Reykjavik to Belgium

Awhile back S & S Brewing Co. took a stab at our first lager, a black lager. Lagers require a constant cold temperature to properly ferment and because of the extra hand holding involved we felt this would be a good test of our brewing chops. We brewed it at the end of our bathroom renovation and wanted to name it for something having to do with the new room where you get clean. "New Toilet Seat Lager" or "Black and White Hex Floor Tile Lager" doesn't roll off the tongue, so we put the name conjuring process on the back burner while putting the finishing touches on the bathroom. We decided to hang some nice pics of nature and landscapes from our honeymoon in Iceland on the wall when it hit us. Iceland is covered in volcanoes and black volcanic rock, we have pics of beautiful Iceland in our marvelous new bathroom, and our newest brew is a black lager, how about calling our black lager, Lava Rock Lager!? Perfect! We opened the first one and the beer started gushing out of the bottle and all over the kitchen. Not a good start. It wasn't as clear as it should have been for a lager either, also not good. All that aside it tasted ok. We figured we'd just careful about opening them and make our way through them as quickly as possibly to get rid of them as quickly as possible. One fine weekday morning the Fantastic Wife and I are having breakfast when we hear a loud pop sound, we looked at our furry 4 legged children, suspecting one of them knocked something over, nope, they're both relaxing quietly on the living room floor. It sounded like it came from the basement...where the Lava Rock Lagers are lying in wait....oh no. One of the Lava Rock Lagers exploded. The gushers had progressed to bottle grenades, the ultimate death knell for home brews. Seeing as one went we had to get rid of the rest to avoid having them all blow up on us. As hard as it was to pour 15 beers down the driveway it wasn't all pain and suffering, a couple of them shot a plume of beer 1-2 feet into the air. A little research tells us that the gushing and subsequent boom boom condition is caused by contamination at the bottling phase and we think we were able to pinpoint the exact moment it all went wrong, (lack of sanitizing after syphoning.)

So, fast forward to a couple days ago, armed with new knowledge about being super extra clean with all that we do we bottled our Belgian Triple. We think we got this one right, we'll have to wait and see. We're wrestling with a fistful of ideas for our next batch, right now the front runner is a caramel apple ale. The contenders include a vanilla porter and chocolate hazelnut porter. We have some brews we want to do for the warmer weather, something light and drinkable like a pilsner, but they actually need warmer weather to ferment properly. By warmer I mean in the mid 60's. We keep our house in the high 50's during this time of year, so we have to wait for Mother Nature to get her head in the game before we can start brewing them.