Sunday, September 16, 2007

Rock Party

My neighborhood had a block party yesterday, for which I provided a keg of Rocky Raccoon (p.210), prepared with help from Marco and Bobby. My neighbor Shawn, who organized the party, promised to forward me at least some of the pictures he took. If there are any good shots of people enjoying homebrew, I'll try to post them here.

I made sure to take the first cup, since I hadn't tried the batch yet, and I wasn't sure if there was anything in the lines (or just in the sediment) that would result in off flavors. It's a good thing that I did, since there was definitely something not right in my first cup. It was still drinkable, but very bitter. Subsequent servings were considerably better, but even after rinsing my mouth a couple of times, my palate was still too affected by the first drink to get a good sense of the batch quality.

My dad had a similar experience between his first two servings, though his first wasn't as off as mine, and didn't seem to bias his palate as much. Everyone else who tried it had nothing but good things to say, and I hopefully have at least one new convert to homebrewing. The only disappointment was that I'd expected a block party to easily tap the entire keg. I estimate about a gallon remaining. For the sake of my ego, I'm going to attribute the "low" consumption to the cooler temperatures — yesterday's high was only 71, which isn't as conducive to drinking as the 77 degrees of just the previous day.

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