Johnny's in the basement...

... mixin' up the medicine. I am in the kitchen with the tombstone blues.

Wait. That's not quite right. I grabbed the porter from the basement and am now letting bleach do its magic before I rack the porter to secondary. I'm pleased with how it looks so far. I cooked it up last Saturday and although it took a while to get going, it seemed to ferment rather well. To all outward appearances, it went smoother than my first two batches. I cooled it down in a hurry, actually tried to take it off the trub, seemed to have gotten loads of oxygen by filling the carboy and I aerated with the fish tank de-vice. So all that's ok. I took a reading with my bizarre German hydrometer and got an OG of 1.075. I know that's dead wrong and I look forward to learning what sort of odd scale that thing is set to. I'll take a reading tonight and at least I'll know how it's doing in a relative sense.

I experimented with a layered hop addition this time. Porter isn't something known for its hop, so that was a bit of a fool's errand, but I love to try new things and I hate to wait. And a porter with complex and assertive hop is hardly going to annoy anyone, so there you are.

Meanwhile, I poured a glass of my hef side by side with a glass of Schneider (picture to follow later). I have to admit, I was pleased with the color that I got. Granted, color ought to be something that's very hard to F up, but it was a surprise given my initial reaction. When I first poured it, it seemed far too dark. A comparison with the cover of my book about German wheat beer seemed to confirm this, but there's no arguing that the Schneider looked very similar. That is to say, the color was similar. The head looked loads lovelier on the Schneider. As for taste, I didn't fare too bad here, either. There's no doubt that the Schneider was better- mine is still a banana bomb and somehow simultaneously too thin and too heavy. Still, my hef held its own. It wasn't nearly the disaster that I had been expecting and that's a very good thing.

Tomorrow night: tasting the ESB/strong ale/whatever. Bought a bottle of Fuller 1845 for comparison. Had an ESB, but I drank it last night. Like I said earlier, I hate to wait.