Some pun with the word porter

Took a hydrometer reading on my porter. I bought a new hydrometer last week as I was beginning to suspect that the one I picked up in Germany had a funny scale. I can now confirm this. My new 'murrikan hydrometer tells my beer is at 1.014. The kraut-thingy says about 1.040. There's clearly some Euro-confusion going on and one of these days I'll sort out just what it is. Until then, I'm happy with the knowledge that I might have a notion as to when my beer is done fermenting and can hazard a guess as to how much booze is in it. Had a taste of the sample. Pretty tasty. I think I'm going to bottle next Saturday, which will cause the four-pack samplers that I'm taking to some friends in Philadelphia to become proper six-pack samplers.

Meanwhile, I'm having a Sam Adams Wee Heavy. I really shouldn't as I've got a bit of a cold, but what the hell. I'll be going to bed soon and this will send me on my way nicely. I picked up a four-pack of this and the imperial stout. I'm happy with the variety that Sam seems to put out, but at the same time, it'd be nice if they had a nice stable of four or five that I could reliably pick up now and again. Brooklyn Brewery is great in that they have a steady roster, but still break out the one-offs. Dogfish Head could also follow this advice. Special is nice, but what's also nice is being able to buy something a second time.

Back to the beer. Rather nice. I had two of these last Friday while racking the porter to secondary (and painting my front door and watching Star Trek). I was surprised that it didn't get on top of me as it's a fairly big beer. ABV is 10% which would even make a Belgian sit up and take notice. It's a very thick, syrupy drink and I mean that in a good way. There are nice pockets of caramel and molasses lurking in this dark, peaty thing. It heads in the direction of being the ale equivalent of some instances of Starkbier. Nice. Certainly worth having again; it would be lovely at Christmas. Let's just hope I can still buy it in five months time.

It just occurred to me that I'm drinking a Wee Heavy and I heard the Phish song "Heavy Things" on the radio this morning. Cool, baby.