This one is well struck... it's got a chance....

First for the soda. The rootbeer project is complete. I tried it yesterday morning and it had a good amount of fizz. When you're staring at an 18, you know it could get better, but you could bust. No blackjack, but as I understand it, yeast carbonation yields less head than forced carbonation. There was only so much fizz I was going to get.

Next time I will let it ride a bit longer instead of the in-out, in-out of the fridge action. Probably shocked the yeast. I will trust the plastic bottles more next time since I know what to look for now.

On to the beer.

So I just took the specific gravity reading on the beer for the first time. We are sitting at 1.011, so it should be close to done. I will check it again on Saturday to see if it has changed. If not, then the beer is safe to condition and bottle.

Conditioning will be accomplished with a small package of corn sugar, a siphon and the bottling bucket. I mentioned earlier that I was having trouble with connecting the spigot to the bucket. I was feeling a bit discouraged that I was not clever enough to figure out why the hole and the end of the threads on the spigot were exactly flush, instead of stopping at the hole.

The folks at More Beer (www.morebeer.com) were quick to point out that they had mis-drilled holes in some of the buckets, and suddenly I was no longer stupid. They provided a corrected bucket, with apologies, and a new spigot, and I was on my way.

So if the reading on the hydrometer is still 1.011, then I will siphon the flat beer out of the glass carboy, and into the bottling bucket, leaving as much debris, or trub, at the bottom of the glass as I can. To augment my success here, and to minimize oxidization, I will transport the carboy to the counter where I will siphon it ahead of time. This way the trub has time to settle to the bottom.

Once transfered to the bottling bucket, I'll add the corn sugar and let it dissolve.

The yeast will eat the sugar and produce enough sugar to carbonate the beer, but not enough to create excessive pressure.

Now, after the measurement has been taken, I have this tall slender beaker of flat beer, and I'm thinking that I've been wondering if the beer made it through OK or was tainted by bacteria. So I look at the beaker. I give it a whiff. Smells OK. It's flat.... but it's still beer...

What the hell, I gave it a taste....

WOW! It wasn't my recipe, so I can only take credit for the execution (along with Frank) but damn that tastes pretty good.

It has more of a hoppy taste than malty, but I can taste the malt. The hoppyness was like an IPA, but there was a mellowness underneath it, remeniscent of Buffalo Bill's (http://www.buffalobillsbrewery.com/brewery.asp) Tasmanian Devil.

It will be interesting to see what it tastes like after 2 or 3 weeks in the bottle. I was careful to soak the tubing I used to extract the sample for the hydrometer in a bleach solution, and to cap the carboy again once it was done. Would hate to contaminate the beer now that I've come this far.

Tomorrow I will discuss the search for bottles....