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Rolling Blackout

This beer was a kit that I bought on ebay from XXXX.  I brewed on an afternoon with my family during a scheduled power blackout scheduled by TEPCO**.  This is the first taste after waiting 1 week after bottling.  There is not much aroma except for maybe a hint of dark-maltiness or is it malty-darkness.  There is a little bite on the tongue as priming (3/4 cup of light malt) is starting to kick off.  There is no head to speak of, but hopefully that will develop in a few more weeks.   I was a little concerned because this particular bottle had some yeast (or something) inside the bottle on the neck, but it tastes to be ok.

Ingredients:

  • 4 L water
  • 2 lb. Muntons Dark (Dried Malt Extract)
  • 3.3 lb. Muntons Hopped Dark Bitterness (40-45)
  • 1 oz. German Hallertau Hops (pellets, Alpha 3%)
  • 6 oz. Muntons Crushed Crystal 2-Row Barley (not much!!)
  • 11.5 g, Saflager S-23 Dried Yeast
  • 1/2 Tsp. Irish moss

**Rolling Blackouts: The theory was that because of the earthquake and damaged Fukushima nuclear powerplant everyone would have to endure months of power outages where each city or grid was on a different time so that no one would have more than 4 hours of outage time.  And that the times were rotated so that no one had to endure a very inconvenient time all the time ex. 0600-1000.   Blackouts would be announced on the TEPCO website and on the “big voice” a network or loudspeakers strategically placed throughout each city and prefecture.  unfortunately this was in Japanese so it was just eerie-echo voices that were no help at all to whether the power was about to go out, it was going to go out in the morning, or it was not going to go out at all.