Gee, that doesn’t sound very tasty…
Why on Earth would I name my luscious, delicious, and vitamin-packed creations after the Black Death?
Well..um…er… I don’t really have a good reason. I’m big on hyperbole. I get a kick out of the goofy beer labels with incongruous, funny company names and joke beer brands. One of my favorites has to be Schmaltz Brewing Company, and their He’Brew line of “chosen” beers. I also like to come up with my own oddball beers — my favorites were my Howling Black Death Dark, and my Old Maidenhead Cherry Stout.
There’s been a bit of a hiatus in BB’s brewing, a number of years, but I’ve had some time lately and a resurgence in my interest in zymurgy in general. I’ve been working my way back into beer using naturally-carbonated soda, something that lets me practice a bit, get used to the whole “sanitize everything” drill, gather equipment and supplies, that sort of thing. Most of the tools for building a good beer are the same you use for building a good soda, and a lot of the techniques are the same. Of course, there are specialized techniques for each, just like there are for winemaking, for mead making, for cider making…you name it. But when you come down to it, there’s just making a sweet base for yeast to eat, letting it ferment to alcohol or not, and either letting it carbonate the result or not.
I looked at my other websites, and what I have already built isn’t really suited to my brewing efforts, so I bought Yet Another Domain Name and set up WordPress (it was available on Fantastico, so I didn’t have to go to any effort), and whammo, blammo, I have a blog for my brewing. Who knows? I hope it’ll be interesting!