Flat Tax

After many delays, Nahum and I were able to get together to sample our long-bottled batch of Explosivo! beer (aka, the stout that exploded and went a little hinky). So we took a pair of bottles from the fridge on a warm evening and retired to the deck for a refreshing quaff.




The only problem was...when we popped the caps, there wasn't quite the satisfying fizz to which we've become accustomed. The beer wasn't totally flat, but it wasn't fully carbonated either. We even shook it up, which produced foam...but no real bubbliness.



It did taste delicious though, and had a nice color (which we know because I spilled some).



The Explosivo! batch continues to be vexing. I suppose we really can't complain; we've managed to produce, at this point, several batches and hundreds of bottles without a real dud. And the Explosivo! is quite tasty (plus, as the weather heats up, its less-than-stout flavor & heaviness is actually fairly refreshing), but I think it's served to cut down the 2JB bravado a bit.

Nahum claims there's a way to fix this carbonation problem, even this many weeks after bottling (he wouldn't let me bring any home...and I'm down to my last few beers!). He's going to look it up, and I guess we'll give it a shot. But I'm also pretty much ready to write this one off as the dud-like experience we were bound to have and just move on. After all, there's a 5-gallon carboy of fermented Originale sitting in my basement, just waiting for us to get back up on the horse and gallop back to some top-notch homebrewing.