The Beertender: Into the Black

No matter what the calendar says, summer ended for me on Sunday, September 27, at around seven in the evening. It was at this time that dusk turned to dark, the wind picked up and the Kölsch keg blew.

My friend Joe has a sweet draught system in his house. It's a small True cabinet with a two-tap tower that sits right next to his kitchen table, which means on nights when he and I are sitting around shooting the proverbial poop, we don't even have to stand up to refill. Jealous? Me, too.

One recent Sunday evening, Joe and I were sitting in his backyard with some other folks, enjoying some Schlafly Kölsch (tap #1), when Joe's lovely girlfriend came home from a hard day's work and tried to pour herself a well-earned beer. Plooshhhh. No more Kölsch.

OK, what's behind tap #2? Looks like an oatmeal stout! Oh, yes, please. So each reveler filled his or her glass in turn, and the evening progressed much as before.

Sometime during that first glass of the Black, I paused, realizing that I had just gone from drinking perhaps the palest, lightest ale style to one of those sandwiches-in-a-glass beers without hesitation. Now, granted, I'm a geek, but not everyone at this gathering was as promiscuous in their choice of drink. There was something about this beer that made it a no-brainer at that moment in time -- other than the fact that its tap was right next to the beer we had been drinking, and that it was closer to us than the beer fridge, which involved stairs and glass bottles and openers and... well, anyway.