HollyCornblog’s home brewing skills are on display here as she deals with a very feisty (and most likely yummy) Stone Smoked Porter clone.

First … here’s her big pot in action. The spigot is open and draining the beer from the pot through a strainer into the carboy.

Then the carboy gets covered with a paper bag (beer needs to be kept in the dark as much as possible – so much for those clear Corona bottles, eh?) and sits in a warm place and “works.”

… and works and works and works and works.  In fact, it gets pretty worked up!

Here’s the carboy on Monday night, spewing Smoked Porter out of its air lock.  It’s hard to see – but if you click on the thumbnail you’ll get a larger image.  Apparently it was a strong, thick stream.

I asked HollyCornblog what it was like and she wrote: “Yep, it was coming straight out in a forceful skinny stream. I ended up having to take the air-lock off and I put a giant blow-off hose in the container. It wasn’t long after I sent you the picture when there was a loud boom and the cork flew out of the carboy.”  Who knew that home brewing could be so exciting (and possibly dangerous)?

The last photo is of the blow-off hose … with this update from HollyCornblog:  “It has finally calmed down enough where I can put the air lock back on it. It was just bubbling like crazy last night and spitting and sputtering. You can see how the paper bag got all splattered from it shooting up in the air. I am just hoping in the end the beer tastes good.”

Two comments:

1)  I am sure the beer will taste awesome!

2)  Any chance you could loan me that blow hose for the next time Christopher Hitchens is on Hardball?  I think it might really help.