Fable for a failed race

Having made my own malt I then had to decide what beer to make with it. It would have to be single malt so I could best see how my malt had turned out. And single hop seemed appropriate too, as should the brain eating living dead destroy civilisation as we know it I'm sure we'll have a lot less hops to choose from. Which I'm sure will be one of the pressing concerns of the few scattered survivors.

The hop really had to be English too, as I'll have to find something growing locally and the delicate flavour of English hops won't overpower the malt. I did go a little off piste in choosing Flyer though as it's now only grown in small amounts on one farm, but I had some in stock and I'd been meaning to use it for a while and this seemed a good opportunity.

I stuck to the self sufficiency thing by propagating the yeast myself, from a bottle of Summer Lightning before it went keg (I also had other plans this yeast but that's another story).

Not always being entirely on the ball in the morning I did ask myself what the grist was when I saw how dark the wort had turned out. It seems with the long moist kilning I'd ended up making munich malt rather than pale.

Just to be certain that starch conversion had taken place I got the iodine out:

It was good to see that all was well. The fermentation stopped fairly early leaving the beer sweet, but the high alpha Flyer hops did their job and gave plenty of balancing bitterness and a pleasant fruitiness. The yeast gave nice flavours too, and I'm glad I got some on a slope before Hopback stopped bottle conditioning.

If this is how post-apocalypse beer is going to be then I don't think we've much to worry about.