Now we just have to wait.

So John finished with school this week, an event we celebrated on Monday evening with Jelly Beans and Beer at the park. One whole year of graduate school closer to being Doctor Geography is nothing to sneeze at.


So that also means that now I have an extra set of hands around here for things that are really more of a two person job. The first on the list was getting that aforementioned hefeweizen into bottles so they can start carbonating and aging so that we can drink it. You may however remember that the most dreaded, most labor intensive part of the whole process is when you have to put that stuff into bottles, a process that goes something like this: power wash, suds it up, rinse it WELL, sanitize, and then repeat.

It takes a while just to get everything prepared and then you have to also siphon the tasty beer from the primary into the bottling bucket (I've reverted to single stage fermenting since moving here, as it is a bit simpler in our tiny quarters), managing to leave the trub behind, mixing in the sugar, keeping everything Clean. And then actually dispensing it into those shiny vessels and capping them all off. I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

But we did it. John cleaned the kitchen and kept things orderly while I cleaned out the bottles and then we did that brilliant waltz described up there of doing the damned thing and afterwards, John scrubbed the floor. Truly.


Afterwards, the payoff is all those shiny bottles lined up on the countertop ready to do their part and turn that delicious hoppy liquid into something refreshing. Now we just have to wait.



I couldn't have done this one alone. Thanks to Andrew and Miriam for being such trooper beer drinkers and giving us a bundle of bottles. And thanks to Gerik back in January for so considerately saving those big old 33 oz. re-sealable bottles he drank out here, which were Great for this.