Sporadically

I've something to confess, friends. Though it's not set in stone, I've begun working at a JOB recently.

Which leaves far too little time for the number of projects I'd been undertaking at an increasingly ambitious pace this spring. Including my commitments around here. Caramels have been keeping me rather busy, besides the actual 9 to 5, in addition to learning how to compost using red worms, joining a soccer team and oh did I mention, sampling the homebrew?


That last task has taken up the better part of my evening two nights running and I dare say I'll probably have another one tonight as I wrap the last of the caramels for the highly anticipated wedding of Colin and Sarah, which we plan to attend this Sunday. And depending on how it goes, I may even whip up a dress for the occassion.

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.

Homebrewer, Revisited

When we moved to the West, we took with us many bicycles, many books, many kitchen supplies and a favorite chair, but the beer making equipment didn't make the cut. The carboy will crack, the hydrometer will shatter, I assumed and so we sold it to some nerdy boys at Drexel and left without it.

Having moved from a three story, 5 bedroom Victorian house with a basement into our scant one bedroom apartment, we put off buying new homebrew equipment until we were certain that our essential belongings would fit comfortably in here. Since September, we've build lots of shelving, kept the place neatly organized and gotten more comfortable with the place. In sum, we've figured out how to stay junk collectors at heart and still have enough room to maneuver among the madness.

And so two weeks ago, it was with great anticipation we finally went to Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley to buy ingredients for the first batch and a setup. A far cry from the wall-hole in South Philly where I first got started and from Home Sweet Homebrew, the center city brew shop staffed by several cats, Oak Barrel is all glamour. They manage to make beer brewing romantic, and that friends, is not easy to do.

They were a little pricier on the equipment, but much cheaper on ingredients and if my math is correct, that will be just fine in the long run. We got ingredients for Hefeweizen, it being spring time and all, and the plan is to boil it up this afternoon.



Did I mention that Oak Barrel also sells vinegar making supplies? Um, don't even get me started.