More Beer Stuff?

Yes, yes, yes.

A couple days of summer school paid for this mess, and it'll be used for both mead and beer bye the bye.  Elizabeth is at Faire up in South Lake Tahoe today, and since she's not here to do the opening joy, I sent her a series of text messages documenting the Opening.

First...the doorbell rings.  I'm still in my nightgown, folding clothes in the laundry room.  Cooper whoofs.  I carefully open the door to peek out to see if it's the FedEx guy (or lady, I'm not choosy regarding deliveryman/woman gender ratios) without the FedEx guy (or lady) seeing me in my embarrassing state of dishabille.  I look to my left, I see the FedEx truck.  I look on the door, and see a sticker telling me I've a package on the porch.  I look ahead, and what I do see?  A BOX!  Yes, my order from Midwest has come, and it's tucked over in the corner over by the bush and behind the pillar where the FedEx guy (or lady) always puts it if I'm not home to take delivery.

Come to think of it, the UPS guy (or lady) does that too. Oh, how I love the FedEx and UPS guys (and ladies), as they always bring me something I want.  Unless it's something for Michael which I have to forward on to Norway, then it's not as much fun for me.  But I do get to at least open it, which is fun even if I don't get to keep it.

Anyway, this box is HEAVY, so I roll it into the house and get it upright.

Don't tell me that I can't roll something that isn't roundish, because I did it, thump thump thump.

Once I got it in the house I set it upright and scooted it into the kitchen/dining room area.  I did have a moment of crisis of conscience here,  because I knew that Elizabeth would be as excited to open this box as I was, and I briefly considered waiting until she got home tonight or tomorrow before opening it.

Only briefly, though.  My conscience is clear.

I grabbed a pair of scissors, cut the tape, and opened the box, which I clearly had opened upside down.  Yeah.  Story of my life, I tell ya.  But I'm nothing if not flexible and pride myself on my problem-solving skills, so I soldiered on in spite of the unfortunate start.

First I pulled out a brand new aluminum CO2 tank.  Glory!

Gorgeous.

Okay, it's not gorgeous, but I've wanted one for a long time, and it was on sale so I got it. I could have got a used steel one or the new aluminum, but giving my general state of wimpiness, I figured lighter was much better than heavier.

I dove back into the box, and voila!

I pulled out one reconditioned Corny Keg...

... and then the other!  And yeah, that's a beer kit there in the background.  It's for the wedding in August, we'll probably boil it tomorrow.

But CO2 tanks and Corny kegs don't work without all the magic fixings to connect them and make them work, so hopefully there is something else in the box...

There is! A box within a box within a box...etcetera ad nauseum.  But what could be in the box, sez I?

The anticipation is killing me...

Okay, not really, I knew what it had to be, and I was right, although this box was opened upside down too.

Feh.

There it is, all new and waiting to be hooked up.  Do I know how?  Absolutely not.

But hey, it comes with instructions, and Elizabeth and I will muddle around with it until we figure it all out and life will be good.  I did promise her I'd wait until she gets home for that part, at least.  I'm all noble like that an' stuff.

Will I make a blog post when we do that?  Probably.  I mean, duh.  This is a vanity blog. Of COURSE I'm going to bore you with useless ramblings.  Why else do you think I started this thing, anyway?

As an aside, I do shop extensively at my local homebrew shop, and although their prices are generally higher than Midwest, the convenience can't be beat, there's no shipping cost, and the people are really nice.  But they don't have everything and sometimes Midwest's price is lower even considering shipping, so I go there.

The nearest big place like Midwest is MoreBeer/Wine in Concord, and I order from them from time to time as well. It all depends on what I want, when I need it, and whether it's worth the shipping cost.

Entropy is Not Always Our Friend

My daughter Elizabeth is a librarian.  Even if she never again works professionally as one in an actual library setting, she is a librarian, which is to say, she cannot long stand disorder.  Add that to her Aspie brain and you get someone who goes ballistic when things aren't organized by the dewey decimal system.

Okay, not really, but it is true that it is highly dangerous to get between a librarian and disorder, as she will trample you without compunction.  This is being abundantly illustrated today with the following photo:

Disorder

What you see here are all the bottles we had in the garage--collected over the last year and more to put our mead, beer, and lambic in.  A while back I went through all of them and put them in orderly stacks in the garage, but that was some time ago and many things have been tossed in the garage since. Bottles were stacked and stashed everywhere, and she couldn't stand all that randomness.

So today she went into the garage and brought out all the bottles she could find.  Here they are on the floor of the dining room, and what she's doing now (I can hear bottles clinking downstairs as I type this) is rooting through all of them, tossing the annoyingly moldy ones into the recycling bin (we are grateful for people saving bottles for us, but if they aren't rinsed, they get way too moldy to bother scrubbing out), and sorting them by type:  still wine, sparkling wine, beer.

We brought 15 gallons of beer to the family reunion, and the fam did a great job rinsing out bottles as they drank the beer.  We were also able to salvage many beer boxes to put our bottles (empty and full) in, ready to make beer for my niece's wedding in August.  The still bottles will be set aside for the mead we have to bottle soon, with more coming later this year as we can afford the honey to make it.  The rest of the beer bottles and the sparkling wine bottles will be filled with the TWENTY gallons of lambic we've had aging for a year or so and is ready to be bottle conditioned--raspberry, peach, cherry, and blackberry.

She also has been organizing the Cupboard Under the Stairs (with apologies to JK Rowling), which is the coolest spot in the house and where we store all our potables whilst aging and after bottling. There are shelves in there that WERE stacked with assorted miscellaneous but are NOW with assorted specific.  This girl is death to entropy, I tell you!

Tonight's summary: 289 beer bottles clean, in taped and labelled boxes, ready to sanitize and fill with beer for Matt and Kristina's nuptials.  Kate the Efficient Housewife would approve, I'm sure.

She'll tackle the wine bottles tomorrow.  Come back for an update!