Beer

I made you smile, didn't I?

Who doesn't love beer?  I REALLY love beer.  I am sure that statement would make some people roll their eyes.  Let me explain. 

It is not just drinking beer that gets me excited.  I love to make it.  I love to shop for it.  I love to shop for the ingredients to make it.  I love the colors, the smells, the flavors and the process.  I love a neat row of freshly capped bottles.  I am learning to love being able to pull the tap handle and fill whatever size glass I dare.  Not just beer.  I love wine.  I love mixing beer with mead, wine with mead.  I am not crazy about mead though.  It is the process of making braggot or pyment that excites me.  I have made hard cider and that was awesome too.  I love that my daughter, Gwen, enjoys helping me.  The other two get excited, but don't help as much.  I think they are learning to love the process, the colors and the neat rows.  Today I was racking my malbec for its final phase before going into bottles.  While doing that I started preparations for bottling the raspberry/blackberry fruit ale that I made.  I just think a keg of fruit beer would overwhelm me, so bottles it was.  When I stacked the cases of bottles near the back door so that they could be scrubbed and sanitized the girls all asked "are you bottling beer?"  My affirmative reply elicited a "yeah (yay)!" from the assembled crowd. 

So on we went.  Filtering the fruit the yeast feasted on and the dead yeast was of above average difficulty for beer.  Gwen was undaunted.  She assisted me the entire way.  She was rinsing buckets and hoses.  She loves to use the "jet washer" for rinsing the sterilized bottles.  She is my "cap placer," and "bottle arranger."  We bottled it up and she loves to write the three letter codes on the caps that tell us what nectar is inside.  Today was "FAT" for "fruit ale tart."  She thought that was funny. 

Anyhow, in the process there are always little bits of sludge in the bottom of the buckets.  I filtered out the wine sludge and let it settle.  We had a few ounces of the beer in the bottom of the bottling bucket.  I let Gwen try it.  She said the wine was "like the wine at church."  Interesting comparison.  I will rattle on about that another day.  Let me say this:  if the wine in church tastes like that I need to start taking the wine at communion.  The beer was cool.  It tasted nice even with no carbonation.  She marvelled at all the seeds in the bucket and that it was "all that was left" of all the raspberries and blackberries."  The yeast did its job.  We had discussions about force carbonation versus bottle conditioning.  While I am sure we have discussed this before, my ability to show her both in action HAS to be a better way to drive it home.  By the time we were done she was excited about "what are we going to make next?"  We ordered the peaches and apricots to make a fruit ale with those.  I ordered the ingredients to make a lager before it gets too warm for lager fermentaton now that I have lagering capability.  I ordered juice to make a Spanish Tempranillo and the honey and pinot noir juice to make a pyment just because I was so happy.  I feel it necessary to explain that the joy of shopping for ingredients is diminished with three kids in tow.  Online brings joy, but not quite as much.  You can't smell and touch. 

This day.  I coached Ione's soccer team in the morning.  Gwen worked with me on beer and wine for the bulk of the day.  I read from from the trilogy we are plowing through tonight.  This day.  Gwen said to me while we were outside on the patio, "Daddy, is this kind of like how you and Grampie made maple syrup together when you were a kid?" 

I love beer.