Thirty Gallon Six Pack

I'm not a neat freak. Ask anyone who knows me, and they're likely as not (even if they like me) to say, 'That slob?'

But there is one area of my life that I'm truly fastidious about: beer. It's (make of this what you will) probably the closest thing to religion I've every truly had.



I've been homebrewing since 1995, approaching a hundred batches, and I've never lost a batch to bacteria. Cleaning and sanitizing are essential to drinkable beer.

When I was still making batches small enough to be made in the kitchen, the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster embraced my hobby because it got me to clean the kitchen. And I mean clean it like I was going to be operated on in there.

When we moved into my present home, I put together an all-grain brew rig that let me move to ten gallon batches and got me out of the kitchen and into the driveway for the brew day. This is a good thing. Fresh air. Twice as much beer. And if you boil over (as you always will), it's more garden hose and shrug than pull the stove out and try to clean behind it.




But as life has changed, I've done some things I'd never do. Like go a year or more without brewing. Or attend church regularly and take my kids. Go figure.

As I explain to the occasional passer-by when I do my beer dishes in the driveway: I just don't have a dishwasher that will take these five gallon kegs and carboys.



However, some things have no excuse. Like when I brewed a batch last August and never got around to even racking it. I kegged it this evening, but it was a close call between dumping it entirely.

Yeast autolysis can create almond flavors, but the distinct green apple of acetaldehyde? My friend thought it smelled okay and even his wife who hates beer agreed, so I went ahead and kegged it, adding an ounce of East Kent Goldings in a hop bag to each keg in hopes of covering up the sins of this errant brew.

On the flip side, the American Stout I brewed up a week and a half ago is very promising. And the mead I kegged tonight after 14 months in the secondary may be the best mead I've made in years.

Add to this the cider I discovered in my brew closet when I brewed the stout...



Back when I brewed more actively this couldn't have happened. The keg of cider and the carboy of mead that spent 14 months in the secondary, neither would have gotten so long if I'd brewed anything between August of 07 and June of 08.

As it is, my neglect seems to have netted me ten gallons of questionable beer and five gallons of stellar mead and another five of very respectable cider.






And between the keg of cider already on tap and what I packaged tonight, a true homebrewer's sixpack made up of six five-gallon Corny Kegs.