I was doing the dishes this morning when I spied an old home brew on the counter. The wife must a discovered it in my plunder and brought it upstairs. It’s gotta be 15 years old, at least. The old bottle was an artifact from my distant past, covered in years of fine sawdust.
Here in Alberta our breweries are (or were, at one time) - all unionized. And sure as chit, every couple a years, right smack dab in the middle of high summer - those pooch screwing brewery assholes would go out on strike like clockwork. When they finally came back, relieved Canadian sheep would flock into the liquor stores and buy the overpriced, watered down swill and a few might grouse about the hefty price hikes. I looked around in wonder as my buddies all loaded up on their favourite brands - as if there was any real difference between one brand of the over-priced, over-pasteurized goat piss and another. It was all the same chit to me.
I said to hell with it all in the 90s and began brewing my own. I’d go down to the grocery store and buy a can of wort, a bag of dextrose - and $10.00 and four weeks later… I had 5 gallons of green home brew. My fermentor was blooping 24/7/365 after that and I always had four batches: the current batch I was drinking, two bottled batches quietly aging in the corner down in the Reclusium, and one blooping and bubbling in the fermenter. That was the big mistake noobs always made with home brew: it has to age for at least a month. 60 - 90 days is better. But even at its worst… my home brewed swamp scum would go head to head with factory beer any day of the week and twice on Sundays! A couple brewery strikes later… and a lot of folks took my home brew seriously and started doing it themselves. I remember driving past the picket line at Labbatts and wishing those pooch screwing assholes a loooooong vacation! HAR HAR HAR! Fuckers!
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I probly spent too much time with my nose in a glass, or hung over, and one day I just stopped drinking altogether. That… and watching my elderly father in law trying (unsuccessfully) to balance his meds and his booze might have had something to do with it too? I may still have a drink once in awhile… but very seldom. I can take booze or leave it now… but Lord… I was sorely tempted to take a sip of that beer this morning. It foamed up with a healthy head and smelled like better times and memories.
But… common sense, right? Down the drain it went…
Ack! At least you or your wife could have made some beer bread with it. The demon alcohol would have been almost entirely gone, but the beer would have lived on in the flavor that it left behind.
ReplyDeleteJerseyJeffersonian
yep
DeleteI used to brew as a hobby (hence the username) and quickly discovered it made me a beer snob. I could NOT drink the "American Light Lager" typical of nearly all beers, and I was able to pick up the flavor of the adjuncts instantly. (I still can't drink a Miller product without thinking "CORN".) I also never drank more than 2 beers in one session because after 2 I couldn't taste it well enough. So it drastically cut down on my beer consumption. It was a helluvalotta fun, though.
ReplyDeleteYep, you can make a good 90 proof rum at home for about seven bucks a quart. Sugar, molasses, water, yeast. Easy peasy.
ReplyDeleteWith the damn price of shit tasting beer going up, my brother and me were talking about start brewing our own, We both use to do wine and understand the discipline and work into but ya get a better tasting and better for you mug of frosty.
ReplyDeleteYup. And brewing beer is even easier than wine. You just mix everything up in a clean pail, leave it for a week and bottle it.
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