Here's the Plan

Weather: 80
Drinks: Beer - home brew

Ok. We've got a plan.

A plan for the baby? No

For financial wealth? No

For a vacation? No

For a summer full of drinking beer? YES

Last summer MM gave me a choice: Would you rather take up the hobby of wine making or beer brewing?

Hmmmmm. Decisions, decisions. A hobby involving alcohol - yes please! It was at that point I KNEW I married the right man.

We settled on brewing beer. It just seemed . . .easier, and less frightening. Granted, grapes are much more appealing than grains in their original form, but let's leave the wine making to people speaking foreign languages and Californian, thankyouverymuch.

Since that fateful day, MM & I have brewed our little hearts out, perfecting the 5 gallon batch procedure. And have ended up with a basement full of suds. Some excellent. Some ok. And one or two absolutely obnoxious.

We even managed to brew 4 gallons of cider vinegar last fall when our batches of hard cider went awry. Good thing cider vinegar makes decent drain cleaner or we would have been eating fish and chips for the rest of all eternity.

But from the excellent batches we have 4 standouts - MM's original Vanilla Stout and a gorgeous Chocolate Porter, and my Amber Ale and Creme Ale.

When I got pregnant MM asked if he should quit brewing until after the baby is born. Hell NO! I replied. It takes a couple of months to produce a ready to drink beer and by god we better be stocking up for the day the baby is out of me and I can drink again. Granted I'll be breastfeeding, but it will be summer time and I'll make it work, because beer drinking and summertime are like twins conjoined at the heart.

So while my stints wearing the brew master cap stopped, MM patiently took over and continued to brew & experiment with recipes. The delicious smell of the wort would fill our house on those cold winter days and fog over the windows. The nice thing about that was knowing the beer he was brewing would be waiting for me just about as long as I would be waiting for it - and we would both then be ready.

A week ago MM mentioned he had been pricing small chest freezers. Forwhy? It's a cheaper version of a refrigerator when you install an external thermostat. Oh. My wheels turned.

Then we saw a couple of small freezers in KMart - just about the right size for two soda kegs. So what if we put said freezer in the sun room, just on the other side of the kitchen wall, and our sink. . . .and ran a short bit of tubing to a double tapper tower installed beside the sink?

More turning wheels. Searching. Pricing.
Turns out for about $300 we could have 2 kegged beers on tap in our kitchen, with childsafe locks of course. A plan.

Now we just need to decide which 2 beers will be first!!!