Fun with a beer seeker

Paris returned to Omaha this morning, and as usual we had lunch at the Crescent Moon Ale House and bought a few bottles next door at Beertopia. We got home around dinnertime and fed the cats and planned to have a quiet evening at home.

The phone rang around 8:00; it was the bartender at Gottberg. She said there was a guy at the bar who had been using my site for years to plan his travels, and he'd like to meet me if possible. Why not...we walked over to the pub.

At the bar was one Christopher Bay, from Detroit. He was wending his way home from seeing his daughter in New Mexico, stopping at breweries along the way. Twenty breweries, in fact, in the last two weeks.

We talked about beer and we talked about breweries and he showed us his pictures and we drank more beer and the pub was about to close. We told Christopher to park his camper in our driveway, then we got into my cellar and drank more beers. (I'll have to sort through the empty bottles to figure out just which ones.) A good time was had by all.

Education

After this morning's medical appointment — they're sending me to a spine specialist in Omaha — I went to the brewery and rinsed the acid out of the mash tun, kettle, and heat exchanger, then packed the HX with sanitizer.

At noon, the Brewers Association presented one of their online web-based educational opportunites. This month's Power Hour, on the subject of Ensuring Draft Quality in the Brewhouse and Beyond, was presented by Upstream Brewing's Zac Triemert, who talked about controlling beer quality during the brewing process, and Tom Geordt from Micromatic, who covered draft line maintenance. Very interesting and important stuff.

Cleaning, and kegs

I started catching up on my long list of things to do this week, having been quite a slacker recently.

• Cleaned kegs.


• Filled kegs of beer for the pub and root beer for the wholesalers.
  
• Cleaned a couple dozen picnic taps.


• Threw away a bunch of trash in my office.


• Circulated acid through the heat exchanger and kettle for an hour. I'll let it soak overnight, then rinse and sanitize it tomorrow.


• Soaked the mash screens in acid to be rinsed tomorrow.

Tomorrow: see if I can get some sugar and make 28 barrels of root beer.

Michigan triples deposit on beer kegs

Kegs are expensive. Breweries pay lots of money for their cooperage. It has never made sense to me that we can charge only a $10 or $20 deposit on a piece of equipment that costs up to fifteen times that amount to replace. Retailers and consumers might not like it, but I think Michigan's action is a step in the right direction. Besides, paying a larger deposit doesn't make the purchase more expensive, since you get that money back when you return the keg to its rightful owner. Which reminds me, scrapyards that buy kegs from the scumbags mentioned in the article are guilty of receiving stolen goods, and should be prosecuted accordingly.

Buying a keg for your next party is a little more expensive. Large breweries have complained about losing thousands of beer kegs a year in Michigan because retail beer customers have been selling off the stainless steel barrels at scrap yards rather than returning them to stores to get their $10 deposit back.



As a result, state alcohol officials have boosted the deposit from $10 to $30, The Bay City Times reported Sunday.

Read the entire article at IndyStar.com.

Buy a Pal A Pint - Wherever

Here's an interesting concept that will probably face some legal tests in the near future. Ain't the Internet grand?

[Steve] Cohn and two friends started a business called BuyYourFriendADrink.com, a Web-based operation that allows folks to buy a friend a drink - whether across town or across the country.



The trio raised $500,000 and started signing up bars. So far, BYFAD has signed up 60 bars, mostly in the New York City area, although, Cohn said, it is expanding into the Boston area and is signing up about five bars a week.

Read the whole article at NYPost.com.

Jeremy Kirby, Brewmaster

Exciting news from Berlin: Jeremy Kirby, formerly my rented mule, graduated last Friday from the renowned Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei!

Jeremy Kirby's VLB diploma

Jeremy says he may be headed to Münster for a one-month apprenticeship.

I heartily congratulate him on his accomplishment, and wish him all the luck in the world with his new career!

Catching up, again

I guess my idea about "drinking less and typing more" hasn't taken root.

• Tuesday, May 29: Cleaned the draft lines. Cleaned a boatload of kegs. Crashed the Hefeweizen to drop some yeast out in preparation for transferring it to the cellar later this week.


• Wednesday, May 30: Ran a five-gallon keg of root beer over to Crackers to Caviar, my nearest customer outside the pub. Caught up on invoices and phone calls. Dumped trub out of the Rye Lager, Hefeweizen, and Gold.


• Thursday, May 31: Filled kegs. Went to a fun tasting event at our local Hy-Vee store this evening; they were introducing beers from Big Sky Brewing (Missoula MT) and Left Hand Brewing (Longmont CO).


• Friday, June 1: Picked up Paris at Omaha's airport and had lunch at the Crescent Moon Ale House. (Of course.)
  
• Saturday, June 2: Drove down to Denton and poured Uncle Ivan's Dunkelweizen and Impromptu Pale Ale at a fundraiser for the Lux Center for the Arts, held at the Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center. Empyrean Brewing and Spilker Ales also brought some beers, and a good time was had by all.
  
  

  Brian, Paris, and Christine at the fest



• Sunday, June 3: Drove Paris to the Omaha airport, but didn't stop for a beer. (!)


• Monday, June 4: Filled some root beer kegs for the Grand Island wholesaler. Did the monthly tax reports. Kegged the rest of the Hefeweizen, cleaned and sanitized the tank, and transferred the new batch.


• Tuesday, June 5: Cleaned the draft lines. Got a phone call from Skeeter Barnes in Council Bluffs, Iowa saying they were down to half a keg of root beer, and they needed four kegs right away. So I filled them and drove them out there. Transferred 14 barrels of root beer into the cellar.

Tomorrow: Clean and fill kegs, and clean the pile of picnic taps that came back wit all the root beer kegs. Whee.