Brewing Bummer

I haven't posted about brewing for a while. We have really spread out our brewing, mainly because we haven't been able to spend much time together. When we had one or two days each week where we could spend the entire day together, it was a lot easier to take 3 hours out of the day to brew. But we haven't had that luxury for a couple of months!

There is a more unfortunate reason why we have majorly slowed down the brewing. We had a few bottle explosions! Yes, that's right, a bottle of beer will just up and explode while sitting on the shelf or in a box. Obviously, this presents several problems - very messy, a little scary when you hear the explosion, and definitely dangerous. And it is so disappointing to miss out on drinking that beer!



We have had this happen to about 6 or 8 bottles. The strange thing is, they aren't all the same batch, we can't really find rhyme or reason - the most strongly carbonated beer has not had one explosion. I think a lot of the reason they are exploding is because it is warming up, and our apartment, being on the top floor, is difficult to keep cool without blasting the a/c all the time.

I have to say that the saddest casualty (to me) of this series of explosions is my She-Ra dress.



Some beer and broken glass got into the box where I had Halloween stuff stored. Some of the decorations had to be thrown out, which was not a big deal, and Chris didn't especially like wearing his He-Man costume, so I don't really feel too bad that his sexy shorts probably couldn't be washed anyway.



But when I saw the white dress soaked in brown beer, I almost cried a little bit. I had worked so hard on it and I really thought it turned out cool! But, no point in crying over spilled beer - don't worry about me, I have moved past it. Most of the beer came out, and the dress probably needed to be washed anyway! I'll just have to make a way cooler Halloween costume this year.

Our plan now is to take a few months off of brewing. Depending on our work schedules and how much time we'll be able to spend together after our wedding (less than 4 months away now!), we might pick it back up again. We probably have enough beer for the next few months. And then... we might have to switch to... (bum-ba-bum) COMMERCIAL BREW. Oh well, we'll survive. We may wait until we have more space and can start kegging, and not deal with bottles at all!