Explosive Fermentation

Yesterday I had not one, but two volcanic eruptions in my basement. It all started with Sunday's match up between the Steelers and Vikings. B. James and his girlfriend(wife) came over to watch the game, grill up some food and brew some beer. Late in 4th quarter, after like his 5th sack, Bret Favre kind of just laid on the field in the fetal position, not wanting to get up.


That was our cue. Time to make some beer.

Brewing went well. We did everything perfectly. We sterilized everything thoroughly, followed the recipe to a tee, chilled down the wort to 70 degrees in under a half hour, pitched the yeast, transferred to the fermenter, and sealed the airlock with cheap vodka. It was time to begin the drinking ...er, waiting game.

8 hours passed, no bubbles. 12 hours passed, no bubbles. 24 hours passed, no bubbles. 36 hours passed, no bubbles. 48 hours passed, ...OH MY GOD! THE BUBBLES!!!

I come home from work to find the lid of the bucket covered in thick brown sludge and the airlock is bubbling forth with happy little yeast farts. Yea!

We were getting worried, and were glad we didn't have to resort to our backup plan to get the yeast going, which was letting my pet guinea pig take a swim in the bucket.


It may have been a slow start, but things quickly got out of hand. I wake up yesterday morning (this is the first morning after bubbles started the night before) to find my basement has fallen victim to a volcanic eruption. We're talking Mount Saint Fuck'n Helen!


I see thick foamy head oozing out of the bucket, the lid is lying on the ground 10 feet away, and it looks like an elephant's ass had exploded in my basement.

I cleaned everything up, resterilized the lid before putting it back on, and went off to work. But it wasn't done there. Hoping that the yeast had gotten it all out of it's system the night before, I come home to find another volcanic eruption. This one was tamer, but no less messy. This was one of those slow moving lava flows. You know the ones that a 2 year old could out run, and yet some grown man always seems to be caught off guard and killed by it. The sludge had oozed out and formed a nice pond and river of filth through my basement. Once again, I cleaned everything up. Now I have the bucket sitting in a large basin in hopes to contain any further mishaps.

I guess the only comforting thing is knowing that if the yeast is that active, it's got to be choking out any bacteria that might try to get a foot hold in the batch. I could probably take a crap in the bucket and still come out with good beer.

...ok, maybe not.

The 117

I woke up dizzy, nauseous, and in pain the morning of Richard's annual party. That's the morning of, not the morning after.

Confused? Let me back up a bit.

The night before, a friend had come back into town for the party, and we'd gone out for dinner and drinks. I ordered chicken fried steak for dinner, but emotional trauma from a previous chicken fried steak experience kept me from eating much of the delectable deep fried beef before me (it's a long story). But the short and chubby of it is I didn't get much food in me, but I didn't adjust my alcohol intake accordingly. Sure, it was spaced out enough that I was reasonably sober by the time I was going to sleep, but you need the calories and moisture of a good meal to help your body process the fusel oils that exist in every form of alcohol that's intended for human consumption. After those who were pregaming for the next day left the bar, a friend of my girlfriend's showed up and we stayed a couple more rounds.

Also, I'd had a pretty bad allergy attack during the night. So by Saturday morning, my head was throbbing, I felt like I needed to vomit, and I was stumbling around like a new camera man for Deadliest Catch.


Water, Sudafed, Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Immodium, and a whole pot of black coffee had me feeling only moderately human by the time I headed out for Richard's place.

Richard and the out-of-town friend were already setting up (they had eaten dinner). I was still feeling like shit, but I had grabbed a pounder of Red Bull on the way. That's right, a pounder! I drank it down like it was nothing and still wasn't very energetic. But guests were starting to file in, so it was time for Paddy and myself to take our traditional places for our once-a-year amateur bar tending.


I had spent no small amount of time assembling a cheat-sheet for mixing drinks. In fact, I had asked you for ideas, but I only got one reply. So I started by adding all the items from a menu Richard had made up for the first of his annual parties, then I searched for tropical-themed drinks, as this was to be a tropical-themed party. The next thing I know, the sheet had over one hundred drinks on it. One hundred seventeen, to be exact. So I called it "The 117" (pronounced One One Seven).

In no time, the booze was flowing freely. Everyone had to do a shot when they arrived, and they got a stamp on their hand/arm for that and every shot they did that night. I, however, wasn't drinking too much. I was still feeling pretty terrible.

Someone else who wasn't drinking much was Richard. Playing host is difficult, even with two suave bartenders like Paddy and myself keeping everyone intoxicated, there's still a ton of stuff to do. He was prepping food, manning the grill, meeting and greeting, and trying to keep everyone entertained.

Though I attempted to help him with this last item as well. I had come up with games that, as a bartender, I could use to keep the energy of the party going. The aforementioned stamps were one of those ideas.

We also played Russian roulette with shotglasses. Six shotglasses were arranged like chambers in a revolver. Five were filled with water, one with vodka. Two people would take turns drinking them. It was a lot of fun and helped keep people hydrated.


Occasionally I would ring a bell and ask for something from a party-goer; a receipt from the liquor store, the person who drove the oldest car to the party, the person with the most piercings, stuff like that. The winner got anything ranging from a glowing necklace to a tiki shotglass.

One game that took all evening to play was a betting pool of sorts. Everyone guessed when they thought the first person would throw up. Not who, just when. The closest person without going over won a prize. The guesses really spanned the whole party from early afternoon to near midnight. The earliest time almost won, but dry heaves don't count.


But even with all this, there was more than enough to keep Richard busy as hell for the earlier parts of the party. But at some point, the party gained enough momentum that he could take some time out. He joined Paddy and I to make a couple drinks for folks, we took a walk around the block with travelers and cigars, and then... well, he kind of disappeared from my sight for awhile. My girlfriend was handing my camera back to me when a look of shock came over her face. I turned around just in time to witness an impressive spectacle. Now, I'm no stranger to face-smashing, and I have to say that Richard's maneuver was quite impressive. As I turned around, I saw Richard bent at the waist about to ram a standing oscillating fan at the end of the bar with his head/face. He smashed into it, creating an impressive crashing sound, then collapsed behind the bar on his back. Then the fan fell on top of him.

I don't know exactly when or how, but Richard had gotten completely and utterly demolished. He was led outside where he could roll around in the grass without injuring himself too much, but soon he was taken upstairs to the bathroom, and Paddy's sister-in-law won the pool.

After purging himself of whatever the hell it was he put in his stomach, Richard tried to re-join the party. It didn't go well. He just kind of rolled around in the grass some more saying very nice or very insulting things to people. He looked up at his wife and said "I'm sorry I do this every year..." Then he looked up at one of his brothers and said "You're the best brother!" Then he turned to Paddy and spit on his foot. The pecking order had been clearly established. Paddy stared down at his foot with an expression that conveyed dismay, discomfort, and a complete lack of surprise. I told Paddy he would be completely justified wiping his foot on Richard. He did so.

Once Richard's very tolerant wife put him to bed, the party took on a bit more of a sexy and subdued atmosphere. I rang the bell and said the first person to give me their bra would get a prize. Paddy's future brother-in-law quickly appeared at the bar holding his fiance's bra high, so I gave her the prize of a flowered bra I had purchased at the party store.


Then things got mellow, but not in a bad way. The party still had momentum, it had just shifted gears. The music changed from upbeat reggae to slower classic rock. The sun was down. Tacky tropical decorations fluoresced under black light while couples danced to slower, easier music. At the end of the bar, casual acquaintances were getting frisky. Outside, the smokers waxed philosophical. I was finally feeling human again and having some serious cocktails. As the crowd grew thinner, groups of old friends got together and talked over old times. The party didn't die, or even really stop. There was no sensation of brakes being applied; it just kind of eased away like music from a ship drifting into the distant night. It was how every party should end. It's how everything should end. It left everyone feeling joyful, relaxed, and completely satisfied.


Well, almost everyone...

Fail !!!

I have returned from Beerfest, and all I can say is "Fail...Massive fail." I discovered that there is no way to get through such a competition without puking. A lot of fuck'n puking.

In the end only 7 teams showed up. That means there were 9 teams who were smarter than us. Not a single person got through the competition without massive projectile vomiting at least once during, and many many times afterward. It wasn't a matter of consuming too much alcohol. It was a matter of consuming too much fluid, in general. The human body can only hold so much (some people more than others). Make that fluid carbonated and you end up with quite an ugly situation. If I chugged a 70 oz glass boot filled with root beer, I probably would have still thrown up.

This isn't to say that there aren't dangers in such events, nor am I saying we didn't get drunk. massive amounts of beer were consumed by all, but there were plenty of sober (smarter) people around to help out if someone needed it. It was definitely not one of my shining moments. But as I said, I survived. It's the day after and I got through it at near full capacity. I was even drinking beer today. Will I ever participate in another event like this? I don't know, but for right now I'm going to say "no way."

My only hope is that through my lack of judgment, I have spared you the pain and misery that comes with extreme stupidity. I have taken on that burden, so that you may drink on in moderate stupidity...as it should be.

Fermentation Friday - Cheese it! It's the fuzz!

Cleanliness is next to godliness. Old phrase. It has its origins in ancient Hebrew, someone who may or may not be full of shit once claimed. But the expression has more than age to lend it credibility. Science, practical experience, and riding the bus all bear this out. Letting sanitation slip is something you'll pay for in the end. Let your car stay dirty, it'll be more prone to rusting. Let your body get dirty, and you get hit on by Brad Pitt. Let food you're cooking get dirty, and some guy with mutton chops projectile vomits chicken fried steak into a stranger's yard as his car sits with blinkers on in the middle of the road. But in the home brewing world, being dirty can lead to even more horrific results.

Now, Paddy and I are pretty careful when it comes to cleaning our brewing equipment. We dish out the no-rinse pretty generously, and even give it a rinse with hot water after that, in spite of the product's name. It's served us well, other than the fact that it will most certainly kill both of us in some rare or possibly even as-yet-undiscovered way. Every time we open the container, the powder becomes airborn, and we invariably inhale some of it. It can't be good for us.

But even with being so cautious and clean, there have still been some failures related to sanitation. Three stick out in my mind.

Ginger beer. Beer with ginger. Simple idea, right? It was an interesting experiment we'd hoped would lead to epic drunkenness. We essentially brewed up a really light beer with a shitload of ginger in it. 2 weeks later, we had something surprisingly interesting, but it lacked the sweetness we had hoped for. So we decided to blend in some sugars and let it sit for awhile. A quick sample spiked with sugar seemed to confirm this was the way to go. So we heated up a small amount of water on the stove, and began stirring in various sugars. The water was at a simmer. I asked if we should boil it, and Paddy said "Nah, it'll dissolve just fine this way." (If you're keeping score, this was the mistake.) We cooled it, poured it in, racked it into a carboy for good measure, and let it sit with a fermentation lock on it. Two weeks later, we anxiously opened up the carboy and took a big whiff. It smelled like someone had pissed in a sweaty gym sock.




If we had sterilized the sugar water we added, we might have had a couple cases of a wonderful sweet, bitter, alcoholic concoction. But instead, we dumped the awful swill down the drain and chased it with Clorox. Fail.

Wine has had the similar problems twice for Paddy and me. Once was a strawberry wine that ended up moldy. Brown fuzz climbing up the sides of the bucket. Yeah... that shit got Cloroxed before dumping it. I commented that it made the whole room smell like a pool, not bleach. Paddy would later open his pool for the first time, and learn in his research that was the smell of death. Then, most recently, we brewed up a bucket full of blueberry fail. Or rather... didn't brew it. Which was the problem again. Paddy tells me the bucket is currently filled with green fuzz, so at least we're achieving some variety in our mold cultures.

So to close it all up here, I'm going to boil the ingredients for all my beers and wines from now on. I mean, just boil the shit out of it. Literally. Kill anything that's in there. That, and hold my breath when scooping out the no-rinse.