Memo to Dick Jauron from the days of common sense

Dick:

Sure...Leodis McKelvin decided to fight momentum and come out of the end zone. Twice. Once with a tide-changing fumble and again with a time-wasting saunter to the 21 when Standing Hampton would keep you at the 20 with a few extra seconds. Bad. Wicked bad. But Leodis isn't the no-talent-ass-clown that called the D that allowed the Best of the Best to saunter down the field to knock your nostalgic lead from 11 to 5. It's all on you, Yale boy. Your team hit all game and all of a sudden you turn turtle and play prevent. Is this what Ralph's paying for? Crash Davis says, "don't think...it can only hurt the ball club...

It's bottling day for Flying Taco BrewVentures!

While I contemplate the waning of my latest momentum trade in the 3rd month of the quarter (it's still actually doing well; just not as well as it was a couple of weeks ago), I'm finally getting around to bottling a Saison that I have anticipated since the Beautiful Bride bought me the homebrew setup for the holidays. The latest Flying Taco BrewVentures creation has a working title of "Rye Not? 'Tis the Saison" or a recent title of "Saison du Beavis," in honor of our 15-year old cat Beavis who was found cozying up next to the brew barrel during the final days of dry-hopping. It's definitely not been the same for Beavis since we had to say goodbye to his closest companion Butt-Head right before the new year; hell, they've basically been partners in crime since birth. But Beavis soldiers on...and I digress...

I was supposed to brew this deal in June. But Saison yeast requires higher fermentation temperatures, and anyone familiar with Boston weather patterns this summer remembers that we basically got shafted out of the first 6 weeks of summer. Additionally, we had a kitchen project and a few other things pushing the schedule back, so I finally had a chance to brew on July 16. In addition to using the lightest extract I could find (hey, after all it's only my 4th batch), I steeped some Belgian Pale and Pils and about a pound of Rye malt. Toss in some candied ginger, a bunch of candi sugar and a little coriander with Styrian Goldings and Saaz hops and away we go. In addition to needing higher temperatures, Saison yeast also has a habit of setting the world on fire early and petering out for a while before it finishes the job. This was the case with my batch; with an original gravity of 1.062 it worked down to 1.020 but needed a fair amount of time in August to get down to 1.006; of course, cooler temperatures in the back end of July didn't help. It wasn't cold enough to safely put a BrewBelt on the fermenter but wasn't warm enough for the yeast to clear out the remaining fermentables. So I let it take its sweet time and when we hit below 1.010 I dry-hopped with a little Saaz and Styrian Goldings. And now is the fateful day, a day to rejoice, taste the final sample before bottling, and be exceptionally stoked about the project. Right?

Not exactly.

Bottling day is all of that. But from a tactical perspective, bottling day sucks. Royally. For a homebrewer, bottling day is chock full of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, sanitizing, sanitizing, sanitizing and a whole bunch of stuff that can easily go wrong (not enough bottles, caps or cleansing equipment; broken cappers, broken bottles, earthquake, a terrible flood, locusts, "it wasn't my fault I SWEAR TO GOD!!!"). Two quotes come to mind that are extremely relevant to a homebrewer when thinking about bottling:

• On football when the forward pass was a new, exciting and somewhat scary wrinkle to the "three yards and a cloud of dust" game of yore: "three things can happen when you put the ball in the air, and two of them are bad."

• On golf from the neighbor of the real Beavis & Butt-head, the immortal Tom Anderson, after our two favorite unruly teenagers spent the afternoon following him around the course and bogarting all his golf balls: "Boy, I tell ya what, Dusty...I felt like a one-legged cat tryin' to bury turds on a frozen pond out there today."

It's all that and a bag of chips. Bottling day is like being a flaky art student who just got cut off from the 'rents cash flow and has to balance the checkbook after a 2-week jaunt to Europe. Kicking the tires on a job requiring project management skills? Developing and implementing a homebrew calendar for a year requires both project management and organizational skills...not to mention significant attention to detail. If you do it right, it goes something like this:

1. Soak bottles in water and cleansing (I use PBW = Professional Brewers' Wash) solution
2. Soak bottling bucket and equipment (hydrometer, beer thief, auto siphon, racking cane, tubing) in water and PBW solution
3. Rinse bottles
4. Wash bottling tree
5. Wash bottling spigot
6. Rinse bottling bucket, equipment and spigot
7. Sanitize bottling bucket and equipment
8. Sanitize and rinse bottling tree
9. Sanitize and rinse bottles
10. Sanitize and rinse pan for priming solution (the priming solution of water and sugar gives the remaining yeast just enough to feed on in the bottle to generate natural carbonation)
11. Sanitize caps
12. Prepare priming solution
13. Cool priming solution
14. Sanitize bottling spigot
15. Rinse bottling bucket, equipment and spigot
16. Prepare bottling bucket and auto siphon
17. Pour priming solution into bottling bucket
18. Take final gravity measurement of beer and sample for taste
19. Siphon beer from fermenter/carboy into bottling bucket
20. Bottle and cap
21. Optional per Bluto: "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily."

OK, it's a little more than a 12-step plan but a little less than Kerry Healey's mystical 50-point plan she noted during her unsuccessful bid to become Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (leaving us with Deval Patrick, who has less soul and personality than Tiger Woods. We won't even discuss the comparison of efficacy in each of their chosen crafts/professions).

Invariably, something goes wrong. I have brewed and bottled a whopping four...count 'em...four...batches on my own this year and can name something from each batch in which I screwed the proverbial pooch. No need to bore you with the details, but prepare yourself. Have at least 24 bombers on hand (22 oz. or 650 ml bottles) and at least a 6-pack of typical 12 oz. bottles. Make sure the labels are off before Bottling Day, because not a lot is more annoying than scouring glue-y labels off bottles when you're supposed to be filling them with your luscious creation. Cleanliness and sanitation are critical to keeping unruly microscopic critters from tainting your finely-crafted beverage. Another useless metaphor: If homebrewing is a football field, then bottling is a First-and-Goal situation from the 9-yard line...those last nine yards are the most important, so they can be the toughest to get. Accordingly, they require a great deal of strength, brute force and a tremendously plodding work ethic. This, my friends...is Bottling Day. Don't fret, though...in two to three weeks you'll pop the cap on your latest (and now carbonated) elixir and enjoy it with family and friends...just like you thought when you started this crazy hobby of yours. As always, enjoy!

Consumer Products Analysis, Volume 1

Here's my review of diet Ultraviolet Mountain Dew:

It really sucks.

Even worse than Ma Kelly said about the Lower East Side in "Johnny Dangerously."

The first day...

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Taking Jr. to lunch @ Regina to celebrate 1st day of kindergarten. Felt like a bigger deal than we expected, but parents and son doing just fine.