The Power of Homebrew

You guys in the north east US know, we are going through a pretty bad heat wave. It was 103°F today here in Jersey...

My AC died this week and I called in this morning to get it taken care of. I got home this afternoon and my apartment was 107°F!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These three mexican dudes came over to fix the AC, so I gave em a bunch of home brew Oatmeal Stouts to chill them out. I tell ya... its like the best $1.50 I ever spend. The dudes were like... "oh man you are so nice"... "everyone complains so much in this place".. "So nice to have some cold drinks after 12 hours of working". They did a bang up job, replaced a bunch of stuff in my AC unit, new compressor, recharged the lines, hosed out the outside unit, cleaned out the inside unit, new filter... and they are gonna take care of my squirrel-in-the-wall problem. (thats another story)

I read a lot of reviews about the maintanance crew in my development being a bunch of slackers... I tell ya what... the people posting these reviews dont know how to take care of their workers. These guys obviously bust their asses and deserve a break. They came over at like 6:45pm, were here for 45 minutes after hours on a day that was WAYYYYYY too hot to be working. The last thing they need is someone bitching and moanng at them.

The AC has been on for 10 minutes and its down to 92°F

One of my favorite things about homebrewing is being able to share generously.

We had good friends over this weekend for the first time in too long. He loves my beers and I had actually saved the last bottles from a couple different batches so that he could taste them. We had a nice dinner and he tasted about 6 of my beers and raved about all of them.

We live modestly and I'm a naturally cheap person. But it does feel nice to be able to be generous in that one way.

100% agreed.

I'm not the richest guy out there, but damn its nice to pass around some ice cold brewdogs when its 100+ outside!!!

sirsloop said:

These guys obviously bust their asses and deserve a break. They came over at like 6:45pm, were here for 45 minutes after hours on a day that was WAYYYYYY too hot to be working. The last thing they need is someone bitching and moanng at them.

The AC has been on for 10 minutes and its down to 92°F

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The homebrew is just icing on the cake. What really matters is that you recognize how hard these guys work, and relate to them very differently from the people who ***** and moan at them. Good on you!

You have hit the nail on the head here.

Today, I traded 2- 22oz and a 12 oz of brew for 300 square feet of 2" rigid foam insulation for my walk in fridge project..

Cost of insulation - $400 bucks

Cost of homebrews - 2 bucks.

Traded a guy a 22 oz for a used Ronco Controller.

Cost of controller - 60 bucks

Cost of homebrew - 1 buck

What a deal.

Sharing is goooooood.

Cheers,

knewshound

i'm worried about your Brew Pastor's Bastard Lager...

How's that doing at 107 ?

BTW, i have also had maintenance guys working on my apartment A/C, twice in the last month. No home brew finished to offer them yet. Three weeks from now when I am bottled and conditioned, I may call them again...

Luckily I have both the dunkel and wit chillin under wet towel and fan in the bathroom. They are both ready to be bottled, so I don think 80-85° is gonna hurt them ALL that much. for a couple days at this point.

I think I would be pretty irate if I put $50+ 4 hours labor down on 10 gallons of beer and ended up with junk cause the AC failed.

BrewProject said:

i'm worried about your Brew Pastor's Bastard Lager...

How's that doing at 107 ?

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LOL. Yeah, it's been pretty brutal here, but it was "only" 103 today and supposed to be "only" in the mid 90s tomorrow. The humidity has eased a little, thank God.

My basement is not finished--concrete floor, etc. The furnace radiates a fair amount of cold when it's running non-stop, so it's actually a few degrees cooler down there during the dog days than in early summer.

I've got it in a tub of water--I drop some ice in there once or twice a day and it's been reall steady at around 60. I'll probably increase the ice rate later during secondary after it's fermented out.

sirsloop said:

Luckily I have both the dunkel and wit chillin under wet towel and fan in the bathroom. They are both ready to be bottled, so I don think 80-85° is gonna hurt them ALL that much. for a couple days at this point.

I think I would be pretty irate if I put $50+ 4 hours labor down on 10 gallons of beer and ended up with junk cause the AC failed.

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:rockin:

I've always found you get a lot further with people by treating them nicely...case in point - last year I was on a business trip and waiting in line at the Avis rental counter. The guy in front of us was literally SCREAMING at the Avis lady because he didn't like the car he'd been given. After wasting about 15 minutes of his, her, and my time, he left. When our turn came up, my associate and I politely offered to chase the guy down and stuff him in our trunk. She upgraded us to from a Malibu to a Cadillac for free

alemonkey said:

I've always found you get a lot further with people by treating them nicely...case in point - last year I was on a business trip and waiting in line at the Avis rental counter. The guy in front of us was literally SCREAMING at the Avis lady because he didn't like the car he'd been given. After wasting about 15 minutes of his, her, and my time, he left. When our turn came up, my associate and I politely offered to chase the guy down and stuff him in our trunk. She upgraded us to from a Malibu to a Cadillac for free

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good story and the old saying holds true...

“you’ll catch more bees with honey than with vinegar”

Speaking of trading Home Brews for goods and services, i have been compiling the components for my bar for a few months now. My first score was a couch and a love seat for free....yes, and not the stained frat house ones. These came from some house in a neighborhood where the avg house costs 800K. Where i live that is a 2 story house plus basement and 3 stall garage at about 1900 sq ft per floor. so big houses.

My next score was some old barn wood and corrigated tin. wood to face the bar, tin to hang from ceiling to make my bar look like an old, well, barn. cost: 2 22 ounce home brews.

My father in-law says he has a mini fridge i can have so i may convert into a kegerator, cost 6 home brews. Sweet, go to pick it up it is the mini of the mini fridges 22" tall. damn wont work.......wait, my buddy's roommate is moving out, he is giving him the 36" tall mini fridge. my buddy just wants a beer fridge and the 22" one will work if i trade it to him plus a couple home brews.......sweet, 6 pack to the inlaw, 2 to my buddy and bang.....got my mini fridge.

Now i just need to find someone who wants to trade brew for 2x4s so i can construct the frame to my bar.

Yeah, some people will trade for home brews but others look at you like "That didn'g cost you nothin'". I find that some people feel extemely happy to be offered some homebrews and other are twerps. It may have cost me relatively little to brew 5 or 10 gallons, but the time, effort and never ending equipment upgrades are something to consider.

Its home-made so its a completely different animal. Good example-

Get offered delicious store bought brownies/cookies and you are like, cool thanks. Get offered delicious home-made brownies/cookies and your response would be WOW! NICE!

I think a lot of what you are describing says something about the person. People that grew up on homemade stuff learn to appreciate it more. If you are a silver spoon fed prick thats had room service breast feedings since you were a newborn, then you probably would put less value on something like this. I know I always feel better after going back home and having a meal my parents cooked for me than going out to some fancy restaraunt .

-plus I think a lot of people dont know that homebrew is easy to make.... then again homemade food isnt hard to make either, but thats our little secret

Well, I pull a 5 to 8 hour brew day, so i wouldn't exactly say it's easy. Well maybe Time consuming would be the best description.

I know what you mean. I had my riding mower break a belt. I couldn' t replace it myself w/o taking off a bunch of pressed on pulleys. I had a the local repair shop pick it up. They told me they would have it done in 3 weeks. I'm like damn... 3 weeks my grass will be 8" tall.

I thought I could wait it out. On the fourth week still not fixed. I reluctantly decided to use my push weed wacker. The grass was 8-12 inches. I have 2 acres on land, half of it is on steep hill and the other half sloped. My neighbor saw me struggling with mower, so he hopped on his tractor and mowed the rest of it for me.

Boy was I glad!!! I had two glasses & two home brews waiting as he finished. He was quite happy to see them.

Two days later my mower was done!!