As much as I enjoy the winter holidays, I’m really glad they’re behind us. Baking sprints, family gatherings, holiday parties, cross-country travel, and repeated bouts of postprandial shame are all well and good, but the interminable onslaught of joy and gingerbread really ate into the time I would normally devote to homebrewing.
My absence from the hobby became abundantly clear this past weekend when, in a marathon string of brewing chores, I
- Brewed a double IPA.
- Fully disassembled, cleaned, sanitized, and reassembled four kegs.
- Racked a bock, an Irish stout, a Belgian golden ale, and a cider to the four newly cleaned and sanitized kegs.
- Cleaned the two buckets and two carboys in which the newly kegged beer had been stored.
- Cleaned and rinsed my kegerator’s draft lines.
- Swapped one standard draft faucet for a nitro faucet in anticipation of enjoying the stout I kegged.
- Pulled the carbon dioxide cylinder from one of my two draft lines and replaced it with the nitro blend that will push the stout.
This took the better part of a day, but I learned a lesson in the process: Don’t procrastinate on your homebrewing chores! I suppose I can let this one slide somewhat since the holidays include a large asterisk on the calendar, an asterisk that says, “All bets are off from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.” But there’s no reason the rest of the year.