Beer Day

I sure love living by the college calender. Getting those random holidays off that you don't get in the real world, like MLK day today. So since Chad has today off, it is Beer bottling day. And so far it has been a family event. This is the first time he has bottled beer since we moved which posed 2 problems.

Problem #1- We no longer have a dishwasher, which is how you sanitize the bottles. Chad is Mr. Sanitizer himself. So he wants them sanitized at the last possible second and stored in an airtight, sanitized container. So we asked friends Dave and Amy who live down the block and they happily agreed to let us use their dishwasher for a few beers in return.

Problem #2- We had to get the bottles to Dave and Amy around 10 in order to have them back by Soraya's nap time, which is prime bottling time. Well, Chad didn't even start looking for the bottle until 9. We found about 200 bottle with the labels still on...but couldn't find the 80 that he used in his last batch which we had already scraped the labels off of. So during Jack's am nap the scraping began. We had one side of the sink full of hot water soaking bottles. Once Chad and I scraped the label off of a bottle with a razor blade we put it in the other side of the sink where Soraya dumped out the water, rinsed it off and put it in the tub with the other finished bottles.


Soraya also made sure the bottles that were soaking were stirred.


So we get the bottles ready in time and Chad takes them down to Dave and Amy's. Well, they couldn't fit all of them in their dishwasher in one load so then we call Rod and Amy who live a few minutes away and Soraya and Chad drive over with the rest ofe bottles to get a load going in their dishwasher as well, costing us a 6 pack.

We then get both kids to sleep for their naps and we start bottling.

First you sanitize. Chad sanitizes EVERYTHING!


Then you syphon the beer from the carboy to the bottling bucket.


Chad didn't want to waste a drop!


I was the bottle filler.


Chad was the bottle caper.


All done! Just in time for Jack to wake up!