all posts relevant to ‘drinking’

so, we took a step back this weekend for a bit. in addition to home improvement duties, we took in a concert at the white river amphitheatre. it was brad paisley’s bonfires & amplifiers tour. opening for brad were: taylor swift, jack ingram, and kellie pickler.

ancilliary highlights of the evening:

a $4 Cup of unsweetened tea

good because it was unsweetened, and $4 was alright because it had to be about 1/2 a gallon.

new songs

brad played new songs from his forthcoming album, including “i’m so much cooler online” which of course, i can relate to.

mystery guest

they were shooting the video for the above mentioned new song @ white river, and to everyone’s surprise, we all got to see what part jason alexander would be playing in it!

i mentioned Flyers also, didn’t i? on sunday, we took a drive out to Oak Harbor, WA to have dinner at Flyer’s Restaurant (warning: sound). they have a very interesting menu, and very good beer. in particular, we were seeking their NABA, GABF, and WBC medal-winning Porter.

while we enjoyed some rainy time this weekend, we went and had lunch @ Brouwers in seattle, and enjoyed some fine belgian style beers.

the cornerstone of the meal was this enormous veggie burger:

yes, tax season 2007 has ended. carrie celebrated on the 17th with her co-workers, when their office closed at noon, to remain closed through the 18th as well.

since she had the 18th off, we decided i should take a vacation day as well. after sleeping late (much to the chagrin of the cats) we had breakfast, and took some time to relax and study (carrie for the CPA, and me, for my Accounting class).

due to the amount of studying we had to do, we decided to limit the day’s traveling activities to a few hours. our destination of choice is one we had been to several times before, but not for a long time — LaConner Brewing Company in LaConner, Washington.

so, a typical memorial day weekend might be spent drinking beer, then going to work at the end.

when have you known me to be typical? well okay, you got me there. but we spent the weekend, in addition to doing household chores & work, doing work on our kegging setup, and didn’t get it done until late monday night.

the last element missing was faucets & shanks. these are the 2 elements that, together, make the “tap” that you see at your local saloon. we purchased 2 of each from a local homebrew supply store, and i spent all day monday doing all the final hookups and testing the system.

we have the capacity inside the chest freezer to hold 4 kegs, and we’ll probably add on at least one more in the next few weeks. in order to fit that 4th keg, we need to do a bit of finagling with the lines & whatnot inside the fridge.

now, with these expenses, how many batches of beer to we have to brew & serve ourselves, before we realize a monetary savings over purchasing it? i don’t know — ask my accountant. luckily, the accountant happens to be the brewmaster (er, brewmistress – aka, alewife) so the answer has to be “it’s worth it!”

hold on, i studied engineering, i can do math. (plus i have access to google calculator). so let’s think out loud, in bulleted-list format:

• 5 gallons of homebrew is 40 pints.
• a pint of microbrew at a restaurant, outside of happy hour, is at least $3.50.
• to drink 40 pints in a restaurant, would cost $140.
• the ingredients to brew 5 gallons beer cost around $30, retail.
• our brewing equipment has already paid for itself several times over in the 22 batches we’ve already brewed.
• a CO₂ cylinder refill is $15 (i think), should be necessary twice a year.
• our chest freezer was energystar rated at $26/yr to operate — that’s when it was a freezer. we’ve convereted it to a fridge, should use less energy.
• propane refill is about $30 (i think) should only need this once a year (only use it for brewing).

so, with all that babbling about, let’s say that a batch of homebrew, with diluted energy and supply costs, runs us around $40 (probably a tad high estimate). that means a savings of $100 per 40 pints over purchasing it elsewhere. is that right? i’ll have to call my accountant to check out my numbers.

i know, we could have saved even more money if we continued to bottle. but frankly, we would have paid that price with out sanity. bottling is tedious at best. and since we don’t really take our beer anywhere or share with anyone (the only friends we have don’t drink) then why do it? we’ll still bottle some (for things we want to condition for a long time, or send to contests) but i think we’ll primarily be kegging from now on.

the only additional ongoing task now, is for me to work in biceps, triceps, and deltoids. because lifting a 40lb keg of beer into the chest fridge is no small feat!

i’ll post pictures up after i take some tonight.

no, i’m not adding Nitrous Oxide injection to my car.

we’re assembling the parts to finalize our kegging/draft beer setup. since we started homebrewing, we’ve grown more and more tired of collecting, stripping, cleaning, and sanitizing bottles. read on for more info and pictures that only a homebrewer could love.

the first picture is all the supply-side equipment boxed up and together, CO2 cylider on the floor and a big length of gas supply tubing.

here’s the ball-lock valves for the supply (gas) and the service (liquid) sides of the kegs.

this is a 4-way manifold to split off the supply gas to 4 different kegs.

these are (on the left) the gas pressure regulator, that meters the CO2 out of the supply tank. (on the right) is an inline regulator. i think i need to re-assemble these — the splitter needs to go on the tank regulator (higher pressure) so we can tap off one high pressure line for carbonating beer, then send the other line to the subsequent regulator for serving beer at a lower pressure.

a motley assortment of used cornelius kegs, previously used to store the syrup that makes soda-pop as it comes out of the soda fountain. these are excellent for homebrewers, as they can have a lid that can be removed for cleaning, and can hold 5 gallons. this is a whole, or one half, of a typically sized batch of homebrew, depending upon whether your brew 5 or 10 gallons.

another recent purchase not pictured here, is a chest-freezer that we will convert into a refrigerator to hold all (or most) of these.

more pictures & information as the project progresses. we expect to have it almost complete within a week or so. exciting!