It begins!

My husband Nicholas, makes his own beer.

 Not from a kit or a box you buy at a bed and bath store. He is a focused and dedicated beer enthusiast with beakers and tubes, dear God the tubes. Only in recent years, have I fully realized that his "Hobby" is much more than a pastime. It all started about 8 years ago. We met and he quickly realized that I was the woman of his dreams, I too found him to be agreeable and we moved into a cramped one bedroom apartment  together.

 On his Birthday, I took him shopping at a home brew store and set him up with supplies. I didn't realize how serious this home brew stuff was, to be honest I was actually expecting a store full of dinky kits. As we made our way home with large glass carboys and, paper bags bulging with with malt and wheat, vials of yeast some buckets. I began to feel anxious. This was going to take up a lot of closet space.
  I didn't know anything about the brewing process, I was concerned that somehow the yeast would get loose and grow all over the apartment like a fungus.

                               "Your house has a hefeweizen infection."

 I thought the beer might be volatile and explode. I would eye the krausen suspiciously, fretting it might foam out the top of the carboy and fill up the hallway. My first brewing experience, Nicholas made an apple flavored hef. I sat there with a notebook writing down the times he added this or that and what temperature things were. He had me smell the hops, it was like getting kicked in the nostril with a tangy sneaker.   

Weeks later I helped him siphon the hef into unmanageable grolsch bottles. Soon afterwards, we had beer. Our friends were pleased and I tried to help drink as much of the beer as I could manage. But all I really managed was learn why you should NEVER drink the last little bit of brew from a bottle fermented beer. 

Having done my part, I thought he had got this out of his system. Oh how wrong I was.

 Unlike everybody else, Nicholas was dissatisfied, and spurred on by revelations of the brewing process. Strove to create better and more complex beers.

 When we moved out of State, we bubble wrapped the hell out of the carboys so we didn't have to sell them. Thus far we had been limited to extract brewing, which is equivalent to getting your cake from ingredients in a box. The toys, doodads and gear we needed in order to amp up the brewing process began crowd our living space. Each time we moved, we managed a little bit bigger apartment. That was inevitably filled in with bottles, buckets and brushes. The process soon involved propane burners, special sugars and tablets and yet more tubes.

 Today we live in a two bedroom condo in Seattle. One of our two rooms has been taken over by fridges, shelves, coolers, kegs, thermometers, beakers, stir plates, large spoons, beer posters, tap handles and tubes. It's the beer room. 

 Having helped to procure him a mountain of nik-naks, my part in this is still not done.

 I accompany my husband to Brewery tours, tastings, beer events, home brew shops and coming soon tours of hop farms and likely conventions will follow. As long as I'm here, I may as well write this down.