adventures in moonshine-making

Tim started making beer before he was legally old enough to drink. Ever since he graduated college, though, the beer-making has come to a halt. On a whim a month ago in upstate NY, he stopped at a beer-making supplies store and bought the requisite ingredients for an Irish red ale. He mixed the ingredients on the stove with water, put it in a big concrete bucket to ferment for a couple weeks, and bottled it up this past Wednesday. After sitting in the dark in bottles for a week, it will be ready to drink. Actually, he'll have to wait until Easter to drink it because we both gave up all drinks besides tap water for Lent.

Anyway, the hardest part of this process was collecting enough bottles for the amount of beer he made. We had about 4 around the house, which clearly was not enough. A co-worker collected some for me from a party she attended. And the best part is that Tim went out on Wednesday night (the night before recycling is picked up in our neighborhood) and scavenged for the remaining 30 or so non-twist off bottles needed. He probably looked pretty creepy rummaging in the alleys through people's stuff, but he succeeded! He, of course, sterilized all the bottles with bleach, so it's not that gross (although, yes, I think it is a little gross, too).

Here are some photos of the process:

before going out to collect bottles from other people's recycling bins...

part of his loot. look how proud he looks.

sterilizing the bottles

draining the beer into another bucket to get rid of the dead yeast on the bottom

sealion is interested

the finished product