When being "annoying home brewing guy" pays off

The highlight of our weekend with friends near Philly was their (always huge) Super Bowl party. We've been at the party so many years now, we're fixtures along with the hot wings and pigs in blankets. As always, it was a great time, as evidenced by my disinterest in eating a full meal the next day.

This year my friends are in a new house, so I met some of their new neighbors for the first time. I ended up in the kitchen with the folks from next door, watching on the smaller TV -- I end up there a lot, because figure it puts me closer to the food and the "kitchen folks" usually aren't rooting one way or the other and want to talk about topics in addition to the game.

When I mentioned to my friends that I would try to make some beer for next year's party, their next-door neighbors started asking about the process -- so I went into all the details of boiling the wort and hops, adding the yeast and watching the beer ferment and age before finally bottling it. It's always a fine line between satisfying the genuine interest of someone who doesn't know how brewing works ... or being "that home brewing guy" who gets too technical and has nothing to talk about but his home brew.

When I talked about bottling, the neighbors mentioned a bottle of hooch that a friend had brought to their Christmas party. "It's a HUGE bottle, I think it was some sort of ale. It was less than half full, but still plenty for all of us and very good." They tried to indicate the approximate size of the bottle through hand gestures, but really only narrowed down the volume to something between 16 ounces and three gallons. I don't know if it was the amount I'd drank, but I really couldn't visualize what they could be talking about.

"It has a kind of a cork that sits down in the neck. If you think you could use it, we can have our son bring it over. We were thinking of putting flowers in it, but I think we're just going to recycle it."

What do I have to lose, then? I figured it was probably a decorative liqueur or champagne bottle of some sort and that with a little luck, I could get it cleaned and figure out how to cap it appropriately.

So, when their son brought in this bottle, imagine my surprise and shock and UTTER JOY. The smaller bottle is a regular 12 oz beer bottle, for scale:



So what the hell is the mystery bottle? It's a 101 oz (approx. .8 gallons) gate-cap bottle that previously held Tröegs seasonal Mad Elf. (Which sounds yummy enough to hunt some down.)

This bottle is already making me happy three ways -- I can avoid the hassle of capping at least 8 bottles of beer during my next brewing session (conditioning in that bottle will take quite a while, but I'm a patient guy). I've promised that in exchange for the gift, I'll be bringing the bottle back to the neighbors sometime filled with brew -- so we get an excuse for another party! Woo-hoo!

The best news? This happy incident has motivated me to get brewing again, however difficult it's going to be with my current electric stove setup. I cooked some starter wort today and pitched some yeast that will hopefully be happy yeast within the next day or so, which would leave me ready to brew by the weekend.

If my yeasties are dead (sadly, this is the more likely scenario) then I'll be putting in an order with Midwest sooner rather than later...