| Ok, so I know I haven't updated this in forever, and this isn't exactly going to be a what's-Dave-doing-now kind of think, but I felt I needed to share this evening's events with somebody.
As some (or all) of you may know, I occasionally brew my own beer. I had gone over to a friend's house a couple of months ago to help him bottle a batch of beer that he had made. I took four 20 oz. bottles home with me, and they've been sitting in the pantry carbonating, until tonight.
When you bottle a home-brewed beer, you add a little bit of excess sugar right before, to give the residual yeast something to eat, and the yeast in turn produces carbon dioxide, thus carbonating your beer. Well, sometimes, if you've added too much yeast, the pressure from the CO2 will become too great and the bottles will explode. I came home from school today to find that two of the bottles of beer had exploded in my pantry. And I don't mean the bottle caps blew off, that's the strongest part of the bottle. I mean they shattered. Shards of glass everywhere, beer on the undersides of the shelves, etc.
I took the other two bottles and put them in the fridge, hoping the temperature drop would settle them down a little. Well, I had to go to an intramural football game shortly, so I figured I would clean up the mess later. We lost the game (of course), and I came home to clean up. After about half an hour of picking up shards of glass and cleaning up sticky beer, I decided I needed a drink, so I took out one of the other bottles and put it on the counter.
It didn't occur to me that this bottle of beer might also be quite volatile. I pried off one side the bottlecap, and beer shot all over me. Now I've opened shaken bottles before, but this was worse. It took me a second to react, then I put the bottle in my sink, on it's side. The beer was pouring forth with such force that it was bouncing off the side of the sink and splattering on the counter.
After a few expletives, I surveyed the situation. There was beer splattered over pretty much my entire kitchen floor (which is decently large), my microwave, my cabinets, and the wall behind the sink. Also, it made it's way to my windowblinds (yes, that's right, my windowblinds) and pretty much covered me. To make matters worse, this wasn't regular beer, it was a Belgian dubbel, which is one the the sweetest, maltiest, and, most importantly, stickiest beers ever.
So I stripped down to my boxers and fixed myself a whiskey sour. At least my good friend Jack didn't let me down. |
