Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, Mutha Fuckaaaa

 Life goes on……. bra.

The accidental brewery anthem of the last year or so, a la my boss/mentor/teacher/friend, which also happened quite accidentally, on a whim, passively asking what the requirements were to be an assistant brewer.  The only real requirement, as it turns out, is heavy lifting… well… and not being retarded…which is borderline for me… on both counts.  We haven’t been brewing a full year yet, but the first beer we made together on his pilot system in his driveway, an oatmeal sour, days after my daughter was born, just went on tap, so I feel like we’ve reached a revolution on this wagon wheel.  

 Regarding the heavy lifting, while I am working with a broken elbow, the weight of kegs has reduced significantly since I began, though in reality they remain about 160 lbs., and I toss them around now like they are 155, easy.  Also, in less than a year, I’ve evolved from knowing nothing about brewing to having books on hops and yeast and grain under my belt, and brewing my very own beer that is a hit amongst most the beer snobs that drift through the bar.  I am now reading up on water chemistry.  The guy who made it through high school without taking chemistry is reading about water chemistry.  It’s like reading Greek, only I can make sense of Greek.  Baby steps.

 I can do most of the tasks in the brewery with only passive hand holding, and this is swiftly becoming an accidental career…that involves drinking a lot of beer, so I definitely can’t complain…though I do…quite a bit… whilst smiling and having a pint.  This last week we brewed our 40th 5+BBL batch together.  All the taps (18) but cider and cold brew coffee (that we make) are beer that we made, and there would be one more if we could legally make cider.  Our humble four fermentation tanks are perpetually full, with one more FV and BT on the way that will be dedicated to straight to kegging operation.

 We are rolling like the high krausen pouring out of the bucket under the exhaust hose of our filled to the brim and over pitched tanks.  For those of you who have no idea what a BBL is, and fail to google properly, just for perspective: a BBL is 31 gallons (two kegs); We have brewed 338 BBL; the calculator on my phone tells me that this is 10,478 gallons of beer; 8 pints in a gallon… I’m going to let you do that math and wait a moment for you to wrap your head around it.

 I realize that production breweries put our numbers to shame, but for two guys in the back room of a bar who don’t distribute, that’s pretty impressive.  We often step back from work and try to take it all in.  I’m not really sure if this is where I’m going to be for the rest of my life, but there are certainly worse places to be.  My dreams are still butting heads with my reality, and I am still trying to find a happy medium.  For now, I’m fine… picking away at my dreams on days off.  We are fine.

 Summer is over, so a bunch of the employees that helped open this place are off to live their own lives, leaving the rest of us behind to question ours.  We all just keep going.  Idyll wildlife how I envisioned it, but it doesn’t happen like that, does it?  When you really get to know these kids, standing back and looking at all this makes you appreciate how special all of this really is.  I wonder if they appreciate that they could very well be something significant, or if they’re just wasting their lives away like most.  At a glance, I haven’t accomplished anything significant with my life, but I have accomplished a lot, and that’s because I’ve spent every day of my life accomplishing something. 

I can’t even go to a goodbye party for a friend without shooting it.  I can’t simply sit down and have a beer with my friends.  I have to be potentially accomplishing something.  I suppose that’s not a good thing, but I always saw it as an asset.  Time will tell.  All the photos I take will either eventually be deleted off a hard drive by grand kids, or become a part of something greater, whether these kids realize it now or not.  I do know that the kids I shot when I was a kid, whom were generally annoyed by the fact that I always had a camera in their face, wish now that they had all those photos.  This is my crazy story, and everyone is invited to participate.