I can’t remember if I mentioned it before but a few weeks ago we had an unfortunate circumstance with our kegerator.
I’d bought my brother a nice shiny green Dogfish Head tap handle to replace the crappy Budweiser one that was on there. He’d bought the latest keg, Hook & Ladder Brewing Company Golden Ale, a beer that we found surprisingly good and that also had set the record for “most expensive beer yet in the kegerator”. Probably because it’s a local brew, but we’d gotten the keg at Total Wine.
Well, after a long day of drinking out of the kegerator the handle had done its usual “fall to the side” thing and we’d let it go figuring tomorrow was another day. Unfortunately, what we hadn’t figured on was that one of our cats – and we think it’s The RZA, ’cause she liked to sleep up there – might nuzzle the tap handle.
We woke up to about 5+ gallons of beer soaked into the oriental rug and an empty keg.
D’oh.
We cleaned the rugs and returned the empty keg. We decided to go without a keg for a while until we could get one that we’d really want. So we just went with bottles.
The future sister-in-law wasn’t overly pleased by that. The kegerator had a big use – it kept down the recycling. She beseeched me to get a new keg. Matt and I talked about it and we decided that our preference would be a keg of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale. We also thought about maybe the Oberon from Bell’s.
I went by Total Wine “just in case” but they only had the third-size kegs of it. They had a few other beers – Stella Artois, Hook & Ladder Golden and Backdraft Brown – but nothing that really tweaked my nipples, as we’d say. I went over to Westover Market, off Washington Boulevard, which has recently been promoting their “Wall of Beer” and the fact that they could get over 400 different kinds of beer/kegs.
I was told that they didn’t have any in stock but it’s a 24 hour turnaround on ordering. I grabbed a six pack of Stone Pale Ale and a couple of “Wahoo Wheats”, put in my order for a keg of Two Hearted and went about my way.
About ten minutes later my phone rang – they actually had the 15.5 gallon kegs in stock! I grabbed Matt and we went to pick one up.
Devin – it might be Devon, I don’t know – was the guy who helped us out at Westover and he was really cool. You could tell he was enthusiastic about beer. In fact, the whole beer area of the store gives off that “We love beer!” vibe that made me happy I was buying the keg from a local vendor rather than a chain. He even gave Matt a bottle of Avery Brewing Company Pale Ale to try out later. We hauled our keg home, replaced the CO2 canister (man, that one had lasted forever, especially compared to the nitrogen canisters!), and enjoyed a few frosty beers. The Two Hearted is GREAT out of the keg.
I just have to be careful, it’s 7%.
I’m really happy to have the kegerator restocked. And we still have a few random bottles of beer, such as Magic Hat Hefeweizen, Dogfish Head India Brown, Hook and Ladder Backdraft Brown, and a couple of Smuttynoses.
On a completely different note…
Hopefully showing up today or tomorrow I have some “miracle berry” tablets on the way. These are the things that make bitter or sour foods taste sweet. I plan on experimenting with these – I’d love to see what they do for some cocktails.
