Cheers to That!

When I left off with our brewing adventure, Colin and I had a pail full of fermenting wort. We had made a few mistakes on Brew Day, but we were holding out hope that we were going to get beer in the end.

It's been about four weeks since then. Two weeks ago, we took the next big step in the process: bottling. Bottling Day was, in some ways, very exciting. I mean, first, you get to open up the fermenter and see your beer. Does it look like beer?! Does it smell like beer?! (In our case, yes!) It's the first great moment of truth. Second, you get to put the beer into bottles with caps and everything. It looks totally official at the end of the day.

But in other ways, Bottling Day is really anticlimatic. Colin and I started by washing and removing labels from 60 empty bottles, just to make sure we had enough. This was not particularly exciting. We basically washed dishes by hand for several hours over the course of Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Here's what we learned:

1. Baking soda and warm water remove labels really quickly.
2. The bottle brush that comes in the brewing kit is the worst ever. We got a serious arm workout trying to jam it inside the bottles before it finally bent and we threw it out.
3. If you don't have a bottle brush, or even if you do, I recommend partly filling the bottle with soapy water, holding your hand over the top, and shaking vigorously in time to whatever music is playing.
4. If your partner gets sick of Taylor Swift ("shake it off, shake it off!"), old episodes of "This Old House" are also good entertainment.

Washed, de-labeled, and ready to be filled. There should be more somewhere...

After we finally had 60 empty, clean, and de-labeled bottles, it was time to fill them up again. We siphoned the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket, leaving behind four or so inches of disgusting "trub" (sediment). That stuff was so gross--it's hard to believe it's associated with beer, which is so pretty and delicious. Then, once the bottling bucket was full, we organized the assembly line. Colin would take a clean bottle, swish it through sanitizer, and hand it to me; I would insert the bottling wand, which was attached to the spigot on the bottling bucket, fill the bottle all the way to the top, then remove the bottling wand, leaving the perfect amount of head space. I would then set the bottle down on floor next to Colin, who would hand me another empty bottle before snapping a cap on the full one.

Rinse, fill, cap, repeat. Times 53!

Then move all those bottles back to their spot by Colin's heat vent, where they would spend the next month carbonating.

But here's the cool thing. Beer doesn't actually require an entire month to carbonate. Sometimes it finishes as quickly as two weeks, so the guys that taught my homebrew class recommended tasting your beer after two, three, and four weeks in the bottle to see how it's progressing. Two weeks after Bottling Day was Valentine's Day weekend, so Colin brought a couple bottles when he came to Boston.

That was the second great moment of truth. Okay, so it looked and smelled like beer when we put it into bottles, but does it taste like beer?!

Two American Ambers coming right up.

Again, the answer was a resounding YES. True, it was still pretty flat (I'm crossing my fingers that the next two weeks are filled with lots of carbonation), but it tasted like beer. It even tasted like beer that I would pay money to drink.

We didn't ruin the beer, guys. Cheers to that!

Still mostly uncarbonated but totally tastes like beer!

Midwinter in Minnesota

Most people plan midwinter vacations for somewhere warm and sunny, like Florida or California. Me, I plan midwinter vacation for Minnesota. As it turned out, though, Minnesota actually was warm and sunny compared to Boston. While I was away, Boston got two more feet of snow (bringing our season total to something like 6.5 feet!), and - after an extra 40 hours in Minnesota due to cancelled flights - this is what I came home to:

The snow shovelers have been hard at work making sure that sidewalks are clear and parking meters are uncovered.

That's a 7- or 8-foot-tall fence out there. If I had snowshoes, I could walk right over it.

But enough of that! While Boston was drowning in snow, I was soaking up the Minnesota sunshine with four of my best friends from SNRE (the ironically self-named "divas")... and two new-ish babies! :) Yep, those little kiddos were the primary reason for our midwinter rendezvous, and they were happy to be the center of our attention. Little Tommy is nine months old and the most thoughtful baby I've ever seen. He likes to sit and watch what's going on with a furrowed brow, but I'm convinced that he'll skip right over babbling and walking and go straight to sentences and running. One-year-old Nia, on the other hand, is constantly moving, laughing, and getting into mischief. The family dog is her best friend (the only word she can say at this point is "dog"), and she gives her parents a knowing grin just before dropping her food onto the floor for the dog to eat.

There wasn't enough snow in Minnesota to use the sled outside, so we pulled the babies around the living room!

Although most of our weekend was spent playing with the babies, we also made sure to get in some girl time of our own. We spent Friday evening exploring the local ice castles, where colored lights illuminated elaborate icicle structures (including an ice slide!), and warming up at a coffee shop. On Saturday, we spent some time crafting quiet books out of felt, buttons, velcro, and other tactile objects that will hopefully entertain the kids for a while. We then ventured into Minneapolis to see the famous "Spoon and Cherry" sculpture at the sculpture garden.

Divas in the Ice Castles.

Oh, but before we made it to the Ice Castles, we had to stop and pick up dog food. This was my weight training for the week. Those 30 pounds felt like 100!

Spoon and Cherry with Minneapolis in the background.

Aaron and I had fun swinging on one of the interactive sculptures.

I loved this glass fish sculpture by Frank Gehry.

The last time most of us saw each other was one year ago at our friend Jazmine's wedding--but Aaron couldn't make it then because she was in labor with Nia (a reasonable excuse). We last saw her at our friend Meredith's wedding in December 2013. There was a lot of catching up to do, and we stayed up late every night talking. I love how easy it is to pick up where you left off with good friends, even friends you haven't talked to in a while. And this last year has seen big changes for all of us, from new babies to new houses, new jobs, moving in with significant others, career challenges, and general quarter-life crises in which we wonder what the heck we're doing with our lives.

I think it's really cool how our friendship has evolved over the years. This weekend was spent mostly in jeans with chocolate and cookies but not much wine, a far cry from the "going out" years of grad school. We ran errands and cooked together. We talked about everything from environmentally-friendly laundry detergents to gender discrimination to strategies for starting an Etsy store. Even as we admitted feeling a little lost in the adult world, we also marveled at how far we've come in the six years we've known each other. I love seeing my friends grow into their own and do great things.

And with that, the weekend came to an end too soon. Amy, Caitlin, and Tommy headed to the airport Sunday morning, while Patty and I stayed behind for a few more hours. Around noon, just as we began to talk about stopping for lunch at the Mall of America, I found out that my flight back to Boston had been cancelled. Another snowstorm was descending on New England, and I wouldn't be able to get back before Tuesday afternoon. Well, I wasn't too sad about that! After making sure that Aaron and her husband Loren really didn't mind hosting for another day, I emailed my bosses that I was unfortunately stranded and wouldn't be in the office for a couple more days. (Best snowstorm ever!!) Then, with that settled, we drove to the Mall of America for a delicious Italian lunch before sending Patty off. Oh, and the Mall of America is as crazy big as everyone says. There's an amusement park in the middle of it! Roller coasters, a water ride, and everything. There are a few stores, too (like 400+).

Monday was much quieter since all the guests (except me...) were gone. Monday was mostly "figure out what it's like to be a stay-at-home-mom" day. First, I tagged along to Nia's baby class in the morning. The kids (six of them, all about one year old) played for a while, made Valentines for a while, sang some songs, ate a snack, then played some more while the moms had Q&A time with one of the teachers. During the singing, Aaron plopped Nia on my lap and Nia seemed a little surprised, but not concerned, about that. I like to think she and I were friends by the time I left. At any rate, I'm totally enamored with her. Then, in other "Claire learns how to take care of a baby" news, I helped Aaron give Nia her bath. Nia loves her baths and was splashing up a storm and grinning her usual grin. The whole time, I kept thinking how impressed I was with how naturally my friends have transitioned into motherhood. I don't know how they figured out what to do, but they do it so well, so easily, and seem to be all-around amazing moms.

So, Monday night, I had to say goodbye for real to Nia and Loren since I would be leaving before dawn the following morning. It was bittersweet to leave--I felt so refreshed after five days with my friends, but I also realized just how very much I miss them.