No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

As a child I was fascinated when my dad would make home made root beer. He would make a full 5 gallon batch and bottle it in 5 cent coke bottles. My brothers and sisters and I would enjoy it all summer. We were all excited when it was root beer time. We had an ongoing task and ongoing incentive to collect "pop" bottles to take home for dad's root beer. As an added bonus if we had too many bottles we could take them back for the 5 cent deposit and buy candy with the deposit money. We would never return the bottles for deposit to buy a bottle of pop because, even as kids we knew we had the best root beer around right at home. To this day, no root beer that I have ever purchased has tasted as good as dads home made root beer. And to this day, if I see a glass pop bottle on the ground, I pick it up and briefly flashback to my childhood.

Now, being a dad myself, I decided to do the same for my kids (and myself). I knew from the start that it would be some effort to gather all the appropriate supplies and equipment but, I was willing to make the effort. I wanted my kids to taste that real root beer and I longed for that taste myself. I knew from my experiences with my dad that it might not go off without incident. (Few of my dads activities ever went off without a hitch.) Apparently, I was so focused on the thick, foamy, head of a freshly poured mug of home made root beer that I completely overlooked the "with out incident" part.

So, I was off on my journey. It took months to get all the supplies together. I did the calculations and figured that I needed 52 bottles of 12 oz size. The bottles had to be the capped bottles, not the twist off kind that are made in the U. S. today. So, I had to drink a lot of imported beer to get enough bottles with the right kind of top. (Another sacrifice on my part!) I had to find the root beer extract (not many stores carry it) and find a bottle capper (you can't find a bottle capper anywhere.) Luckily, my dad a spare one. I mentioned to him that I was going to make some of dads home made root beer and could not find a capper. He immediately produced one, as if it were as common as a tea spoon. He gave it to me along with advise about leaving the root beer sit in the vat for a while to let the yeast blend. I looked at the capper and wondered if it was the same one he used to cap his root beer when I was child. It was obviously very old and rusted and looked like an antique. I immediately offered to return it as soon as I was finished and he said "No, just keep it. I have more." Wow! What a root beer dad I have! He has multiple cappers! No wonder I want to be a dad like him.

I still had to find a mixing container large enough for mixing 5 gallons (8 gallons container recommended) I remembered that when buying trash bags one of the sizes was 13 gallons so I decided to use a plastic kitchen trash can. Then it was the bottle caps. Try to buy some bottle caps. Let me know how you do and where you find them and how long it took you. I just want to compare notes. Dad, to the rescue again. He gave me a bag of them. My son, Nathan, counted 62 caps. Based on my calculations, that was enough for my first batch. Mental Note - Just because Nathan goes to the Catholic school and is in 5fth grade, don't assume that he knows how to count to 100. Finally, I needed a siphoning hose to fill the bottles from the vat as I had often seen my dad do. It was my last purchase -- I though-- and I could already taste that foamy root beer on my toung. At Home Depot I found the custom length hoses (I needed about 5 feet) were too thick or too thin in diameter so, I had to buy 14 feet of hose because that was the smallest pre cut size they had. It was only about three bucks and I figured if I ever needed to siphon root beer from the roof of my neighbor's house to my kitchen, I would have enough hose.

I persevered the shopping and accumulated all the equipment and ingredients. The first step was to sanitize the bottles. I reflected back to my childhood basement when we would fill the two utility sinks, one with hot soapy water and the other with cool rinse water. We would scrub the bottles one by one and then put them in the rinse water and into the wooden soda bottle crates...each of us had a task. I went out to the paint shed and got my cardboard cases of empty imported beer bottles and stacked them next to the kitchen sink. I looked at the lone sink and thought "how I am going to do the wash and rinse in one sink?" I decided that things are different now days; people don't have two huge utility tubs in their houses so I would just wash them all and then rinse them all in two separate processes.

When I pulled out the first bottle to place in the hot soapy sink I had just filled, I discovered that if you don't drink the last little bit of beer in the bottom, and you store the bottles away, in the dark, all kinds of furry things will grow in it. The bottles looked like a 6th grade science project! The only way to fix that was with another piece of equipment that my dad always had on hand....something that I had not seen or thought of, or heard of in years and years...a bottle brush. Ok, now, let's go to the store and find a bottle brush.

Advice on finding bottle brushes: Do not look in the cleaning section of the store, even though they are for cleaning. Do not look where you find other brushes for the toilet, sink, carpet or your teeth. Bottle brushes are not "other" brushes. They are "special" brushes and are usually in a "special" section of the store. Do not ask an employee of the store for help in finding a bottle brush...they may call security. Your best bet is to discreetly look in the baby products section. Act as if you are a new dad. New dads wondering around in the baby section are allowed to be confused and often considered "cute." No one will call security on you in the baby section. Apparently, they use to use bottle brushes to clean glass baby bottles. The fact that glass baby bottles have not been used in my lifetime is irrelevant. So, your best bet is in the baby section. Of course the brushes will be thick (for baby bottles) not thin enough to get down the neck of a Corona science project. So, good luck finding a thin bottle brush that will fit in an imported beer bottle.

What I did was purchase the only bottle brush that I could find that looked thin enough to pass the Corona bottle test. I found it at Wal-Mart, a store that I hate to shop at because they have EVERYTHING at Wal-Mart and drive all the little maw and paw shops out of business. In fact, I bet it was Wal-Mart that put my home town Bottle Brush store, on the corner, out of business. By the time I found one that might work, it was after 9:00 at night so I put all the bottles back in the paint shed and gave up for the night.

The next night I started on the bottles again, and found that the thick brush DID fit down the neck of the Corona bottle, with some effort, but it could not reach the bottom of the tall bottle. The thick plastic handle at the top was in the way. I am convinced that the handle was conveniently placed there by the Wal-Mart Bottle Brush Division for the comfort of lactating moms whose hands were raw from scrubbing baby bottles. So, off to the store I went again. This time, I was seeking a "long handled" sleek bottle brush. The best one I could find (after about 10 stores) had no handle at all, only a wire holding it together. It was not long enough but in improvising, I taped a pencil to the end so that I could reach the bottom of the bottle. Mental Note - The furry things seem to grow at the bottom of the bottle so store the bottles upside down. The pencil did the trick. So, I was off again in eager anticipation of that frosty froth on the top of the root beer.

The bottle washing took several hours and because of the science projects in each bottle, I figured that I better sterilize them in boiling water. I figured that if my family needs penicillin we can go to the doctors. I make a good living and do not have to grow my own. Mental Note - drink all your beer all the way to the bottom. Mom always told you not to waste. Now, I know why. The two largest pots that I own make soup for 40 and 30 respectively. That is about 5 imported beer bottles each.. Placing the bottles into the boiling water was not too bad. It was a lot like dropping fish into a vat of hot oil for a fish fry. . You just drop it and run. Holding down the necks so that they filled with the boiling water and retrieving them from the boiling water proved a little more difficult. I kept thinking that I should have picked up those 18 inch grill prongs that I saw at Wal-Mart. But, with only a few 3rd degree burns, my 6 inch kitchen prongs sufficed. When I finished the last bottle, and cleaned up the sink and counter and put the cap back on the burn ointment, I noticed it was 12:00 am. My kids were fast asleep. I wanted them to participate and share in dads home made root beer but, it was much too late. I would have to start again another day.

Sunday is a great day for a root beer activity. So, I started at 4:00 pm, early enough to re-sanitize the bottles before make the root beer. I inventoried all my supplies and ingredients and all systems were "go." Elizabeth helped make the root beer by dumping the cups of "luke warm" water into the 13 gallon trash can. We used a 4 cup measuring cup - the largest we had,. She lost count a couple times when she got into the high teens. I kept doing the calculations and checking myself on cups in a gallon and was grateful that I paid attention in English class...or was that Science? Anyway, I was sure that there were 16 cups in a gallon...or was that 16 oz in a pound? Just to be safe, we started over by dumping out the milk in the gallon jug and filling it 5 times to get 5 gallons.

Karen helped me bottle it. It was about 7:00 pm and I think she wanted me out of the kitchen so that she could make dinner. The siphon hose kept falling out of the trash can that I was using to mix the root beer and falling on the floor. I knew from one of my classes in school that something travels from an aria of greater concentration to and aria of lesser concentration or that water flows down hill. I also knew that my dad put the vat on top of the washing machine and bottled on the floor. So, I had this one down pact. Mine was on the kitchen counter and I was on the floor. The hose kept falling out of the vat and hitting me in the head. No pain, but my hair was stiffer than the collar on my First Communion shirt. It was then I remembered my brother Ricky standing over the root beer vat holding the hose in to the brew. Only then, it occurred to me that root beer is at least, a three person job...sort of like water skiing. Don't try it with two.

The flow of root beer through the hose was sometimes too great to stop by pinching the hose so it would over fill the bottle and overflow onto the floor. It was no big deal because the floor was already covered with sugar, and syrup and I was covered in a sticky goo that continued to collect objects as I moved. The bottles were 3 different heights, Heineken, Molson, and Corona. So, I had to find differnt height stuffers to put under the capper. Mental note-in the future don't use tuna cans, they crush into tuna disks when you push down on the capper. Mental note 2 - Drink more Corona. When all 56 were bottled (remember, I only had 52 bottles so I ended up chugging four imported beers at the last minute...for the cause) The cardboard cases that held the bottles were soaked and falling apart but with support underneath were transportable. . I kept my spirits up during the four hour venture (the four chugged beers had nothing to do with my spirits) and I figured that I would learn from my mistakes. Next time, I would use all the same size bottles. Mental Note - Drink more Corona. Next time, I would devise a cut off on the hose to stop the flow. Next time, I would solicit a 3rd party to manage the hose in the vat. It became clear that to make dads home made root beer, we needed a scrubber, a riser, a holder, a hosier, and capper, and a packer. . (No wonder my dad had so many kids!)

I cleaned up the mess and washed the mixing can and the counters and everything else and mopped the floor and packed all the supplies into the mixing can for easy access next time. I boiled the hose to clean the syrup out of the inside of it. I packed away the root beer into the garage as recommended for 70 degree temperature for 5 days min but 10 days optimal. The cardboard crates were soaked but seem to hold up ok during transport and were stackable. On Tuesday, I checked on the root beer and rotated the bottles....the yeast tends to settle on the bottom...one quarter turn every other day...that is what they do with fine campaign... according to the Discovery Channel. I resolved to rotate them again on Thursday and check on them on Friday (Day 5) and then to put them in the fridge on Sunday (day 7).

Friday was a slightly unusual day because no one was in the office (next to the garage) all day. There is usually someone in the office each day but, not on this particular Friday. So, when I came home, around 7:00 pm, and being the dutiful brewer dad that I had become, I remembered to check he bottles. As I stepped into the garage, a puddle of root beer at my feet, greeted me. Several bottles had exploded. I was not alarmed, because as a child I learned that an occasional root beer bottle would explode. It was part of the process. So, I entered, and checked further. The seepage caused the cardboard supports to collapse which cause more bottles to break. There was glass and root beer everywhere. The ants had noticed and were feasting on the cardboard crates. I put on a pair of thick rubber gloves and opened the box to peek inside. Just as I did, one exploded all over me. Luckily, I kept my vision. The bottles had become little bombs that had to be handled as such. I had to remove the bombs one by one so that I could clean up the glass and root beer that I was discovering in more and more places. It was everywhere...on the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and the walls across the room ten feet away had glass imbedded in them. The carpet was a sticky gooey mass of glass and syrup.

"It must be too hot! I need to cool it down and slow the fermentation." the scientist in me yelled. I got two large trash cans and filled them with ice and pulled each remaining bottle out one by one from the mound of glass, root beer, and soggy cardboard. I handed each bottle to Nathan who placed it in the ice water. None exploded while we were doing this. "Safe for now" I thought. "We all still have our eyes."

After spending hours cleaning up the garage I went into the office and started to write. But, I heard explosions one by one coming from the garage. The bottles were exploding in the ice water and shooting the water, the root beer, and the glass out over the newly cleaned garage. So I covered the cans to prevent further mess if more exploded over night and, resolved to clean the garage again in the morning but no more exploded over night. They had finally cooled down.

While I was pulling the bottles from pile of glass, syrup, and soggy cardboard, on Friday, I noticed that the bottles that had exploded originally were all Heineken bottles. Mental Note - Drink more Corona. When I checked on them on Sunday no more had exploded. I was out of the woods. I had lost about 1/2 of my batch but was now ready to put them in the fridge. I read somewhere or heard somewhere that fermentation of yeast will stop in refrigeration. Once you get it to 40 degrees or lower it will stop. So, now, in a day or so we could all enjoy a frosty root beer! I carried the once ice covered bottles in the trash can out to the fridge in the pantry and place a garbage bag on the shelf before putting the bottles in. I was not going to take a chance of one exploding in the fridge and leaking all over everything. So, I put each one inside a trash bag and tucked the bag under the weight of the bottles. I had three independent racks of bottles all in trash bags...about 28 bottles in all. I could just taste that root beer in my mind as I gently laid them on their sides in the bags on the racks. Immediately after I went into the bathroom and picked the small pieces of glass out of my fingers with a pair of tweezers.

About an hour latter I was in my office working and I could hear a lot of commotion in the house. I opened the door of the office and I could hear Karen yelling at Nathan "Stay away! " "Stay away from what?" I ask. "The pantry!" she shouted. The bottles were exploding! They blew the door of the fridge open and were shooting glass across the pantry. Each one was like cannon shooting glass and syrup. They had been placed on three shelves in the fridge yet when I braved to put my head in the pantry to see what was happening all three shelves had collapsed into a pile of rubble at the bottom of the fridge. I did not need to open the refrigerator, the door was wide open. The inside of the refrigerator looked like a bomb had gone off...a root beer bomb. The glass pieces were stuck to the sides and roof and everything else in the fridge was covered in the syrup of root beer. The volumes of root beer that were not projected on the sides and ceiling of the fridge had pooled and drained into the carpet that I only recently installed. The walls of the pantry were splattered with glass and syrup. It was then that I realized the real power of root beer. Not the innocent carbonated beverage that you find at Wal-Mart but the real granddad of the original root....the weapon that can be used for good or evil. Its power can not be harnessed by a dad, such as me. Yet, the overpowering aroma of that rich frothy brew permeated the air...taunting me.

Quick "close the door ..." But, the door to the fridge would not close because of the piles of glass on the floor and hinges and path of the door was clogged with syrup and glass. The bottles were still exploding as I wrestled with the door. Finally, I gave in to the power of the root beer. I closed the door to the pantry and put up a gate to keep unsuspecting pedestrians from crossing the path of the sugary shrapnel.

Today, I peeked in the door to see what the status was. I tugged at the corner of the only accessible garbage bag. I shook the glass of the top and found the opening. I slowly lifted the bag with two bloody fingers. Low and behold, in the center of bag surrounded by a pile syrupy glass was a lone bottle of dad's root beer. I was afraid to touch it, or even look at it. It teased me. It called to me. It challenged me. Do I dare attempt to drink it? I was torn between fear and longing. But, like a true dad, I accepted the challenge. I picked up the bottle with those same two fingers, keeping my head turned incase it exploded. I placed it in the sink and ran warm water on it to wash of the syrup and glass that was sticking to it. I dried it gently with a paper towel. I moved consciously with a surgeon's accuracy, slowly and methodically, opening the drawer to retrieve the bottle opener. Ever so gently, I place the opener on the cap and tugged. The cap did not move. I tugged again but still, it refused to budge. I could feel it struggle against my efforts, refusing to submit. Gentle, would not do. So, I grabbed the bottle by the neck and forced the cap off. It hissed like a snake at me and foamed to the very brim threatening to overflow but sighed as it reached the very top and finally submitted. I had been its captor and now it's liberator. Now, it was free to breath and I was free to bask in the bouquet of my brew...the sweat of my brow. I needed no glass, no ice, and no pageantry. My lips on the rim were more than enough. I sipped it, slowly savoring the nectar of the root. I delighted in every sensation on my tongue, flashing back to my dad, to my brothers, to my childhood basement...to a place that I will always call home. It was heaven on earth, for those few moments. It was everything I had hopped for and more than I ever dreamed of. I place the bottle down on the counter, fulfilled, and satisfied and in total harmony with the root...until I watched the bottle disintegrate into a pool of glass and root beer all over the kitchen counter. There must have been a crack in that last bottle. Maybe that flaw is what saved it from exploding. I only know that it held out long enough for me to enjoy a brief taste of what I was seeking.

All in all, I would say my project was a success. But, next time...

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