BYO Blogs

We nearly didn’t get to brew out a second batch of beer.

Drinking Beer for Science

I drank some beer recently. This shouldn't be surprising, but the way I drank it might be of some interest. As outlined in my previous blog entry, James Spencer and I wanted to test if different glasses  have an effect on the characteristics of the beer. To test this, I drank eight pale ales from eight different beer glasses. (I used Sierra Nevada, because I didn't have any homebrewed pale ale on hand -- I'll be fixing that problem soon.) Here's a shot of my "laboratory." 

OK, so the long awaited day arrived and we brewed our first batch of Heretic beer.

In a way, I can’t believe we will be brewing our first batch in just a couple days.

I’m not sure how many of you have been to Las Vegas or any other city that has a casino with a craps table.  I personally try to stay away from table games these days. But in my younger years I’ve put some money down on the pass line a time or two.  When someone is rolling the dice and has gotten hot, there’s nothing quite like the roar of the people standing around as everyone is winning and high fiving each other.  Then people start doubling their bets and letting it ride.  More risk equals more reward right? But at some point, there will be a 7 or 11 rolled... and that is when it gets quiet. 

Well my friends, I experienced a moment similar to “crapping out” a few weeks ago.  I checked my email one morning prior to going to work at the Firehouse brewery and saw that I had something from the President of the company.  Much to my dismay he stated that due to the insurmountable level of debt that the new management team had discovered over the past couple months, along with multiple financial lawsuits, that they had no choice but to file for bankruptcy.  All employees were terminated.  Effective immediately. 

I’m sure I paraphrased a bit of that, but you get the idea.  Going into this I knew that I was walking into a rebuilding phase.  I didn’t know they were in THAT bad of shape though.  To their credit, I think the guys that hired me tried very hard to undo the damage that was done by the people that were previously running the place.  I also believe they didn’t truly know the extent of what they were getting into bed with until they pulled back the covers so to speak.  I don’t hold any ill will towards them, but regardless I still feel like the wool got pulled over my eyes just a little bit.  

There is still a chance that a group of investors may come along and try to revive the Firehouse Brewing Company once the dust settles.  These things can take a long time and I am certainly taking the skeptical approach on this one.  I truly, will only believe it when I see it.