Greg Tomei • Tallmadge, Ohio

Most everyone has probably heard of a bottomless cup of coffee or maybe the bottomless ocean. But I have never before experienced the bottomless keg. Here’s my story.

It all started on a normal day of brewing in early November. I was brewing up a quick extract and specialty grain batch of German Dunkelweizen. With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, I wanted to have a relatively easy-drinking beer available to the “non-craftbrew” beer-drinking crowd.

We usually have Thanksgiving dinner at our house with anywhere from a dozen to two-dozen guests. Of those, there are probably ten beer drinkers. In addition, my father’s family has an extended family reunion every year on the Sunday after Thanksgiving with at least two-dozen beer drinkers, all expecting to sample the fruits of my labor.

By my calculations, my beer would be ready by Thanksgiving, giving me plenty of time to get my heavier beers brewed for the Christmas holidays and the cold northeast Ohio winter weather.

The beer was kegged in mid-November and force-carbonated one day later. My initial tapping confirmed that this quick-drinking ale would be perfect and I anticipated that it would last until the middle of December.

At this point, a power greater than any here on earth must have taken over.

Based on my family’s planned get-togethers during the Thanksgiving weekend, a beer that I thought was going

to last a few weeks was still hanging around well  into the new year. It survived Thanksgiving dinner at my house with about five beer drinkers, including my Miller Lite-drinking brother-in-law, who happily sucked it down by what seemed to be the bucketful.

It also survived the family reunion that I mentioned. I always plan to bring a keg of homebrew for this event and this year was no different. Most everyone appreciates the quality of a well-made homebrew. Even if they don’t normally drink handcrafted microbrews, they can appreciate the work involved and what it takes to create a batch.

Well, also in attendance at the party was the same brother-in-law from Thanksgiving who saw fit to serve himself and his entire family my beer in 24-oz. plastic cups. After having enjoyed my beer for Thanksgiving, he brought these cups specifically for my beer. Worse yet was the fact that these cups had a Miller Lite logo emblazoned on the side! I swear I saw him at least a half-dozen times filling his cups, two at a time, and sometimes even three. Did I mention that he was doing this for his entire family: son, daughter and son-in-law?

Ok, time to do the math. That would be more than three gallons of my precious brew, or 60-percent of my total output. Surely this beer isn’t going to last much longer, and it certainly wouldn’t be around for the Christmas season. The relative lightness of the keg after the party compared to when I brought it confirmed my expectations.

But this beer kept right on giving. After returning the keg back to my beer fridge, with each glassful that I poured, I fully expected it to blow. My wife even asked me if there was something wrong with the beer. For a while, I thought maybe there was.

I started thinking that maybe my taste buds had deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t tell the difference between this beer and Miller Lite. But that was not the case. In fact, throughout this time, the flavor miraculously kept improving. Weizens are normally best when consumed fairly fresh, but at four months, the beer actually was getting better.

But alas, like all good things, this too eventually came to an end. One day I eventually heard that familiar “pfffftttt” sound coming from the picnic tap. The keg finally blew on March 6, almost four months to the day from when I brewed it.

Ironically, it occurred during another brew session — how appropriate.

Unlike my usual thoughts of “No, it can’t be, this beer died much too young,” this time, I had somewhat different

feelings. I felt a sense of accomplishment — a sense of awe and a great sense of hope. Perhaps it’s similar to when someone dies at a very old age. You feel sad, but you know that they lived a long and fruitful life.

Someday, I hope to experience that same feeling again. And I hope that other brewers can also experience the joy of the bottomless keg.