This all sounded great to me because I was already thinking about asking her to marry me anyway, and this was just the icing on the cake. So, about six months later, in May of 2009, while hiking to the top of a mountain, I asked her to be my wife.

About a month later I began work on my new rig, and five months after that it was ready for its first brew day. The first brew my wife and I made was Vanilla oatmeal stout, which is among our favorite beers to brew. The day flew by with only a few hiccups - and a couple things got changed on the new brew rig - but since then we have brewed a lot of great beers, including beer for our own wedding.

After a year of extract brewing my girlfriend bought me an all-grain cooler set up. I brewed on that for about a year and a half before I saw Lonnie's Brutus 10. That's when I knew I had to build a rig like that right away. I excitedly showed it to my girlfriend, and she told me that if I bought her a ring she would pay for the build!