We had workmen installing air conditioning for the last two days. The company we went with, Lakewood Furnace, was great. They were very nice, talked us through everything they were going to do, etc. I even gave them some beer when they left. I am very happy with their work and would recommend them to others.

Now to the nasty business of asbestos removal. We hired a company called Residential Asbestos to remove the old heating ducts. I met with the owner for an estimate, he seemed competent and the estimate was right in the range I expected. He even had a working relationship with Lakewood Furnace, so it was rather easy to schedule them both for the same day. We arranged to have the asbestos removal guys come in Monday at 8 AM and Lakewood Furnace to come in at 10:30.

Monday morning came, but the guys from Residential Asbestos didn’t. I waited patiently until 9 AM, then left message at their office and on the owner’s cell phone. I was annoyed, Cindy was upset. At 9:30, Cindy called Lakewood Furnace to inform them of the situation, they were very surprised and had never had problems with this company before. They called Residential Asbestos and left message as well. Around 10:00 we finally received a call from Residential Asbestos, apparently they had forgotten to put us on their schedule and we rescheduled for Tuesday morning.

Cindy was more than a little upset. She had taken Monday off to get this done and it may have just become a waste of time, and the AC install could now take part of Wednesday as well. Fortunately, the Lakewood Furnace guys were able to come out and do some of the work even with the old ducts in place. They placed the AC unit outside, ran electric, ran the condenser line, and cut the hole for the new vent. This allowed them to finish the job on Tuesday, which was much appreciated by us.

Tuesday morning came and the Residential Asbestos guys were on time, even a little early. The owner was not with the removal guys. They introduced themselves and went right to work, although neither was particularly professional in their demeanor. The owner showed up about 20 minutes later, talked to us a few minutes and gave us the invoice. He was obviously interested in getting the money then, although he said we could pay his guys when they finished. That bothered me on two fronts: First - payment is generally only made after work is complete. Second - giving a check to his workers shouldn’t be treated like a hassle to him. Anyway, I paid the man and he promptly left.

The work was completed rather quickly, and they did a fine job of removing all of the asbestos. A few minutes after they left the Lakewood Furnace guys showed up to finish the AC installation. Around lunch time I went down to see how it was going and the guy pointed out that the asbestos removal guys had broken our BEER sign. He asked if they had told us, and of course they hadn’t. The sign itself isn’t particularly special, it is a bit fragile, and it was precariously hung on a door, so I am not surprised that it was broken. But, after everything else with Residential Asbestos, I was finally pissed off enough to write this giant post. Lakewood Furnace finished up early on Tuesday and everything looks beautiful and shiny.

No beer was harmed in the process of installing Air Conditioning. We moved the active fermentors upstairs so that they would not collect dust or otherwise be in the way.

- Chris

One of the first rules of cooking is make sure you have all of your ingredients before you start. I have never been able to remember this rule and used frequently end up running to the store in the middle of cooking to get some ingredient I cant live without. Over the years I have gotten great at improvising which reduces store runs. Sadly, I am not as comfortable at improvising beer recipes as I am with dinner. So, because I decided that the girlbeer has an ingredient which it cant live without, it is being put off until monday (or some time next week…).

We were going to just brew next weekend, but I had gotten myself in the middle of a batch of spent grain bread and had no spent grain. I could go on without, (of course the bread wouldnt be as good….), however we decided to go ahead with at least one of the batches of beer. So we are currently making the strong IPA. At the moment the grains are steeping and the house smells fantastic!

 Gotta go– hot beer on the stove!

–Cindy

Lately we have been getting estimates for some work we want to do on the house. This means that we have strangers who come through the house when they are giving us quotes. More than one has noticed the excessive number of beer bottles in the kitchen (probably somewhere 30+ and we have about 6 wine bottles as well), the room in the basement with a large sign that says ‘BEER’ which has about 150+ beers in it, and other various signs which would make them think that either we have been on a bender or that we just had a party. They dont say anything, but rather stare every now and then at Chris and I with a look of awe for ‘how the hell do you drink all of that and not have a beer gut?’(ok, really who ever thinks like that!) or a sad ’you must be drownin’ your sorrows’ look. When we notice this we usually give them the disclaimer ”we’re homebrewers”.  Today, we forgot and after the guy left we looked around and thought–  as the house was in a bit of disarray from the holiday I am guessing he must have assumed that we had a party (I have never been thankful for a mess before). But such is the story of living with homebrew: sometimes you feel like an artist and sometimes you feel like you are making moonshine in your bathtub.

— Cindy

So, I thought I should start with a post discussing the history of our little brewery. The first part seems to be pretty common among most homebrewers– we had a friend who made fantastic homebrew, chatted with him about it, and eventually decided to start making our own. I have to admit when Chris first started talking about wanting to brew I was a bit apprehensive. This is mainly because growing up near Milwaukee I was familiar with what we called ’stinky street’ a street which runs next to miller brewing co. and smells like yeast– but in an overpowering, not tasty, sour funk kind of way (I have never since smelled a brewery with this funk, but then again it was the miller brewery). I was afraid the kitchen/house would smell like ’stinky street’. At that time just about the only beer I would drink was scotch ale. Eventually I gave in, we started brewing beer and I started drinking enjoying beer.

We have been brewing just over two years and have made around a batch a month for that period of time. We are constantly thinking about the style of the next batch (which can involve tasty research), what we could change about a beer recipe to improve, and what new equipment we could buy.

– Cindy