For the 4th consecutive day, I forgot to pull the photos I took this weekend off the camera. I remember being in the shower this morning planning out my pre-work time, and #1 on the list was doing that (after getting coffee, which doesn’t even need to be on the list). So that will have to wait until tomorrow.

in its place, I give you this New York Times article about Root Beer. Why is that significant? Milwaukee’s own (and former Buchs employer) Sprecher Brewery gets their nod as the best root beer.

Our No. 1 root beer, from Sprecher in Wisconsin, a wonderfully balanced and complex brew, uses a combination of corn syrup and honey…

That also brings me to a short story. Once upon a time, I took up homebrewing as a hobby. Mostly because I couldn’t get any decent beer at the time. In addition to an IPA, one of my favourite batches to bottle was Root Beer. Just add water, sweetener, root beer extract, and champagne yeast; bottle and wait.

Well, I was living with my parents at the time, and wanted to demonstrate. We brewed up a batch in the kitchen, bottled it, and set it in the basement to carbonate. A few days later, I was home alone in the late afternoon when I heard glass breaking in the basement. My first instinct was that someone was kicking in a window, so I grabbed a 7-iron and made my way down the stairs. When I turned the corner into the room I heard the ruckus come from, I stumbled into a wet sticky mess on the floor.

Apparently, I used a wee bit much yeast in the brew. Next to the box embedded about a half inch in the wall were several large shards or glass. The carbonation had built up to such a high pressure that the 22-ounce bottles had started to explode.

That was my last adventure in homebrewing.