Capsized

Look, I know I get frustrated about small things. Instead of stepping back and acting rational when something doesn't work right, I drop F-bombs. Patience is not one of my virtues. Still, it's gotten me this far.

Despite all that had happened in the course of homebrewing, when I probably overreacted to some things that may not have really gone wrong, here I was, bottling away, thinking that soon I'd have an enormous quantity of beer to drink that I had made myself.

Well, I'm not sure what happened, exactly, and if it's anybody's fault, it's the fault of the folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, whom I previously described as "fine."

Remember how my homebrewing kit was a gift? When I opened it, I remember my in-laws mentioning something about a mix-up with the bottles. As a result, Beer and Wine Hobby had replaced a box of 12-ounce bottles with a box of 22-ounce bottles for no charge. Fine with me, considering that I didn't have to pay for any of it in the first place, and I will always drink 22 ounces of beer over 12 ounces if given the choice.

First, I filled and capped my smaller bottles. This worked great. It took me a few seconds to realize that the bottle capper took a little more force than I'd expected, but within minutes my 12-ounce bottles were capped and looking superb.

When I placed a cap on my first 22-ounce bottle, I realized something was wrong. It didn't fit. It didn't come close to fitting.

So I got angry. My saint of a wife started looking things up on the internet. She discovered that you can actually cap a 22-ounce bottle with these caps and this capper, but it requires reversing some plates on the capper. We couldn't find any instructions for doing this, save for a cheery "It's an easy adjustment!"

It was not an easy adjustment. It took ten minutes of improvising a chisel out of a flathead screwdriver and hammering away at it. Maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal to you, but when I use any kind of tool it's about as dangerous as Nicolas Cage running around with that glass ball of nerve gas in The Rock. You don't want to be anywhere near me.

Only after making the easy adjustment did we realize that the real problem was that these were Belgian bottles, and required corks. Do you think the fine folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, supplied corks with their upgraded replacement bottles? No. No they did not. I had several useless caps, and a dozen 22-ounce bottles of beer with nothing to seal them.

I ended up dumping half my beer down the drain. Maybe there could have been some way to improvise a seal on these bottles, but it was getting late and I was getting disheartened. I wondered -- not for the first time, nor the last -- whether homebrewing was worth it.

There would only be one way to answer that question. I had 24 bottles of 8-Bit Ale left. After bottling, they needed to sit for 10-14 days. Nothing to do, once again, but wait.