Now, I am by no means a carpenter, and the biggest building project i've ever done in my life was most likely the model house i built in 7th grade Tech Ed class. but my brother and I set out about a month ago on a quest to build an L shaped bar for our apartment. with no knowledge of carpentry, structural engineering or anything, i designed some blueprints for the bar, all the while in the back of my mind thinking that this would be one of those projects that you dream up but never do. well, we decided to go for it. we went to home depot, bought all the wood we needed, bought a circular saw, cut all the pieces, stained, lacquered, and assembled. it took a while, what with work and drinking non stop every sat and sunday for ucla and fins/eagles games, but we finally finished it yesterday, and i'm proud to say i think it looks damn good. now we can realize our dreams of having a fully stocked bar. we don't have much by way of liquor at this point, but now we have a place to make drinks and store it, so we're going to start at that. we brew our own beer too, here is a shot of our different brews: they're mostly ales and pale ales, with an english brown derby and a pumpkin porter we just brewed recently for halloween, and of course the dueling world series ales (they're the same beer just with different labels.. shhh) but anyway, just wanted to share what i've been up to with my free time of late. once we get it stocked and going maybe some LA folks can come over and we can watch a dolphins game or something. we're still working on finding a good deal on barstools. i dont think i trust myself enough to build a sturdy one
yea we're getting better at it, but we're still relatively new to the brewing scene as well. we want to start making lagers, but the temperature isn't right in the apartment. we might be able to use the cool room at my brothers lab, its a little lower than room temp but not too cold.
Just get a small fridge, big enough to store your carboy during fermentation, and set it around 40-50 degrees. You'll get good results.
I can't make beer but I can sure put a few of 'em away. I once fermented blueberries and made wine from the mess. It was disgusting but it did get me and some friends pretty drunk. Puking purple was a little scary, but hey, you play, you pay.
yeah we left the blueberries in for fermentation of our blueberry beer. it gave it a really true color in the beer, and it was delicious
here's an easy recipe for a batch of hard cider good around this (or any) time. 5 gallons of apple juice no additives (ascorbic acid is okay). 1 5 gram any (montrachet for 'official' recipe) yeast packet 2lbs of honey put it in and let'er rip. drinking at warp speed will get you wasted. tastes like champagne. ps. awesome bar. gotta get yourself a phins barstool now.
Nice work on both the brew and bar. By the way, disappointed you don't have a bottle of Jack Daniels anywhere around.
that stuff is disgusting. once you start drinking to taste and not to get drunk you'll understand especially if you ever homebrew (i recommend it)
we already finished it, had to recycle it, we've got some cheap knockoffs around though.. ya gotta have the whiskey around 24/7 though, i agree
well done bro, it looks great. Now a whole new chapter of your life has opened.. The Bar life will henceforth be told as BB (before bar) or AB (after bar) and all your buddies will know exactly what you mean.