Now that I’ve finished de-labeling (shame on you Mayflower Brewing for making your labels so hard to remove) and sanitizing my 12oz bottles, I’m getting ready to put the raspberry and Thai sweet basil tripel experiment to bed. More than a month ago I racked off my tripel into a couple of Martha’s Exchange growlers. One with some fresh frozen local raspberries and the other with Thai sweet basil from my garden. The former was inspired by “just for the hell of it” with the latter inspired by the excellent Bruery Trade Winds tripel.
Everything went without a hitch. Every batch I bottle or keg, I realize what brewing toys I’d like to have to upgrade the whole experience. All the pouring and gravity-feeding of things… I’ll report back in a couple of weeks how these experiments turned out.
While I’m juggling this, neighborhood families are ringing my doorbell. Earlier in the day, I dropped $20 on last-minute big bags of candy at Hannaford. I feel an obligation to hand out candy when I’m home on the 31st. A year ago, I was in Cambridge with friends at the Cambridge Brewing Company’s Pumpkin Beer Fest. It was the night before my wedding. Tomorrow is my first anniversary. So back to this Halloween obligation… I feel obligated to hand out candy when I’m home. It’s just one of those “neighborhoody” things to do and we live in a “normal” neighborhood with regards to trick-or-treat. It started out slow. Not a lot of foot traffic out in the street at 6:00 when things officially started. By about 6:30 or so, there were a lot of people outside. “Flip on the post and porch lights and they will come,” as the saying goes, right?
Wasn’t as steady as previous years, but it seemed busy overall. When all is said and done, we have a big bowl of candy left over. Now to resist eating it…
