My son, Matt, came to Florida for a few days. Why he would want to leave San Francisco, a medium sized multi-cultural city with hundreds of great restaurants to stay in a trailer park…oops, I mean mobile home community…where Jean and I bring down the average age by several years, I don’t know.

He got here last Wednesday evening. Mom left on Friday to be brother Bill’s office girl up in Michigan so we decided to go out to dinner (Mom, Jean, Matt, Bother Bob…you may know him as Bobbie Butane…and me). Matt brews his own beer and loves to go to “brew pubs” so we decided to go to St. Sebastiaan’s, a Belgian brew pub about 6 miles North on US-19.

They have great food and some excellent beers but, for the first time, the service was lousy. We got there at 5:45, just in time to get the geezer early bird prices. Our waiter took our drink order about 10 minutes later. He finally got back to us with our drinks at about 6:10 and was ready to take our food order, 10 minutes after the early bird prices ended. We asked him about the early bird prices and he said it would be no problem.

Our food showed up at 7. The drinks were to be two for one and we didn’t have the second one yet, he had forgotten to bring us bread or rolls and, when he finally brought the second drinks, he forgot mine. One of the beers was a specialty brew that changed periodically. When Matt asked him what the current selection was, he said “Read to me what the menu says”. When we read it to him, he said “I think it’s called Specialty Brew”. Duh!!!

Brother Bob had gone outside to have a smoke, ran into a couple from Mt. Pleasant, Michigan looking for property and, since Bob sells real estate, it wasn’t all lost time. When the bill came, I looked it over, and the three meals that were ordered from the early bird menu were at regular prices, a difference of about $7. I could have just paid the bill and taken the $7 from the waiter’s tip, but his tip was going to be meager anyway, so I complained. That sent Bob out again for another smoke.

The bill was changed, the tip was embarrassingly low, and we left. Oh, well, the food was good, the time spent with family was great, and the beer was good. I said the food was good, but found out from Brother Bob that he awoke at about 2AM with severe stomach pain and barely made it to the bathroom. As he sat there unable to leave, he felt the urge, grabbed the wastebasket, and barfed up his Seafood Fettuccini.

Matt and I brewed beer in San Francisco the day before we swam the Tiburon Mile. I got a lot of brewing equipment for Christmas so we decided to brew a batch here. Matt looked over my shoulder so I could do it by myself when I get back to Michigan.

We needed a brew pot and used beer kegs (half barrels) make great ones, but are often hard to find. Many stores have them but they’re the property of the beer brewer or distributor and can’t legally be sold. We called around and found one in Brooksville, about 25 miles away, that the distributor wouldn’t take back. It’s perfect for what we need. All they wanted was the normal keg deposit ($20). Regular brew pots average around $150 so we felt lucky and it was legal, so I could sleep at night. We (Matt) cut a hole in the top, drilled a hole in the side for a spigot, and were ready to brew.

One of the attached pictures is the keg on top of a gas stove in the last few minutes of a 90 minute boil. The contraption sticking out of the top is a chiller, one that Matt and I made last summer. It’s coiled copper tubing with plastic tubing that hooks up to a hose, and more plastic tubing to drain off the hot water. It’s not pretty, but it does the job.

The other picture is of the 5 gallons of beer fermenting in the closet. It will stay there for a week or two until it is ready to be bottled. Once the bottling is done, it should be a couple of months before the beer is ready to drink. The recipe is for an Irish Red. It won’t be exactly like a Killian’s, but hopefully will be better. I’m finding out that it would have been cheaper to sit in a lounge chair all day, go to the ABC liquor store, and buy a six pack of Killian’s, but where’s the fun in that.

Get ready to hoist a few!

Just (Not Ready To Compete With Budweiser Yet) Jack

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I hope you all had a nice New Years Eve and didn’t party too much. Jean and I went to a friend’s place here in the park. It started at 5:30. Jean won the bet. She said we’d be home by 9 and I said we’d be home by 10. We got home at 9:10 (yes, PM–I have come home at 9 AM New Years morning, but that was in my much younger days).

As to the title of this week’s e-mail…it doesn’t mean that I think mobes are the best thing going. That would be “Mobes Rule“. Jean and I have lived in larger homes than the mobe in Florida and, with tight quarters, there are some unwritten rules.

In the master bedroom we have a closet with sliding doors. If she leaves her side open, that means that in order for me to get anything out, I have to go to her end, close her side, go back to my end and open it. Mobe Rule #1 – Close you side of the closet when you are done.

In the bathroom, above the sink, we have one of those old medicine cabinets that is short and wide. I keep my things in one side and Jean keeps her things in the other side. If Jean leaves her side open, and I want to get out my shaving cream for my every other day de-whiskering, I have to close her side before I can open mine. Mobe Rule #2 – Close your side of the medicine cabinet when you are done.

In both of the above cases, I occasionally leave my side open just so she can see how aggravating it is.

The mobe has a fairly small kitchen that is enclosed on three sides by walls and is partially blocked on the fourth side by an eating bar that extends into the room. I eat differently than Jean, and usually make my own food if we don’t go out to eat. If two people are in the kitchen at the same time, you are constantly bumping into each other. When I go into the kitchen, it seems to be a trigger that brings Jean in to do something. Most often it has nothing to do with food preparation and may be rinsing out the coffee pot, emptying the dishwasher, etc. Mobe Rule #3 – The first one in the kitchen has priority. All others KEEP OUT.

The refrigerator is a fairly small one with one shelf for large things and a couple of shelves and spaces in the doors for smaller things. I can reach in to get a pitcher of Crystal Light or water from the Brita water filter and, before I can get it back, Jean has put something short in the only space available for something tall. Besides blatantly abusing Mobe Rule #3 by being in the kitchen the same time that I am, she’s putting something short on the tall shelf. Mobe Rule #4 – Only tall things go on the tall shelf…short things go anywhere else.

I won’t bore you with Mobe Rules #5 through 16. You get the idea. It’s a universal truth that order must prevail. If the Mobe Rules aren’t followed, chaos ensues, and I feel lost.

On a different note, but also a slap in the face of science, I just don’t understand the differences in the same temperature. If you read last week’s e-mail and didn’t delete it by mistake, you may remember the picture I sent showing me watching television in Michigan. Remember the temperature was 57 degrees. The other night something strange happened and I don’t quite understand it.

It’s Jean’s house up North, and I don’t change the thermostat. So if it’s 57 degrees, I bundle up to keep warm. Jean seems to be quite comfortable and laughs at me if I have gloves and a jacket on. Down here, it’s my mobe, so Jean doesn’t touch the thermostat (Mobe Rule #12). I keep it on about 66 degrees. We were watching TV and it was my turn to sit in the chair (we don’t have much furniture yet so we have to take turns) and there was Jean on the floor wrapped up in a blanket. The picture is attached. She says that 66 degrees down here is much colder than 57 degrees up North.

There will be times up North when she’ll say something like “It really looks warm outside. Why does the heat keep coming on?” It may look nice outside but that doesn’t mean that it’s warm. And, in the winter, unless the outside temperature is above 57, the heat will come on. Granted, I do understand thermal heating when the sun is out, and the house cooling off faster when the wind blows than when it doesn’t blow. But 66 degrees is the same temperature whether you are in Moose Pass Alaska or Key West Florida.

Just (After 16 Years I Still Have A Lot To Learn) Jack