Andrea and I don’t have any kids (we plan on it), much to the chagrin of certain mothers.  I don’t have kids but I do have babies.  My affectionate name for my homebrews is to call each one “the baby.”  In my defense, making beer is like making kids: there is a lot of grunting and sweating that goes into the process…only this one won’t bug you for 18 years…and it’s cheaper.  At any rate, I think it’s a weird idiosyncratic thing I do, and I wanted to share with the thankheavenforbeer readers.

I’ll call indulgent Andrea when I’m at work and ask her how the baby is doing.  Is it cooing and gurgling? Of course, I want to know how active the fermentation is, but this is a more fun way to talk about it. Laughter seems to make a good marriage.  Andrea will laugh and tell me all about the baby.

Today I was told that that baby was being bad and spitting up.  I anticipated that the “baby” might do this and had put on a blow-off tube to stem the mess that baby spit-up might cause.  You see, we brewed a double chocolate stout, and I knew that the head space of a gallon and a half carboy was not enough to keep the thing contained.

Does this look geeky?…for sure!  But consider this, gentlemen calling the beer baby keeps the real babies off my back.  Maybe this is actually a knavishly concocted plan.

Either way, I only want to say that too much involvement in beer for too long will make a gent more insane than a mad hatter.  Who else out there is insane from beer?