Sometimes the phrase “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” can truly hit home.  Andrea and I have some friends near San Diego and went to visit them this past weekend, which led to me obtaining some seriously nice oak barrels.  How did it happen?

Well, our friend has started growing grapes on his property in an attempt to make his own wine.  This year’s batch was actually pretty good. Last year, however, was not what Tom expected.  The long and short of it is that he counted on ambient yeast (i.e., the yeast on the grape skins) to give him his desired fermentation.  No such luck.  Some bacteria also got a hold of the wine and soured it.  Too bad for Tom’s barrels, they became unusable…for wine, that is.

Concurrent with Tom’s vine mania is my mania for lambics.  I’ve had a couple of these fun beers going for almost a year.  When Tom told me that his barrels were “no good,” I knew they were perfect for my purposes.  So, the day that Andrea and I got back, my lambics got transferred into the wine barrel…man, I love beer!