This morning, as is the case with every morning, I started my day off by taking the dog for a walk. It was a brisk morning, but what else would you expect for the end of December.

The sun had not quite fully risen, and the air was quiet…almost eerily so. It was the kind of quiet that only exists this time of year. There were no birds chirping. The wind was still. There were no kids on corners waiting for the school bus. It was just dead silent.

Maybe it was the silence, or maybe it was the captivity of anxiously awaiting Lucy to do her business, but I found my mind spinning with ideas.

This is by no means abnormal. You leave me alone with my thoughts for more than a few minutes, and it is almost guaranteed that some kind of half-cocked notion (or twelve) will start rattling around in my head. As of late, many of these thoughts revolve around building our brewery, and the umpteen-bazillion steps and things we need to do to make our dream a reality. Combine those with the umpteen-bazillion thoughts coursing through my brain about becoming a Dad for the first time, and it’s a wonder that I can ever get anything else done.

This morning though, my mind was all about brewing. I was working over in my head the logistics of kegging our beer. As Justin teased in his blog post yesterday, we are going to start kegging our brews so we can force carbonate them with pressurized Co2. This is going to be incredibly awesome for us. It will cut the wait time between brewing and drinking in half, and will give us much more control over the carbonation levels of our drinks.

But back to my thoughts. I was thinking about kegging. I then started thinking about all the kegs we will need when we one day have our production brewery up and running. I then started thinking about old kegs, and what happens to them when they are no longer useful. I started thinking how cool it would be to make a BBQ smoker out of them. Then an even better idea hit me.

Wait for it…….

KEG URINALS

Yep, you read that right. Keg urinals. How awesome would it be to make urinals out of old kegs. They would be the perfect addition to our future Regular Guy brew pub.

Just imagine how sweet it would be to saunter up to one of those bad boys with a full bladder. Think about the joy of relieving the pressure into one of those unmistakable stainless steel cylinders. The sounds. The experience. The simple poetry of returning full circle. The beer you drank in our bar would start in a keg…and finish in one.

Sweetness.

At the point of this inspiring revelation Lucy had not yet done her business. For once, I was fine with that. More walking meant more time to think.

The wheels continued turning.

First order of business…how to mount the keg? Vertical would be a better use of available wall space, but horizontal might be easier to construct, plus it would kind of be like a mini pee-trough.

Next…how would we plumb it? What parts would be needed? Could I do it myself? Could we make the handles look like tap handles? Would that be sanitary?

From there my thoughts wandered on to safety. Would we need to put some kind of protective edging around the lip of the keg? How smooth could we grind the edge down? What would be the chance that someone might cut their junk on the edge? How bad would it suck if someone did? If someone did cut their junk, would I laugh at the news? What if it was me?

Then I thought about the experience. How much splash back would there be? What would it sound like? Would we want them to be super shiny? Would pee stain stainless steel? How truly stainless is stainless steel?

At about this point my train of thought was broken up by the sight of a squatting schnauzer. Lucy had done her business. I bagged up her poop, and we headed home.

My thoughts were still very much focused on this keg urinal concept as we walked through the door. I put some food in her bowl, and then I sat down at the kitchen table. I pulled out my phone, and I did what any right-thinking person would do. I googled “keg urinal” to see if anyone had beat me to the punch.

In my heart, I knew that this idea was just too awesome to have never been thought of before. Surely someone had put two and two together and produced something of this sort ahead of me. It was just too much to hope for. As inventive and creative as I might be, there was just no way that I could believe that I was the first to wander into the keg urinal arena.

To little surprise, I was not. Bummer.

There were vertical ones.

Horizontal ones.

Ones that were super polished.

Ones that looked like crap.

Ones that were cut down.

Ones that were not.

It blew my mind and left me a bit torn.

On one hand, there was much sadness in my heart. While I knew it was a long-shot, the slight bit of hope that I had in being a true vanguard has been flushed away. On the other hand, I felt somewhat optimistic…because this idea that I had come up with, obviously had some kind of pre-existing support. It was kind of cool and comforting to know that I was not alone. That there were indeed other people in this world who thought this was not only a good idea, but a frickin’ awesome one.

We might be years away from making Regular Guy Brewing a viable business…and who knows how much further away we might be from having a tap room or brew-pub, but when we get there, You better damn well believe that the men’s room will be lined with kegs.

It’s certainly something to look forward to.