When we started brewing, our “brewery” was in my garage. It’s a pretty normal place for a home brewer to brew. It’s efficient because bringing a big old kettle to boil on my electric range would take a lifetime, it’s better to spill on the garage floor because all I have to do is wet the floor with the hose and squeegee away and even though the smell of the boiling wort and hops is one of our favorite smells, the significant other probably wouldn’t appreciate the entire house smelling as such. So it worked for us as it does many other home brewers.

The difference for us was my wife and I had just bought the house a few months prior and we had some nosey neighbors.

One Saturday morning, after a long night of brewing, I was in the garage cleaning up a bit. The nosiest of neighbors just happened to be walking his dog right by my driveway and decided to stop and have a chat. Here’s how it went:

Mr. Nosey: Hey how’s it going?

Me: Not bad, how about you?

Mr. Nosey: I’m good. Hey, I uh, I work afternoons and I get off pretty late. I drive home this way and I see you guys hanging out in the garage.

Me: Yep. We…

Mr. Nosey: (interrupting) What are you doing late at night?

I couldn’t help but chuckle. Here we were in a brand new neighborhood with a very crude homebrew setup, late at night AND Breaking Bad was at the height of its popularity. I knew what he was thinking, but come on! If we were cooking “Blue Sky,” “Big Blue,” “Blue Magic,” “Fring’s Blue” or simply “Blue” don’t you think we would have closed the garage door?!? Seriously!

Me: My friends and I are brewing beer.

Mr. Nosey: OOOOOH! Ok!

He was relieved to say the least. He then went on to tell me all about every beer he’s had in the last ten years. I listened politely because I’m way too nice and eventually we went on our separate ways.

Moral of the story? There isn’t one. I just like the story.

Happy Friday fools!