Last fall I sold my faithful pickup, which is now memorialized in a little sconce on a shelf in our dining room. At the same time, I learned that my long-time source of brewing supplies was discontinuing that service to our community. I decided that my forty-year career in homebrewing needed to come to an end as well. I began brewing in 1985, when we moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta, only to find that beer was more expensive than bourbon in those days. It seems that not enough Lutherans had settled the area before I came. Since I began brewing, of course, the craft brew revolution took place, with brewpubs now dotting the American landscape. And some of them, despite the filtering, are surprisingly good!
Since I lager my beer in the basement, I decided that it might soon become too dangerous to be carrying cases of beer up and down the narrow stairs. I didn’t want my obituary to read: “Theologian dies in fall on basement stairs carrying a case of beer.” When I told my physician about this, she laughed and retorted, “But what a way to go!”
So I am down to my last few cases of beer. Over the years, I have rotated about 15 cases of beer through the rituals of sterilization, filling, lagering, and consumption. Most of them are some forty years old. Now that’s recycling! The question I faced was what to do with them. So Sylvia, knowing of my need for a therapeutic intervention, asked for a case of my Rolling Rock bottles. A plum tree in our backyard had died over the past winter, so she trimmed its branches and turned it into a bottle tree, where it is now blooming with the symbols of my long career as an amateur brewmeister. As the sun glints through the waving bottles I can sit back with a local craft brew and think of my glory days as a home brewer.