Christmas & 4 Letter Words

Hey gang Welcome to our first Christmas story of this series. As you can tell by the title today's story has to do the use of four letter words combined with Christmas. Now as you may know, there are a lot of four letter words out there, both good and bad, that have been in use for as long as Christmas has been around. And I also believe that several of you out there may have used some of those four letter words yourself AND you may have used them in conjunction WITH Christmas. It's OK to admit it, I've been there and I've bought that T-shirt myself.

Four letter words are easy to use, they can describe the feelings we experience at the time we use them. For women to use four letter words at Christmas time they may choose words like shop, save, ring, card, love. As for men, their four letter words may include fine, tool, cars,or work. Teenagers may select words like cool, or game or maybe even tats and of course for the little ones, they too may use four letter words too like toys. As for the retailers their four letter word would be SELL, SELL, SELL. And that my friends is all fine and dandy if those words work well for you. The words that I used for examples all sound like possible good or nice Christmas presents, wouldn't you agree?

Today I want to tell you a Christmas story that has a few choice four letter words in it. Now just for fun, as you read the story, see how many four letter words you can find in this story. Ready? Let's begin. Our story today begins a few years ago in June, Rainman and the family went to St. Louis for his parents 60^th wedding anniversary. One evening while we were sitting around doing our visit, Grandma pulled out her old photo album and everyone was going through it. We found some old letters and papers inside the book. Turns out the papers were Rainman's Great Grandfather's old beer brewing recipes from the prohibition times. Since Rainman and I are vivid homebrewers Grandma let us have them along with a photo of Great Grandpa. It was great to have his old beer recipes but there was one problem, they were all written in German.

Lets fast forward on our story to October when Rainman & I started brewing our annual Christmas beer. For Christmas that year, Rainman wanted to make a new kind of bier. Rainman found someone local who was able to translate Great Grandpa's papers. The recipes looked pretty simple to make, the papers also included some technical processes using some old world style equipment. Now over the summer Rainman had built a particular style of a temperature controlled box for the fermentation of Great Grandpa's recipes and we were going to brew a Christmas bier using all of the old style methods. In case you were wondering why we wanted to do the process this way, well Zig Ziglar once wrote : “What you get by achieving your goal is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” Our goal was to achieve a beer flavor so good that it would be indescribable.

On a Saturday we brewed up three different 5 gallons recipes of bier. The biers needed to be done in October to allow time for the bier to age properly to complete the intended flavors we would most certainly love. Using Great Grandpa's old techniques, we boiled the brew over an open fire in the backyard. Doing that and a few other techniques we hadn't used before made for an interesting day of brewing. When each batch was completed we had placed the drums of raw beer in the fermentation box and placed air locks on the drums. The box was closed up, the proper temperature was set and the bier was to be left alone for 4 days. That way the little yeast bugs could munch their little hearts out on the sugars in the wort, then fart out some carbon dioxide and piss out alcohol to turn the wort into bier. Now don't freak out about the farting and peeing part, it is the most natural process (other than sex) on earth. After we finished working all day on our 'new' old style recipes, we gave each other a couple of hand slaps to signify that we did a good job on the brew. (Don't you just love all of these four letter words I used?)

Wednesday evening came along and when Rainman arrived home from work, it was time for us to checkout and see how well the bier was processing. Mom wasn't home at the time so Rainman figured now would be as good a time as any to get it done before dinner. So the three of us (me, Rainman and Baby-girl the dog) headed out to the garage/brewhouse. Rainman rubbed his hands together in anticipation prior to opening the door to the fermenter box. At first glance of those full nice, good looking drums of wondrous home made alcohol gave us an exciting chill . He opened the first drum and dropped in the hydrometer tester to check the alcohol content. The reading said the bier was at 4.5% alcohol with another .5% to go, almost ready for bottling. The second drum said the same thing. It was looking like we were going to be doing a lot of bottling on the same night. On the bottom shelf sat the third drum. Rainman looked at the air lock. It didn't show any movement of the excess gas being released from the drum. We took it as it was a good sign that the bier was finished with the fermentation cycle and would be ready for bottling. Good old Great Grandpa's recipe might be working better than we thought. Well, that is what we thought until the drum was opened. Rainman grabbed a hold of the airlock and pulled it from the drum.

What happened next is best described by and should be compared to as a major eruption of Mount St. Helen. This strong fountain of bier and foam roared across the sky from built up pressure caused by a failed air lock. The air lock hole on top of the drum provided the needed vortex to achieve distance that allowed the bier foam mixture to hit two walls, the ceiling, the floor and of course Rainman himself. I was sitting on the workbench across the room and ducked for cover waiting to get hit with flying debris. Rainman of course began to spew a few nice four letter words at the wondrous mess he just created. As I watched, it seemed as though that drum was never going to stop spewing bier everywhere. The only thing I could do was laugh at poor Rainman, who was covered in bier. He looked like he just won a wet T-shirt contest.

Rainman just stood there in shock, I was rolling with laughter on the workbench and Baby-girl, well she was one busy puppy lapping up the bier off of the floor (I was thrilled she was happy to jump in there and help clean up like that). Rainman finally moved, he pulled off his shirt and threw it across the garage. He yelled at me (with a few more choice four letter words)to stop laughing and get him a towel. He began to clean up the fermentation box and reseal the drum. It looked as though about 1/3 of the beer in the drum had erupted. Baby-girl was busy doing her part to clean up the floor, and I have to say she was doing a fine job. Rainman then handed me the mop and bucket to finish up the floor. The more we cleaned was the more the place seemed to be covered in bier. It was the perversion mess from hell. Rainman got to the point that he had to shoo Baby-girl away so he could get the rest of the floor done.

Finally everything was cleaned up, the mop bucket and mop were washed out and Rainman grabbed a clean shirt to put on. He was just in time too because guess who just pulled into the driveway, yeap, you guessed it, it was MOM. And you know what happens when mom walks in and sees an awful mess anywhere in her house. If she had seen the mess that was made, she would have freaked big time and most certainly used a few very special chosen four letter words in her vocabulary. Rainman chased me and Baby-Girl out of the garage and into the house just as Mom walked in the front door, it was perfect timing. We all had our best innocent looks on our faces. (Remember this: You are always innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.)

Everybody went into the living room to sit down, Stacey was asking Rainman how his day went and what was he doing out in the garage. Rainman said that he was just checking on the bier and that it was doing fine. A few more days and it should be ready to bottle. Stacey of course repeated her standard rhetoric of wondering why we go through so much trouble brewing bier when we can just buy it at the store and save the hassle. Rainman and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes behind her back. If she only knew what had just happened.

Then it looked as though she was about to find out what happened in the garage. I looked in horror down the hallway. There I saw Baby-Girl making a very bad attempt at walking towards us, it was more like trying to walk straight towards mom. The dog was drunk on her ass and was headed for the the one person we didn't want her to be around. Stacey took one look at her dog. Turned her head towards Rainman and demanded to know what was wrong with the dog. Rainman jumped up like he was on springs and grabbed the dog off of the floor. He cradled her in his arms and 'said' that there was nothing wrong with the dog. Rainman sat back down on the couch still holding the dog while Stacey reached over to pet her. Thank God Stacey didn't get any closer to the dog than she did, because just as sure as God make little apples, she would have smelled the alcohol on the dog's breath. Like two school boys waiting in the principal's office, both Rainman & I were sweating bullets just knowing we were about to get busted.

But then Stacey asked Rainman “Why are you holding my dog? You know that is my dog, give her to me.” I thought “oh $#%& (four letter word) we are so busted.” So what does Rainman do? He hands her the dog, Stacey took one whiff of air and smelled the evidence, “Did you give my dog bier? What did I tell you about giving her bier? Didn't I tell you not to do that?” Oh $#%&, (four letter word)she is on a roll now. But somehow, she stopped squawking and just gave Rainman a dirty look, then handed the dog back to him. The dog just laid (more like passed out)on his lap with her head hanging over the edge. Finally mom let it go and got up to start some dinner in the kitchen. Talk about breathing a sigh of relief.

Rainman made sure to hold on to the dog until dinner time, he didn't want the dog to stagger into the kitchen and restart trouble he/we didn't need. By the time dinner was over, the dog seemed to do a little better with her walking and we each sighed a big relief. Fast forward to a few months later and it was finally Christmas Eve. It was time once again for the Meinhardt's annual Christmas party. The home brew of Great Grandpa's recipes was a huge success. The bier had turned out better than we ever expected and the party was hopping that night. Rainman had people constantly asking him where he came with the recipe. Of course he told them the story of finding the recipes and then bored them to death with how he built new equipment and all that. Now it was after I had a few cold biers myself that my tongue loosened up and I let it slip out as to how the fermentation process went and went into detail about the after effects Baby-Girl experienced as our unofficial taste tester. I could tell by the roar of laughter from everybody they all thought it was funny. All except for mom, she had daggers in her eyes for both Rainman and I over that poor dog, but at least she graciously reserved our beheadings until after the party.

That party was so much fun that we marked it down as a party to remember for a long, long time as a really great Christmas. As I finish up this story and prepare to start the next, I'm looking over at the several cases of home brew we have ready for this year. So if you are in the area, stop on by for a damm good cold beer for Christmas, we would love to see you. And always remember the wise words of Grandma: Keep your words soft and sweet, for one day, you may have to eat them.

Ride Hard or Stay Home

Pig