Living Room—Never Leave the Action
Put the TAPS outlet right by the La-Z-Boy Matinee (www.La-Z-Boy.com, varying prices, expect to pay around $750 per seat, more for motorized), a multi-seat reclin-o-matic row of seats built for home theater, with built-in cup holders and trays. That’s real home theater.
Do your home theater at Circuit City: a mighty plasma screen, surround-sound, thumping bass, plus installation, all in one stop (about $4,000 when it’s all said and done; you can spend more or less).
Beer in the living room changes by season. Summer: Stegmaier Summer Stock Lager. Fall: Smuttynose Old Brown Dog. Winter: Spaten Optimator. Spring: Gordon Biersch Blonde Bock.
Kitchen—Recipes for Beer
There’s definitely a TAPS outlet in the kitchen, right by the sink. Mmmm, hot and cold running water…and beer.
Kitchens are for cooking: this is where we make the beer. What we use is the B3-2100 “brewing sculpture” from MoreBeer.com: $2550 worth of stainless steel, pumps, brilliant engineering, and a 20-gallon batch size. Put a reverse osmosis water filter ($195) on the front end and a Pro Series counterflow chiller ($185) on the output down to your cylindro-conical in the basement, and you’re more than good to go.
If you’re making beer, you need to mill your grain. We put a Schmidling MaltMill Model AA on a swing-down support—kind of like a Murphy bed mill—that props right over the B3-2100’s mash tun. Sweet. ($143 at www.schmidling.com)
Brewing early in the morning? Get going with a cup of Bell’s Java Stout and you’ll be percolating indeed.
