Master Bedroom—A Calm Refuge
There are precious things in the bedroom. Like your barleywine collection; store it in a handsome maple rack from The Wine Rack Shop (21 bottle rack, $63, www.winerackshop.com).
And under the bed? The most precious beers of all—the Stone Vertical Epic 03-03-03, the 1960 Ballantine Burton Ale, the 1996 King & Barnes Christmas, the 1985 Bigfoot—are stowed in a foam-lined, securely locked black-finish Quantaray aluminum camera case (www.ritzcamera.com; $60). The one thing to grab in case of a fire.
Want a uniquely soothing decor scheme? Go to your local paint store with a draught can of Guinness and a pint glass. Get the tinting expert’s attention, pop the can, pour, and tell him you want three gallons of black and two gallons of foam. Paint your room black with a foam ceiling and foot-high border. You’ll sleep like an Irish baby. (Approximately $125 for paint and brushes.)
The bedroom beer (aside from the all-house tap, which you’ve definitely got in the bedroom) is something strong and sweet and soothing: Weyerbacher Insanity, a bourbon-barrel aged barleywine. Get a little crazy tonight.
Bathroom—What Happens Here, Stays Here
Yes, you’ve got a TAPS outlet here, and a Spulboy Flin Flon, the very best glass cleaning system available, NSF-approved, and very water-efficient. After all, it’s not as if you’re going to be getting up to get a fresh glass. (www.mrblender.com, $586). Heck, might not be a bad idea to get one of these for the kitchen, too.
Time to stop joking about “The Reading Room” and do something about it. Get these effective and protective glass-doored bookshelves (to keep the books dry) by Tennsco from Dallas Midwest (www.dallasmidwest.com), then drop about $500 at www.BeerBooks.com and fill ‘em up.
Hey, you’re already sitting down; why not have something really big? Make it Goose Island Bourbon County Stout.
Guest Room—One-night Stand
No all-house tap. One warm six-pack of light beer on the night stand. What, you want people to stay forever?
The Beer Room—’Nuff Said!
The Den was just a start. This is the real display. Open up that TAPS outlet and enjoy your friends’ glow of envy.
If you don’t have a collection of the cool old brewery advertising called ‘breweriana,’ why not start one to decorate this fabulous room at www.Breweriana.com. It’s not the most intuitive system, but man, do they ever have the stuff.
Display and preserve your Jealousy Collection—all the beers everyone else wishes they had—in the impeccable Sub-Zero 601RG glass-front stainless body refrigerator. You’ll want to turn off the interior lighting, of course. Figure on about $5,000 for this, but honestly: you’re talking about the Stone Vertical Epic series, your full run of Eldridge Pope Thomas Hardy’s, 1994 Alaskan Smoked Porter, six years of Niagara Falls Eisbock, five years of Fuller’s Vintage Ale, the King & Barnes Millennium Ale in the wooden presentation box, New Haven Belle Dock, first runs of Geary’s Hampshire Ale…do you really want to trust that to something you picked up at a yard sale?
You need entertainment, and it might as well be beer: www.HistoricVideoArchives.com has two hour-long DVDs of classic beer ads from the 1950s through the 1970s ($25 each). Add in the video from your latest beer hunt, and you’ve got some spellbinding stuff.
Why not drop another $500 on beer books for this room? This would be a good place for BeerBooks.com’s reprint series of classic older titles, like Pasteur’s “Studies on Fermentation” and Arnold’s “Origin and History of Beer and Brewing.” Very classy.
The beer? Any damn beer you want, baby, it’s your room!
Closets—Useful Beer Space
Fill that closet with beer shirts and hats! Get your faves at your local micro, check out the selection at www.BeerBooks.com, or try on some wild drinking monk-theme shirts at www.StObnoxious.com.
There are farms by us that often have used 55-gallon plastic barrels for sale for ten bucks. That looks like a home malt silo, just waiting to happen. Stick one in a closet right above the kitchen, pipe some PVC down to that drop-down Malt Mill, stick in a few flow-control valves, and you’re in business. Getting the malt bags upstairs is your problem.
Closets are a perfect place to keep your stash of Bud Light.
