Some might have seen this before:
You KNOW You’re A Homebrewer If …
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You take a personal day off from work to brew on a Wednesday to have an adequate yeast starter for the 1.100 Specific Gravity Belgian being brewed on Saturday.
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You refuse to pay $8.00 for a beer in a restaurant because you can make 5 gallons for that much.
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You scan the Belgian Ales at checkout yourself so the clerk won’t disturb the yeast sediment.
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You live in a small one bedroom apartment, and you have two refrigerators.
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You wonder what everything would taste like if mashed, boiled and fermented.
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Your computer passwords are all related to beer.
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You make hummingbird food by boiling the sugar water for 1 hour and then sanitize the feeder with Iodophor.
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Your house doesn’t have air conditioning, but your beer room does.
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Your pet rabbit will only eat crushed German pilsner malt.
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“Pick up CO2” is on your shopping list.
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You see the acronym R.D.W.H.A.H.B. and know what it means. *
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You get all your exercise from moving carboys.
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You take your wife out to garage sales in hopes of finding brew gear.
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You hate to wash the family dishes, but think nothing about standing over a sink for hours cleaning empty bottles.
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You have used a bottle opener on a twist-off cap.
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Your wife starts buying two of every kitchen utensil so she doesn’t have to search the brewery when it’s time to cook.
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You ask the guy at the hardware store if something is “food grade”.
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You’ve ever spent the afternoon in a hardware store staring into space, trying to improve your wort chiller/fluid transfer.
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You pre-heat your thermos cup to have a thermal mass of zero.
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A “beer run” is now classified as a 3 hour escapade at the local homebrew shop.
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You have ever parked your car in the rain to keep your beer out of it.
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You have never taken a microbiology course but you know all about Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces carlsbergensis.
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You measure purchases with how many batches of homebrew you could have brewed.
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Your children believe that Santa Claus would rather have a glass of homebrew than milk.
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You worry about channeling when you “sparge” your coffee.
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You asked your phone company if they have a phone number ending in 1056.
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You can estimate hair color in degrees Lovibond.
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You have a separate email folder for homebrew.
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You can name at least 10 different varieties of hops, but can’t name 10 Congressmen.
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You understand how water chemistry and pH affect the mash, but barely passed high school chemistry.
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Your wife left you for someone who doesn’t brew.
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You have your local homebrew supply shop on speed-dial right above 911.
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You own a stock-pot big enough to bathe in.
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You have more varieties of beer on tap than your local bar does.
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You take two fermentors with you shopping for refrigerators.
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A smelly, moldy, disgusting college-dorm fridge is a gift from the gods.
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You tackle your wife in the kitchen before she sneezes.
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You have moved clothes out of your closet to make room for more fermentors.
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Your child’s science project is on fermentation.
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You’ve ever got up to check an airlock in the middle of the night.
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You have more refrigerators for beer than you do for food.
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Going to a brewfest is part of your honeymoon.
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You plan your family vacations by which breweries you can visit.
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You and the local bottle-grannies have come to an accord over collection zoning.
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You have more airlocks than the International Space Station.
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You’ve tasted the finest commercial beer and said, “I can do better.”
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You have more kegs than your average fraternity.
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Staring at a bubbling airlock is more exciting than the Superbowl.
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You pour your coffee carefully to avoid hot side aeration.
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You bring a 3-gallon corny to a cook-out with its own neoprene jacket.
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You’ve kept a log of the temperature in your basement for the past 5 years.
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The presence of a basement was a major factor in the selection of your new home.
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You have room in your fridge for 7 different types of beer, 6 packages of hops, 4 vials of yeast, and two cans of rice syrup, but no room for milk for the kids.
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You schedule your lunch break around trips to the homebrew store.
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You start asking questions about other people’s worts.
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Your 5 acre yard is completely mulched with spent grains.
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You have multiple propane tanks but only use charcoal grills.
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You own more stainless steel than your local hospital.
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You get up in the middle of the night to dry hop.
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You plan your days off around when the homebrew supply store is open.
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You have 45 gallons of bottled beer in the basement and wonder if you should double the batch you are brewing on Saturday.
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Your basement looks like the set of a 1930’s horror movie.
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Your 5 gallon propane bottle has never been connected to a barbecue.
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You don’t brew much until your wife leaves town for the weekend, then you brew 30 gallons.
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You have more than two refrigerators.
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You have bottles of bleach and no white clothes.
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You hear someone say “sock hop” and you think they’re dyslexic.
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Your neighbors think you started a bottle recycling center.
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You use old, leftover hops as potpourri.
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You’ve got more cooking utensils and gadgets than your spouse does.
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You return from New Year’s Eve parties with a trunk full of empty champagne bottles.
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You always make sure to take the truck, rather than the car, to the brew supply store.
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You name your new puppy “Fuggles” or “Growler”.
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You send a holiday card to the owner of your brew supply store.
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Your house smells like a brewery.
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You buy more pantyhose than your wife (…for hops!)
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You kidnap the family thermometer to test the temperature of the wort.
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You hear the term ‘malted milk’ you think they are talking about a stout.
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You’ve ever bought a case of beer saying, “I paid for the bottles, the beer comes with them for free.”
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You’ve ever had 6 or more cases of EMPTY beer bottles in your house before you had a party, not after.
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You’ve raided the Boy Scout bottle collection/recycling for old bottles.
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You’ve ever left your local soda bottling company with your trunk and back seat full of 5 gallon Cornelius kegs.
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You give clothes to Goodwill just to get more room in your closet for beer and equipment.
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Someone says they’ve had a yeast infection and you ask what they were brewing at the time.
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You get crown seals and hop bags for Christmas presents.
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You’ve ever bought returnable beer bottles with no intention of EVER returning them.
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You’re surfing the 'Net at 3:40 am looking for homebrew websites or recipes.
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You cancel a date because your wort hasn’t reached pitching temperature yet.
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You can’t remember that last time you popped open a flip-top beer can.
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You think the term pitch has nothing to do with baseball.
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Your cupboards have more brewing items and bottles than they do food and plates.
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You don’t think that 10 gallons of beer is a lot.
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You’ve ever cut a hole in a refrigerator.
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Walking across the kitchen floor sounds like Velcro.
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You’ve ever asked the question, “By weight or volume?”
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You own a sterile trash can.
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You’ve ever tried to improve a Budweiser by stirring in a hop pellet.
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You’ve ever mopped the ceiling.
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Your linen closet has 3 fermentors in it.
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You know how to pronounce Hallertau Mittlefruh.
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Your 10 year old son comments on the head retention of his Root Beer.
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You are entertained by watching a carboy of fermenting beer.
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You own the biggest pot in the house (even counting your wife) and no one else is allowed to touch it.
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You spend more time worrying about a newly brewed batch of beer than work/school/money.
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There appears to be rabbit food in your freezer.
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You take longer to order your beer than your meal when you go to a restaurant.
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Your five year old son comments on the clarity of his apple juice while holding his glass up to the light.
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You have more refrigerators/freezers than you have TV’s.
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Your pint beer glasses are cleaner than any other glass in the house.
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Any large container suddenly appears appropriate to use in brewing.
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Your neighbors spread a rumor of you being a witch because they saw you outside sprinkling “green stuff” it to a huge steaming kettle while stirring it with a giant wooden spoon, grinning wildly and muttering strange, unintelligible words.
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You walk around Home Depot and you can think how to use most everything as brewing equipment.
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You have more styles of beer available at home than most bars.
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You get constant use out of your turkey fryer and have never fried a turkey in your life.
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You fantasize about making hop scented little tree car air-fresheners.
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You take “airlock hits” to get huge whiffs of your fermentation.
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You call in to work “brewing”.
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You know that a Hopback is a piece of brewing equipment and not a bodily action.
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You think it’s cool to taste assorted homebrews from 4 oz glasses.
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“Pitching” hasn’t a thing to do with sports.
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You think an active fermentation full of moving proteins is a thing of beauty.
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You buy a chest freezer with no intention of putting food in it.
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Your work friends ask, “What’s brewing?”
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You wake up in the middle of the night to tweak your hop/grain bill according to how the brewing went in your dream.
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You frequent home improvement stores with no intention of actually improving your home.
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At home improvement stores, you find your opening line to the employees almost always begins with “OK, this is gonna sound a little weird, but I need…”
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Your basement/garage/kitchen has a name… (fill in the blank) Brewery.
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Your wife calls you at work to tell you your airlock is bubbling away because she knows you were worried about your fermentation lag time that morning.
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You can be mesmerized for an hour watching a twirling sparge arm.
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You have a section on the bookshelf devoted to beer books.
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You can name all the types of hops and yeast, but can’t name all 50 states.
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An exciting weekend involves things like mashing and racking.
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You pick your nose and pull out a hop leaf… and aren’t fazed.
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You can seriously use the word “bunghole” in a sentence without laughing.
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Your beer gets its own room.
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You smell your beer before drinking it.
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You frequent Lowe’s so often the employees begin talking about you (“Look, there’s that guy again!”)
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You inform your wife she can no longer park her car in the garage since the space needs to be devoted to the brewery.
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In May you already know what kind of beer you’ll be serving at Christmas.
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Your co-workers call you “the Brewmeister”.
