I am currently eating a nub of cheese. In fact, most of my diet this week will be composed of food I had leftover from my party. I have a couple packs of hot dogs, another link of kelbasi, and an extra package of 'lil smokies'. I fear that by the end of the week I am going to be all sausaged out. Dogs are going to start following me in the streets. I'll probably affix a derisive German laugh.
Alas, while the meat kept fine in my fridge, I was not as lucky with the keg. I had gotten a keg not because I thought there would be that much beer drunken, but simply because it's been ages since I bought a keg and I felt like buying one. Thought of a cold frothy keg beer in my own home delighted me. However, much to my disappointment, it turns out that the local ABC did not sell kegs, and the local Albertson's had only crappy beer in stock. If I wanted a decent beer, I had to order it a week ahead of time.
A large lady with alarmingly silver painted eyelids behind the Albertsons liquor store counter ticked off what she had in stock. Sighing over the choices of Miller, Miller light, bud, and bud light, I resignedly got the Budweiser. A couple of beer-lackeys hustled it into the back of my truck.
After the party there was perhaps half a keg left. This suited me fine because I thought I could just keep it cold for a week and come home and take frosty mugs of it after work. I had brief visions of me lounging in my hot tub with the keg hose snaking over the side of the tub and into my mouth. It would be like being back in the womb, but much better.
However, it turns out that when you use one of those frat-boy air pumps as opposed to a CO2 hookup, it quickly oxidizes the beer on the inside. So while I had no problems keeping it cold in my bathtub, by the third day the beer that came out of it was flat. It still had a head to it, but the beer itself was not 'crisp'. It was bad enough it was Budweiser, I can just about choke that down, but sub par and flat Bud is just out of the question. I would rather crawl on my belly after a St. PAtty's parade and lap at whatever puddles I might find. So now the keg sits in my tub, warm and forlorn until I haul it back to the store.
Which needs to be soon because I want to take a hot bath.
Nineteen years back, to a flat keg of Budweiser and a grand ambition involving a hot tub hose.
What a relic. In 2007, a man's beer options at the local store were apparently Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Light, and despair. Now I could have forty different hazy IPAs delivered to my front door by an app, which means the beer arrives warm, the app takes a cut, and I still sit alone in my sad rented hot tub—progress. But the true vanished technology is the keg-deposit system. Back then you hauled a steel corpse back to the store and some beer-lackey hoisted it into your truck. Today you can buy a tiny pressurized keg with a CO2 cartridge and then throw the whole thing away because recycling is a performance art. Party leftovers are eternal, though: hot dogs and lil smokies and a nub of cheese. We just got fancier about the cheese. Subscription boxes now deliver artisan wedges at prices that would have bought a whole party, and the cheese still goes bad in the fridge. The only constants are flat beer and regret.
“2007 Ed, did you truly believe an air pump would keep that keg crisp, and more importantly—would you actually have let that hose dangle into your mouth in the hot tub, or was that just cheap-beer bluster?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you got me. I was an idiot. I figured a hand pump would be fine because it's just air, and air is what puts the fizz in there, right? Turns out it's the wrong kind of air. By day three that keg was pouring out flat, sad Budweiser, and even I have standards. So no, I did not truly believe it would stay crisp—I just didn't think about it, which is basically the story of my life. The hot tub hose thing, though? That part was pure dream, but I won't lie: if that keg had held something decent, I might have let that hose snake over the side and gone full giant baby in the bubbles. But flat Bud? Not even for the womb. I'd rather haul it back to Albertson's and take a bath like a normal, non-beer-sucking hermit.
