I Wonder What Happens If...???

In the "Funny" department we have the following story from yours truly.

We've heard it a million times if we've heard it once about how 'curiosity kills the cat'. Sometimes, in fact most often, it's good intentions which lead to unintended consequences. Another post here on ATS reminded me of this story. So, without further delay...

On this week's episode of..."I Wonder What Happens If...?" We have to rewind all the way back to my junior year in college. Beer making was all the rage back then, so my roommate and I decided to try our hand at making some beer. I say my roommate, but he was really more of a housemate as we had rented a duplex and I lived in the upper apartment with my GF, and he lived in the lower unit, but I digress. Of course, like most college students, we didn't have any money so buying all the fancy new equipment to make beer was out of the question. We would make do with what we could scrounge up. I mean, who wants to pay $15 dollars for a plain old 5 gallon bucket, right? Nope, we'd use a pickle bucket we got from McDonald's. We had a physicist and an engineer...what could possibly go wrong?

We finally had all the stuff we needed and the night came to make the "wort" for the beer (the base for fermenting). The night to actually make our wort came around, and the wort was made successfully. The closet with the water heater in my roommate's apartment was the perfect temperature to age the wort, so into the closet the wort bucket went. It needed to age 2 weeks at least. The waiting would be the hardest part.

After a little over a week we were curious as to what was happening. Was it going good? Was our first beer a disaster? We had no idea. There wasn't any real sign of anything so far. We discussed maybe taking a peek at our concoction, but opted against the idea and decided to wait instead. A few days went by and it was my roommate's birthday and he had a few friends over. Of course, they drank many beers (from the store). Later, after everyone had gone home, I was upstairs in my apartment when I heard this house shaking **BOOOOOOOOM...CRASH!!!** And then I heard the sound of shattering glass.

Then, after a very long 15 seconds or so, I heard..."HOL...LEE...SHEE...IT!!" I didn't really want to go see what had happened, but I had to. Something had gone seriously amok down there and I needed to see what it was.

When I got downstairs I found my roommate sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, spread eagle, looking completely dazed. About 5 feet from him was a pickle bucket on its side. The lid for the bucket was down the hallway, and there was broken glass all over the floor. That was bad, but it was absolutely nothing in comparison to what I experienced next. Every single square centimeter of the kitchen was dripping beer. The ceiling, the walls, the floor...beer was everywhere! The broken glass was from the ceiling light shade which had been blown, unceremoniously, from the ceiling and had fallen to the floor. My roommate was drenched in beer and sitting in a puddle of the stuff in his catatonic state. If I hadn't known how difficult all this was going to be to clean up it would have been a hilarious sight!! Well, even so, it was still pretty hilarious...and I busted out laughing.

To make a long story short(er), we'd missed one "minor" detail in our initial beer making adventure. That one "minor" detail was...it's a really good idea to vent the wort bucket so the gases can escape. We hadn't done this with our pickle bucket, and when my roommate decided to take a peek after bragging up his beer making prowess to his buddies all night, well, the whole shootin' match went KA-BLOOOEY!

So that's it for this week's episode of..."I Wonder What Happens If...?? Be sure to tune in next week when we recount I Wonder What Happens If...I make a flame thrower out of an old fire extinguisher??