Life of a brewmaster is always intense

I cooked up a red ale last night - came out a beautiful ruby color and looks pretty good overall.

I had just pulled the first clean quart from the sparger when Marsha (my grandfather's girlfriend) called, she and my grandfather were going to a play in my neighborhood and wanted me to come out to dinner afterwards. I did a quick calculation and decided there was no way I could do 3 hours of sparging and an hour of boiling in the next 90 minutes, so I invited them over for a drink instead. So 2 hours and 2 gallons of wort later, they arrived. I quickly fixed my grandfather a martini using my patented 'put liquor in my grandfather so he mellows out' recipe - a splash of vermouth, gin up to the top. He'll complain its too big, but he'll drink it anyway, which is important because he disapproves of my homebrewing.

In his mind there is some sort of hawkeyed building manager, waiting to throw me out onto the street at the first sign of danger from homebrewing. I'm not sure what kind of danger homebrewing represents to the building, but it seems to involve explosions. My goal was to convince him he was thinking of distilling, while simultaneously distracting him from noticing my hand diving into the hot water pot to get more sparging water.

So for about half an hour we sat around talking, my grandfather with his martini and Marsha and I with the last of my Dunkle-weizens. Every 10 minutes or so I would get up to pull off wort and add water, which would restart my grandfather's fear of my landlord's impending anti-beer crusade. By the third time the gin had definitely worked its wonders on him, but too well, he had started slurring his speech.

This was shocking, granted he's 91 but I've seen him drink those giant martinis before and not be anywhere near this drunk. Turns out he missed breakfast and had a very light lunch, so his stomach was empty. Now I get to feel guilty on top of annoyed as he tells me about all the problems with homebrewing for a fourth time in a slurred voice.

Eventually they decide to go to dinner and after watching their painfully slow decent down the stairs, I can get back to the sparger, just in time for it to get stuck.

My sparger had been working beautifully for the first time ever (the first sign of trouble), the mash created a filter bed the way its supposed to and the first 4 gallons of wort were completely clear. Then the mash stuck, and stuck hard. With continual stirring I was able to push through another gallon of wort, but it was incredibly cloudy (I prize volume over clarity).

After I had cleaned up everything else, I put the sparger in the sink, hopping it the last of the wort would drain out of the grain. After three hours with NOTHING coming out of the bottom I removed the top half of the grain, which was dry enough not to make a mess on the way to the garbage can. When I checked up on it this morning there was still a floating pool in the sparger, so I tipped the bucket over - better to make a grain mess in my sink than a super sticky wort mess on my floor.

So take my advice - keep your sparger far away from your grandfather, otherwise karma is going to stick your mash and you'll be sad.