Yesterday I brewed a stout that is modeled after the Rogue Shakespeare Stout. This marked the one year anniversary of the beginning of my homebrewing career. What a fun year it was! I would call this stout my Anniversary Stout, but instead it will be dubbed the Wounded Knee Stout.

Well, calling it an injury would be a bit of an exaggeration, but I did bruise my knee yesterday. As I was sanitizing the glass carboy that was going to be my primary fermenter, I was pouring the sanitizing solution out of the glass into a bucket. I lost my grip on the carboy and it first crashed into my knee and then onto the tile floor of the kitchen. The floor won. A five gallon flood of water and glass shards went all over the kitchen floor, creating quite a mess.

The good news is that I walked it off and kept brewing. I’m just glad there were no beer casualties, although it was one heck of a mess to clean up. Broken glass is the worst. So, the lesson to everyone: Stay focused and keep a tight grip when you’re holding onto five gallons of liquid in a glass container. It seems obvious, but you can take it for granted!