We took the keg of homebrew, mentioned below (from the Sudsology Facebook Group), to Palm Springs for my birthday celebration, along with a new jockey box I built. I hooked everything up as soon as we got to the rental house, and filled the cooler with ice. I tried to draw a cold one, but it was mostly foam. I made several more attempts, using a pitcher, but got the same results. My thinking was that the beer had been jostled too much from the trip, or that I didn't have enough tubing (30 ft.), and the beer wasn't cooling off enough. I decided we would let the homebrew settle for the night and we would go with plan B; store-bought beer. Plan B worked out well enough, and a good time was had by all.

The next morning I went to check on my brew to see if it was pouring better. As I approached the rig I noticed that the tube running from the keg to the jockey box was clear. This was odd, as it should be full of amber nectar. I felt a lump in my throat as my heart sank. I had a bad feeling. I grabbed hold of the keg and lifted, expecting it to weigh about forty pounds. It did not. The keg felt as if it were completely empty, which it was. "Oh shit!" I thought. I opened the lid to the cooler, and much to my horror saw approximately five gallons of 10-year old homebrew. My jockey box had sprung a leak somewhere and as a result the beer was lost.

The flag flew at half-mast for the rest of the weekend, as we drowned our sorrows with store-bought beer, ribs and cake. I guess it could have been worse. We could have drank the beer and been blinded.

"Sudsology: Because Beer is Good"