The Smoking Bottle has been a little lifeless lately. I’d like to say that is because I have been too busy brewing and cooking but unfortunately the silence has been caused by bacteria, viruses, evil spirits and possibly witchcraft. It all started with Half-Pint bringing home a bad cough from daycare. That was then followed by pneumonia. Of course she handled it well, as she always does, but daddy on the other hand was not so brave. After thinking that the illness was leaving the house, I was hit by the same upper respiratory infection and a week and a half later I found myself with pneumonia too. Of course Mrs. Smokey has also caught this and is now lying in bed waiting for the antibiotics to kick in.

So far it’s been 20 days since a beer has touched my lips. That has to be a record for me. The worst part is, I also had to call off a brew-day and a day of testing out the Cold Smoke Generator (ok, the worst was actually seeing my baby and my babe go through this… and the phlegm sucked). I was really looking forward to some smoked gouda and a nice brew. I am not sure when I will be able to fit these activities back into the schedule but you can expect some upcoming posts about cold smoking and brewing up an interesting breakast stout (I’ll post the recipe-in-progress later)…. but first we are all going to rest a bit and make sure the plague has finished with us.