Home Brew

Man Cave.

Anne and Mark have seen a few 'man caves' in their time.  Usually, this is an area of the house set aside for the benefit of the sports-watching, beer-drinking, Tim Allen and Larry the Cable Guy-appreciating members of the household.  Usually there's an old ratty sofa, a beaten up fridge that barely even keeps the beer cold, and a huge, state of the art television.  However, last Saturday, Mark took a little ride with Krassi outside of Blagoevgrad and saw the man cave to beat all man caves.  What set it apart?  How about a full, working distillery.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the distilling process is used in the production of alcoholic beverages.  And if you have one of these in your man cave you are probably either a Bulgarian or Hawkeye Pierce.

Hawkeye and BJ Honeycutt: early innovators of the man cave.

And just in case you are not convinced of the man cave cred that this place had, consider this: just to get there, we had to roll in past the welcoming fence posts/artillery shells.  Yeah, that's right.

That's got to be a pretty good break-in deterrent.

The distillation process is not for those with short attention spans, as it takes a little while.  We got there at around 8 in the morning, loaded the wine and crushed grapes into the oven and started a big fire.  Then.... well, then we waited.  After a few hours of cooking the potion, the chemistry starts working its magic and the distilled spirits start separating from the rest of the materials.  As they separate, the distilled parts rise and are directed via a series of pipes into a separate tank.

The remainder of the materials, which consists mainly of really hot crushed grape .... husks?, are fired out the back door of the furnace into a receiving pit.   

But do not worry about waste.  This is actually more of a "by-product" than "waste."  We did three cycles of distillation, so this pit was filled up twice (the third time, we distilled the product of the first two batches to get a super distilled final product, so we did not have a by-product of grape husks).  While we were there, some local farmers stopped by two or three times to take the grape husks away.  The local herds of pigs and sheep feasted on grape husks that night.  Hopefully all the alcohol had evaporated, or we could end up with some pretty silly goats.

After we started the second batch of distillation, it was about lunch time.  Since we had a man cave and a furnace, we decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try "flash grilling."  Someone ran to the store and picked up some sausages and chops.  Then the sausages and chops were placed over the inferno for at least ten or fifteen seconds and bing bang boom, lunch is served.

The Bulgarian Olympic rakia drinking team.

If you notice in the photo above, there is a half-empty bottle of rakia on the table.  The thing about man cave lunches is that they may involve a bit of booze. Mark is on a mission to experience the local culture as fully as possible and, as such, did not abstain from the local drink of choice.  (Those of you who know rakia recognize that it is a bit stronger than whiskey regularly, and this was the bottle they brought for "special" occasions, so who knows what proof it was packing)  However, Mark does not have the ability to tolerate rakia like the men in the photo above do.  

Readers paying close attention will notice that this account of events has gone from the morning until midday.  After that, the accounting of events gets a bit hazy.  Mark vaguely remembers arguing FOR artificial turf, discussing the nursing program at AUBG (*editor's note: there is no nursing program at AUBG), arguing AGAINST artificial turf and then.... well.... waking up the next morning.  Good times.