Murder Brewed At Home (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 3) by Belle Knudson Page B

murders. I'd done two already and was knee-deep in a third, but when that weird dude in the golf cart offered to buy my brewery, I found myself instantly telling him no. That was one thing that Mr. X had not counted on. He'd done his research, or so he thought, and he thought he had me. The very fact that I resisted told me that on some level I really did want that brewery. I wanted it all to myself. It was a wonderful feeling. And suddenly the threats of Mr. X were just that. Threats. Ok, if he was involved in crime somehow, fine. I could deal with that. What I really couldn’t deal with was my own lack of resolve.
                  I looked up at Lester. He was smiling.
                  "What?" I said.
                  "You. The most miraculous change just occurred on your face. A minute ago you looked like someone just shot your dog. Now you look like you just discovered gold."
                  "In a way I did," I said. "Now be a pet and drive me to my brewery, will you?"
                  I jumped up, kissed him on the forehead, and headed toward the car with a new spring in my step.
     
    #
     
                  With this new frame of mind, I finally found a healthy balance between my two vocations. I stepped into the brewery with a take-charge attitude and it felt great. My cousin Gerry, our master brewer, noticed it as soon as I walked in.
                  "What happened to you?" he said.
                  "Nothing at all, my friend."
                  "Did you get visited by three ghosts last night?"
                  "Very funny. No, as a matter of fact, I slept terribly."
                  "You should do it more often," he said. "It suits you."
                  We talked business and walked around the tanks. Over the main mash tun – the large, stainless steel vessel in which malted barley is steeped in hot water to make the base of our beer – there was a curious contraption I'd not seen before.
                  "A lot happened in your absence," said Gerry. "This is my little experiment."
                  "What in the world?"
                  I was referring to the lid of the mash tun, which was held open by a piece of cord tied to some apparatus involving a pulley and a counterweight.
                  "Bear with me," said Gerry. I was trying to come up with a way we could automate the mash-in process without having to climb up the ladder to the top of the tank and add the grains by hand. I was experimenting with that little pulley system up there. Suspending a fifty-pound bag of grains from it. Keep in mind, this is merely an experiment. I can show you designs for a more sophisticated system I sketched out. Anyway, I think it can work. We had a few problems when we ran the test though."
                  I had to chuckle. "What kind of problems?"
                  "Well," he said, scratching the back of his neck, "I kind of screwed up."
                  "How?"
                  "Ok, see, I hitched the thing up with fishing wire..."
                  And here's where things got a little fuzzy for yours truly. I missed just about everything he said after the words "fishing wire.” Why? Because of my college job.
                  Let me explain.
                  Back when I was in college, I picked up a few bucks here and there by writing blog articles. Mostly these articles were just click bait designed to keep surfers situated on a company's website long enough to notice the ad banners running along beside my article. I wasn't very good at it, but the assignments were varied and sometimes interesting. I learned a few things.
                  Like PVA, for example. Polyvinyl alcohol. I did an article for a company that sold fishing equipment and they wanted a few