Adventures in Home Brewing, Part II of II

Continued from here.

"Yeah, you sound sober!" I pointed out.  "Weren't you drunk just a moment ago?"

Dan looked back at us, blinking a couple of times.  "I am!" he insisted.  But then, a moment later, he shook his head in wonderment.  "I mean, I was..."

For a moment, we just all looked at each other.  Ari, perhaps because he'd been sober from the beginning, was a little quicker on the uptake.  "No way," he said, and he grabbed his own cup of coffee.

Dan and I both watched as he lowered the cup from his lips - and screamed.

The scream went on for quite a while, until Dan slapped a hand over his mouth.  "He's gone too far the other way!" he cried out at me, as Ari battered at the bigger man with flailing arms.

I stared back, wide-eyed.  "What do I do?"

"I dunno, find something with alcohol!"

I spun around, staring at my kitchen.  We had (well, Dan had) finished off most of my beers.  In desperation, I grabbed the jar of vanilla - distilled in alcohol.

We shoved the bottle into Ari's mouth and forced a couple gulps down his throat.  As we watched, holding our breaths, the man finally calmed down a bit.  "Holy crap," he gasped, staring at us.  "That stuff is strong!"

"What happened to you?" I had to ask.

Ari shook his head back and forth, searching for words.  "Okay, you know when you take a shot on an empty stomach, and you just feel the world lurch as the alcohol hits you?" he finally stammered out after a minute.

We both nodded.

"Well," the man concluded, "it was just like that, but the opposite.  And way worse."

After that ordeal, we all needed a drink.  And not of my brewed coffee concoction.  Dan scrounged up some more beers, and we sat around, staring at the still mostly full jug of black liquid.

"Could make a fortune outside bars at last call," Ari finally offered.  "Sobers people up with a sip, that stuff does."

"Yeah, but one wrong sale and you've got somebody screaming," I retorted.

After a minute, Dan just shook his head.  "Damn, man," he finally said.  "You definitely brewed something, that's for sure..."