About a week ago, I was preparing for my homebrew day (actually a dual homebrew day, doing 2 batches simultaneously), and I was in & out of the house gathering equipment for my brew day outside.  While re-positioning cars in the driveway to clear my brew space, something crunched in my back pocket.  I pulled out my BIC lighter and found that it was not very pocket-durable when you sit on it.

Luckily, I had bought the lighters as a 2-pack way back when, so I tossed the broken one aside and got my backup.  I briefly thought about what a disaster it would’ve been had I not had a spare.  My intricate schedule of balancing two different brews, my smack-pack yeast warming in the house, my crushed grain waiting in buckets in the basement, …  I would’ve had to scramble off to the store to buy another lighter, and screwed up my whole schedule for the day.

I was reminded that I had already taken precautions on my propane tanks, and I always keep 2 tanks
on hand for brew day.  Years ago, I ran out of propane in the midst of my boil and that really sucked.  Much worse than it would’ve been had I not had a spare BIC lighter.  It reminded me that I needed to do a bit of an equipment review and figure out which items would be a true disaster if I sat on them or something on brew day and didn’t have a spare…