Sacking the Sack

A colleague of mine was cleaning out his house and came across two of these and gave them to me:

This is a Brewsack, made by The Malt Extract Factory of Kirkliston Scotland. As far as I can tell by doing a Google search for Brewsack, it is a one shot home brewing kit. It originally comes filled with malt extract (hop infused, I would imagine) and a packet of yeast. You add boiling water, shake, add cold water, then pitch the yeast and wait. What could be easier?

This colleague of mine made the beer some unknown number of years ago. Reportedly, it was not very good. He gave me the Brewsacks, thinking that I might find some use for them with my home brewing.

I was intending to use them to serve the Light and Dark beers at our going away party in a few weeks, then I looked inside. Oh man. Inside was a horrific display of dried moldy old beer. The thought of scrubbing the inside of the sack with a brush, rinsing, sanitizing, and repeating until every speck of muck was eliminated quickly ran through my mind and out the window. It left so quickly that I didn't even have time to brainstorm ideas on how to hang two of these sacks in my fridge to chill.

I was hoping to be able to bottle half of each of the 5 gallon batches of beer in these things. Looks like I'll need to scrounge up some more glass bottles before tomorrow.