Pic(k) of the Week: Fermenting, things go better with Coke.

Resourceful re-purposing, as seen in the small fermentation room at BadWolf Brewing, the first-ever 'craft' brewery in Manassas, Virginia.

As beer ferments in these sealed 55-gallon plastic drums, carbon dioxide, produced by the yeast, must be allowed to escape, so that the drum won't rupture. The stream of CO2 runs, via a tube, into a Coca-Cola bottle, filled with a solution of sanitizer, that precludes airborne microbes from travelling back into the beer, mucking up the fermentation.

The brewery opened to the public in late June 2013. This photo was taken during a visit on 12 January 2014. After which one might have said: "Things go better with ... beer."

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• BadWolf —indeed spelled as one word— was opened by husband-and-wife team, Jeremy and Sarah Myers, in late June 2013. The brewery's batch size is only one barrel (31 U.S. gallons). In the U.S., a brewery of less than about 4 or 5 barrel brewlength is often referred to as a 'nanobrewery'. It's not a legal term, but a cultural designation. More pics (including a visit to neighbor Heritage Brewing): here.
• The photo's title is a play on a 1964 (and still referenced) slogan of Coca-Cola: simply, "Things go better with Coke."
• Here's another method for running-off carbon dioxide during fermentation, as seen at a larger microbrewery.
• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, often posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as a subject. Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.