How to Make Beer

Finally bottled my first batch of home brew. At the beginning of the summer my brother Jim was talking about how he used to be really into making his own beer. Actually, he's still into it, but like a lot of us, there's not enough time in the day to do everything we want to do. Somehow making a living and raising a family has to fit in there. Sleeping takes up a lot of time. Then you throw in reading random articles at Digg.com and watching marginally valuable videos on youtube.com and then you can't forget blogging! Well, after all these tasks making home brew has to fit in between the end of the work day and dinner on a Friday night when my wife is out with her girlfriends.

Essentially, the whole process is about cleaning...and then cleaning again....and then cleaning one more time just to make sure....and then rinse.....and rinse again.....and rinse one more time just to be sure. And like a museum, you have to make sure not to touch anything, especially whatever would be really handy to touch.

We made a batch earlier in the summer that didn't turn out too well. Perhaps it was because we only cleaned the instruments a couple times instead of a whole bunch of times. It also could have been the yeast. Maybe we had too many bad cells in the bunch. We did find that if you mixed it with a beer you bought from the store it was quite palatable, though it would make your stomach feel a little funny. Sounds a little scary, but then again, Cici's Pizza will do the same thing to you.

There are a few more steps after the cleansing of every surface in your kitchen.

1. Heat a big pot of water with the magic beer beans. These are grains which flavor the beer. You put a bunch of it in a big sock (clean sock preferably) and then heat to a hot temperature.

2. Drink store beer while you wait for the magic beer beans to do their thing. (about an hour)

3. Transfer to big glass bottle, add yeast and water to fill to top.

4. Put cork thing in bottle that lets gas escape but nothing can come in.

5. Wait a couple days for the big bottle to stop fizzing. We waited much longer than necessary but that's ok. As long as you don't mind, we don't mind.

6. Transfer to another cleaned big bottle using a pump/siphon thing. Make sure it has been cleaned.

7. Clean a bunch of beer bottles.

8. Put beer in bottles and then cap.

9. Wait for 5 more weeks and you can enjoy!

So in recap, the whole process is a labor of love from what I can tell. I love to cook. I like smoking pork shoulders and making my own sauce. However, even the toughest pork is ready to eat within 24 hours. 5 weeks just seems a like a long time to wait when I could buy beer in the store today and not have to clean like the cleaning Olympics.

There were, however, some undeniable benefits.

1. Got to hang out with Jim, which is always fun.
2. Learned how to make beer in case Prohibition returns.
3. I will have a cool beer with its own label to show off at Liz's upcoming birthday party.

I think that last one is the real kicker. Look at me. I made this beer. See how cool I am because I made this beer. Care for another?

One more thing. If you click the title of this post it will take you to the Mr. Beer website. They have an ad there that crosses out the word "easier" and replaces it with "cheaper". Does that mean you send them less money and they write you a postcard that says:

1. Get some water.
2. Get some grain (magic beer beans)
3. Make Beer

Certainly cheaper and definitely not easier.

Questions to ask someone on their birthday

We were at my cousin's birthday party last night at the Bower. Great food and even better company. We even had sushi prepared fresh just for the occasion which in West Virginia is no small feat. Thanks Jim!


At some point I asked my cousin what she was most suprised about in her life now. Not a great question, but at least a different question. I got me thinking though about what other quality questions could one ask of the birthday boy or girl at their birthday party. Once I started to do this I can't help but think of the low quality questions that I find funny....just amusing myself again.

Some good quality questions to ask someone on their birthday:
What are you most grateful for in the last year?
What is really perfect about being this age now?
What are you most looking forward to doing this year?
What are some of your best birthday memories?
What would you like to do for your birthday next year?
How have you personally grown in the last year?

Some medium quality questions:
What's for dinner?
Can I have seconds? (I learned that this could be a good quality question if it is accompanied by supplication.)
How old are you?
Really, your that old?
Do you have any cold beer?

Don't ask these questions:
Can I borrow some of that birthday money?
This food sucks, do you have anything else to eat?
Do you have to have one of these parties every year?
How early can I leave and not offend you?
Are these the only friends you have?
Sorry I drank all your beer, do you mind running out to get some more before you open your presents?

Ahh birthdays. True holidays they will always be.

Beautiful 6600 acres in Pennsylvania

What a fun day yesterday! Myself, along with another member of our investment group met up in a small town in PA to look at some land that we have under contract. It's a huge property. It's hard to imagine a private piece of property that encompasses over 10 square miles of wooded mountains, trout streams, and rolling praries. There's

We were there to meet with the seller and a forester to double check the value of the timber as well as get some hands on experience with the property.

Lucky for me, I had a chance to spend about 8 hours in the car with the seller and interview him about his life, his business, and his personal success principles. His keys to success were:

1. Always deliver more than what the customer expects.
2. Never work for money, work for building your reputation.
3. Never sue anyone.
4. Always be a man of your word.

Photos from my trip are posted here.

Message from Water..Amazing

This is some of the coolest stuff I have ever seen. Masaru Emoto is from Japan. He has done research to show the effects of thoughts and feelings on the molecular structure of our physical world. I have believed for the last couple years that our lives are basically the result of our thoughts. However, this was always kind of a faith thing for me. If I believe what my future will be with enough force, then that future will come into being. Similar idea to having a vision for one's future.

My understanding is that Emoto wanted to see if there is tangible evidence that only our thoughts could have an impact on the physical world. He reasoned that water is the most easily shaped of the four elements. Using a microscope to take pictures of water he documented the effect of thoughts on the water. For example, the took two pictures of the same water from a certain lake. One picture was taken after the water had been blessed. They were different!

Amazing. Also, he took jars of water from the same distilled source and simply taped pieces of words on the outside of the jars. Words like "thank you" or "love and appreciation" or "you make me sick, I will kill you." The water molecules actually align very differently as you can imagine.

You can see for your self here. Masaru Emoto: Messages from Water.

If our thoughts can do this to water, imagine what they can do to us?

mmmm....videos

So I've been meaning to start my blog for quite a while now. It's going to be a place mostly for me to keep track of what I like and what I find to be interesting with our world.

I've just been awestruck with the proliferation of videos that are now widely available on the web. Especially through sites like YouTube, Google Video, and Yahoo Video. I remember the days when it would take several days to download a video from the old Peer-to-Peer networks. If you didn't get a virus and you could leave your computer running for a month without rebooting then you were all good. Every knows that a windows pc can run for ever without rebooting...:-)

Then things improved a little with the whole bit torrent thing. These sites are still popular but you do have to be a little bit of a geek in order to get the stuff you want.

That's it...you no longer have to be a geed in order to watch videos from the internet. Makes me wonder what else you could "de-geek" for the masses and create a site where millions of people would want to access what was previously only accessible to the geek elite.

Maybe a database programming website where anyone can upload and share and rate each others homemade database software....not sure that will have the same mass appeal. www.youdatabase.com doesn't sound welcoming....