Aisle Twelve

The Homebrew Process - Fighting Brewers Brewery This post is for all who have asked me what these boys are up to when they brew their beer.  (This post was written by Joe.  I haven't the slightest idea of what half of this means.) Step 1: Heat up water in hot liquor tank (turkey fryer). While its heating, take the yeast out of the fridge and put in your pocket to warm the yeast up. Check the temperature. You want it to be approximate 170 degrees, sufficent so that when you combine it with your grain the resulting temperature is approximately 152 degrees. You usually want to use 1.15-1.25 gallons of water per pound of grain. There are calculators on the internet which will give you the exact temperature needed for your mash. You want to take approximately 1 gallon to 1 1/2 gallons of water from the hot liquor tank and put it in the mash tun (cooler) to bring the walls of the cooler up to the temperature so that when you add your grain and water it doesn't drop the te...

Brussels - April 13 - 18 Monday, April 13 After what seemed like the worst train ride in the world, we made it to Belgium, finall y! The actual trip was only an hour and a half, and the train ride itself was quite pleasant, but Gare Du Norde the Paris train station, was anything but pleasant. Being in the confusing and dirty train station was the last thing I needed. Somehow, after hours of waiting at the dirty station and the actual travel, we made it to our very nice hotel in Brussels. We took much needed showers and dressed and headed out into Brussels to begin the second leg of our trip. Before I begin plotting out our trip, I will need to explain our main purpose for going to Brussels. First Joe brews his own beer and Belgium is well known as having the best breweries in all the world. Secondly, one of our favorite shows is Three Sheets. Its host, Zane, is a comedian and his job is to tour the world and learn the local drinking customs in different countries. (How is he so ...

Paris - April 7 – 13, 2009 Tuesday, April 7, 4:00 p.m. Leave GR for Cincinnati. Barely make it on time to get on plane for Pa ris. By the time we sat on the plane, ate our dinner, read a few pages in my book it was time to take out my contacts and try to sleep. We sleep well. I wake Joe up when I hear the breakfast cart come by and Joe tells me that we have a half an hour until we land in Paris!! Wednesday, April 8, late morning Arrive in Paris(!) airport and take train to Hotel Brebant. Joe tells me not to sleep or we will be jet lagged (but SOOO tired!) We get to our hotel room and then decide on an Irish bistro to eat lunch, still feeling kind of self conscious about my French being so rusty. After lunch we just can’t do it and take a couple hour nap. Wake up and wander around the area near our hotel. We decide that 6:00 pm on a Wednesday evening probably wouldn’t be a terribly busy time to visit the Louvre so we take our museum passes and go. It was pretty crowded for being ...