Nate's 40th Birthday Beer

 I had a crazy fun idea for Nate's birthday this year.  He is turning 40!  With our faith journey, we have studied and researched everything from a scientific perspective.  This includes items from coffee to tea to beers and wines.  Part of the disconnect from these items is that we were never educated on where they come from or how they are made or even what ingredients are in them.  We were always simply told they were bad.  I found an opportunity for us to study beer: where it comes from, what ingredients it involves, the process of brewing and how we can actually do it with our own hands!!  At Gnometown Brewery they have a program where people can come in and make their own beer from scratch.  How intriguing!  We invited our friends, the Grahams, whom we have just created a real estate holding company called Blue Fox Properties and purchased a lake house with on Blue Lake.  All of us have similar religious backgrounds, so this experience would be second to none!

First, a load of barley was poured into a large "tea bag" and allowed to brew in boiling water.  This brings the flavor out of the barley and into the boiling water, just like tea!  We were required to place a big masher into the tea bag and mash the barley to help disburse the flavors.  We had to do this every 5 minutes or so for about an hour.  This was a messy process because the tea bag was floppy and awkward trying to keep it from falling into the pot, leaning the opening over the edge in between stirs/mashes, etc.  After a long time of doing this mashing, the tea bag of barley was removed and a few ingredients were added, one of them being hops.  I had never heard this term before, completely new to me.  I never knew why the Hoppy Gnome was called "Hoppy" and I never knew what went into beer. Hops are plant pieces that grow.  Our beer maker teacher actually grows some in his backyard.  There are different flavors and types of hops with different levels of potency.  The darker color the hops, the more bitter the flavor of beer.  Super interesting.  Anyone could grow them and make their own small batches of beer at home.  Never knew that.  How interesting.  So our teacher guy knows the correct amounts and what not and he let us drop in some hops and other interesting ingredients and let the mixture continue to brew.  Finally, we used a pressurized system to push it into a barrel which would then sit for 4 weeks to age.  He put our name on the barrel and we left it there to return at another time to bottle our homemade beer.  

What an interesting process.  Education is key in understanding the world around you.  Hands on education is fascinating, to learn and understand first hand how things work.  We am constantly eager to learn more and more and more about the world around us.  Happy 40th Nate!!  

This wall shows the process of brewing beer.