The part of this story that really gets me is that the liquor stores want to keep things just the way they are. If the law changes then they will have to spend the money to install refrigerators, so selling warm beer is just fine with them. The liquor store lobby has the the state legislators in their pocket, so I don’t imagine that this situation will change very quickly.

All that being said, if I want to drink Fat Tire without driving out of state I have to make it myself. I’ve made two clones. The first was from Northern Brewer, and didn’t really taste like Fat Tire. It wasn’t a bad beer, but it wasn’t a clone.

The following recipe is in my keg right now, and is close enough. I found it online. It has the distinctive biscuit malt flavor and a nice hop character that will tide me over until I can get the real thing.

Here it is:

Brew Type: All Grain
Style: American Amber Ale
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Volume: 6.5 gal Boil Time: 90 min

Ingredients
6.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3 SRM) Grain 58.5 %
2.00 lb Amber Malt (22 SRM) Grain 19.5 %
1.00 lb Munich Malt (9 SRM) Grain 9.8 %
0.50 lb Biscuit Malt (23 SRM) Grain 4.9 %
0.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt – 10L (10 SRM) Grain 2.4 %
0.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt – 40L (40 SRM) Grain 2.4 %
0.25 lb Special Roast (50 SRM) Grain 2.4 %
0.75 oz Northern Brewer [8.5%] (60 min) Hops 22.8 IBU
0.50 oz Williamette [5.5%] (30 min) Hops 7.6 IBU
0.50 oz Williamette [5.5%] (15 min) Hops 4.9 IBU
0.50 oz Williamette [5.5%] (5 min) Hops 2.0 IBU
American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [Starter 1000 ml]

Beer Profile Estimated Original Gravity: 1.058 SG (1.045-1.056 SG) Measured Original Gravity: 1.059 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.014 SG (1.010-1.015 SG) Measured Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Color: 12 SRM (11-18 SRM) Color [Color]
Bitterness: 37.2 IBU (20.0-40.0 IBU) Alpha Acid Units: 2.4 AAU
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 5.7 % (4.5-5.7 %) Actual Alcohol by Volume: 6.1 %

After some investigation I bought a kit from Northern Brewer for my first fruit beer. Well… I think this will be the last fruit beer “kit” I try for awhile. Don’t get me wrong, this is not an awful beer. The wheat part of the beer turned out great, but I screwed up on the blackberry part. I’ll explain.

When the kit arrived I noticed that I could smell the blackberry extract as soon as I opened the box. It was pretty strong. In fact the smell of the extract left a faint blackberry scent throughout the house for the first couple of days after it arrived. I apparently didn’t take this as a warning sign when adding it to my wheat beer.

The bottle said that it was the correct size for a 5-gallon batch, but it also mentioned that the extract should be used “to taste.” Therefore, I added the entire bottle. Stupid me.

I was a little worried that the beer would end up over-saturated with blackberry the moment I added it to the keg, but I hoped that the flavor would settle out after a couple of weeks.

Well, it hasn’t… really. Maybe a little, but not really.

Every time I draw a glass of the this beer the first thing I notice is the strong scent of the extract when I bring up the glass. The actual taste of the beer isn’t overtly fruity, but the strong scent overpowers the flavor before you get the chance to even take a sip.

I let my brother-in-law try a glass, and he didn’t really care for it. He finished it, but it wasn’t his favorite. For the next round I used his same glass for another beer. The exact scent lingered to the point of tainting the flavor of the next beer as well.

The moral of the story is that the next time I try a fruit beer I will use real fruit, and not an extract kit. The extract is just a little too potent for my taste.

Now I just need to finish the rest of this beer to clear out some keg space. I still can’t bring myself to dump it… so I’ll drink my mistake for the next couple of months.

Cheers.

All of the 50 or so bottles for an average 5-gallon batch must be completely cleaned and sanitized before filling. Any slacking at this point can result in a “beer bomb.” I’ve already experienced one of these delightful surprises. In a batch last year I popped the top on a seemingly normal beer, only to have it explode all over the kitchen. It was actually kind of funny once I was over the initial shock.

The quick solution to this beer bomb problem is to keg your beer. Having this in mind, I purchased a mini-fridge, two 5-gallon cornelius kegs and a CO2 system on eBay. Now I only need to make sure that one keg is completely cleaned and sanitized, rather than 50 individual bottles. This all sounds so nice and easy, but there are other challenges involved with kegging beer.

There is a lot of info circulating around the web concerning kegging beer. It doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult, but my first go-round has proven to be a little tricky.

Kegging lesson number one: don’t use the “quick forced carbonation” method that involves turning up the psi on the CO2 and shaking the keg back and forth. I was a little impatient to try my Fat Tire clone, so I tried this method after watching a youtube video demonstration. My first glass of pure foam gave me an indication that something wasn’t right. It took me days to draw anything but foam.

To resolve the issue I shut the CO2 off completely and hit the release valve 5 or 6 times a day for a week. When I finally drew a nice glass with a decent head of foam I turned the CO2 back on at about 3 psi… just enough to push the beer out of the keg, but not add more carbonation to the beer. After a week at 3 psi I started drawing glasses with no foam at all. I pushed the pressure to 10 psi and the refrigerator is holding at about 38 degrees. That seems to be the right balance for now.

I added my next keg of ESB a week later, and kept the setting at 10 psi. I think I can set different pressure for the 2 kegs, but I’m not sure of how yet.

I didn’t do the quick method on the ESB, so it took awhile to carbonate. My biggest issue with the ESB so far is waiting for the hops to calm down a bit. The carbonation seems alright (albeit a little low), my problem with this batch is all about the taste. After 3 weeks in a keg I am still getting a nasty bitter funk to on end of the ESB. I’m hoping this will age out over the next few weeks.

The Fat Tire clone is great. Nice carbonation and nice flavor. Not sure how close it is to the original, but it’s a nice amber beer with a hoppy aroma and flavor. I’ll keep this one on regular rotation for a while.

Well, that’s my story about the first kegging attempt. I’m going to bottle my next batch because the kegs are currently occupied. It will be kind of nice to bottle a batch after all of this keg and forced CO2 business. Good ‘ole priming sugar to the rescue… although I am still glad to have the keg system set up. I can only go up from here.

Is healthcare a right?

The rights in the constitution are things that do not impose on another person’s rights, and these are rights to action, not property or some sort of service. The right to free speech, to bear arms, to assemble… to do things. Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness. These are not rights to have things that must be provided but the right to do things.

Government provided healthcare, by definition, has to be provided at someone else’s cost and with someone else’s expertise and equipment. The fact that these services are provided by someone else makes them a privilege, not a right.

OK… not a right. But as a nation can we decide to provide this as a public service? A benefit of paying taxes?

Sure. We, as citizens, can decide to offer these services.

But, isn’t that socialism?
Yes.

OK… but is socialism so bad? We offer other public services too. Are all public services, like Police, Fire, Libraries, Streets, Water/Sewer socialism?

Not really. True… these are programs agreed upon by the population as services to be provided at taxpayer cost, but they are civic services put in place at a local level. Socialism is a system of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. These civic services work best at a local level. They are limited in size, and this keeps waste and bureaucracy limited in scope.

So, if nationalized healthcare is not a right, but a social program, the question becomes… is it a good idea?

We can only look at examples from other countries that are already offering nationalized healthcare.

These programs are going bankrupt or in serious financial trouble everywhere they have been established, and the tax rates in some of those countries are topping out at around 60% if you add the upper income tax rate and other taxes, like property taxes and the VAT tax, which so popular in Europe. Depending on how much money you make, that’s OVER HALF of your paycheck to the government. Wow.

The law that was passed last week will drive our national debt to over 90% of our governmental budget by 2020. Ninety percent of government spending will go to debt. Let me say that again… NINETY PERCENT.

The long and short is that, while this may be a compassionate and nice thing, our country simply cannot afford it. These programs actually cost money. This is not “free healthcare” by any stretch.

Also, by most accounts the actual medical service suffers from the same waste and inefficiencies as other public services. Long wait times to see a doctor or to have a medical procedure performed (years in some cases). The quality of the care starts to suffer from the bloated system. Case in point… the Prime Minister of Canada recently had heart surgery in Miami, Florida because he could not get the procedure under the nationalized Canadian system… The Prime Minister! There are countless stories of Canadians heading south of the border and paying for treatment that they cannot get in Canada.

My conclusion

I’d rather reform a free market system to provide safeguards for people who need help than begin down a road to public system. The devil in the current system is the mega insurance company. The devil in the other scenario is the government. You can’t find another provider if the government doesn’t do its job. You just live with it… or die with it.

Today congress will vote (loosely termed if you account for all of the parliamentary gymnastics that has been going on in the past months) on a “Healthcare Reform” bill. This bill could set the wheels in motion for the growth of a permanent nanny state in America. The details of the bill are largely a mystery at this point. Nancy Pelosi said that we’d need to vote for it in order to find out what’s in it. It is so convoluted and lengthy that I can imagine that not one member of congress has fully read or understood this bill, much less the implications of it becoming law.

Every indication is that this bill will 1) eventually force private health insurance out of business from government competition that is subsidized by taxpayer money, 2) create a government bureaucracy to dictate the level of care that each person receives, 3) ration access to health care due to the limited supply of doctors and increased demand of patients, 4) drive this country into bankruptcy.

Sounds like good plan to me.

This is obviously a very polarizing issue, and support is divided today at about 48% opposing and 38% supporting, depending on your polling source.

At the core of this conflict is a differing worldview. While too complicated to fully explore now, I’ll try to explore the basic idea in future posts.

Basically, the leftist Washington elite have a small window of opportunity to make sweeping changes in our laws, and they have decided that they are the ones to make life decisions for the poor, unwashed masses. The plain folk that inhabit ‘flyover country’ need someone to watch out for them because of their basic ignorance and inability to navigate their own health care options.

Because of the tremendous need for clear thinking, these Washington intellectuals will become the Keepers and ‘we the people’ will become The Kept.

We are now experiencing a small realization of the left’s humanistic priesthood coming to power in America. I hope that this can be reversed in the Fall.

The root cause here goes back thousands of years. In future posts we’ll explore modern-day Nicolaitans of American secular culture.

When he ran, he knew where he was on the field. He knew that the yardage needed for a first down was 6 yards away. He knew that he had two lead blockers, and there was a guy coming up on his left side that he needed to avoid. He had vision on the field, and I did not.

When I placed the helmet on my head I instantly felt as if I was at the bottom of a hole. I couldn’t see or hear with any clarity. When I was given the ball my brain would shut down, and I simply ran. I ran frantically and I ran straight until I was taken down… which usually very quickly.

In retrospect, I feel like I lived much of my life in a similar fashion until recently. Just run. Run straight ahead without thinking. Just run.

When I graduated high school I really didn’t have a plan for my life. I can remember visiting Texas Tech with my parents. We were in a giant assembly hall for a freshman orientation. When the group started breaking up into major classifications I didn’t really know where I needed to go. Art or computer science? It wasn’t clear to me. I felt like I was at the bottom of a hole, and wasn’t able to see or hear clearly. I didn’t have a vision for my life, so I did the easiest thing at the time by defaulting to a community college and working in a screen printing shop. I was handed the ball and I ran until I hit an obstacle. There wasn’t a plan because I lacked vision.

Drifting soon became a way of life. For years I simply did the thing that was expedient. The opportunity that was right in front of my face was the opportunity that was taken. There was not a broad purpose in mind, there were simply small steps. One by one.

I beat myself up for this lack of vision for years. I felt guilty. When my friends were graduating college I was working a dead end job at Kinkos, because I had dropped out of school. I was simply taking the step in front of me while others seemed to be following a map.

I have recently found peace about those days. When I look back, I can’t think of much that I would change. The product of those years is now a very comfortable little life. Each aimless step that I took back then actually led somewhere… and this is a good place. I really feel like I was living on massive amounts of grace and that my steps were being guided, even if I couldn’t tell.

What has changed now is that I feel like I have vision. I am seeing the steps before I get there, and this feels nice. I bet that I’d be a better running back today too… except for the extra 20 years and 20 pounds. That’s another story.

There are rare moments in time when a great idea meets with the proper circumstances and something larger is born. I mostly believe that these moments of serendipity are fables. When you eventually hear the details behind the birth of something great, more often than not you hear the story of the large effort which was expended to bring an idea to the point of critical mass. It often turns out that there are many long hours of “doing” preceding the moment of “happening.” Thomas Edison’s famous quote quantifying the ratio of inspiration to perspiration comes to mind.

This brings me to a phrase which I cannot seem to shake. Not sure where this came from, but when I think about the dreams that I have for my life, the phrase, “The Year of ‘DO’” seems to stand in my mind, hanging like a large banner in front of me.

I need to be about the business of doing… active and productive. These dreams that I have carried for years will not spontaneously erupt one day. They will need to be planted and tended to with daily activity.

SO… I have enrolled in grad school. This is my long-term doing. In about 2 years I will have more options open to me in terms of career choice because I will have my masters in mass communications. This is my first act of doing for the year.

Others that must be done include: writing at least 3 songs, writing a completed short story, losing twenty pounds and laying the ground-work for Underhill Creative to thrive.

There are many things to do. Time to start doing.

On Tuesday I start grad school. That’s good. I have a job that I enjoy, and feel secure in keeping. That’s good. I have about four or five unfinished songs kicking around in my head. That’s good. I am actually feeling motivated to write again. That’s good.

These things together are piled into a little stack of kindling. The spark that brings this together into a potential fire is an unexpected hope that has seemingly sprung from nowhere.

As things unfold this year I will attempt to chronicle the events here.

Onward.

Then we got to Andy’s supplies. In a way, the things you pick out for your school supplies reveal a window to your heart. OK… that’s a bit dramatic, but in this case I think it’s true, and it made me glad that we are choosing to educate our kids through Classical Conversations. Andy had picked an eclectic mix that I would know as his if I had to pick it out of a line up. He had chosen some Star Wars pencils and a Star Wars notebook. He also had a Transformers folder, but just after that he had chosen a folder with the picture of a cute little fuzzy kitten. After that there was a folder with a cute little brown puppy.

This was the mix that is Andy. He loves science fiction and ‘cool’ little boy stuff like Transformers, but he also loves kittens and puppies. Had he shown up in public school with this mix he would have been made fun of by other little boys. He would be forced to conform to the image that the culture forces onto many little boys, or pay the price. These boys are forced to abandon a gentle side at a young age… a side that likes kittens and puppies. Even as early as the 2nd grade this begins.

I observed the source of some of this pressure first-hand when we lived in Texas. The source was an insecure father that lived down the street. If you looked closely, under the bleached hair and suntanned skin you could still see an insecure little nerd with a lifetime of hurt that he was trying to hide. As an adult, this man tried his best to cover up his former shame, but it always showed through just a little, and much of this was because of the macho over-compensation.

The saddest part of the story to me was the way that he tried to ‘spare’ his little boy from the hurts that he had endured as a child. This boy could quote the team roster of many NFL teams, and knew which school teams were playing on Saturday. When he would volunteer this information to me he always seemed to trying to impress me with his knowledge. His dad often took him into the street to ‘play ball’. The soundtrack to this playtime usually involved a lot of yelling. “Hustle! Go get the ball! You have to move faster! Concentrate!” This was the sound of their play time, and it always made me sad.

The curious thing was how much this little boy enjoyed being at our house. Andy loves to build with Legos, and he loves to play out the little scenes he creates. When we first got these boys together Andy would try to get this boy to play Legos and use his imagination. After a little time this neighbor boy had dropped this man-ish attitude and was playing like a 7-year-old boy. He seemed free when he was at our house, but it always took him a few minutes to drop the facade.

Anyway, I say all of this to convey the fact that I am glad that Andy feels free to be himself. He feels free to enjoy what he truly enjoys. I don’t want that to be taken from him, especially not by me.