I started this recipe using Charlie Papazian’s Cherry Fever Stout recipe from “The Complete Joy of Homebrewing”.  I modified it some, since I don’t have access to choke cherries.  Also his recipe calls for John Bull dark malt extract.  This isn’t made anymore.  So, I just used the dark LME from my local homebrew store.  Additionally, the homebrew store was out of roasted barley so we had to modify the recipe a little.  I think it came out a little too roasty.  I brewed a 10 gallon batch because it split it with a friend and gave a lot away.

Boil:
Effeciency was 100%.  It’s going to be a strong beer.  Added 8 lbs of sour cherries and let steep for 15 minutes.  Recipe called for 10 lbs, but I wanted to be able to add the black cherry juice when I rack to secondary.  It turns out that it was good I didn’t add all the cherries because the beer was pretty sour.  There was a bit more beer than I had calculated.

Fermentation:
I picked Wyeast 1272 because I like the fruity aroma and flavor.  Since this beer will have cherries, I thought it was a natural pick.  I knew the beer was going to blow off some since we over filled it.  I rigged a blow off setup, but the cherries plugged the small hose and the carboy blew it’s top and sprayed beer everywhere.  Messy.  We got a slightly larger hose and it was ok.  I ended up with only 4 gallons in this fermentor.  After 5 days I racked both batches to secondary and removed fruit.  The beer tasted very dark and sweet with notes of chocolate.  There was not much of a perceptible cherry flavor, but it was VERY tart and had a cherry aftertaste.  I went ahead and added all 32 oz of unsweetend black cherry juice (from Fred Meyer).  I split it proportionally between both batches.  I am hoping some of the tartness will mellow.

Carbonation:
Pretty strong beer ~7.2%.  I bottled most of it and gave it away to friends.  I only kegged about 3 gallons.  I used a nitro-tap for the kegged beer.  This added a nice smooth texture.  I carbed the bottles to about 2.3 vols.  This seemed about right.

Tasting:
I wasn’t very satisfied with this beer.  It was the first time I’ve brewed it and there is certainly room for improvement.  I was glad I only added 8 lbs of sour cherries because the beer was too sour for my taste.  I would back this off to 6 lbs for a 10 gallon batch.  Also, the cherry juice did give it flavor, but it made the beer taste kind of ‘winey’ (wine-like).  In the future I probably wouldn’t use the juice,  but instead I might consider an artifical cherry flavoring.  The beer lacked a little body (too thin).  This could be fixed by switching to all grain and adding some carapils.  I would also pick grains that are a little more on the malty, sweet side and less on the roasty side.  I think there was also too much hops.  The bitterness compounded the effect of the sourness and the result was that the desired sweet-cherry character was understated.  I would reduce the bittering hops and maybe eliminate the finishing hops?  Over all the beer was fair.  Very roasty, somewhat dry and tart.  Aroma was rosted grain.  Great head retention.  This beer got much better as it aged.  The last beer from the keg was the best (4 weeks later).  The strong tart tones and wine taste began to mellow.  I would plan to allow this beer to age a month or more before drinking in the future.

Details:
Vol of CO2: 2.3
SRM: 45
OG: 1.071
FG: 1.016
ABV: 7.2%
IBU: 18
Brewery Eff: 100%
App. Attenuation: 78%

Why do people celebrate this holiday so much?  What is the real significance of that cute baby in the manger of all those idealized nativity scenes?  What exactly happened that night and what was so special about this baby?

Here is why this is the most amazing, glorious, and wonderful event in all of human history.  Jesus was Immanuel, that is, “God with us”.  That is perhaps the most profound statement in the history of the world.  God with us.  Why is that so profound?

• The God who is so enormous that the entire universe cannot contain Him chose to become so small that He could be held in arms.
• The God who is so powerful He can divide a sea with His word gave up His power to become so week He couldn’t lift His own head.
• The God who has no weakness chose to get the flu, fall and skin his knees, have runny noses, and have to have his diaper changed by man.
• The God who knows how many grains of sand are on all the seashores in the world became so simple He couldn’t even form words and had to be taught how to tie his sandals.
• The God who holds the stars and planets in His hands became a child held in a young girl’s hands.
• The God who wrote the Scriptures came having to study and learn them just like us.
• The God who needs nothing from anyone and is fully complete within Himself became so dependent that He needed to be fed by the breast of a woman.
• The God is owns everything in existence chose to belong to a family whose only possession was a donkey.
• The God who has all authority over every living thing chose to submit himself to the authority of a young carpenter and his teenage wife.
• The God who created the sun became a child who would be burned by it.
• The God who sits enthroned in indescribable splendor exchanged His throne for a feeding trough filled with straw.
• The God who was there when every event of history took place chose to have to study and be taught about them by man.
• The God who invites all people to come to Him with open arms chose to come to a people with no room for Him in their hearts or their inns.
• The God who reigns over all creation laid aside his crown of many diadems and took up a brutal crown of thorns.
• The God who had never experienced the weight of guilt from a single sin chose to bare the weight of the sin of the entire world.
• The God, who had never experienced weakness, exhaustion, sickness, or pain, chose to be bruised for your iniquities, crushed for your transgressions, and marred beyond all recognition to pay your punishment.
• The God, who rightfully could have come to bring judgment upon every person on the planet, instead came to take the judgment Himself and make a way for them to have peace with God.
• That God clothed Himself in your frailty, weakness, and sin and allowed you to clothe yourself with His strength, power, and righteousness.

If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.  My words fail me.  I am unable to describe or even comprehend the depth of this magnificent truth.  I hope that if you will spend time this Christmas thinking about the first Christmas gift, God giving Himself, and realize that this is the greatest and most profound gift ever given.

There is no religion on earth that teaches that their God came to be one of us and to right our wrongs by his sacrifice.  Only Jesus did this.  Only a perfect God could right wrongs against a perfect God.  Flawed, sinful man and NEVER make up for our sin.  You will never succeed in being good enough to deserve heaven.  Stop trying.  You don’t have to.  Jesus already did it for you.  Will you accept His gift to you this Christmas?

I first brewed this beer last fall.  I was looking for an idea for a good seasonal fall beer because I was tired or brewing Pumpkin Ale.  Truthfully, the Pumpkin Ale wasn’t coming out as good as I was hoping.  Then I tasted a seasonal beer from one of my favorite US breweries, New Belgium, called Hoptober.  I fell in love with this beer.  I was initially worried the bitterness would be overpowering (as indicated by the title) but I was surprised to find this a very pleasant, well balanced beer that was actually a little on the sweeter side.  It does have a very pronounced and pleasant hop aroma and flavor, but the bitterness is not over the top.

It tastes like fall.  There are grassy, autumny, leafy, notes that come through.  Since it is brewed with 5 grains and 5 hop varieties, New Belgium describes it as “cornucopia of the earth”.  This is an accurate description of this complex ale.

I set out looking for a good clone recipe.  The one I used last year was good but didn’t quite get the mouthfeel, head retention, or the initial gravity of the New Belgium.  I modified the recipe a little this year in an attempt to adjust for these factors.  Here is this years version.

Ingredients (5 Gal)
7.5 lbs Pale 2 Row Malt
2 lbs Belgium Wheat Malt
1 lb Rye Malt
1 lb Flaked Oats
0.4 lbs Crystal Malt – 80L
0.6 oz Willamette Whole Hops (Bittering)
0.6 oz Centennial Whole Hops (Bittering)
1 oz Sterling Whole Hops (Aroma)
3 oz Green (Fresh) Willamette Whole Hops (Finishing)
1 oz Cascade Whole Hops (Dry Hopped)
1 oz Willamette Whole Hops (Dry Hopped)
Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

The only hop contained in the New Belgium version that I didn’t use is Glacier.  This is because it is very hard to find and it is similar to Willamette.  Since I’m using both freshly picked and dried Willamette, I think this will give it plenty of personality.  What I like to do with this beer is use some of the fresh hops that I pick from my garden as finishing hops.  These Willamettes were picked the same day as I brewed.  The dried Willamette was part of a batch I acquired from a Yakima brewery for free.  I also used some of the  Cascade that I picked from my garden.  I went ahead and dried these and used them to dry hop in the secondary fermentor. Lasts year’s version of this beer didn’t have enough hop aroma or flavor so I bumped up the aroma, finishing, and dry hopping this year.

The New Belgium web page says that they include 80L Crystal malt in their recipe.  This surprised me because the beer so gold in color and 80L darkens up the beer a lot even if you just add a tiny bit.  I wanted to stay true so I did add a little (.4 oz).  As a result the beer did turn out darker than the original.

Mash:
I used a mash thickness ratio of 1.28 qts water/lb grain.  I mashed at 152-153F for 60 minutes.  I had to boil a gallon of water to get the strike temp up to target.  The strike temp came out about 151 when it was targeting 153.  I will need to adjust the formula for strike temp calc a little.  Formula was adjusted to use a constant of .276 instead of .2 (Palmer).  This is the value that would have predicted 151.  I will have to see if this holds true on the next batch.  I sparged with 165 degree water keeping an inch of water above grain bed.  Water calculator about .35 gal too high.  Had a little too much water.  Beer seems darker than desired, but it will lighten some during fermentation.

Boil:
Boiled for 1 hour.  I added the Centennial and .6 oz Willamette hops at start of boil for bittering.  With three minutes left I added Sterling.  With two minutes to go I added 3 oz green Willamette.  I forgot to add Irish moss. Added 3 oz of freshly picked Willamette hops from my garden along with 1 Oz Sterling (9%).   Brewery Eff was better than last time but still only 70%.  I think this beer needs a protein rest, or just use a 70% Eff in the recipe formulation.  Volume came out a little high (5.35 gal). 

Fermentation:
Fermented for 16 days (7 days in primary).  Beer was very cloudy.  I added some inglass when I moved it to the secondary to try to clear the beer a little.  This did have an effect.  I dry hopped 1 oz of freshly dried (home grown) Cascade hops and 1 oz dried Willamette into the secondary.  Beer was fermented a little cooler than desired (~64F).  However, this didn’t seem to affect the yeast aroma or flavor.

Carbonation:
I used 2.4 oz of wheat DME (Briess) for conditioning 1.7 gal of beer. Targeted 2.4 vol of CO2.  I Kegged the other 3.6 gal.

Tasting:
The first batch (last year) didn’t have the hop aroma I was hoping for.  It had a light hop smell.  I couldn’t pull out the Sterlings.  So, this year I used one full ounce of fresher Sterling hops and added it 3 minutes before end of boil (instead of 5 minutes).  I also used 3 oz fresh, green Willamette at end of boil and dry hop with 2 oz (Cascade and Willamette).  I do like the flavor profile of the American II.  I think this is the closest Wyeast approximation to what they use at New Belgium.

The beer was fruity, very pleasant, and highly drinkable.  It wasn’t too bitter at all.  Quite a bit less bitter than the New Belgium version.  This was a very popular beer.  Everyone really enjoyed it.  Refreshing.  It is very popular with people who say they don’t like beer.  The keg got drained within 2 weeks!  The head retention was much better this year than last time.

The hop aroma was much more pronounced this year.  Mission accomplished!  I could really pull out the Willamette.  Perhaps next year I’ll dry hop with some Sterlings as well.

Details:
Vol of CO2: 2.6
SRM: 7
OG: 1.056
FG: 1.011
ABV: 6%
Brewery Eff: 70%
App. Attenuation: 81%

Click below to play.

God, Thank you for your Word; completely true, living, active, and personal.  Thank you that you still speak!

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” ~ Matthew 5:43-45

Forgiveness is hard.  It flies in the face of every inclination of my heart. My will opposes it.  My heart demands justice,  a reckoning, and payment for the wrong.  But, God says forgive.  He says to love those who have cut me deepest.  To love them.  Why?  Why would God ask such a difficult thing of us?  Why does God call us to forgive others who have DEEPLY hurt us?  Here are the reasons that come to my mind:

1. It is a continual reminder of how much He has forgiven me of, and what I truly deserve.  It preaches the gospel to me every time I must choose to forgive.
2. Grudges only hurt me, not the person who wronged me.  God wants to set me free from the weight of resentment.  When I refuse to forgive I am carrying the weight of that person’s sin on my shoulders.  God has already carried the weight of it to the cross at Calvary.
3. Because forgiveness shows how great God is.  Only God could give someone the power to forgive (when they only deserve hate).  It is a testimony that reflects God’s glory and the world can only stand back with open mouths and wonder, “How?!”
4. Becasue forgiveness is a mini picture of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.  It is a very powerful way we can tangibly demonstrate what God does for us through Jesus’ death on the cross.  There is no more powerful way that this can be demonstrated than by a child of God forgiving deep hurt, just as Christ did when He looked down from the cross and said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.

The video below is a story from CBS about a beautiful sister in Christ who has chosen to forgive the man who murdered her child.  It is a powerful story and testimony of how the power to forgive is truly God’s alone.  The choice to forgive is ours to make but the power to forgive comes only from God.

Who have you not forgiven?  Aren’t you glad that Jesus forgives you?

“My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it . . . An agnostic is somebody who doesn’t believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I’m agnostic.”

Despite being a rational, intelligent, inquisitive man Carl was not able to look at the universe and see the evidence for an intelligent design.  He is famous for responding to questions about why he didn’t know there was a god by saying, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”  Apparently, this evidence was not obvious to him in the world and universe that surrounded him.

To my mind, this begs the question what WOULD be extraordinary evidence?  What evidence would be extraordinary enough that a skeptical mind, like Carl Sagan’s, would be forced to concede there is intelligence in creation?  Another way to put this is how can we know if something posses design?  How can we tell by looking at something if that something was created as a result of the actions of an intelligent designer or as a result of random natural processes?  This question is at the center of the theory of Intelligent Design.

What I find fascinating is that Carl Sagan actually  answered this question for us.  He did so in a novel he wrote about man’s encounter with aliens, called Contact.  This book as also made into a popular 1997 movie starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey and Tom Skerritt.  In Carl’s book the main protagonist (played by Jodie Foster in the movie) is an astronomer who is part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI.  This is a a group of scientists who monitor radio waves coming from the stars in hopes of detecting a signal from another world that they can prove is the result of intelligence.  In the book, they receive such a signal coming from the Vega system. Watch the clip from the movie below to see the scene where they determine the signal is the result of alien INTELLIGENCE.

Did you catch that?  How do the scientists know the signal isn’t noise?  They are able to determine it is from an intelligent source because the signal is a string of prime numbers (a number divisible by only itself and 1).  Did you hear her conclusion . . .

“Those are primes:  2, 3, 5, 7.  Those are all prime numbers.  There’s no way that’s a natural phenomenon!”

The amazing thing here is that Carl’s SETI scientists have just done the very thing that is at the heart of Intelligent Design.  They have inferred intelligence based on a clear, detectable pattern.  Here’s the rationale for this inference: Nothing in the laws of physics requires radio signals to take one form or another. The prime sequence is therefore contingent rather than necessary. Also, the prime sequence is long (every prime number from 2 to 101) and hence complex. Note that if the sequence were extremely short and therefore lacked complexity, it could easily have happened by chance. Finally, the sequence was not merely complex but also exhibited an independently given pattern or specification (it was not just any old sequence of numbers but a mathematically significant one—the prime numbers).

Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic trademark or signature—what within the intelligent design community is now called specified complexity. An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent and therefore not necessary; if it is complex and therefore not readily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern.

So, if we take Carl Sagan’s method for determining and concluding intelligence and apply that to the world around us, what do we see?  Let’s look at the amazingly contingent, complex, and specified example of the genetic code.  The very fact that it is referred to as a “code” should tell us a lot right upfront.  It is just like the “code” of prime numbers detected in Carl’s alien signal, except much more complex.  DNA is encoded information that is more advanced than any computer ever created (quote from Bill Gates).  Within DNA there is MRNA, which has coded information in a different language than the protein molecules.  There is an adapter molecule, called TRNA, that translates the coded information in the MRNA into the protein language.  The TRNA is then changed when it gets attached to the correct amino acid.  This is cyclical and can’t function if any piece is not in place.  Take a look inside the cell and see the specified complexity . . .

This puts a sequence of prime numbers to shame.  We have coded information, deciphering actions, mechanical devices, all producing a repeatable pattern.  As Jodie Foster said in Contact, “There’s no way that’s a natural phenomenon!”

Thank you, Carl Sagan.  Not an obvious ally and undoubtedly a reluctant one.  However, your dedication to reason and science has put you in quite a quandary.

The second book is Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation by Jamil Zainasheff and Chris White.   Yeast and fermentation is where all the magic happens in brewing.  I am no Chemist, so I am super excited to have a whole book dedicated to this mysterious science.  This is probably the biggest area where most brewers (myself included) could grow in our knowledge.  I have read a couple chapters so far it this book promises to be be both informative and very practical.  I can’t wait to read more.

On of the researchers, Onur Kilic, a postdoctoral researcher in electrical engineering made the following insightful remark:

“Orcas had millions of years to optimize their sonar and it shows  . . . They can sense sounds over a tremendous range of frequencies and that was what we wanted to do.”

Ah, millions of years, that’s the key.  If you give a random process enough time it eventually gets smart.  It is like evolutionists think of “nature” like some learning computer that can learn from past mistakes and continue improving,  never going backward or repeating past bad designs.  The reality is, with true randomness no consistent progress is ever made.  Try flipping a coin and landing on heads 1000 times in a row.  One tails . . . start over.  Your species was selected for extinction.  You probably won’t get past 10 in a row.  Orcas randomly ending up with just that this one trait of amazing sonar ears would be like getting heads over 10,000,000 times in a row!  I don’t care how long you have to toss the coin . . . it ain’t gonna happen. 

Perhaps if the Stanford team had just thrown the electrical and mechanical components in a garbage bag and repeatedly shaken it they would have arrived at an equally good design.  Look in the bag.  Is it a fully designed underwater audio sensor yet?  Nope . . . OK then, keep shaking the bag.  After all, who needs designers.  Intelligence is vastly overrated.  “Nature” can best it by natural processes, right?  All you have to do is toss the dice 50 million times and eventually you wind up with pure genius.

Wait, who does the Stanford researcher credit with the Orcas advanced ear design?  Oh yeah, that’s right. . . the Orca.  The Orca had millions of years to get his own ear design right.  How an Orca has any control over his own ear design, I have no idea.

Oh, but it was natural selection that fine tuned the Orca’s ear so that it is better than any human design.  OK, I’m an engineer.  I know what it takes to design something that actually works.  It takes intelligence.  It takes a clear-cut goal.  Do you know what you get if you put 100 engineers in a room give them each a piece of paper and tell them each to design something (without telling them what the overall project is)?  You get a bunch of random junk that will not integrate together and has no unified function.  And, that’s if you start with intelligence.  Try it with a room full of paper and pens with no people and then see what you get. . . nothing.  Chaos does not produce order in the absence of an organizer.

These scientists are making an assumption without even realizing it.  They are assuming a design in nature.  If you believe that there are design lessons that we can glean from the natural world, you are acknowledging by action (if not by mental assent) that there is intelligence in the way life exists.  You are by action saying, “there is an intelligence in this design that is better than what I can create myself.”  They are doing this while simultaneously holding onto the mental belief in natural processes that relay solely on random chance.  This inconsistency is amazing and, I must confess, comical to me.  It is like an astrophysicist grad student copying answers to his physics exam off a 5-year-old child sitting next to him coloring on it with a crayon, all the while, claiming the child knows nothing of physics.

A scientist or engineer who believes all life is the result of purely natural processes has no reason to look to nature for inspiration in design because there is no intelligence to be sought there.  There is no design.  However, what if we approach this from the other angle? What if we assume (for the sake of argument) that there is an intelligent designer?  In this case there is design.  We would expect to find order.  We would expect finely balanced processes that foster and sustain life.  We can learn from nature (from the flight of birds, to the propulsion of single cell organisms, to the noses of dogs, to the focusing capability of the eye, to the ears of orcas).  Now be honest, which hypothesis best mirrors what we see when we look at the natural world?

How is it that seemingly rational, otherwise intelligent, usually logical people can look at a world full of unfathomably complex engineering and come to the conclusion that there is no design, there is no plan, no blueprint, no intelligence behind it?  I don’t have an answer to that, myself.  The Bible does gives us the answer, though.  In the first chapter of Romans, Paul explains that people (all of us) at one point really have known the truth that there is a creator God, and that we have CHOSEN to reject, to suppress, that truth.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse.” ~ Romans 1:18-20

The scriptures are making the bold claim here that there are no real atheists.  At one point in everyone’s life they have known there is a God and chosen to suppress that truth.  If you suppress the truth long enough, you eventually start to believe the lie (just like a compulsive lair will start to believe their own lies).  Paul goes on to explain why we suppress the truth . . .

“Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. . . They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.”~ Romans 1:21-23, 25

If we are honest and come to the conclusion that there really is a God who designed and created us and everything else in this world, then there are a ton of implications that come with this realization.  All of the sudden, my life and my choices have consequences.  I was created for a purpose.  What I do matters because I am not in command of my own destiny.  I have to answer to someone else.  This idea is repulsive to us.  We want to be free to do whatever we want.  We want to be our own gods.  This is why we suppress the truth.  It is much easier, much more convenient, to trade the truth for a lie.  Do this long enough and eventually you can’t even see the glaringly obvious logical inconsistencies.  But, it remains the elephant in the room.

Yes, Paul is right.  In the past and in native tribes people end up worshiping created creatures (like birds and animals) as gods.  We see this in every primitive culture in the world.  But, what about us modern, educated, intellectual people?  Well, we do the same thing.  We worship created things instead of God.  We attribute His breathtaking design to natural processes.  We worship science and elevate it above God.  God created the natural world, its processes, physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and even logic.  They are all the result of the fact that God is logical, and they are good.  But, when we worship these above God we are doing exactly what Paul says all people do . . . suppress the truth and worship that which God has created instead of the one who created it.  We even attribute the act of creation itself to these created natural processes, all while claiming to be wise.  As a result, we become utter fools and our minds become dark and confused.  Never has this been better and more honestly put in print that by the 1967 Nobel Prize winning scientist George Wald:

“When it comes to the origin of life on this earth, there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation (evolution). There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved 100 years ago, but that leads us only to one other conclusion: that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds (personal reasons); therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance.”

You have to give the man credit for his honesty.  At least he was aware he was consciously rejecting the logical evidence. Although, I believe that was of little consolation to him when he died.

The truth . . . effectively suppressed.