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Today I got back to brewing beer again, using grain even! To mark the start of the summer the plan was to brew a nice summer Kolsch. Here are the ingredients (more details here):

• 0.5 lbs of Organic light Munich malt.
• 0.5 lbs of Cara Pils.
• 9 lbs of Organic German Pils.
• 2 oz Hallertauer, 60 minutes.
• 1 oz Saaz, 20 minutes.
• 1 oz U.K. Kent Golding, 5 minutes.
• 26 liters of filtered tap water.
• Original Gravity 1.050.

It turned out that this was probably my most efficient and cleanest all-grain brewing day ever. I typically spend about 5 hours total, today it was four. Cleanup took less than 10 minutes. Not sure exactly what the trick was, but the following lists the major events in rough order:

It's Saturday, lets make some mead!

After spending the last six weeks away from home, it was really nice to have a full Saturday to do whatever I wanted. Well actually I spent the whole morning doing chores, but in the mid-afternoon I had some free time, and what better way to spend it than making mead?

That is one of the great things about mead, making it is fast and simple. Little more than a container, some sanitizer, yeast, nutrients, water, and honey is required. No heating, filtering, or cooling which makes the process quite simple and enjoyable. The second great thing about making mead is that it is so much fun to drink it while making it, and I always tend to have spare mead lying around.

Before stating anything I like to pour some nice mead to drink during the brew process

Despite the solid rating on beeradvocate, I never really expected to see the skullsplitter recommened in any kind of mainstream beer of the week, but here it is (via postbulletin)!

From the Cleveland Reader (via the Baltimore Sun) comes a story about research from Spain which indicates that drinking beer after exercise may be more beneficial than drinking water.  The study compared the hydration levels of students after strenuous exercise when they drank only water or beer afterwards. The results showed "slightly" better hydration for those who drank beer. Weather or not "slightly" actually means statistically significant or not, there are several explanations given for why drinking beer after exercise may be better than drinking water (carbonation, salts, sugars, etc.).