Chris makes beer: Part 1

One of my favorite things about Chris is the fact that he brews beer. Finding a roommate who you get along with, cleans up after himself, and pay bills on time is hard enough, but finding one who does all three and makes alcohol for you to enjoy is something special. Over the years Chris has made pretty much every beer you can imagine and has gotten very good at it. I recently looked at him making some Oktoberfest Lager, took some pictures and heres how its done.

The Supplies: Malt Extract, Barley, Hops, Yeast (not pictured)

8-10 Gallon Bucket of water boiled to about 155 o

Once the water is hot enough add the barley in a cheesecloth sack

Steep the bag for about 20ish minutes

then add and stir in about 2 cans of old timey malt extract

Hmm these pictures make me want to go grab a beer. Ill have more pics posted of parts 2 and 3 soon !

So we went camping

This weekend the gang went camping in Frederick, Md. Now many of your readers may be surprised to know that despite my rugged looks I'm really not much of a camper. I went camping once before when I was 12 and read part of Into the Wild, but those two examples are really my only exposure to the great outdoors. Stu on the other hand is an Eagle Scout and made sure to remind us that he was any opportunity he had. An accomplished outdoors man Stu has skills that the other roommates and I could only dream of, his Eagle Scout prowess helped all of us find the parking space next to the campsite, track the hot dogs and smores from the cooler to the grill, and helped us chop the prechopped wood they had available at the ranger station into even smaller pieces of wood. Camping was a great adventure and a nice change of pace from the everyday weekend routine. We took a hike, told stories by the campfire, and Chris and I actually drank out of Jugs. I took some pics below:

The roaring campfire

Stu teaching me how to chop

Ten trys later I actually did it

More pics of chopping wood

The Campsite

Stu and Les (as in Leslie)