Planet Of Beer

Have you ever been to Cincinnati?  If so, hopefully this travelogue brings back a lot of fond memories and tempts you for a return visit.  If not, let’s see if we can entice you!  Nestled along the Ohio River in the southwest corner of Ohio, Cincinnati is a diverse energetic city complete with unique geographical features and a burgeoning wine culture.

But before we help you discover all that’s great about Cincinnati, let’s take a higher level view.  Ohio, the Buckeye State, has long been part of America’s wine culture.  In fact, we were interested to learn that Ohio has numerous micro climates, with grapes grown all over the state.

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If you appreciate a great tasting home brewed beer and have been thinking you might like to brew your own, I’d like to share some tips that will make your first home brewing experience a winner. Before you start, decide how you are going to approach home brewing. Are you going to start from scratch and do everything yourself? Or are you going to simplify things and use a home brewing kit?

If you want to brew your own beer from scratch, you may want to consider purchasing a book or video on the subject. Believe it or not there are easy to follow home brewing videos available online that will walk you step by step through the entire process.

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As part of a recent eastern state swing, we discovered abundant clusters of wineries and wine trails all along the southern and eastern boundary of Lake Erie, from Ohio to New York. Along the way, a small area of Pennsylvania awaits, offering the wine traveler a chance to visit some of the Keystone State’s most prominent wineries. This area is part of the Chautauqua Lake Erie Wine Trail, one of 11 wine trails encompassing Pennsylvania wineries.

Like most states in this general geographic area, Pennsylvania has a long history of grape growing and wine making. At present, the state ranks fourth nationally in grape growing and eighth for overall wine production. As you might expect, there are plenty of Pennsylvania wineries to explore, with the state’s varied topography offering many distinct types of grapes and wines.

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Alcohol is the result of the fermentation process where a micro- organism (yeast) converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. Yeast is a living organism that is critical to winemaking. Without yeast, there would be no beer, wine or spirits, bread, yoghurt or cheese.

‘God is Good’ was how yeast was referred to prior to 1859 when Louis Pasteur discovered that a single cell organism was responsible for the conversion of sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The Egyptians were the earliest recorded users of yeasts. They brewed wine and they baked bread. Yeasts are around 6-8 microns in size (1 micron is 1 millionth of a millimetre), it takes about 20 billion of them to make up 1 gram of yeast and the chemical reaction that happens is C6H12O6 + yeast = 2C2H5OH + 2CO2.

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No wine style as old and prized as Tokay can get by without a colourful legend. So here’s what happened, according to local lore. In the mid 17th century, a noblewoman called Zsuzsanna Lorantfly owned an estate encompassing the entire present-day Tokay region in Slovakia. Her priest, who doubled as her winemaker, postponed the fall harvest in 1650, fearing an attack from the Turks. The priest’s precautions may have saved his grape pickers, but it left his grapes vulnerable to a humidity-loving fungus called botrytis. Some of them succumbed and shrivelled, but the thrifty cleric didn’t discard them. Rather, he had them picked, crushed, and added to the must made from unaffected grapes.

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It’s officially Fall now and with the Autumnal season comes both Halloween and Thanksgiving, two great American holidays. While Halloween is all about Tricks or Treats and carving pumpkins, Thanksgiving is all about eating pumpkins in the form of pie. Both holidays include pumpkins and how better to celebrate the season than with a pumpkin ale? Beer comes in all flavors and pumpkin beer is just one of many that is either loved or hated by those who partake. I like all kinds of beer and will try just about anything so even though pumpkin pie may not be my favorite, craft beers are and pumpkin or not, I’m going to try any pumpkin beer I get my hands on.

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Did you know that you can make your own beer at home? If you are a regular beer drinker like me, then you had to have thought about it. Many more beer lovers are taking a shot at home brewing than ever before. Think of yourself as a chef; a beer chef!

Home brewing beer can be a family project or just a new hobby for yourself. It really is not as hard as you would imagine. Lots of folks would just rather go to the store and buy their beer, but what fun is that? However, it is not about the convenience or the cost of the beer in stores. It’s about pride and that little hope you hold out that maybe your concoction will become a hit and make you some money!

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Imagine this scenario. Your buddies arrive at your home for the weekly Sunday football get together. They walk through the door and the first thing they see is your new home draft system. Believe me, their jaws will drop and the questions will start flying. “How much did this baby set you back? What kind of beer do you have on tap? Where did you get it?”

The home draft system or kegerator as it is sometimes called is the anchor of any home bar. It’s the weekend water cooler. It not only stimulates conversation, it always keeps your favorite beer at a cool 38 degrees. A home draft system will give you the ability to keep nearly any beer on tap and enjoy it for as little as 45 cents per serving. It doesn’t get much better than that.

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The history of making alcoholic beverages is essentially the history of home brewing. Historians believe that beer was originally discovered by people of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Barley was a staple grain of this area and it was soon learned that if the barley got wet and was allowed to germinate, it would become sweet and could be used in foods like bread. This process is known as malting.

It didn’t take much time after the discovery of malting to discover beer. Someone probably allowed their malted barley to get wet and remain exposed to the elements. Perhaps wild yeast contaminated the exposed liquid. The yeast then took hold and multiplied generating a bubbly liquid of alcohol and barley that soon became the first beer.

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If you love to pop open a good bottle of wine with a loved one, or to share in the company of good friends, then you may love the idea of being able to impress them by making that wine yourself.  Imagine the pleasant surprise on their faces when they discover that the tremendous wine they just sampled is your own creation.  In order to get to that point, however, you must first go through the actual process of making these wines – and that can be a tough task unless you have some help.  This is where home wine making kits come into play.  By using one of these kits, you can get the knowledge and practice you need to be better prepared to make a great bottle of wine.

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