A long day of manual work, days burdened with deadlines, a week of stressful meetings and decision making, and pounding hours of intellectual discourses would always be best ended with a bottle or pint of beer. Birthdays, weddings, and gatherings of friends and kinsmen would always be merrier with beer. The joys of beer are countless. The greater would be the pleasure when they are homemade. Imagine relaxing with a pint of beer that you personally mixed with ingredients you chose to your liking. This is all possible if you have a home brewing kit.
Producing Your Own Beer at Home
There are basically three phases in producing beer at home: brewing, fermentation, and bottling. With your home brewing kit you could do the following steps in brewing:
▪ Boil water then clean or sanitize your brew pot, stirring spoon, table spoon for measurement, measuring cup, yeast starter jar, fermentor and lid, airlock, and thermometer
▪ Make the sweet pale yellow or reddish liquid malt barley extract called wort.
▪ Cool the wort at a temperature of 18 to 32 degrees Celsius
While the wort is being cooled, rehydrate the dried ale yeast by mixing pre-boiled water and yeast, and when done, cover it with plastic wrap. When the wort has cooled, you may proceed to the next phase which is fermentation. Pour the rehydrated yeast into a bucket then add the cooled wort. Siphon the mixture into the fermentor. Do not suck on the siphon because you might contaminate the mix. Seal the fermentor with the lid and store it. Use an airlock for better results. Keep them in a safe and cool place for two weeks or more as you desire. When you bottle your fermentation be sure that your bottles and caps are well-sanitized. Prepare the priming sugar that you would mix with the beer that you fermented. Add the flavor of your choice. Store your bottled beer at room temperature. After another two weeks, they are ready for consumption.
A Closer Look on Home Brewing
Beer may be brewed at home using a home brewing kit as long as the product is for personal consumption and not for commercial distribution. A lot of environmentalists in fact support home brewing of beer because it reduces the negative impacts that are brought about by mass production and distribution. Home brewing of beer is practiced by a lot of people for the following reasons:
▪ Cheaper costs
▪ Customized or personalized tastes
▪ Total control over the alcohol content
▪ The enjoyment of non-pasteurized beer
Home Brewed Live Beer
Most commercially distributed beer is pasteurized, which requires it to be cooked. When beer is cooked it loses its natural carbonation, which kills the yeast and result to improper aging. The taste, feel, and color of pasteurized beer are inferior to that which is not pasteurized or what most call as live beer. If you would like to enjoy beer at its natural state, buy a home brewing kit and brew your own.
To assure yourself of a well-priced and excellent home brewing kit, check out The Grape and Granary.
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30Jan
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24Jan
Mankind has been drinking gourmet teas for thousands of years. First discovered in China, tea is believed to benefit several areas of your health including your mental equilibrium, liver, and cardiovascular health. Tea is the most popular beverage in the world after water and its benefits to health are far more than just wives’ tales. Many scientists have discovered through research that much of the supposed health benefits of drinking gourmet teas are indeed a reality.
Why Tea?
Tea contains flavonoids, which are naturally-occurring compounds that have antioxidant properties. Antioxidants are very beneficial to your health because they neutralize the damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals damage genetic material and lipids and contribute to chronic illness. Studies of the health benefits of tea have been done on animals and humans using green and black
, both of which come from the camellia sinensis plant. Some findings from these studies include the fact that drinking tea is associated with bone and oral health, a boost of the immune system, a lowered risk of cardiovascular disease, and a lowered risk of certain cancers.
Drink Gourmet Teas for Cardiovascular Health
People who regularly consume three or more cups of black tea per day may reduce their risk of getting a heart attack or stroke. This is because black tea consumption lowers cholesterol levels, improves blood vessel function, and reduces oxidative damage.
According to a study done in Holland, people who drink one to two cups of black tea per day have a 46 percent lower risk of severe aortic atherosclerosis, which is a strong indicator of cardiovascular disease. In the same study, those who drank more than four cups of black tea per day had a 69 percent lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
In a Harvard study of 340 men and women who had suffered from heart attacks, those who drank a cup or more of black tea per day had a 44 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack.
Researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that five servings of black tea per day reduced LDL cholesterol levels by 11.1 percent compared to placebo beverages.
Drink Gourmet Teas to Prevent Cancer
Tea flavonoids reduce cancer risk because they combat free radical damage, inhibit cell proliferation, and promote programmed cell death. More evidence regarding the effects of tea flavonoids is needed before definitive conclusions are made, but findings include the following:
-Smokers who drank four cups of decaf green tea per day demonstrated a 31% decrease in oxidative DNA damage in white blood cells compared to those who drank four cups of water. Oxidative DNA damage is implicated in the development of a variety of different cancers.
-A study conducted by the University of North Carolina found that the consumption of 2.5 cups per day or more was associated with a 60% drop in rectal cancer in Russian women from Moscow.
-Researchers in Taiwan discovered a link between cancer reduction and EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), which is a polyphenol found in green tea. The researchers found that the EGCG induced cell death and blocked cell cycle progression and thus inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells.
-In studies comparing groups of mice treated with a carcinogen and receiving either water or water enriched with antioxidants found in tea, the tea-fed mice developed 24 percent fewer lung tumors. Furthermore, the average size of the tumors that did develop was 38 percent smaller than the water-fed mice.
Drink Gourmet Teas for Oral Health
Drinking tea contributes to oral health because it is believed that tea flavonoids inhibit the formation of plaque. The fluoride in tea may also support healthy tooth enamel. In a study conducted at the New York University Dental Center, hamsters were fed water with black tea extract. The hamsters that were fed the tea had 63.7 percent fewer cavities than the other hamsters.
Drink Gourmet Teas to Lose Weight
According to preliminary research, drinking tea may prevent fat accumulation, increase your metabolism rate, and help you lose weight. Green tea extract significantly increases fat oxidation and energy expenditure in healthy adults according to some studies. Green and black teas have also been found to increase insulin. In a study that had moderately obese patients consume green tea on a regular basis for three months, body weight decreased by 4.6 percent and waist circumference decreased by 4.48 percent.
A Reduced Risk of Kidney Stones and Osteoporosis
For people who have had kidney stones, increased fluid intake is recommended to reduce the likelihood of recurrence. The risk of developing kidney stones can also be lowered by consuming tea. Beverage choice is thought to affect the development of kidney stones.
Drinking tea can also reduce the risk of osteoporosis as many studies point to the role that tea plays in bone health. In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a study was published stating that older women who drank tea had higher bone mineral density (BMD) than those who didn’t. The researchers of this study concluded that tea might influence bone mass. Another study showed that adults who are habitual tea drinkers experience significant benefits to BMD measurements.
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23Jan
This is a question healthy and in shape individuals must ponder all the time. After all, they are in shape…how hard could it be?
Well, I can answer this question very simply. WE LOVE FOOD!
People who do not struggle with their weight simply see food as a necessity to stop their hunger pangs. Overweight people however have an addiction to food. Some people might think what I am about to say is a bit far fetched but I believe that food addiction is the hardest of all to break! My simple reasoning is that we all need food. We cannot live without it. This is like asking someone who is struggling with alcoholism to have just half a beer, 3 times a day!
Like alcohol binges, many overweight dieters often binge eat enough to feed a whole family in Africa…for a month! No wonder people diet for years and actually look fatter! Food is everywhere and is needed, our will power is constantly working overtime with cravings coming in left right and centre, and no matter how strong we are, eventually we succumb to the pressure.
Overweight individuals seem to have a greater appreciation for food. The various tastes, textures and scents. Food makes us more comfortable in times of tiredness and stress. It helps us enjoy more of situations, whether it’s walking along the beach with your girlfriend while eating an ice-cream, enjoying a large home cooked meal with family, a BBQ with friends on a beautiful summer’s day or a pizza with friends while watching the footy (I could go on forever!)
Not only do we love the taste of food, we absolutely love feeling FULL! We love overeating and feeling satisfied or to a better extent…stuffed!
Food is one of life’s greatest pleasures, forms of enjoyment and relaxation for many overweight individuals.
So can you imagine how hard it would be for one of us to give up not only overeating, but the freedom to enjoy our favourite foods. It is almost impossible for the vast majority of us to not only drastically reduce or calorie intake, but to also dramatically change what we eat to super healthy. This is unrealistic and unachievable.
Its not as simple as stop eating that, or stop eating so much
So next time you see someone struggling with their weight, I hope you can appreciate what they are going through.
