Bitter Water Brewery

With finals completely over and grades in the bank, I am gearing up for a summer of playing in urban-impacted streams of Chicago. Not enough preparation has been done to set this processes in motion, but I'm going to get my feet wet anyway. My thesis research proposal is ready to be signed off on, the committee meeting last week was superb! Much thanks be to God and the faculty giving me professional guidance for my project. They even cut back some of my work, saying that I was a little too ambitious in the methods I had planned. When I return from Kansas I will be perform a 'dry run' of the main sampling sequence I've devised. Anyway, you can check out the finished version of my thesis proposal, which is significantly different from the first: Mechanisms of Phosphorus Control in Illinois Streams.

Yes, I am making a short visit to Kansas very soon! I'll be packing my stuff up Saturday evening for the return trip to KS on Sunday. I plan to be in Topeka four days and three in Kansas City, eventually leaving for IL on the 5th. At this moment, the trip looks to be a whirlwind of travel and visits, so please forgive me for not being able to visit all of you.

Friday and Saturday of this week, just before the trip home, I'm participating in the Stateline 60 - a bicycle ride along the IL/WI border. I'm looking forward to ride particularly because I purchased a new bike last weekend. My new sweetheart, Charlize, is manufactured by a Trek subsidiary known as Lemond. Here are her specs: Tour Malet. My bicycle isn't the subtle silver/grey as shown on Lemond's website, but imagine that bicycle with a vivid, dark metallic blue, and instead of a white decal on the downtube, there is a black one with white lettering. Let me be candid for a moment, Charlize is absolutely ravishing!

More news from CU: Michael and I brewed our first batch of beer over a week ago, and we bottled the lager the last night. While the carbonation has yet to build up, I have to say that the smooth, subtle amber wheat flavor is quite appealing. Michael and I just wanted to have something that resembled beer, but, praise be to Jesus, it turned out darn tasty! When I return from Kansas M and I plan to have a little party to share our brew with friends and church family. By the way, our brewery name is 'Bitter Water Brewery', named after the test for adultery as cited in Numbers, chapter 5. The reason for BWB is that often in evangelical circles an explicit or even subtle legalism is placed upon Christian consumption of alcohol. In Christ, though, there is a liberty and freedom to enjoy the drink outside of condemnation. Consumption in sin - drunkenness and impure motives - is on your head, and on the last day if the righteousness of Christ is not your covering then the mere act of drinking, or any other action not acted out in Faith, will be bitter and condemning. Michael and I ask that those who partake in the fruit of our labor do so in sincere love for the King and neighbor.

A bunch of reusable and larger bottles = $2.00 (my advisor let us borrow the big ones)


Ingredients and yeast (below) = $32


Hours spent brewing, cleaning and bottling = 10


Getting to cap, taste and see our beer bottled: absolutely priceless!!!


And the sum total of efforts - a bunch of bottled amber wheat beer and two excited graduate students who have become better friends!


Praise God!

I'm not one of those that's going to apologize for not posting for a while, saying something like "Sorry for not posting for a while. Nothing has been going on around here, so . . ." Plenty has been going on, thus the paucity of recent posts.

Last week was spent preparing for this weeks finals and wrapping up a presentation and literature review for soil microbiology. I completed my finals as of yesterday and am overall pleased with how they turned out: The aquatic chemistry take home test was given out about two weeks ago and completed yesterday. Wednesday was my supposedly most difficult exam, physical inorganic chemistry, but it didn't turn out to be as tortuous as the past two. Soil microbiology was supposed to be a comprehensive exam over the whole semester, but I don't remember any questions from the previous sections of class material. These tests are usually a little tricky - in class we've focused on a more broad approach at learning a large amount of material, and the tests generally cover the broad stuff and a bunch of little specifics.

I've also taken to road cycling over the past five weeks, or so, and am now considering purchasing a new bicycle - used or new. My mountain bike isn't able to cut in on 35 and 40 mile rides; but the road bike a friend lent me has been wonderful to ride. Last Thursday I went on for a short 25-mile ride and was completely beat up by the wind! It was as though I was a sail trying to pedal my way through a strong, North wind. A ride that should have taken an hour and twenty minutes took almost 2 hours. Saturday's ride was by fire the longest I've ever undertaken - 44 miles. I've signed up for a cycling tour along the WI/IL boarder for May 28th and have registered for Tour de Corn on June something-or-other. My main goal is to complete a 100 mile ride at the end of the summer, maybe September.

Other events happening soon: Fellowship of the Huge is back in the swing of things. I've put off lifting weights because of time, electing to go for bike rides over going to the gym. I am fairly sure that next week we'll start our regular workouts again. Also, Michael and I will start brewing our own beer come this saturday. He will be leaving for a summer internship in Germany come a month from now, so we need to get a move on in fermenting some hops. If we get a complete batch by the time I visit Kansas I'll see about bringing some with me (assuming it tastes fine).

Please pray for my research: my advisor will be leaving for the summer, meaning that I'll be responsible for keeping disciplined and keeping to my goals. Please pray that the proposal and research methods become solidified and complete.