Home Brewing Beer - Women Can Get in on the Suds Too! By Tracey S Watson

Ladies, do you ever notice how the guys seem to have all the fun when it comes to beer? They feel like they "own" the beer market? They swill it down and hog the keg. Also, when it comes to making beer, the men love to think that they are the king of the craft - like home brewing is a guys-only club (it reminds me of a tree house with a hand written sign - "no girls allowed"). Well, I'm here to say that I am no longer going to stand for this, and neither should you.

Come on girls; men might think that beer is a "manly drink" - but this doesn't mean we have to believe it as well. I for one love to enjoy an ice cold beer with my girlfriends while talking about the latest workplace gossip, comparing amazing shopping finds, figuring out our lives, or just plain relaxing while away from the opposite sex. There's nothing like the feel of a cool brew slowly trickling down my throat, especially after a long day.

But where I have something really special, and where I'd like to encourage many of the other beer-loving women out there to shine as well, is by making my own beer at home. Girls, think about it: we have been expected to cook and clean house for ourselves and our "significant others" since the beginning of time. Why not learn how to make your very own home brew as well? Take it from me - making beer at home is not only easy to do, but the results are better than anything the guys can buy.

I recently took my very own home brew and served it to my guy friends while they watched the game on my HDTV. They kept complimenting it, begging me to tell them where I got such great beer. And these are guys that have tasted a lot of beer before. But, I want most of my batches going to my gal-pals, and to the guys who really appreciate it.

So come join with me. It's fun, it's not very expensive, and it can be our little secret. Well, that is unless you want to make the boys beg to you for a change.

How about a much simpler recipe, with a lot less ingredients, and even less steps to making it? Go get your own free guide chock full of easy beginner's homebrew guide as well as a much simpler version of the famous Goat Scrotum Ale at http://QuickHomeBrew.com

Wine Racks - Methods to Storing Your Wine By Rachel A Kuptz

While wine racks are an atheistically pleasing way to store wine, they also hold value in keeping your wine in optimal storage conditions, allowing the wine to continue aging. Make sure these six storage conditions are present to ensure that your wine stays in quality drinking condition.

Temperature: Wine should generally be kept at room temperature, or 55 degrees. Here's where it gets tricky -- sparkling wine should be kept in a wine refrigerator, while white wines are best kept in temperatures of 45 degrees. Temperature controlled wine refrigerators allow you to set the temperature based on the wines you most frequently store, but a simple wine rack placed in a cooler spot of your home will do just fine. Just make sure that the spot you decide to store your wine isn't next to a heater or vent, as fluctuations in temperature can impact the taste of the wines.

Height: When using a wine rack, keep this rule of thumb in mind -- sparkling wines on the bottom shelf, white wines in the middle, and reds on the top. This rule comes into play with the thought that heat rises, so keep the wines that are best served cooler towards the bottom.

Surroundings: Did you know that keeping a wine next to fruit or vegetables can cause the wine to mold? Foods that can rot may send the moldy flavors into a cork of the wine, causing the wine to have unfavorable smells and tastes.

Keep Away from Sunlight: When exposed to light, wine can age faster and lose it's flavor. Keep your wine rack or refrigerator away from any sources of natural light, and preferably in a darker section of your home.

Sideways: Keeping wine on it's side will keep the wine in contact with the cork, preventing air from escaping into the wine bottle. Different types of wine racks will allow you to tilt the wine to an optimal level, allowing the wine cork to stay wet and prevent oxygen from coming in.

Air Circulation: Wine can mold. If you keep wine hidden in a closet or dark room, make sure that there is a steady amount of circulation. Just like you wouldn't keep clothes in a moldy closet, make sure your that the place you store your wine is clean and free of mold.

Rachel Kuptz is a wine enthusiast and a collector of wine racks. For more information or to shop for a wine rack online, visit http://WineRackBar.com

Home Brewing Beer - The 8 Great Health Benefits By Tracey S Watson

Here is what is true: Beer, especially home brewed beer (due to it having no artificial colors or flavors, and no preservatives), can help when it comes to your health. Like apples, you could say, "A beer a day keeps the doctor away!"

Following are the eight ways that home brewed beer is healthy for you:

1. Studies have shown beer to increase HDL ("good" cholesterol) and decrease the occurrence of blood clots.

2. In May of '99, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found that moderate beer drinking would lower the drinker's chances of getting coronary heart disease by 30% - even upwards of 40%.

3. "The New England Journal of Medicine" reported in their November '99 issue that moderate beer drinkers would decrease the chances of their suffering a stroke by a full 20%.

4. The TNO Nutrition and Food Research Institute found that home brewed beer contains the vitamin B6, which prevents the build-up of the amino acid homocysteine (these have been linked to causing heart and vascular disease).

5. Home brewed beer contains no fat and no bad cholesterol. Drink it guilt free!

6. Drinking beer (brewed at home) helps promote blood vessel dilation, sleep, and eases urination in elderly people.

7. Beer is a proven stress reliever and sleep inducer. Nothing like relaxing with a glass of delicious beer you brewed yourself. In fact, the very act of making beer is relaxing.

8. Beer increases vitamin B6 absorption into the blood plasma by 30% - no other beverage can do this!

Now you have another reason to finally begin brewing your own beer at home. It's not only tastier and cheaper than any commercial beer, it's also healthy for you. Salute!

How about a much simpler recipe, with a lot less ingredients, and even less steps to making it? Go get your own free guide chock full of easy beginner's homebrew guide as well as a much simpler version of the famous Goat Scrotum Ale at http://QuickHomeBrew.com

Beer and Homebrewing - Four Fun Facts By Michael M Thomas

If you're like most people, you probably love trivia. Come on - admit it. At some point or another nearly every one of us has played a game of Trivial Pursuit at a party or watched Jeopardy on television. So how would you like to know a few fun facts about beer and homebrewing?

We all know about how the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. But did you know that the pilgrims stopped where they did because they had run out of beer? If they still had beer on board, the pilgrims probably would have kept sailing South (to somewhere warmer). If the pilgrims had more homebrew beer on board, the world (or at least North America and the United States) may have been a different place today.

Did you know that July is officially "American Beer Month"? When you stop to think about it -- what with the Fourth of July, summer barbeques, and plenty of ballgames -- having July as American Beer Month makes a lot of sense. But if the pilgrims hadn't run out of their homebrew beer, maybe there wouldn't be an American Beer Month at all.

Did you know that over 30,000 people visit Denver each Fall for "The Great American Beer Festival"? What's to do at such a festival? Well, by now I am sure that you can guess: you can talk about beer, drink beer, learn about homebrew beer, and you can even try a few kinds of homebrew beer.

Surely you know that beer (homebrew and store bought) is not solely an American tradition. But did you know that rules and regulations about beer go back to ancient times? In fact, in Babylonia there was a law that prevented bars from serving watered down beer. Now if you love beer, you know how disappointing a watered-down beer can be. But the punishment for serving watered-down beer in Babylonia was that the bartender was drowned in a barrel of the watered-down brew. That's a serious punishment!

Did you know that it's simple to learn how to homebrew your own beer? To be honest, it's actually quite simple. Go to http://www.howtobrewbeer.com and download a free guide to homebrewing. The homebrewing guide includes more than a dozen recipes for different varieties of beer.

A Wine Lover's Weekly Review of $10 Wines - An Alsatian (France) Sylvaner By Levi Reiss

Over the years I have enjoyed and reviewed many wines from Alsace, France with their distinctively shaped bottles and sometimes, but not always, their distinctive taste. This is the first time that I have found one in the inexpensive price range here defined as $10 and less. I'd like to say something about this price limit. I live in Ontario, Canada where wine prices tend to be somewhat higher than in many parts of the United States. Our dollar fluctuates and I don't want to cut off a wine because the Canadian dollar inched up a bit. So I specify about $10 when it's floating near the limit.

Alsace is a relatively small wine-producing region. Its wine growing area is a mere 60 miles (100 kilometers) long and at most 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) wide sitting on the German border to the east. Almost all its wine is white. While Sylvaner is fairly widely planted, it is not considered a fine grape in Alsace or elsewhere. For $10 did you expect to get a fine grape from an expensive region in an expensive wine producing country? However, this wine just might turn out to be a bargain.

OUR WINE REVIEW POLICY All wines that we taste and review are purchased at the full retail price.

Wine Reviewed
Dopff and Irion Crystal d'Alsace Sylvaner 2007 11.9 % alcohol about $10

Let's start with the marketing materials. Tasting Note: Pale straw color; light floral aromas with hints of pear and melon; fresh and lively with green apple, lime and herbal notes on the palate; crisp, clean finish. Serving Suggestion: Seafood or fish; quiche, etc... And now for my review.

I started by sipping this wine alone. It was lightly sweet, quite long, and mildly acidic. The first meal was smoked turkey thighs cooked with chickpeas. The wine was appley and refreshing but uni-dimensional and light.

The second meal was a commercial shepherd's pie. Now the Sylvaner tastes both lemony and appely. Its acidity is pretty good but the length is inconsistent. When I added some Turkish hot pepper it became stronger and wasn't overwhelmed. This is not the hot pepper sauce that I love (even if the two share the name Harissa). I can only wonder how this wine would handle the pungency of the real thing.

The final meal consisted of chicken meat balls slow cooked with soft wheat. The wine became rounder and was sharply acidic, tasting of citrus fruits. It was palate cleansing.

I finished the tasting with two cheeses. The first cheese was an Italian-style Ricotta cottage cheese. It was hard to define the wine's fruit, perhaps gooseberry. The wine became somewhat sweeter. This wine and cheese pairing was better than average. Then I went to a Provolone. The Sylvaner was citrusy, modestly long with pleasant acidity.

Final verdict. I would buy this wine again. It does qualify as a bargain. You can easily pay much more for Alsace wine and not get better. But it's not a wine to rave about.

Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine Italian, French, or other wine, accompanied by the right foods and spend time with his wife and family. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. Among his many web sites he is particularly proud of his new love and relationships site celebrating mostly spiritual and on occasion physical love at http://www.loveamourlove.com You will find a wide range of articles devoted to various aspects of love, and a special collection of love quotes in both English and French (with translations.) Check out his global wine website at http://www.theworldwidewine.com with his weekly column reviewing $10 wines and his new sections writing about (theory) and tasting (practice) organic and kosher wines.