Tom's Tip of the Month: Sweet Aroma

The power of hops is amazing. Such an amazing and powerful aroma from such a beautiful plant. Hops has been used as a natural sedative, relaxer, dream inducer for thousands of years.

Want to see for yourself? Head on down to your home brewery shop, possibly even your local greenhouse, depending on where you live; buy a small sack of fresh hops. Make a small sack out of some old material (yes, I sew too); fill the sack with some of hops...start with a small pouch of hops since it can be pretty strong in the beginning; place the sack under your pillow.....WARNING!! hops is a very strong aroma, most people can construe it as offensive because of how strong the smell is;

See how much different your sleep is over the next week, how strong your dreams are during that time. Of course your partner will either be sleeping in a different room or probably have chucked the sack after a few days. Fill me in on all the juicy details of your little dream sack.

Now, more recently hops is used in alcoholic drinks. most significantly in beer. This is what makes beer so sedating. Or at least one of the things.

ITS NOT THE YEAST'S FAULT IT HAS TO CRAP!

Alcohol tends to be a horrible result of an innocent victim in the hands of man today. Another incredible, biological thing occurrs when yeast is added to this rich mixture of hops and malted barley, another great overlooked resource. Well, the yeast craps, shits, defecates......this is what yeast does after it gobbles up this awesome sugary liquid. And this poop is alcohol, another prized sleep inducer or relaxer. Today, however it is horribly abused. Alcohol given a bad name by those who only want to overdose on it and induce a stupid stupor.

I'm not a fan of the buzz but I sure love the beverage! I can usually only drink one and I'm out shortly after, fully in control of my actions and nicely relaxed. And the flavors are as varied as the snow. Personally I prefer the flavors of my own homemade. My favorites being my awesome rasberry stout one winter. So inexpensive, so natural, so healthy. And the experience of creating your won is incredibly rewarding. Experience the wonderful smells of barley malting, saturating your entire house; watch in your 5 gallon bucket the process of yeast gobbling up the sugars and expelling gas; make music from the tunes of your bubble!; see the transformation of your dark liquid to a fluid suitable and satisfying to the palate; place your final vessel in the snow outside for some cold brew beer.

Not sure what this winter will bring to the stove but I'm sure it will be something dark, maybe sweet, depending on my mood 8) Note: beer-making can be a disatrous undertaking without the right research, filling your experience with horrible "1st-timer's" beers your dog wouldn't touch. Sanitation of the entire process and equipment is number one destroyer of a homebrew. Any foreign bacteria can throw taste off significantly.

Alcoholic beverages have been created and drunk for thousands of years. Not until recently has it gained the inigma of the ALCOHOL. That was man's stupid fault, losing themselves in their own lives and abusing it's powers. Respect our origins; get back to our more natural beginnings, to a time when man respected and lived with nature; a time when our created realities weren't so complex and intricate; a time when we weren't so driven by a concrete system; a time with no drama; god, how I hate drama.

The one thing we had in great common with our ancestors from thousands of years ago---we had faith. The difference? Today man puts their faith in the hands of other men, instead of putting their faith where it belongs, in the natural world around us: spiritual as well as physical. We've lost this faith, lost the ability to see into this world because today man is blinded by other men, hurded along like the Borg into a collective ideology. The power? The power is in the numbers. The more numbers and more that believe makes that faith more powerful and more enticing. Under its hypnotic trance man slowly forgets a time long past, casting it into a mythic place, even calling it evil.

Faith in times long ago relied on the world around you, your experience in the world, your creation. It still should today. There are beautiful things our world provides to us for various reality compositions--the way we create the reality around us. Today, those things have gone because spirituality is hard work and we can't rely on another's experience to dictate how you should experience this spiritual world. Like food prepared by another is bigger than that prepared by ourselves; bought food vs growing your own; man's (disgusting) pharmacy vs nature's own wonderful remedies; watching a short movie vs reading a long book; we rely on man to give/create everything so we can do less, think less, create less. Unfortunately, stupifying our spirituality has been a result of man's progress or evolution. Only we can change the world around us by changing ourselves, becoming ourselves, creating ourselves. But we have to start with ourselves.

Wow!! I'm so sorry whoever made it through that entire post, got severly sidetracked! So, if you did make it this far, you get a special quickie tippy: happiness is contagious; spread it as much and as far as you possibly can; it will spread like a wildfire. Happiness is an incredible concept and yet becomes so hard for so many to grasp. And again I digress, sleep I must.