The Brewery Babble

Memories I broke my nose when I was five. I remember running as fast as I could toward my parent's living room couch, staring at the faded green plaid. I wanted to jump onto the soft, buoyant fabric and feel it catch me. But, what I didn't realize, was that I was running right toward the middle section of the couch: the section that contained the wooden cup holder. I ran straight into the wooden center and immediately felt my nose get hot-- it also, somehow, felt like it was too big to fit on my face. My mom found me a few seconds later. I was on the ground, holding my nose, crying. I did not want to let go of my nose because, as a child, my knee-jerk reaction was to hide an injury from sight in the hopes that it would just disappear. This was not a successful tactic. Looking back, I am surprised that I wasn't bleeding. My mom took me to the doctor, muttering something about brain damage, while I happily hid my nose behind my hand, ignoring it out of existence. When...

 Imagine this: you are in a small town off a major interstate, where the main attractions are a concert venue and a McDonald's. You've come to this small, quaint town in search of a brewery. The brewery is called Coal Tipple Brewery, and it is located on a back road. The Brewery shares land with a greenhouse and bee boxes, creating a nice, homely atmosphere. You enter the building, admiring how the interior walls are comprised of recovered barn wood. As you walk through the building, smelling of apples via Yankey Candle, you mosey over to the window. You look outside, and then you see it: there is a bear attacking the bee boxes in the back! Black bears are one of the largest animals that live in Western Pennsylvania, and according to the  PA Game Commission  an "adult grows to an average of 50-85 inches in length with an additional tail length added on." Black bears generally weigh between 200 and 400 pounds, but they can get much larger. In fact, some rare ones ...

Whilst reading the Observer Reporter on Tuesday, September 19th, I came across a story that sparked my interest. Titled "Slices of Life: Collecting the stories of Washington's first Italian families," the article gave small snippets of the lives of Washington county's first Italian immigrants. To read the entire article, click here . http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/88/italians-in-mississippi I was immediately intrigued by the first family, led by brothers Santo and James Alfano. The Santos ran a farm in the city, circa 1906, and made a living through the proceeds of their crops. They sold their produce mostly to the large, wealthy estates of East Washington. However, there was a prejudice against immigrants, and they were not permitted to live in the same areas as the wealthy white families, while their goods were a welcome purchase in the towns. As I was thinking of 'firsts' in Washington county, I realized Coal Tipple Brewery was a firs...

Taps. At a brewery, this is where you can get a glass of a craft beer poured. The acts of brewing craft beer and crafting the written word may seem unrelated, but they're not. To begin, each project starts with a recipe of sorts. This may not be something tangible or precise, but you still need some sort of game plan, or path, to follow. For example, if you were going to start brewing an IPA (India Pale Ale), you would need a basic understanding of what comprises that type of beer before you jumped in. So, for our example, you would need to know that an IPA is traditionally bitter, containing a lot of hops to keep the flavor strong in beer during long journeys. (If interested, I can do a later post on the creation of the IPA-style. It's quite interesting.) So, before beginning to compile ingredients, you would have an idea of what types of materials you wanted to include-- the kind that would ultimately create a bitter beer.  This parallels the writing process. If...