Beer! and Skiing! (mostly beer)

So I decided to be Swiss this week and take some vacation. Of course, I only took 1 day compared to the weeks that everyone around here takes at a time but I'm sure I'll work up to that.

So on my great big vacation day, Andre and I hit the slopes with Andy. We went back to Flumserberg. We were feeling more confident so we headed up the mountain to the intermediate slopes. We made it down once and decided to head down again and make a different turn at the end. Second time down, this was the result:

Judging by the length and shape of the bruise, I'm guessing I fell on my pole???

So after that, we decided the ski runs were overrated and it would be way more fun to be "off piste" and in the deep snow. It was harder to control my skis off piste but it was much softer when I fell. As you see by the snow in my hair and all over my jacket, I fell plenty. I had a blast though!




Andre off piste






Today, we headed to the Rappi Bier Factory and spent the whole day learning all about how to brew beer! The group was very interesting. Hosted by a Brew Master from New Zealand, the participants were from the good ol' US, Iceland, Wales, Spain, Panama and France. We started with coffee and snack, learned some about beer and then tried some beers. Somehow we fit lunch into our brewing and that's where the serious beer drinking began.

Best I can tell, you have about 8 main steps to brew beer.
1. Measure out the Malts (malt is a product created through drying of barley)
2. Run the malts through the miller machine thingy (we used a roller miller)
3. Create Mash (it involves a lot of stirring, reaching certain temperatures, waiting, stirring some more, reaching more temperatures, waiting some more)
4. Lautering (aka siphoning off the liquid from the super gross semi oatmeal texture stuff left - also involves some more hot water)
5. Boiling & Addition of Hops (self explanatory)
6. Whirlpool (spin the water round and round so that all the particles meet in the middle and settle at the bottom)
7. Cooling (involves a contraption that looks like someone hooked up a car radiator to a pressure washer)
8. Fermentation & Conditioning (this part takes forever - boo hiss)

After all that excitement, we should receive our very own beer from our brew in about six weeks!

For some reason, we took more pictures during our beer brewing experience than we have during the rest of our time here. Wonder what that says about us!?!?! :) Anyway, a link to the pictures are below with captions for your educational and entertainment purposes.

Beer Brewing Workshop!