Yeah, a few years ago, I had an awesome* double-procedure of septoplasty/turbinate reduction and tonsillectomy. Obviously blessed to be an expert in wine tasting*, I'd been living life with a crowded mouthful of tonsils and a 90% blockage in my nose. Needless to say, the recovery period from having my head cleaned out like the cavity of a Thanksgiving turkey put me out of commission of a while. So, while sitting on the couch for 2 weeks, unable to work by decree of Human Resources and half-cocked on liquid codeine, I quickly realized that sujection to daytime TV was a worse fate than my painful circumstance. So, I sent one of my caretakers (thanks again to my Mom and my wife!) to fetch some books at the store; I wasn't prepared to recreate Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Once my rations arrived, I went right to reading this one:

Fascinating stuff. If you're into cooking, and especially food science, you should definitely try to brew beer. I've done a few batches, and How to Brew definitely is a good one to get you up to snuff.

Anyway, the youthful exuberance of my beer-curious buddy Booty has inspired me to get back into it. Who knows, soon you may be able to create memorable hangovers with one of our soon-to-be famous signature brews.

With summertime pretty much in full swing where I live, we decided to start out with a hefeweizen, or wheat beer. It was supposed to be an adapted version of a blood orange hefeweizen, but most of the blood oranges I bought ended up being regular oranges, it was to look more like the color of road rash...thus: