Never a dull moment...

Not Looking Good...

Or should I say not smelling good. I checked my new batch last night and while it is starting to ferment, it's not smelling like it should be (or atleast what you'd expect fermenting beer to smell like). I think the long lag time (the time it takes from the moment you pitch the yeast to when active fermentation begins) really hurt this batch, so I now have more equipment that I need. Next time I'm going to make a yeast starter so that they can get to work right away!

Sorry if I'm being too technical (translation: if you're just too bored with all of this). If I had a brew buddy around here I could share all of this with him, but since I don't I get to bore all of you who actually read this stuff!

And if you're interested in tasting the beer, you'll have a better chance of doing that if you either show interest in me making the beer or if you buy me equipment that allows me to make better beer!!!

All Bottled Up

Well, back by popular demand (actually one person, thanks Brian for the encouragement), a post on Home Brewing! Sorry I've been absent for such a long time, there hasn't been anything to comment on since my first batch took such a long time in the secondary fermenter to finish.

I finally bottled the first batch on Thursday, got 49 beers out of it. My final gravity was 13, which is good enough. Now it's bottled and the conditioning begins. It will take approximately 2-4 weeks to condition it, so while it won't be ready for Thanksgiving, it should be ready by the first of December.

I also brewed a new batch on Friday. My second batch is a copy of Fat Tire, which is a Belgian Ale for those of you who haven't heard of it before. I took great caution to correct all of my first time mistakes, and everything was looking great until 4 hours into the brew, after I had cooled my wort, pitched the yeast and sealed the lid on the primary fermenter; I was putting the airlock onto the top of the lid when the rubber grommit, which seals around the stem of the airlock, pushed off of the lid and fell down into the beer. Oh, the horror!!!

So I had to fish it out, which I'm almost certain contaminated this batch, but rather than give up, we'll just wait it out and see if everything ends well or not. If not, then your Christmas stockings may not be stuffed with a 6-pack like I had planned. I'm researching right now to see if I could reboil it and pitch new yeast (which I'd have to buy and it wouldn't arrive til Wednesday), but then I'd know for sure that I don't have any contamination. We'll see what I hear back from my Homebrewing Brothers on the world wide web.

So this is just a quick update, I still have a couple good posts that I need to write, so stay tuned and post your comments.

Discipling the Undiscipled

In honor of Election Day, I avoided all talk radio and internet media, which left more time open to finish reading the many comments on a recent Spunky Homeschool post about discipleship.  What an eye-opener!  At last count this morning (Tuesday) there were 135 comments (I started it Monday when there were 85).  Now grant it, I didn’t completely read them all and disregarded those that went off topic, but most of the comments were between the same handful of folks and were very thought-provoking and well written.  The topic was this: what does the Bible say in regards to education and discipleship of the children He has given us? 

 

The Christian homeschoolers (CHS) look to Deut. 6 (as well as other passages, but for the sake of time and space…):

 

Hear, O Israel : The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.  

 

CHS believe that public schools do not acknowledge the lordship of Christ, and if you can’t be for Christ you are against Christ; therefore the Bible cannot support the idea of putting our children under the authority of the public schools. 

 

The Christian public schoolers (CPS) look to other verses from the Word:

 

“As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”  John 17:18

 

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors…..Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.  1 Peter 2:13, 17

 

The following comment by “Elaine” is a good summary of what the CPS were saying:

 

Yes, I do use 1Peter as the scriptural basis for sending my children to PS. I do not believe it REQUIRES me to do so. Nor do I believe Deuteronomy and the other verses REQUIRE me to homeschool, "only" to raise up my children in God's righteousness--a huge responsibility that I take very, very seriously. You don't have to agree with ANYTHING I've written, Brian. But I will ask you for acceptance and respect, which my Bible also requires me to accord to you as a good Christian…

 

The “acceptance” and “respect” part seemed to rule the day for the CPS.  It wouldn’t be difficult to wonder if these ladies—one whose kids were all grown up now (“jettybetty”)—had put their kids in public schools and might possibly be regretting their decision, and were now reaching for some kind of validation from their Christian Homeschooling (CHS) brethren.  I’m undecided if this is really the case, though. They used several passages from the Word to back up their decision, but were still unable to answer the question: can Christian children be discipled to live for Christ by public schools?  (And please note that I did not say “by parents”, but “by public schools”.)

 

Their argument sounds good from a politically-correct-Christian point of view—God can be found in public schools, not all public schools are like the bad ones reported in the media, children can certainly witness to their peers in public schools, etc.  And although they can give a pretty compelling argument defending their choice to be CPS, they continually miss the point that the CHS are trying to drive home: children are undiscipled.  As Spunky put it in one of her comments:

 

All parents disciple their children, Christian or not. So do the teachers in the school. A disciple is a follower of an ideology or teacher. All children are by their very nature undiscipled. That's the whole purpose of education- to create disciples and why Voddie Baucham titled his blog, Education the key to discipleship. The state knows this as well, that is why they make getting an ungodly education available. They have no desire or interest in creating disciples of Christ. In fact, they hope for the exact opposite and that's why they work so hard to undermine all parents, especially Christian parents. People without a belief in Christ and detached from their family will naturally look to the secular state as their protector and provider.

 

She also says:

 

The public schools do not have the goal of discipleship in Christ. The Bible states that he who is not for me is against me. The schools are by Biblical definition working against the cause of Christ because they are NOT for the cause of Christ. Thus they actively undermine the Christian parent's biblical exhortation to "create disciples" in their own children by false teaching and ignoring the teachings and Truth of Jesus Christ.

 

I am living proof of what can go wrong when sending and undiscipled girl—even one with 8 years of parochial schooling—into public high school…and the rest of this story is a post for another day!