Hobbies

Happy Sunday to you all! It's been another week of great weather here in Nashville and we have been as busy as ever doing fun things around town, as well is in the apartment. We haven't gone on any blog-worthy trips in the last week, but I thought this would be a good time to tell you guys about each of our hobbies. Let's start with Heather.

Heather's hat-knitting endavour isn't something new, but she's been making some really cute hats lately that I must share with you all! She is still getting orders for hats on a regular basis from the ladies at work, and even some of their friends! Here are three of her latest creations:

If any of you are curious, hats are $15 and can be any color and style you like! :) She has even made one with a hole in the back for a ponytail!

My latest hobby has been a few years in the making. I've been enjoying craft beers for several years, but have only thought about making my own for the last 6-8 months or so. I've done a lot of research on how to make beer, and on several of the available home brew kits out there. Turns out, this is a pretty popular hobby! There are tons of different kits out there for all levels of experience. Essentially the spectrum runs from (malt extract in a can + sugar + yeast + water = beer) to whole grain brewing where you steep the grains, multiple types of hops, and malt in a brewer's kettle, mix with different sugars, add yeast, ferment, and bottle. While I like the flexibility of the latter, I thought it wise to start with a simpler set up while I get some experience. So as an early birthday present, Heather bought be a home brew kit! The kit comes with a 6-gallon fermentor (big bucket with a valve at the bottom), 30 750ml bottles, and an American Lager kit.

Here's a picture of my first batch a couple days into the fermentation process.

Yeah... Heather yielded a good portion of the bathroom counter for the beer kit. What a woman!

It's pretty fun to watch the yeast do its thing over the first 2-3 days. Within 6 hours or so of getting everything mixed in the fermentor, the yeast begins to get pretty active. This process is essentially the same as the whiskey process I described in the post about our trip to the Jack Daniel's distillery. The yeast is so active that you can see the liquid churning, bubbling, and foaming. Gravity readings (aka density) are taken every day to monitor the progress of the fermentation. When the yeast is no longer converting sugar to alcohol and CO2, it's time to bottle! The primary fermentation in the bucket lasts about 6 days. You add some priming sugar to each bottle which helps to carbonate the beer in the bottle. The beer is supposed to "bottle condition" for a minimum of 2 weeks. I've read and heard that the flavor continues to develop for up to 3 months! I bottled 3 days ago and I'm already anxious to give it a try! Fortunately, 30 bottles will take quite a while to go through. I'm sure we will be able to have a taste test at several intervals between 2 and 12 weeks from now.

Here's my bottling set up (more or less).

The bottles are now tucked away in a box, and Heather has reclaimed the bathroom counter.

Even though I got one of the simpler kits about there, I can exercise as much creativity as I want when I mix the wort (pre-fermented liquid). My next batch may be a pumpkin ale, oatmeal stout, or perhaps just a dark ale with some brown sugar added. I'm really excited to have a new hobby that takes time, creativity, a little bit of science, and that results in beer! I'm looking forward to sharing some of my results with friends and family.

That's all we have to report for now! Things are going well in Nashville right now, and we are both enjoying the transition to fall. And of course, we are SO excited for the upcoming holidays and all the joy they entail.

Until next time and with love,

Tim & Heather

Going the Natchez Trace Way

Are we on a roll or what?! Three posts in a week? I blame it on the weather. With the official transition from summer to fall, Nashville has seen a delightful cooling in temperature while maintaining mostly sunny skies and minimal precipitation. We're talking about highs in the 70's and lows in the 40's and 50's. Is that not the perfect weather to be spending as much time as possible outdoors? If this isn't, then I don't know what is. In addition to the wonderful weather, Heather and I have been missing all of our wonderful family and friends back home lately. Contributing to this blog on a more regular basis seems like a nice way to "connect" with whomever may come across it on any given week. We hope this finds you all well! We also hope you all are enjoying reading it as much as we are enjoying thinking about you as we write it.

So in the words of the great John Wayne in McClintock, "Lets get to the rat killin'."

For the past few months, Heather has had her eye on the Natchez Trace Parkway. It is a 444-mile long scenic road that extends North-South from Nashville into southern Mississippi. There are many historical sites along this road, and it is meticulously maintained by the National Park Service.

This beautiful bridge was pretty impressive and was our first stop on our drive. The bridge is a concrete double arch design with a span of 1,572 feet and a road height of 145 feet above the green valley below. We drove as slowly as possible across the bridge so we could soak in the great view!

I should say that this drive, like most in Tennessee, was full of wonderful scenes of densely wooded deciduous trees. While Tennessee is fairly plain looking in the winter months due to its lack of evergreens, I think it can hang with the best of them when it comes to autumn foliage. When the entire state is covered in oak, hickory, ash, and maple trees, the turning of leaves essentially changes the entire landscape. If any of you are wanting to visit Tennessee at its most beautiful, you may want to consider coming in early November. The leaves have just barely started to turn, but we could tell during our drive this weekend that things are about to get really scenic around here!


In the interest of keeping this post to a one-sitting length, I'll just briefly mention a few of the stops we made along the 50 or so miles of the Trace that we covered on this trip. Now I know that my parents have hiked up around the continental divide (which separates the water flow of the continental United States - rivers to the west flow to the Pacific, rivers to the east flow to the Gulf and Atlantic). Well, I'm pleased to announce that Heather and I have been to the great Tennessee Valley Divide! Rivers to its east flow into the Tennessee River, and rivers to the west flow into the Cumberland. Ok, ok. Maybe its no where near as impressive as the continental divide, but it definitely made us think of you! Another stop was the site of an old tobacco farm. Neither Heather or I have seen how tobacco is grown, but I know that it involves some amount of aging in tall barns before being shipped out for processing. The tobacco leaves can be quite long (3-6 feet or so), so we were hoping that this stop would actually be at a working farm, or at least a display of the different stages of cultivation and aging. Nope! Just a small barn with one row of hanging fresh tobacco leaves, and a gravel road that took you no where. Oh well!

Here's a shot of Heather inside the barn, admiring the tobacco leaves

Not a bad view from the tobacco "farm"!

As always, feel free to click on the pictures to get a larger view!

Here's a shot from another nice outlook.

The highlight of our trip, aside from the great scenery along the way, was a place called Jackson Falls. Here's a short video of me explaining a bit about it!

What I didn't mention in this video is why the water is no longer flowing here. Apparently a large storm led to some flooding which eroded the river banks and redirected the water flow.

And that's about all I have to say about that! I'll leave you with a few more pictures from the Trace.

Stay tuned this coming week for a post on my newest hobby!

Until next time,
Tim & Heather