The WGOM

Help a brother out.

Okay then, I will. Brewing is either as cheap a hobby as you want it to be, or the most expensive hobby you can imagine.
A good starter kit looks like this, although I would suggest The Complete Joy of Home Brewing as a good book to read through, can be found at the library or from Amazon for a few bucks.

The carboy upgrade is just the next step up in cost. There is a huge debate over fermenting in glass vs. plastic buckets, personally, I don't find much difference. Although, with the glass carboy you get to see how cool fermenting beer looks, I guess that's some sort of bonus.

What you're missing from the kit is a brew kettle (stainless steel, stock pot will work fine (aluminum will impart a metallic flavor to the beer)), big spoon or tongs (BBQ tongs are great), sanitizer, glass cleaner, an auto siphon (very helpful, and cheep- like 8 bucks-), beer thief (makes sampling the fermenting wort easier, much easier), carboy brush, and the ingredient kit.

The next step up would be buying a wort chiller, O2 stone, fridge for lagering...... you get the point.

If the person likes to cook, enjoys a little chemistry, and likes beer they probably will enjoy the sh!t out of brewing, let them know that a bad batch happens to all of us, and the cleanliness is next to godliness.

ps you can find better deals on most of this stuff with cheaper shipping at northern brewer and morebeer.com. Plus, northern brewer is a MN company and the guys who run the shop are extremely helpful, even over the phone.

This is a recipe that interests me a bit, I think that I'll substitute some saaz for the cascade, and use the wyeast belgian abby II instead. any ideas?

1# CaraPils
0.5# Wheat
0.25# Munich

9.9# light LME

1 oz Chinook (60 min)
1.5# light Candi sugar (15 min)
1 oz Amarillo (10 min)
2 oz Cascade (end of boil)

Wyeast 3724

2 oz Cascade (dry-hop)
1 oz Amarillo (dry-hop)

Reid Brignac

Thanks for the label advice, If it's any good I think I'll take the Mannekin Pith rec. heh.

They are pretty much at zero right now. Worse than that, they are just good enough to avoid getting a premium position in the lottery (then again, they got the third pick last year, picked the second best player in the draft -- and traded him away for a guy who will be a decent pro, but also plays the exact same position as their best player). Bad. Bad. Bad.

The Dodgers paid Juan Freaking Pierre $44M over 5 years just a couple of seasons ago. The D-Backs gave Eric Byrnes $30M over 3 years. Blake is coming off of a $6M, 1-year deal, so the agent is pushing for multiple years and the typical baseball salary inflation. It would also be pretty unlikely for a guy to take a reduction in his annual salary unless he disappointed, and Blake had the 3rd-best OPS+ of his career last year. $20M/3yr is hardly laughable--Blake might not get it, but I sure wouldn't laugh at it.

I'm really against acquiring Blake because I think he's an exceptionally poor fit for a number of reasons, but say that there's a price that would make sense for the Twins. Let's see, they paid $6M/2yr for Lamb last year--Lamb has a lower career OPS than Blake, but was also a couple of years younger. Say that the Twins felt like they could go $10M/2yr for Blake, or maybe $12M/2yr to keep Blake from having to take a pay reduction.

Whatever that price turns out to be--somewhere in the $5-6M/year range--why shouldn't we think that the Dodgers can add an extra year or an extra few million to that offer? They have a $120M payroll, and when you figure that you have to spend about $20M to field a minimal team, the Dodgers outspent the Twins in marginal payroll $95M to $30M. So the Dodgers have about 3 times as much money to spend on additions to the team beyond a bare minimum Florida Marlins-style setup. I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to blow the Twins out of the water on Casey Blake if they want.

Comparatively, the Twins' depth at 3B dwarfs their depth at SS. Blake should just not be any kind of priority whatsoever. I don't think there's a whole lot that Bill Smith can do to improve the roster at this point. He doesn't have much money to work with and there's not a huge roster imbalance for him to fix. They need to figure out who their shortstop is going to be next year, they need to make sure that that answer is not Brendan Harris, and they need to try to use the free talent channels (Rule 5 draft, waivers, minor league free agents) to round out the bullpen and their bench depth. Past that, I really don't see them doing anything to significantly improve the team. They might be able to shuffle it around a bit, but there's no obvious Pierzynski/Mauer or Bowyer/Good Bullpen logjam for them to address. I know people want to look at the outfield as a logjam, but I can't see them getting a good deal for Gomez, Delmon, or Span, Cuddyer won't even be considered as a trading chip, and I don't think anyone really wants to trade away one of our two power threats from last season. I see this turning into a boring offseason or a bad offseason.

I don't know, dw, Javy's a better pitcher than his rep. It sounds like the deal is for Lillibridge (who seems pretty Punto-esque), a spare part or two, and Tyler Flowers (and not Jo-Jo). Flowers is a giant catcher who's carried a big stick through high-A so far but may not stick behind the dish.