The Journey of Beer

"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.- Benjamin Franklin"

I hope the old man was not drunk when he said this; I am what I am today because I believe in Benjamin Franklin.
Beer is the world's oldest and most popular alcoholic beverage.

Beer is produced by the fermentation of sugars derived from starch-based material. The most common being malted barley. However wheat, corn and rice are also widely used, usually in conjunction with the barley. Less widely used starch sources include cassava root in Africa, potato in Brazil, and agave in Mexico.

Water is the most prominent constituent of Beer. Water used to make beer nearly always comes from a local source. The mineral components of water are important to beer because minerals in the water influence the character of beer made from it. Different regions have water with different mineral components. As a result, different regions are better suited to making certain types of beer. For example, Dublin has hard water well-suited to making stout, such as Guinness. As a result, it is argued that the mineral components of water have an influence on the character of regional beers. So arguably, if you are drinking an Indian Brand of beer, you may be purifying yourself by the holy Ganges water. I just hope though, that you don't use the above argument to get a upper hand on your Mom or Wife.

Most of us, Beer Fanatics would have no idea of the long journey, the beer has made before flowing into your Mug. Producing beer is a tedious process and generally constitutes the following steps:-

Mashing manipulates the temperature of a mixture of water and a starch source (known as mash) in order to convert starches to fermentable sugars

Sparging (a.k.a. lautering) extracts the fermentable liquid, known as wort, from the mash. During sparging the mash is in a vessel known as a lauter-tun, which has a porous barrier through which wort can pass, but not grain. Wort flows past the porous barrier and is collected. Water is also passed to the lauter-tun to rinse fermentable liquid from the grain in the mash and also extracts the maximum fermentable liquid from the mash as possible. The leftover grain is not further used in making the beer.

Boiling sterilizes the wort and increases the concentration of sugar in the wort. The wort collected from sparging is put in a kettle and boiled, usually for about one hour. During boiling, water in the wort evaporates, but the sugars and other components of the wort remain; this allows more efficient use of the starch sources in the beer. Hops are added during boiling in order to extract bitterness, flavor and aroma from them.

Fermentation uses yeast to turn the sugars in wort to alcohol and carbon dioxide. During fermentation, the wort becomes beer. Once the boiled wort is cooled and in a fermenter, yeast is propagated in the wort and it is left to ferment, which requires, week to months, depending on the type of yeast and strength of the beer. In addition to producing alcohol, fine particulate matter suspended in the wort settles during fermentation. Once fermentation is complete, the yeast also settles, leaving the beer clear.

After fermentation the beer is transferred to a new vessel and allowed a period of secondary fermentation. Secondary fermentation is used when the beer requires long storage before packaging or greater clarity.

I hope this post helps you know your Beer in a better way, and realize the fact that it has covered a long way before settling in your mug. Next time, when you raise your mug to your lips, dont forget to give the long "Journey of the Beer", a thought. But, most of all, I hope you enjoy your Beer!!!

The World from the eyes of Forrest Gump...

Hi All,

My name is Gump, Forrest Gump. No, I am not trying to imitate the famous British agent “James bond, 007”. It's just that I feel proud of my name, because my Mama gave it to me, and I like the sound of it.

People say that I am mentally Weaker compared to them. They tell me that I am different from them. I really don't know whether there is any truth in the former part, but yeah, the latter part is true.

I am different from the rest of people. I hardly understand what drives people around me. I know its wrong to think like this, but I really hate, the way I have seen people being happy about other's miseries, the way people step back on their own words, the way people tell lies, in order to evade helping the needful ones is something which I couldn't understand. I don't understand my fellow beings articulately. No matter, how much I try to put myself in their shoes. I fail to think like them, after a certain point. I don't know whether I was born with an extra sense, or I do lack a particular one, which makes me like the way I am. May be it's because I was born with weak legs.

I really hate myself sometimes, thinking wrong about my fellow beings. I mean, all of them can't be so bad, as they seem. There is something which I just can't grasp. May be it's because of my Weak IQ, as my Principal used to tell my Mama.

Take the case of Mr. Brown and Mr. Spencer. They were childhood buddies. And when his friend was dying, Mr. Brown promised that he will look after Mrs. Spencer and his 10 year old daughter. But somehow, Mrs. Spencer looks like she still needs more help, and the 10 year old Rosy looks like she isn't getting enough to eat. May be, she is missing Mr. Spencer too much. Mr. Brown is doing good though. God must be paying him back for keeping his promise to his childhood buddy. But people speak so many bad things about him, I really can't understand why.

There are some things, which confuse me more than the rest of them. Like why was I was given a medal to save my buddies in Vietnam? I didn't save them, God saved them. I only carried them, ran a little and put them in shade, away from the flames of napalm bombs. Like why did Lieutenant Dan, feel bad when he didn't die? I know he lost his Legs, and I know he must be feeling pretty sad for loosing them, but at least he still has got the head and 2 arms properly in their place. Poor Bubba, lost his life, and I didn't get the bitterness in his voice, which I used to feel in Lt. Dan's voice.

But one thing, I must give credit to my fellow beings, they are very smart. The reason I say so...is because I believe in "Life is a box of Chocolates, and you never know what you are going to get". But this must be too simple for them. They talk about such important and abstract concepts like Honor, Goals, and self satisfaction.

I could never even grasp the meanings of all these terms. All my Mama taught me is to live honestly, never to break a Promise, and always to help my friends and fellow brothers. May be she forgot these terms, or may be she thought, I wasn't intelligent to understand these. But what confuses me all the more is Mama, never thought that I couldn't understand something.

The only person who could understand me was Jenny. And I miss her. I told Jenny once, "I may not be a Smart Man, but I know what Love is". I know it's silly to say so, But I still love her, I love her all the more, and I miss her. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time. I miss you, Jenny. If there's anything you need, I won't be far away.

I hope, I will be born smart next time, so that I can understand my friends better. I am not greedy, I just want to know my friends better.

P.S - I have taken the liberty to copy some Dialogues from the Movie and have used them without changing. I hereby Declare that they are from the movie "Forrest Gump", Screen play by "Eric Roth", and Based on a novel by "Winston Groom".

What would you die for?

Every person stands up for something or other. The meekest of scholars, and the most arrogant of the warriors, the godly saint and the most selfish stinger, all of us are willing to give everything, for some particular cause. And to find that cause, is where the meaning of the life lies.

So what do I stand by?
What are the things for which I would throw away everything, wrapped in a brown paper bag, without having any second thought. Principles, Freedom, Money, Honor...or is it something more basic?

Well there is only one thing for which I will fight till death, without care of tomorrow, and that is my belief. The belief that Man is the best thing that could have happened on earth, that Man has an infinite potential, and once he puts his soul and mind into something, there is nothing impossible for him. For the pride I feel in being a Man!!!

And may there be Rain tonight...

"And may there be Rain tonight..."
The phrase is not as it is sounding right now to most of you, annoyed by the heat. Properly spoken In Irish, it means that whatever happened during the day, may it become a treasurable memory for the speaker.

It's like, you are reflecting on some moments of the day...and you realize that these moments are some of the most beautiful slices of your life, however short they may be...and the prayer escapes from your lips... "May it rain tonight!!!". They say its the final stamp of the rain, that preserves the memory for lifetime.

Well...Elaborating the meaning of the phrase or describing the beauty of Irish language is not my concern here. The moments which I lived yesterday is.

The first drizzle of the season, 6'O clock in the evening, Well I missed it. Shortly after-wards, I was out and feeling the light breeze, I cursed myself for missing it. When I reached home, I was certain that the great Lord wouldn't disappoint me and it will rain tonight. I am not putting any emphasis on my meteorological skills or on my absolute trust in God. It was just a feeling, that it will be raining tonight.

I went to a restaurant, Packed up dinner for 4 people, and collected 4 Beers on the way back. Don't get me wrong, There were 3 friends besides me. When I reached home, it had started to rain heavily, and there was no electricity.

I towelled myself dry, and then I was blinded by a flash. No it was not the power supply coming back. It was the brilliance and originality of my new born Idea. Well, for all the people who are dying to know it, the idea was to feel the rain tonight.We have a Huge terrace outside our place.

To have the beer and the dinner outside on terrace, with all the light coming from a sole candle, getting wet slowly, all the while hearing the droplets plattering by. It keeps you guessing, is it the beer or the humid breeze dashing through the tiny droplets, that's taking hold of the senses. The music of those small droplets when they hit the hard ground at terminal velocity is a soft sound "Putt", barely noticable, but if you concentrate on it, the sound has a music of its own. No wonder, they call rain as the season of romance.

We tried it, and it was truly amazing. I can't describe the feeling in words, I don't have that strong of a vocabulary. All I can say is "May there be rain tonight", so that I can do it again once more and the memory lasts forever.

P.S - For all the people who are going to try this, have some spare candles and empty mineral water bottles. Cut the bottom of the bottle, and light the candle inside it, upside down of course. It leads, air of romance, to the ambience.

Von Neumann Architecture

Von Neumann architecture is a computer architecture model that uses a single structure to hold both the data and the instructions. In other words for a computer to be totally based on a Von Neumann architecture, the CPU shouldn’t make any difference between the Instructions and the data. Von Neumann architecture implements a universal turing machine.

Von Neumann architecture defines an instruction set and details computation as a series of instructions. The machine hence becomes much more flexible. By treating those instructions in the same way as data, a stored-program machine can easily change the program, and can do so under program control. The separation of storage from the processing unit is implicit in the von Neumann architecture.

A stored-program design, as Von Neumann architecture is also called sometimes, lets programs modify themselves while running. One early motivation for such a facility was the need for a program to increment or otherwise modify the address portion of instructions, which had to be done manually in early designs. Of course, this became less important when index registers and indirect addressing became customary features of machine architecture.
Self-modifying code is deprecated today since it is hard to understand and debug, and modern processor pipelining and caching schemes make it inefficient.


In some simple stored-program computer designs, a malfunctioning program can damage itself, other programs, or the operating system, possibly leading to a crash. A buffer overflow is one very common example of such a malfunction. Memory protection and other forms of access control can help protect against both accidental and malicious program modification. These features are generally part of the operating system.

On a large scale, the ability to treat instructions as data is what makes assemblers, compilers and other automated programming tools possible. One can "write programs which write programs".

The separation between the CPU and memory (where the instructions and the data is stored) leads to the von Neumann bottleneck, the limited throughput (data transfer rate) between the CPU and memory in comparison with the amount of memory.

In modern machines, throughput is much smaller than the rate at which the CPU can work. Under some circumstances (when the CPU is required to perform minimal processing on large amounts of data), this gives rise to a serious limitation in overall effective processing speed. The CPU is continuously forced to wait for vital data to be transferred to or from memory. As CPU speed and memory size have increased much faster than the throughput between them, the bottleneck has become more of a problem.

The performance problem is reduced by a cache between CPU and main memory, and by the development of branch prediction algorithms

Harvard architecture is a computer architecture with physically separate storage and signal pathways for instructions and data. The term originated from the Harvard Mark I relay-based computer, which stored instructions on punched tape (24 bits wide) and data in electro-mechanical counters (23 digits wide). These early machines had limited data storage, entirely contained within the data processing unit, and provided no access to the instruction storage as data, making loading and modifying programs an entirely offline process. eg - A calculator.

In a computer with the contrasting von Neumann architecture, the CPU can be either reading an instruction or reading/writing data from/to the memory. Both cannot occur at the same time since the instructions and data use the same signal pathways and memory. In a computer with Harvard architecture, the CPU can read both an instruction and data from memory at the same time. A computer with Harvard architecture can be faster because it is able to fetch the next instruction at the same time it completes the current instruction. Speed is gained at the expense of more complex electrical circuitry.

Computers today use a hybrid of both :))