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MEN'S BASKETBALL
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Recalling memorable events from 2008
Tyrel Reed reflects on heartbreaking losses to Kansas State, Texas and Oklahoma State and an important team meeting
In today's excerpt, Tyrel talks about his freshman year, the march to the 2008 Final Four and a players-only meeting that changed a season and lifting the "Final Four Monkey" off his coach's back.
Our first big road test that year was at Southern Cal, which had
"official" about this meeting. It was just sort of like, "Hey, we're going to Henry T's," and everybody showed up.
I imagine the other people in the restaurant were pretty curious about all this. Because we all have different schedules, it's pretty rare to see the entire basketball team
16. Which put us in the Elite Eight, where we had lost the year before, against Davidson, who was everybody's Cinderella story.
As much as you try to ignore everything, there are certain facts that people just won't let you forget. We were aware that all of coach Self's best tournament runs
FEATURE
BYOB (brew your own beer)
BRE ROACH
Photos by Chris Bronson, taken at Free State Brewery
John McDonald, founder and president of Boulevard Brewing Company, walks through the doors of the largest American-owned brewery in Missouri every morning and is greeted by the smells and sounds of brewing beer. What started out as innocent homebrewing quickly trumped his construction day job and morphed into Boulevard Brewing Company, a brewery that boasts full distribution in 13 Midwestern states.
The standard brown bottle is now anything but standard to him, and the amber-colored liquid inside didn't get that beautiful color by being brewed in gargantuan tanks. McDonald created a Midwest powerhouse brewery, and the best part about it is that he started out at home.
The American Homebrewers Association estimates that there are one million Americans homebrewing beer at least once a year. This trend is becoming more appealing every year. According to a Google search snapshot, the words "home brewing supplies" have quadruple in search volume since 2008.
This mentality created the Lawrence Brewers Guild, the largest brewing guild in Kansas. The guild meets once a month to educate others on homebrewing as well as sample beers that Guild members have brewed. You don't have to be a homebrewing expert to join. Lawrencebrewers.org allows anyone to join online, and after paying a small fee, you're in the guild.
The guild has made beer quite prevalent in Lawrence, and Lake Lero and his father found a way to make it a business. Jake Lero, an alumnus, homebrewer and member of the Lawrence Brewers Guild, opened JWL Craft Brewing at Bob Billings and Kasold with his father, after a playful exchange over why no one had opened up a brewing supply store in town where home brewing thrived. Lero wrote it off as talk, but his dad was more serious. "I was
sitting in a lecture, and I got a text from my dad asking if I wanted to open up a homebrew store with him," he says.
JWL Craft Brewing provide you with everything you need for specialty brewing. They have all the brewing ingredients—extracts, hops, grains—to get you started on your first batch. Lero is willing to take you step-by-step through the brewing process, and though they can't legally teach classes at the store, he's willing to show you how to brew in the comfort of your own home.
Obviously, opening up a homebrew store is a bit more of an investment than simply buying the equipment. The minimum start-up cost is about $150, and if you want to get fancy, it can go as high as $250. Start-up supplies include a boiling pot, fermenting and bottling bucket, capping and siphoning equipment, Lero says. The base ingredients for the beer include water, malt, yeast and hops.
But homebrewing can also prevent expensive trips to bars. Amanda Kong, a senior from Lawrence, prefers to drink at home before spending her money at the bars on low-quality beer. "Most bars charge $4 a pint for anything decent, so I usually get a 6-pack of something enjoyable like Boulevard IPA. That way by the time I go out, I haven't compromised on taste or my bank account," Kong says.
Money aside, some students prefer homebrewed beers to commercialized beers because of the quality. Kurt Lehner, a senior from Cheny, is one of them. "Commercialized beers pretty much have the same texture. There's no room for uniqueness in a huge brewing process," Lehner says. Others students prefer it because of the flavor. "If I'm going to drink a beer, I want it to taste like beer, not water," says Mark Ross, a senior from Horton.
When it comes down to it, the only way to be certain your beer will be just what you wanted is to brew it yourself. Jack Goboo is a
homebrewer in Santa Cruz, Calif. Gobbo started brewing in 1998 and became so fond of the hobby that he created his own label to stick on the bottles. He calls his beer "Cruz Brew." He says that the steps to all-grain brewing are straightforward and simple.
Mashing or steeping is when you mix milled or cracked malted barley grains in 170 degree water for up to an hour in a seven gallon stainless steel pot. During this hour-long steep, the starch in the grains is converted into fermented sugar by enzymes naturally present in the malted barley, Gobbo says. Once the sugar has been converted, place the grain in a strainer and run hot water over it. This rinses the sugars out of the grains in a process called sparging. The runoff, called wort, is then collected in another seven gallon stainless steel pot. From there you boil the wort and add your choice of hops. Boil for around one hour for complete flavor incorporation. "Adding hops provides the beer
with aroma, bitterness and flavor," Gobbo says.
You've mashed and boiled, and the next step is to add yeast. After the wort has cooled to 70 degrees, transfer it to a six gallon container and add the specialized beer yeast. The yeast then "eats" the fermented sugars from the wort. The by-product of this process is CO2 and alcohol. This process can take up to a week. If you add yeast to wort that is above 70 degrees, you can kill the yeast, ruining your brew.
After a week,the product will actually taste like beer, but will be flat and a bit murky, which is why the next step, carbonation, is necessary. Gobbo says to transfer the flat beer to another six gallon container. This removes the finished beer from the dead yeast cells that remained in the initial six gallon container, as well as allowing the beer to settle and become more clarified. Adding a small amount of corn sugar to the container allows the corn sugar to eat the final traces of live yeast. Fill and cap 12-ounce
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That loss shook us up a little bit. We realized we weren't invincible, and one of the outcomes was the realization some things needed to be said, some things needed to be heard and we needed to sort it all out as a team. The manifestation of this was that some guys on the team — I can't remember who — decided we ought to go to Henry T's for dinner as a team, an event which I am now aware has taken on something of a legendary quality. I assume this is at least partially because nobody outside the队 knows exactly what happened there, except that we never lost again that season.
for us, especially Darnell. He had been through a lot of tragedies already in his life, and his cousin had been killed earlier in the week. Sherron was hurt too, and didn't play much (11 minutes).
So here's the story: Henry T's is a sports bar known for its wings and burgers. It has one extra large booth in one of the corners, which suited us fine. There was nothing
We had one more chance for a revenge game that year, and it came in the Big 12 championship game against Texas. The memorable thing about that game was how well both teams played. It was almost surreal to watch. If you're a basketball fan, that had to be fun to watch because of the pure skill and talent on display. That's one of the better halves of basketball that I've witnessed.
The NCAA Tournament is a totally different animal from the regular season. You get funky game times; you don't know who you're going to play. It's weird. The stands are often half full and even the half that is there is a mix of a few different teams' fans.
Kansas got up by 24 in the second half and won 88-74.
bigger target for our fans than he already was (which was pretty big).
We played Portland State in the first round. Then we had a nice game against UNLV and whipped Villanova pretty hard in the Sweet
overtaking him at that time. I can only imagine coaching in college basketball for so long and coming so close. You're so defined by that last game in college. I think we need to be held accountable for losing in the NCAA Tournament, but we try not to let it define us as a team. Things happen. It's tough when people say we had a bad season. You wish it wouldn't be that way, that you went 35-3 but didn't have a good year. I think at a lot of places that would be a pretty good year.
The Davidson win was really a pressure release in a lot of ways. I felt like once we got to the Final Four, there was a sense of calmness.
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© Reed All About It:
Driven to be a Jayhawk
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