Malt madness

Most of my barley brethren end up in cereal. Others end up in health food. A select few, like myself, have the distinct pleasure of becoming beer. My name is Brixton, and this is the story of how I became Upland Wheat Ale.\nI arrive in Bloomington in a bushel with 15,000 pounds of my closest friends. I don't really know what to expect. \nBeing barley, I don't have any choice what happens to me, though ever since I was a young sap I dreamt of being beer. \nI am taken to a storeroom in the back of Upland Brewery where I'm placed next to a bushel of the most beautiful hops I have ever seen. One in particular catches my eye.\n"Heyyyy baby," I say, all cool-like. "What do I got to do to ferment with you?"\nBut before I can hear an answer, I am whisked away and thrown into a malt masher. Can you imagine what it would feel like to strip down naked and jump into a wood chipper? How about taking a bath in fiery lava and then toweling off with industrial strength sandpaper? Well, that doesn't even compare to this agony, this torture. My outsides become my insides, and my insides turn to dust.\n"I thought beer was heaven on earth for us barley," I shriek. "What is the goddamned meaning of all this? I can't take this ..."\nAnd then it's over. Everything stops.\nI look down and I'm flattened like a pancake. But the pain slowly subsides as my vision slips toward the hops lying in wait. I suddenly remember all my cowardly screaming. I notice the hops staring back at me, giggling. I say the first thing that runs through my crushed, twisted mind.\n"Yeah, I'm smashed to smithereens, but look at all this surface area."\nChicks dig the surface area, I think to myself. Chicks dig the surface area.\nAfter another move, the pain is completely gone. Here, I am just marinating in a giant, metal mash tun with some warm water. It feels like oatmeal. I begin to lose myself in the substance. I feel my crushed body grow heavy and start to sink. And yet, for some reason, I am floating. Looking down, I watch my grainy body disappear into the bubbly abyss. \nI look around, and it's happening everywhere. \nWithout bodies, our souls mingle and move in and out of one another. It's hard to know who is who and what is what. As one cohesive unit we call ourselves "wort."\n"Hey, how's it goin'?" I say to a passerby. \n"Long time, no see," I quip with another.\nAfter laying down some basic ground rules (mostly regarding personal space), we eagerly await the next step of brewing.\nWe're pumped into a new vat called "The Kettle," where we begin to boil violently. Without bodies to feel pain, we embrace this "wort mosh pit" like we're front row at an AC/DC concert. Someone kicks me in the crotch and I poke them in the eye. Suddenly, a hatch opens from above, and green pellets rain down on us. \nIt's the hops! \nAnd boy, they are pretty freaked out, too.\nI am having a great time at the boil, but the hops are killing the mood. It's hot. They're screaming. Everybody's panicking. And just before I join them, it happens. A miracle.\nThe hops, too, are now disconnecting from their earthly bodies. Free and fluid, they thrash through the boil with the same intensity as us wort. Cries of fear and anguish turn to shrieks of joy and liberation.\nThen, we begin to whirl. \nWe spin around the kettle and create a vortex in the center where the discarded hop bodies are sucked to the bottom and deposited in an upside-down cone. And then, just as fast as it all starts, the whirlpool stops and we continue our journey.\nThe hops are gone, but I can feel their presence around me. The composition of the wort has changed -- I can tell. \nAs we are pumped through to yet another big vat, I begin to wonder if being beer is everything I thought it was going to be. Can it possibly be worth all this trouble? I'm starting to wish I had just become some Frosted Flakes.\nStill traveling, it starts getting cold. Oh God, is this the end? I hear something in the distance. It's coming at me like a freight train, getting louder and louder, closer and closer. I can hear it clearly now.\n"Wooohoooo! Let's get this party started!" I hear before the crash. Then I black out.\nI awake in a new vat, really chilled out. What hit me, I discover, was a yeast slurry.\n"Welcome to the party, man," I hear. "Sorry about hitting you so hard earlier, but that's my job. How do you feel?"\n"I feel surprisingly awesome," I tell him, as I ease into a newfound state of euphoria. \n"What's going on?" I ask.\n"We're fermenting, man, just chilling out before we're bottled. It should happen anytime, now."\nChilling there, I reflect on my journey. I came into this as a young, cocky piece of grain, and I leave now a premium Bloomington beer. Soon, a gold cap will be pressed onto my bottle, sealing me in until it is my time to be drank.\nWill I be consumed and then savored -- my bottle put on a mantle as a reminder and celebration of my bubbly greatness? Or will I be unceremoniously chugged -- my taste and complexities completely ignored? \nMy name is Brixton. I am a bottle of Upland Wheat and I don't really know what to expect