Mike Gray Blog: Barbecue, Catholicism, and Other Interests

  • Brewing a Bell’s Oberon-Style American Wheat Beer with Cultured Yeast from Bottles

    Brewing a Bell’s Oberon-Style American Wheat Beer with Cultured Yeast from Bottles

    To finish off the summer, I decided to brew an American wheat beer in the style of Bell’s Oberon. Oberon is one of my all-time favorite beers. It is cloudy, with a slight tartness, finished off by a respectable hop bitterness. Oberon, and American wheat beers in general, are beers associated with summer. They are…

  • How Best to Raise a Human

    How Best to Raise a Human

    Raising kids is hard work. For all the smiles, laughs, and happy times, there are quite a few tantrums, tears, and confrontations. As a parent, I want my kids to succeed and be happy and healthy independent adults someday. It is often hard to picture the happy and independent adult scenario when a little one…

  • Thoughts on the Arrest of My Parish Pastor for Sex Trafficking

    Thoughts on the Arrest of My Parish Pastor for Sex Trafficking

    Last Tuesday, the pastor of my parish, Fr. Michael Zacharias, was arrested for sex trafficking. He seemed like a nice and normal person. He did not come off as creepy. I knew him casually in the way most active parishioners knew him. Talks in confession, his homilies, questions after Mass. I liked him. In Findlay,…