Back in March, Jen’s dad came for a visit. When we have visitors, we like to plan to do all of the toursity stuff in the area with them. I had wanted to visit Biosphere2, but we just hadn’t gotten around to it. With Jen’s dad it town, it was the perfect time for me to take off work and head on up.  The Biosphere2 is about an hour away from the Foothills, in the desert.

As far as the Biosphere2 goes, I remember hearing about it a lot in the 90s, but basically it was a gigantic failure as an experiment. Currently maintained by the University of Arizona, the Biosphere2 still conducts environmental experiments. They locked a team in for two years and had them live off the produce grown and milk from goats. The team went in for 2 years and really did not have a lot of food because they killed their livestock early on in the experiment. They were all allowed only a small portion of goat milk per day and a diet of basically veggies and grains.  To me, it just seemed like poor planning.  Why not try to do an experiment for a month?  Then six months?  Gauge things that way.  Anyway, just my thoughts.  So here’s some pictures.

Here’s a view of the Biosphere2.

Yours truly in front of the Biosphere2.

This is where the team in the experiment had grown their crops.

This is the Desert Room.  There were different rooms, representing different climate types, ex. rainforest, etc.

The Foxes with the Fox Tail Agave Plant.

This is the saltwater pool. As you can see, there is a reef, but the team kept raising the salt level, thus, killing the reef.

This is from the tour of Alcatraz, you can see the FREE in the emblem. That is from when a Native American group took over Alcatraz.

The Fox Theatre sign in downtown Salinas, CA.

Trail signage at Yosemite National Park.

Signage in Tucson. Fancy neon.

The Fox Theatre in Tucson, funny it’s the same as the Salinas one. Someone must have had the Fox Theatre Sign market cornered.

Missile Silo signage in Tucson, AZ.

The Irish Heather in Vancouver, BC. Good beer too!

Jubilee Signage in Vancouver, BC.

This little gem was also in Vancouver, BC.

The Army & Navy Sign in Vancouver, BC.  Great store with lots of camping goodies.

Probably my favorite sign out of this entire set. SAVE-ON MEATS! Also in Vancouver, BC. Bummed it was under construction.

South Lung Tunnel!  This sign was at the Biosphere 2 in Tucson, AZ.  The Lung is how the air expands and contracts with the heat from the outside.  Basically it’s like a giant tube that is contained in a building.

Here is the bottle of my homebrewed Raspberry Ale.

Here is the bread all ready to go in. I added a little sugar, sprinkled over the bread.

And here is the finished beer bread. It really turned out well. Toasted with a little peanut butter! Amazing!

Here are the sheep in the organic hops fields. They trim it down

They reused 5 gallon kegs as bike lockups.

There’s beer in there.

The only bummer was that they don’t do tastings after the tour. But we did get to taste some fresh wort.

Those garbage cans are full to the brim of hops.

Both of those boilers are 200 barrel boilers.

The hops freezer.

Close up of the hops.

So after the tour we decided to head next door to the bistro to enjoy a sampler and a pizza. The sampler was great because we were able to taste a lot of the smaller batch beers that really don’t get distributed to the East. We really enjoyed the Old Chico and the Beer Camp beer.

Someone is excited. A lot of beer in that sampler.

The pizza was amazing and was shamelessly served with extra parm. We weren’t angry about that.

And a little sample for myself.

All in all it was a great tour. Really great to see how they work and produce so much. We did see all of the bottling and kegging, but that’s not as fun as all of the beer making. I’d definitely recommend a visit.

I guess nothing says “Let’s get down to business” like a ringtone from a guy who beats his girlfriend.