We Tried It!

By admin

By Colleen McTiernan | Photo by Allison Raber

Interested in brewing your own beer? Love salt lamps and want to take that interest a step further? From halotherapy to home brewing, the Wellness360 team has got you covered!

The Salt Room Experience at The Healing House of Alachua

Designed to take advantage of the therapeutic benefits of salt, salt room therapy (halotherapy) is used to benefit respiratory health and relieve symptoms of various skin disorders. We here at Wellness360 always love trying out new things, so when we heard about the salt room at The Healing House, we knew we had to add it to our list!

Armed with booties to protect our shoes from the salt-covered floor, we walked into the salt room, settled into the antigravity chairs and covered ourselves in cozy blankets. Once we were situated, the halogenerator was turned on and began blowing finely ground salt into the air. We leaned back, relaxed and breathed in the salty air for the 50-minute session. Some of our team members experienced runny noses or coughing, which we were told was indicative that the salt was working to benefit our respiratory system.

In a nutshell: Our first session was definitely a relaxing way to pass the time and we would all be interested in going back again!

Home Brewing

After visiting the local breweries, we decided to try our hand at making beer. We ordered a Vermont Maple Porter Beer Brewing Kit from UncommonGoods and got to work!

After sanitizing our equipment, we used a large pot to start brewing. After steeping our grains and mixing in our malt extract, we realized that the hops were missing from our kit! We put the brewing process on pause and headed to Hoggetowne Ale Works to get our missing ingredient. Once we got the hops into the wort, we let our beer boil for about 60 minutes before letting it cool in an ice bath to get it down to a temperature suitable for the yeast. We then strained the wort into our fermentor, added the yeast and a little bit of water, then let it sit in a cool, dark space to ferment. It did not come out quite as tasty as we hoped, but it was still a fun process!

In a nutshell: We came across some bumps in the road with this project, but it was definitely something we would like to try again. If you are brewing at home, make sure you have everything you need BEFORE you start!