Makin' Lamic (Part 2)

Constant readers of this blog (both of you) will know that I’m a little obsessed lately with sour beer.

Why?  What’s the appeal of beer that’s been intentionally turned bad?

I don’t know, to be honest.  No the other hand, ask your average homebrewer why he wants to brew something topping off at 100 IBUs.

(IBU, for you non-homebrewers out there, is a standard measure of beer bitterness.  It stands for International Bittering Unit, and it’s calculated by measuring the type and amount of hops in beer, how long the hops are boiled for, the conversion rate of the alpha acids in the hops, and a bunch of other stuff you don’t care about.  Put it this way: more hops=higher IBUs=bitter beer.)

Homebrewers, perhaps because commercial brewers were for a long time reluctant to make bitter brews, love highly hopped beer.  Which explains why there are so many homebrew variations on the IPA, a traditionally bitter type of beer.

I am not a fan.  So instead, I guess in a kind of almost teenage-like rebellion, I went the other way, and embraced the sour brews.  Now, I can’t stop.

About a year ago, I wrote here about my attempt to create a homebrewed lambic.  I said it would have to age for at least a year before I could do anything with it.

Well, the year is pretty much up.

Time to bottle?

Not on your life.  But it is time to sample, and the sample tastes amazing!  Perfect acidic bite, perfect weirdly “off” flavor.  Excellent, but not done yet.

Instead, I brewed ANOTHER batch.  Originally, I was just going to brew a 1 gallon mini batch, but that seemed a terrible waste of yeast and bacteria, so I scaled it up to a full 5 gallons.

After a little more than a week of primary fermentation, producing a suitably horrible-tasting very young lambic, I racked off 1 gallon, which I poured into the aforementioned aging lambic.  Then, I racked the remaining new lambic onto cherry puree, which will eventually result in a sour cherry lambic, known as a kriek.

Now what?

Now, I wait.  Lambics, as I’ve said before, take a lot of patience.

Some months down the road, I will bottle these two batches, and let them age more.

In general, time is the enemy of beer.  That’s one of the great things about homebrewing; the beer is fresh, in a way that beer from almost anywhere else isn’t.  Beer tends to lose flavor as it ages, and the other flavors it develops tend to not be very good, resulting in skunky, stale, or at least very bland beers.

There are some exceptions.

Every time I bottle a batch of beer, I put a couple bottles aside, partly to give me a quick visual record of my brewing, and partly so I can revisit certain beers, if the fancy should strike me.  

And recently, I was struck by just such a fancy, grabbing two beers that were more than 2 years old.  One, a doppelbock, had matured beautifully, and tasted much better than I remembered.  The second, a spiced Christmas ale, did not fare so well.  I drank it, but found the experience wholly unsatisfying.

The stronger the beer (from an alcohol point of view), the better it seems to hold up to aging.  And considering the glorious alchemy that occurs in a whiskey barrel as that harsh liquor ages, that makes perfect sense. However, the specific chemical reactions the go in the bottle (or in the carboy in my case) involve the complex reactions of various chemicals, oxidation rates, temperature, and the whole process is pretty poorly understood.  Poorly understood by me, anyway. But from my experience, the doppelbock, at 8% abv, was a perfect candidate for aging (which makes me regret drinking all the rest within the first month).  Stronger beers, like barleywines and Belgian Trappist ales (both of which I’m planning on brewing this year) are also perfect candidates for long-term aging.

And so are sour beers, regardless of strength.  After all, one of the great dangers of letting beer (especially unfiltered homebrew) sit too long is that it might turn sour.  Sour beers can’t turn sour.  And they can’t lose their hoppy bitterness (you can lose something you don’t have).  The kriek I’m making will probably start to lose its cherry taste, but that’s by design.  The cherry taste is supposed to slip into the background, providing just enough fruit taste to balance the sour tang.

So wait, I hear you say, you’re brewing 10 gallons of sour beer, and are planning 5 gallon batches of two high-alcohol beers that will require extended aging…so what are you going to drink in the meantime?

What do you mean?  That's just two bottles....

It’s a fair question.  But brewing requires patience.  And sometimes this homebrewer even 

demonstrates the necessary level of patience.  But not often.

After all, how will I know when the beer is ready, unless I’m constantly taste-testing?

Yes, it’s a burden, but somehow, I’ll survive.

Of Wool And Wort

My wife recently celebrated her birthday and immediately took up knitting. 

I really thought I had another 30 years before the mandatory knitting clause in our marriage kicked in.

The truth is, I can’t make fun of knitting.

I mean, I could.  It would be ridiculously easy.  Easier than learning to knit.

But I can’t, because knitting is exactly like homebrewing.

I know, that surprised me, too.  Ever try drinking a wool sweater?

Well, my wife started out very simply, just some yarn (apparently, it’s called a skein, which sounds like something you should see your doctor about) and two sticks.  (They’re called “needles,” but don’t be fooled; they’re not.)  She figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to learn the basics, considering how many books have been written, or the number of websites dedicated to knitting (and not one of them is Pinterest, which I still can’t believe), plus Youtube videos, and the ever-helpful experts at yarn stores.  

So, how easy was it?

As easy as learning to make beer, which is to say, pretty easy, until it dawns on you that you have no idea what you’re doing and no one actually wants to help you learn.

The problem, it seemed, was that nothing was geared toward teaching the beginner anything beyond the very basics.  For example, one book on knitting actually contained the following: on the first page, it nicely listed and illustrated most of the essential knitting equipment, a quick glossary of common terms, and some other genuinely useful information.  On the very next page were detailed technical instructions on how to design a sweater.

Couldn’t start off with a decent scarf pattern, could you?

And as for the helpful online videos, I watched a couple with her, and they all reminded me of a Staples commercial.  Some woman performed a sleight of hand magic trick with yarn while saying, "Isn't this easy?" over and over again.

And when she went to the local yarn store, the incredibly unhelpful woman (always women in yarn stores, for some reason) seemed to make of point of making her feel like a complete idiot.

But my wife bravely soldiered on, figuring out how to “cast on” (sounds like a leisurely afternoon spent on a lake with a fishing pole, but it’s not), learning a simple stitch, and producing a scarf.  And what did she get for her hard work?  People helpfully telling her she should have used different yarn.

You know, that might have been more helpful at some early point in the process, like when she was buying the freakin’ yarn!

But it turned out to be an adorable scarf, which my daughter loves, and as a bonus my wife made a matching scarf for her doll, Molly.

And she made it herself, and feels rightly proud of my work.  And will rightly punch anyone in the face who criticizes it.

And who wouldn't be excited by a RAINBOW scarf?

Which reminds me of learning to brew, of buying a basic kit and picking up my first how-to book.  The kit made it seem pretty easy: mix some stuff in here, let it sit for a week, bottle and enjoy.  Which explains why my first batch was so terrible.  The how-to book (and almost every book I've read thereafter) started off explaining how to brew from just simple extracts, but then, on the very next page, explained that nobody but the most incompetent brewers used extracts and I should start by bringing my 6 gallon mash kettle up to 150 degrees.  

(To which I thought: What’s a mash kettle?)

I made my first trip to a homebrew store and the guy there (always a guy in the homebrew store, for some reason) started asking if I needed things I’d never even heard of, like wort chillers and carboys.  What’s a carboy?  I just want to make a beer!  What strain of yeast do I want?  How the hell should I know?

So here we have knitters and homebrews, cousins in insanely steep learning curves.  In both cases, you have a hobby, something meant to be relaxing, fun, a chance to meet people with similar interests to you, made absolutely obtuse and frustrating by what can only be described as a willful attempt to PREVENT newcomers from getting any kind of useful information.  I can only conclude that this is some conspiracy to keep people from actually becoming knitters/homebrewers.  

What the hell?

Not pictured: Anything helpful.

Guess what?  This is not the 18^th century, anymore.  Knitting and homebrewing are not necessary to the functioning of our society.  Nor is there any need for secretive guilds to protect the hidden knowledge of our ancestors.  Seriously, this is the 21^st century. I can go buy a sweater made by a machine for a tenth of the cost of just the yarn it will take a knit one, and I can buy a six-pack of beer fermented in a vat bigger than my house in most gas stations for under 10 bucks.

I homebrew because I enjoy it.  No thanks to the secretive gatekeepers who tried to hide their knowledge from me.  Was it some kind of test, to see if I was good enough to be considered a real homebrewer?  To see if I could get my malt to convert starch into sugar?

Who cares?  This is supposed to be relaxing!

Which is why my wife and I are going to open a knitting and homebrewing store, geared specifically toward novices and beginners.  

I’m thinking of calling it the “We’re Not Assholes Emporium.”

"What Difference Does It Make?"

(Catchy title, don’t you think?)

I came home from work the other day to be greeted by my daughter asking to play with her and her American Girl doll, Molly.

“Ok, Molly’s the baby, and you can be her Mommy.”

“Wait a minute, why can’t I be her Daddy?  I’m better at being Daddy.”

My daughter threw up her arms in frustration and said, “Dad!  What difference does it make?”

A good point.  What difference DOES it make?                                  

Which got me thinking about socialized gender roles.

As we all know, girls like princesses and ponies, boys like pirates and trains, moms take care of babies, dads go to work, usually in suits.

This is, right off the bat, complete nonsense.

So where did that come from?

There is a general sense that girls are just made one way and boys another.  But in fact, gender roles are created and passed on by society, and they have absolutely nothing to do with the chromosomal sex of the person.  We created them over time, passed on perceptions of gender differences, most of which were originally based on cultural or logical fallacies, and have evolved through the decades, even centuries, often in direct opposition to the evolution of mainstream social thought around adult gender roles.

In other words, we still tell young girls they can’t play with dinosaurs, they have to play with dolls, maybe not in so many words, but the message is there.  But we also tell them they can be anything they want to be when they grow up.  Why can’t they be anything they want to be right now?!

Future Doll President of the Doll United States, Molly, with Secretary of State Fancy Nancy.

 

And how often do we still tell ourselves, “But boys are different from girls”?

Well, yes, obviously, but boys are also different from other boys, and girls different from other girls, and most of the differences between them are borne not from biological differences, but from the differences we insert, most often sub-consciously, into their being.

Are boys different from girls?  Less than you think.  And even taking into account the few biological differences that do exist, including differences in basic chemistry (hormones, for instance), in very 

young children, those differences are virtually non-existent.

But the stereotypes live on.  And we play directly into them in every decision we make as parents, right down to the color baby blanket they are wrapped into as infants.

And as parents, my wife and I have tried very hard to shield our daughter from these stereotypes.  I think, to some degree, we’ve succeeded.  Here is a list, in no particular order, of things my daughter loves:

Princesses (especially Disney)

Rainbows

Trains                                            

Dinosaurs

Legos

We’ve done a good job.  But as soon as she started school, I started hearing things like, “Pirates are for boys, princesses are for girls.”  The social stereotypes seeped into her life at the very moment she started making new friends, and the way the children interact with each other serves as a kind of stereotyping filter, helping to form the stereotypes in each child's mind.  Even now, when she tells me about her invisible ninja friends, the girl ninjas are much nicer than the boy ninjas.  

Gender stereotypes permeate our society; they cannot be avoided, and, truth be told, they do serve a purpose in encouraging children to understand the biological differences between boys and girls without adults having to actually explain those differences, or the biological purpose of those differences (ahem).  Long before needing to learn the birds and the bees, they learn the difference between girl ninjas and boy ninjas.

So, to go back to my daughter’s original point, what difference does it make?

In that case, I guess, none, and that’s kind of the point.  To her, it didn’t matter if I was the Mommy, or if I was the Daddy, because both Mommy and Daddy can care for Molly.  Two points for Team Parenting.

But it DOES make a difference if we ever forget that these gender roles are just what the name implies: roles that we play.

If she had said no, I needed to be Mommy, because Mommys look after Mollys, that would have been a expression of a stereotypical gender role, which says women have the maternal instinct, or what I've lately heard called “Mommy Intuition,” necessary to care for children.  That’s a role, no different from an actor reciting his lines.  We can play those roles, but in addition, like a good understudy, we can also learn other roles.  The only damage from playing one of these gender roles comes when we put forward those roles, those pre-determined arbitrary bits of dialogue, as reality in and of themselves.

We are not the gender roles that society wants us to play, and we can all learn a great deal by looking beyond those roles, by learning some of lines from our fellow actors.

As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”

Yeah, that’s right I just ended this blog with a quote from Shakespeare. 

Take THAT, ninth grade English teacher!

To Keep and Bear Death Stars

I read recently about how the current administration has no plans to build a Death Star.

 

 

This is of course ridiculous.

 

 

The Death Star is EXACTLY the kind of project we need to be working on in this country. It's big; it will employ lots of people, from engineers to programmers, to construction works, to insurance adjusters, to maintenance droids. You know, the unemployement rate among maintenance droids remains significantly above the average national unemployment rate. This would be a major job creator.

 

 

And as far as investing in our military and creating a lasting peace, there can be no better deterrent to outside attack that a Death Star! Sure, it may be vulnerable to a rag-tag bunch of rebels, but just don't deploy it in an area where you are facing said rebels.

 

 

Well, if the government is "not interested in blowing up planets," I will clearly have to do this myself. It shouldn't be too hard. Maybe I can't build a full-scale moon-sized version, but a more modest version should be easy enough to construct. After all, the technology already exists. Most of the R&D stuff is out of the way. I just need to strap those lasers on my car, and boom!  Instant Instellar Assault Prius.

 

Artist's Conception

Now, you're probably thinking that the ability to destroy entire planets is a) nothing compared to the awesome power of the Force, and b) probably illegal.

 

 

I'll grant you the first part, but as for the second, I dare you to confiscate my Death Star!

 

 

According to the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the founding document of this great nation, I have an unlimited right to "keep and bear arms." It does not ever qualify the words "arms," so I believe I am free to interpret it any way I want. And I want a Death Star!

 

 

I can already hear you bleeding heart liberals, trying to take away my Freedom. (That's what I'm going to name my instellar assault Prius: Freedom!)

 

 

Oh sure, you can point out that the Second Amendment actually references the need to maintain a well-regulated militia for the national defense, that it was written at a time when we had no standing army, and relied on local militias, members of which needed to provide their own firearms, and when no nation had successfully transitioned from a monarchy to a free Republic so the threat of someone attempting to seize power from the fledgling government was real and immediate.

 

 

You could point out that those circumstances no longer exist today, that we have a professional standing army, that our government provides weapons for that army (and for most of the other armies in the world, too, for that matter), and that our democracy has stood up to challenge after challenge and remains one of the strongest and most robust national governments in the world.

 

 

I suppose you could even point out that when the second amendment was written, the most devastating weapon at their disposal was a cannon, and most armies fought with single-shot muskets that required considerable time to reload, and were accurate only at point-blank range, assuming they didn't just explode in your hands. That the idea of Death Stars capable to shooting lasers as hot as the Sun never even crossed the minds of our Founding Fathers, nor tanks, nor fighter planes, nor rocket launchers, nor fully automatic rifles, nor semi-automatic rifles, nor high capacity ammunition magazines, nor automatic pistols, nor really any of the monstrous agents of death you tree huggers are always complaining about.

 

 

And, honestly, you'd have a point.

 

 

But, too bad!

 

What, are we to look at the Second Amendment as an antique, a relic from a by-gone time that is no longer relevant to the situation that we as a society find ourselves in? Should we seek a new Constitutional Amendment, to help strengthen the freedoms we want strengthened, while also creating a safer world for our children.  Should we be concentrating on the enormous amount of common ground between our views, more clearly defining the terms of the social contract on which this country was founded, rather than just falling back into our stereotypical roles, ensuring that nothing will be resolved?

That's just what Stalin would have wanted! That's just what a Fascist would say!

 

 

I want my Death Star, and you, with your common sense, your rational approach to difficult problems, your understanding of the actual original intend of our Founders, your insistence on living in the 21st century instead of the 18th, you can't stop me. 

 

Because in MY world, the Constitution gives me unlimited power to have any weapon I want, because having the capacity to kill anyone at any time is what's known around here as the American Way!  And you can take my lightsaber when you pry it from my cold, robotic hand! 

 

(This blog paid for by the National Death Star Association.)

5 New Years Resolution (I have no intention of keeping)

I gave up on resolutions a long time ago, and yet every year I think maybe this is the year, the chance to make some kind of meaningful change based on my spur of the moment, half-inebriated decisions!  Because nothing can go wrong there!

That's the weight of my shame...

So here we go, five New Years Resolution that I will completely fail to keep.

1  Work Less:

Yeah, who doesn’t resolve to work less?

But the fact is, I am very lucky in the way I have been able to afford to balance my work and my family.  I have, quite be accident, ended up in a career that prizes working odd hours, and I am in a role that lets me set my own schedule, within certain limits.  Those limits are known as holidays and weekends, or, as we in the retail/customer service world call them, “work days.”

But those are also the days I want to spend with my wife and daughter, so I’d like to resolve to work fewer holidays and weekends (and holiday weekends, for that matter).

Of course, that’s never gonna happen.  At least, not without a major career change.  I do, after all, have a mortgage to pay. 

And speaking of career changes and things that won’t happen this year, I also resolve to:

2  Open a Distillery:

Reed Distillery, Makers of Fine Rums and Whiskeys, Founded 2013.

Nice ring to it, don’t you think?

I’ll bet you thought I was going to say brewery?  You know, since I’m a homebrew dad, love beer, and all that?

And you’d be wrong.

I mean, you’d be right, if someone came up to me and said, “Hey Dave, wanna help me start a brewery?” and I knew for an absolute fact this hypothetical person wasn’t insane, I’d jump at the chance.

But give me the choice of just one job I’d like to do for the rest of my life, and making whiskey is at the top of that list.

And though I’m not a fan of most rums, rum distilling was perfected, if not invented, in New England in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and I’m never one to turn my back on history.

High quality, small batch rum and whiskey…

It has the potential for being very profitable, and also the potential of crashing and burning faster than Susan Rice’s cabinet nomination (too soon?).

And as I mentioned, I have a mortgage to pay.

Maybe next year.

In the meantime, I’ll amuse myself by resolving to

3  Blog More Often:

Ha!

I’m writing about New Years Resolutions more than a week after New Years.

Yeah, well, let’s be honest.  You're off your diet, too.

And speaking of achieving the impossible, I resolve to

4  Be More Patient:

Confession time.  Being a parent isn’t always easy.

Ok, it isn’t ever easy.

In fact, it’s daunting, scary, and just plain hard.

I write in this blog about the best moments of parenting:  the hugs, the moments of toddler brilliance, the cute stuff.  I usually leave out the baffling, frustrating, irrational, white-hair inducing moments.  Not out of any kind of censorship, or because I’m trying to shield you from my true evil nature, I just don’t think you want to hear about that stuff.

But I admit, sometimes I lose my temper.

When I do get mad, I usually manage (eventually) to take a few deep breaths, and realize that this isn’t much to get mad about.  There are usually other ways of dealing with the situation, and if I just stay calm, everything will be fine.  And even if everything isn’t fine, as long as no one gets hurt, no harm done.

So I fully intend that this year will be the year of the calmer, more collected, quieter—

ELLA!  GET DOWN FROM THERE THIS INSTANT!  YOU HEARD ME, GET DOWN!  HOW DID YOU EVEN GET UP THERE?  DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!  PUT DOWN THAT POODLE!  THAT’S IT, YOUNG LADY, YOU ARE IN TROUBLE!!

Um…let’s just skip to the next one.

5  Save the Planet:

I almost didn’t put this one on the list, because I really intend to do it.  The only problem is, I’m going to fail.

I’m not Superman.  I mean, I do have super powers, if driving my wife crazy can be considered a super power, but even Superman couldn’t fix global warming all on his own.  He’d at least need Aquaman’s help.

But I’m doing what I can.  Getting solar panels, driving a Prius, making our house so efficient that we get an Energy Star logo painted on the side.  But by myself, that means almost nothing.

I just came home from a Town Meeting where all the other residents of my town voted to keep solar farms out of residential neighborhoods, because they’re concerned that their property values will go down.  Ok, so you don’t want to cut down trees to put in solar panels.   I get that.  Trees are pretty.  But hey, you know where the trees have already been cut down?  Right where your house is!  How about we clear out a couple of housing developments and build a solar farm there! 

Fortunately, their property values are safe, at least until global warming turns this whole state into a Mad Max-like hellscape, which I can only hope will be ruled over by badass motorcycle gangs with huge mohawks, because at least those are guys you can reason with. 

We got into this mess by acting as a single force of nature on this planet, and we all need to get together and act as a single force of nature to help this planet.  We build more and more houses, which use more electricity, which comes from coal-burning power plants, and everyone’s cool with that.  But harnessing the sun to offset the mercury- and CO2-spewing power plants?  Well, now, hang on.  Maybe we should think about this for a year or two before we do anything about it.

Except a year is too long.  Even this year is too late.  We needed to do something a decade ago.  And we didn’t.  You need to help me save the planet.  This year.  Now.

Why?  Because all your stuff is here.

I want to see a world of more efficient cars, electric cars, solar panels on every roof, windmills in every yard, compact fluorescent bulbs in ever socket.  We could generate all the electricity we need without burning a single lump of coal.  We can totally do this.  Turn off the TV, have dinner my candelight once in a while, buy less crap we don't need, throw out less crap that could still be useful, even to someone else.  All we lack is the inability to see beyond our own front yard. 

The world is a big and beautiful place, and you’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Wow, I’m really getting kind of wound up here.   Maybe I should have just resolved to lose some weight.

Finally, I did make one resolution for the year, or at least one wish for the new year, which I intend to keep and I hope all of you reading this will keep it as well, which is this:

I resolve to be here, happy and healthy, at the end of the year, and I hope that all of you will be here with me.

Happy 2013!

P.S. Build a snowman.