Octopodial Chrome

The Economist reports on the distressing American beer shortage. Hop and barley fields are being ploughed under to grow corn for ethanol (ironically, itself the product of grain fermentation just like beer).

Somebody please stop the madness! Save the beers!

Given a coupon for any drink free, Billy Chasen set about building the most expensive drink possible at Starbucks. He ended up with a 13 shot venti soy hazelnut vanilla cinnamon white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel for $13.76.

Absinthe is legal once more! Hip-hip-hooray!

Charles Bork reviews the history of Western civilisation itself, as reflected in the martini. He’s wrong, though, about the ideal proportions: the very best martini is composed of: 2 oz. dry gin;½ oz. dry vermouth; 2 dashes orange bitters; 1 lemon twist. It should be stirred with lots of ice, not shaken. Any less vermouth and it’s not a martin, but an alcoholic’s cry for help.

Tonight I finished the first beer I brewed after my advanced homebrewer’s course—a beer I brewed back in late July. It was the best beer I’ve ever made: light copper, sweet with a very slight thickness (just enough to give it some body), a bit of an acid bite and some bitterness to more than balance, with some hop nose and a lot of hop flavour. It was excellent for a few months, although to be honest the last few it’s not been that great, although it did clarify nicely. Well, on to the next beer: a Scotch ale made with peat-smoked malt!

On the way home after church on Sunday I stopped off at my local homebrew shop to pick up the ingredients for a Scotch Ale. The folks next to me at the grain mills were a nice young couple looking about college age or slightly older. I ended up in line behind them, and as we were chatting (the store was busier than anyone had ever seen, so there was plenty of time for talk) it turned out that they’d never done an all grain batch before. I and the fellows behind me noted with some surprise that they were about to buy around nine pounds of barley and no extract.

Those of y’all who’ve never brewed before (poor souls!) probably don’t know that there are different levels of brewing one can do. Most folks start out with hopped extracts; these are barley syrups with hops already added—the brewer simply mixes with water, boils and adds some yeast. The next step up is to use unhopped extracts and add hops of one’s choosing. The step after that is to steep ground barley (or other grains) in warm water to extract some desired flavour, then to add extract and hops. This is where a lot of folks end up stopping for awhile, as it requires no extra equipment and is fairly simple. It’s relatively expensive, though (extract isn’t cheap to produce or transport) and doesn’t give one very good control over the final beer.

The most advanced sort of brewing (and that done by almost all commercial breweries) is all-grain brewing. One takes ground grains and mashes & lauters them. Mashing is the process which converts the starches in grain into sugars; lautering is the process of straining the sweet sugar water from the spent grains. Both of these steps require a certain amount of skill and special equipment. One has to calculate the right amount & temperature of water to add in order to raise the grain to a temperature where the right enzymes can go to work and one has to lauter the mash so that the wort is relatively clear.

In effect, this couple was going from buying freeze-dried coffee to green coffee beans—and they didn’t realise it! Fortunately, it’s not that difficult a process, but to leap into unsuspectingly is…mind-boggling. We did our best to give them a brief overview of the process and point them to some good resources and I hope that they were successful, but I fear that they might have had one rotten Sunday evening.

Whilst reading the Wikipedia article about Jägermeister I discovered something I’d never know: the cross between the hart’s antlers is a reference to St. Hubert, a nobleman who neglected the church for hunting until on Good Friday he saw a hart with a cross in its antlers, which spoke to him thus: Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell. He reformed his life, gave his goods to the poor and eventually became a pious bishop.

The poem on the bottles reads thus:

This is the hunter’s badge of honour,
that he protect and nourish his game,
hunt sportingly, as is proper,
and honor the Creator in creation.

It’s odd that a beverage with such Christian packaging has become a favourite of drunkards across the nation. A pity, reall.

I recently discovered these republished versions of classic brewing & distilling texts. This fellow scans in the originals, typesets them appropriately and re-prints them in hardcover. They look just great; I’d really like to get the complete set.

These guys offer kegerators to rent. Where oh where were they when I was in college? What a great business idea, BTW. Wonder if they need some investment capital?

I attended the International Mead Festival last night, my second ever. This year’s was in a different hotel than the last one I’d been to, but it was just as enjoyable as ever. There were meadmakers from across the United States, as well as from Canada, Australia, England and Poland. I’d some wonderful meads, and as I walked back to the room I’d rented for the night I felt that I had broadened my horizons somewhat.

The United States have the highest drinking age in the world. Surely we could spend some time and rectify this situation? I think that the high drinking age is part of the reason we have so many alcohol-abuse issues.

A Canadian study found that giving homeless alcoholics a regular supply of drinks improved their health. They were each given up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day, one an hour from 0700 through to 2200. Participants in the study ended up drinking less than before and were generally healthier, although it should be noted that three died of alcohol-related illnesses during the study (which may have killed them anyway). The programme costs $771 (Canadian) per man-month, but saves $96/man-month in emergency services, $150/man-month in hospital care and $201/man-month in police services, for a total of $447/man-month in savings. So it’s probably not really worth it. Still, an interesting results.

During lunch break I had my C0₂ tank filled; when I got home I was able to keg up both a batch of beer (which is force-carbonating in my fridge at this very moment) and a batch of apple cider (which is naturally fermenting in a closet right now). It’s nice having two kegs on hand.

And on Sunday I think I’ll start another batch of beer; perhaps even purchase another keg.

Today I was at my folks’ house and my mother—not unreasonably—wanted me to clear out some bottles I’d left in their basement æons ago. I get down there, open a box and see some wire cages and corks. Yes, there were some unopened bottles of raspberry cider I’d made either back in high school or in college. We’re talking bottles almost a decade old! I found six, left one at their house as thanks and brought the rest back home. Opened one and it was divine. Sometimes good clean living pays off!

Whilst researching purl, I came upon a list of beer drinks for winter-time, all but one of which are served hot. This is a tradition which needs to be revived. One should note that many of these drinks have reduced alcohol contents due to the heating, and are traditionally served in small cups…

Whilst reading an article about Dickens and the revitalisation of Christmas, I came across a reference to purl, which it calls a hot punch made of beer, ginger, sugar and gin. I immediately grabbed a bottle of Lakefront’s New Grist (incidentally, a sorghum beer brewed for those who avoid gluten—it’s rather sour), tossed it in a pot, added a tablespoon of white sugar & two cloves and shook some ground ginger over it. When it was hot but not quite yet boiling, I took it from the heat, poured in a large mug and tossed in a shot of gin.

I gotta say that those Victorians may have been on to something. There’s a tang which I’d like to avoid, but otherwise this could be the start of something grand. I think my next attempt will leave out the cloves, and possibly toss in some nutmeg.

A Russian blog has an article on how to consume massive quantities of vodka and stay sober, as the Russians do. It boils down to preparation & pacing. On the preparation side, one eats some boiled potatoes and drinks raw eggs & olive oil (an American book of the ’30s recommends a regimen of olive oil for the same reason); this fills the stomach with pure carbohydrates and then coats it with oils, which moderate the absorption of alcohol.

On the pacing side, he recommends only drinking vodka, no beer, wine, water, juice or carbonation. This is because once one has gone into heavy drinking mode, and water will merely strip the protective oil lining in one’s stomach. He also makes a point of eating sour, salty & oily foods. These replenish the protective lining and give the body plenty of the substances it needs to deal with alcohol properly. The third component is constant intellectual conversation; if one is slow or morose then the alcohol clouds one’s mind. Finally, close the evening with some tea and cakes to cap off the stomach and feed a little bit of stimulants in.

Now, this doesn’t so much keep one from being legally drunk (one would still be over the legal limit for driving) as from actually drunk and sotted. All in all, a highly useful guide.

For beer drinking sessions, I recommend a similar regimen, with plenty of greasy, salty foods, e.g. a Reuben with a sideof deep-fried potatoes.

Seeing some pictures taken by Buzz Andersen, I really discovered the Cult of Feuerganzebowle. I really want to do this some year.

I recently purchased a mate (a gourd cup), a bombilla (metal filter-straw) and a supply of yerba mate. Yerba mate is a South American herb used to make a tea which is both stimulating & healthy, similar to but better than green tea. It’s all the rage in Argentina & Brazil, and is becoming popular here in the US. Me, I figure I can use another hobby which involves herbs and specialised hardware—after all, I can’t be smoking a pipe all the time...

The Amazing Still is a room-temperature distillation apparatus which produces ½–1 quart of 40–50% spirit per day. Pretty slick!

The Grey Kangaroo is a charcoal filter designed for alcohol; it is supposed to filter cheap vodka and make it taste like expensive stuff. Somehow I don’t really see it. All I can say is that things have changed since I was in school.

The late Douglas Adams once wrote on whisky:

I love whisky in every way. I love the way it looks in the bottle, that rich golden colour. I love the labels arranged on the shelf—the kilts and claymores and slighly out-of-focus sheep. I love the sense that it's a drink that—unlike, for instance, vodka from Warrington—is rich in the culture and history of the place where it is distilled. I love particularly the smoky, peaty aromas of the single malts. In fact the only thing I don't like about whisky is that if I take the merest sip of the stuff it sends a sharp pain from the back of my left eyeball down to the tip of my right elbow, and I begin to walk in a very special way, bumping into people and snarling at the furniture…

He wrote me once, when I had written him to congratulate him on the birth of his daughter, whom I remember was named something absurd like Polly Rocket Adams or somesuch. The man was an atheist, but a smart fellow otherwise. I do hope that when his heart gave out—at far too early an age—he had enough time to repent sufficiently. The thought of heaven without Adams is nearly unbearable.

Last night I went to my sixth consecutive Great American Beer Festival, for the fourth time with my buddy Russell/Jethro (Russel’s his real name; Jethro is his persona’s name in the SCA); I’ve gone once on my own, and once with my buddy Phil. The festival was a complete blast—lots of excellent beer & lots of beautiful girls. They get prettier every year!

This year the food court was greatly reduced in size, which was a real shame; hopefully next year there’ll be more choice than a standard concession stand and over-priced Old Chicago’s pizza ($7 for a four-slice pan pizza).

As always, the beers impressed. We were able to try some wonderful ones which are completely unavailable here in town. It always saddens me that I can’t walk down the street and get the superb New Glarus beers in Colorado.

Bruichladdich allows members of the public to buy casks of single-malt scotch; they’ll even store it for ten years for free. It's about £800 ($1,415), and yields over 300 bottles—that’s less than $5/bottle. The distillery will bottle it up for you with whatever label you wish. The perfect gift for the man who has everything!