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Home Brewing

“Everyone who uses plastic fermenters has pushed the o-ring through the top and into the filled fermenter at least once. Don’t worry, your beer will be fine. Keep an extra o-ring handy for the next time.”

– From the “n00b” thread on Homebrewtalk.com

I really don’t need one more hobby; it’s not as if I am looking for things to do. I am backlogged everywhere in my life, from work to personal writing to Sandy’s Christmas present (a jumper cloned from a favorite old jumper of hers) to, I don’t know, STUFF and THINGS and EMAIL and READING and WHATEVAH.

But for over a month I’ve been mooning over the basic homebrew kits at Homebrew Den, Tallahassee’s homebrewing store. I didn’t really know why. I’ve always liked good beer, but we have a lot of that in Tallahassee. It’s not as if I have ever seen myself as Free Range Brewgal.

But I kept mooning and thinking about it. With a couple of small checks that floated in I felt it was ok to treat myself, so yesterday I  supported the local economy by taking home a kit of beermaking geegaws and a nice box mix (though that’s not what they call it) for a beer called 3 in a Bed Bitters, which reminded me of some of the great brews I drank in last fall’s visit to Oz.

Sandy was out of town, so this project became my Saturday night. I cooked and stirred and strained and sanitized and poured. (See the routine on Flickr.) It was largely relaxing (except for dropping the o-ring into the wort), somewhere between jam-making and sewing. Lots of attention to detail, lots of little steps.

Like writing, the payoff is slow and iffy (though I suspect it’s easier to make drinkable beer than get published). Like most skills and hobbies, it has its own special language, with new words such as wort (the liquid made from cooking malted barley, water, and other ingredients such as hops and flavorings) and words with new meaning such as pitch (the action of adding yeast to the wort).

Then on Sunday, between writing and some work-stuff and laundry and groceries and the cat-box, I browsed some more through The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, and on homebrewtalk.com got a little acquainted with the homebrewing community, whose denizens share recipes left and right, swap sanitation tips, and work hard to be welcoming to newbies.

The homebrewing n00bs, in turn, have strangely similar experiences with home brewing. We all seem to drop the grommet in the wort. We all agonize that we didn’t sanitize well enough. We all worry that our beer is not working its mysterious magic off there in the dark corner where we have stowed our five gallons of hope.  Even the anxiety is comforting in its universality, and the typical response is RDWHAHB — “Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Home Brew.”

(The worst that could happen is I have five gallons of liquid to pour down the sink. Whereas my IRAs… well, let’s not talk about that.)

The part I like the most, at this point, is that homebrewing is different.  It’s a break from the rest of my life — not work, writing, family, cats, Publix, laundry-folding, exercising, or WHATEVAH. But it’s also an easily-compartmentalized break, one I can plunge into on a Saturday night, and it’s highly accessible; you don’t need thousands of dollars or years of study or many painful hours staring at a monitor just to get in the door.

(It’s also a very male craft — I was greeted with an enthusiastic “Hi, Bro!” when I introduced myself on the beginner’s board — and I really don’t get that, since homebrewing feels so haimisch. But overall they seem to be pleasant enough guys, and I can think of worse things to call me than Bro.)

Plus, I realized, since I can cook, bake, sew, and garden, if I add “brew beer,” and throw in a goatherd or two (surely weaving and cheesemaking would be achievable), then Sandy and I can move off the grid and become Feral Women.

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“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” — Proverbs 29:18

About a year ago I stated quite firmly that I don’t do professional goals.

But before I launch into that, I’m aware I’ve been relatively quiet here. My bloggy silence is due to a combination of bad stress and good stress that has eaten into my personal writing time. I’ve been working hard to be more of a presence in my family life and get some other stuff done, and for me, writing happens when my mind is clear and I can devote several quiet, sustained hours of concentration on nothing but the words on the page.

Instead my brain constantly natters, “Hey, think about THIS, no think about THAT, but what about THIS, and then about THAT…” In my one recent writing session, after three hours of listening to that bloviating gush  of random thoughts I gave up and wrote email to old writing buddies.  Not a bad thing to do, actually.

The bad stress is that Sandy is no longer the pastor at her church; she will be consulting while she looks for a settled or permanent position.

I won’t go into details here now or any time in the future, but stuff happens. Sandy has had great church jobs before and she’ll have them again. She’s back “in search,” as they say in her denomination, where her profile is distributed to the regions she has identified (with my involvement and approval).

Yes, that does mean we’ll eventually pack up our troubles in an old kit bag. We have our health and one another, not to mention our ever-amusing cats, and even, in an amazing sign of God’s goodness, naturally curly hair.

I can’t discuss the good stress just yet, but it’s good many times over.

So. Goals.

I still believe that there are few people more annoying or patently false than the strivers living in the future tense, “always thinking about how they are going to get to the job that puts the right title on their door.”

But I think my anti-goals-ism of a year back was an artifact of one ghastly experience. Since then, I’ve been blessed to work with a group of people who aren’t climbing over one another to put Shiny Job Titles on their doors. Nonetheless do think quite naturally about the direction of their careers, the skills they acquire, and the positions they seek to hold, even when that direction is heavily influenced by the desire to stay where they are and do the very best they can do, and become the best they can be, for Their Place Of Work.

(If there can be an MPOW and a YPOW and even an FPOW [where F = Former], then TPOW is valid, as well.)

I also still strongly believe in balance. I tune out the people who want to tell me how many hours they put into their job. They don’t have to tell me; I’m sure their family members have kept careful track for them.

I recall an administrator at a FPOW who misted up when she remembered the good old days under a former director, where they’d stay up until 1 a.m. on a project. I also remember the snide response from someone who had to participate in those sessions and whose spouse was none too amused. They were never on some truly significant project; they were simply performing in an all-emergency all-the-time mode.

But I have also noticed that in the past few months I have looked at certain projects and been so bold as to muse, “I could do that.” Or even, “I SHOULD be doing that.” I’ve allowed myself to remember with pleasure some of the best professional challenges of my career, some of the Manhattan Projects that involved a certain amount of insanity and messianic belief to bring to fruition.  Partly through my mentee, I’ve gotten in touch again with my Inner Administrator.

Once life settles down a little bit, I’ll resume writing at five miles per hour. (The writing workshop is crucial during this fallow period. It might seem like a distraction to read “other people’s work,” but to dig down deep into a manuscript is its own little mini-class, and yes, it also counts as reading. Since I’m obliged to participate — I started the damn workshop, after all — my brain calms down and cooperates long enough to let me do my share of effort.)

But I’ve let myself dream myself into the future, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

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“At other conferences I’ve attended, I’ve had many moments–including during actual presentations–when all I’ve wanted was to get online to check my email and feeds. Not today.”– Joshua Neff, from The Goblin in the Library, reporting on his experiences at Library Camp Kansas

I know there was one a year ago in Niceville, and it sounds as if that was a splendid start. (How could anything go wrong in Niceville?) But I could also see a conference that’s slightly looser in its format: fewer speakers, or at least less pre-planned SDL (that is, “sit down and listen”), with more breakout sessions selected earlier in the day and even prior to the conference.

I see a lot of topics at these unconferences, from customer service, gaming, and web 2.0 to improving the circulation experience. I would like to see at least one very geeky track — like “trickle-up standards,” “How to UnFUBAR FRBR,” “open data knowledgebases,” or “Metasearch that doesn’t suck” — or even a strategic session, such as “How to sell open source to your boss” — but really, if someone can just get me hands-on with a Wii I would consider it an event worth attending.

Of course, maybe other local folks are thinking along the same lines. (If you think I’m looking at you, you’re right.) Yes, it’s a ghastly budget year. But that makes it a superb year for regional unconferences — the ultimate stone soup of event-planning.

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I’m not really driving a hybrid (not that I would object if Santa put a forest-green Prius in my stocking this year); I still have my 1993 Honda Civic, which gets a respectable mileage for its 4-mile commute to my office. So the title of this post is a metaphor for how I’m approaching Lent this year.

Usually I stop doing something for Lent. (Quick synopsis of this season: According to the Scripture, Jesus went into the desert. The Devil sought to tempt Jesus with worldliness, but Jesus, thrice, resisted. He came out of the desert, got whacked, and three days later rose from the dead. Notice how there are no bunnies in this story.)

My own Lents of previous years have been fairly typical. For 40 days (less a few slip-ups), I deny myself that “thing” — fat, carbohydrates, refined sugar, whatever. Then I observe the Passion of Christ, celebrate His rising, and resume my regular habits.

But Jesus didn’t go into the wilderness to take off a few pounds. He was looking for other things, such as introspection, education, and — most crucially — transformation.

This Lent I’m not looking for a quick diet or for presto abnegation. My goal this Lent is to move farther down the food chain, and closer to our local growers. I want to connect with the miracle of the food cycle right here in the Big Bend region. I want to understand where my food comes from. I want to talk to the people who grow my food. I want to know that what nourishes me supports my neighbor.

I’m not on some “test” where I do or do not “cheat.” Some days are easier than others, and travel is always tough. But I’m trying to avoid refined flour and sugar, and I’m also trying to embrace local markets, local foods, local farms, regional, seasonal products, and in general become more aware of and sensitive to the consequences of how we produce food in America. I’m trying to avoid CAFO meat and dairy, but also to embrace meat, eggs, and cheese from happy animals. I’m asking why I need to buy fruit from Peru or California when I live in an area with its own fabulous produce, and I’m also trying to understand what food should be available at this time of year — not just what we force into availability. As some of my favorite food writers have discussed, I’m trying to be a better omnivore.

Some things are easier than others. The bowls of office candy were hugely tempting for several weeks. Now I look at them and see high-fructose corn syrup and preservatives — basically, government-subsidized garbage. I already fight the tubbiness common to aging office workers; the nervous office nibbling needed to stop anyway. The more I read about our broken food system, the more repelled I am by commodity meat and dairy; I see those poor animals packed shoulder-to-shoulder in feed lots, forced to eat unnatural foods, and I don’t want to be part of that misery. I go to the market and bring home white eggplant and Vidalia onion greens grown in local farms, and my mouth waters all day as I think about how I’m going to cook them.

In a season associated with denial, I’m looking for transformation from a baby lettuce leaf. From a ruddy, hand-hefty tomato. From a sweet, crisp oyster.

Recommended reading: Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation.

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10:23 AM Tuesday, Aug 7: 

For those keeping track, our van has so far driven 9,024 miles since we left home. We passed the 9,000 mark yesterday, 13 miles west of Cody, WY. This is the 42^nd day of our trip. We have 13 days left to go.

I can’t believe I’m in a hotel in Wyoming. Wyoming! To me it seems so far away and unlikely, it’s almost like being on Mars, except with cowboys. We went to an old-fashioned photo place in Jackson Hole, WY a couple days ago and had this photo taken:



Look at Lucy and Zoe's faces in particular. Don't they look like they'd shoot you as soon as look at you?

Not a lot of bookstores since my last update—not only because there aren’t a lot of antelope, rattle snakes, or bears who care for YA literature, but also (okay, mostly) because I didn’t schedule much for this leg of the trip—I wanted to make sure we enjoyed the national parks and cool cowboy stuff while putting some miles behind us.

Let’s catch up.

BURNING UP IN LAKE TAHOE, CA

When we got to Lake Tahoe, Evan still wasn’t feeling very well. Thankfully a very generous friend, Michael Zifcak, had let us use his condo in Tahoe for a couple of nights so we had a little time to rest and let Evan get back on his feet. (Thanks, Michael!) But the first night, he had a fever of 103.5 F so we ended up taking him to the local urgent care clinic. The doctor said he just had a virus and that the only thing to do was to let him ride it out. Almost immediately, Evan had a miraculous recovery. I’m not sure why, but there you are. He’s been fine, fine, fine ever since (and that was almost a week ago), and we were able to enjoy beautiful Lake Tahoe. We only wished we had more time there.



Here I am at Neighbors Bookstore, a local independent, with bookseller Sue Ottman. Support your local independents! :-)


A LONG DRIVE THROUGH A WHOLE LOTTA NOTHING

...Then back eastward through Nevada, heading toward Idaho. One thing that has impressed me as we’ve driven through the western half of this country is how much nothing there is. You can drive for hours and hours and only come across maybe one little town made up of a gas station and a couple of trailers. Really.


We drove through Carson City, the capital of Nevada, and were surprised by how little the state legislature building was. To my eye, it looked only a tad larger than your standard McMansion. It was tiny! We’ve seen a lot of state capital buildings on this trip, but this one warranted a photo. These are not big government fans...


OREGON (SORT OF)

I hadn’t realized we were going to go through Oregon, but there it was. We ended up cutting through the southwest corner—which was another long stretch of nothing. But it counted as a state! I think that brings us up to a total of 37 for the trip??




OUR OWN PRIVATE IDAHO



I didn’t know much of anything about the state except for the B52’s song and the movie Napoleon Dynamite. But the truth is, Idaho sneaks up on you. The drive from the Oregon border to Boise is one of the most stunningly beautiful that we’ve had the whole trip. Farmland, green hills, lovely countryside, lakes, clear blue skies and beautiful, sunny weather, which I’m told they have almost every day. I’m not surprised why so many Californians are moving out there. 

We stayed with our friends Glenda and Bill, who live in Meridian just outside of Boise. We met them in Alaska last year in a hot tub (along with their daughter Melissa and their son-in-law Leighton—who are off somewhere eating Swiss chocolates in the Alps now), and they invited us to visit them sometime. Well, here we were! :-) They fed us and gave us comfortable places to sleep. After breakfast in the morning, we met their brother-in-law Tony and the kids got to jump in a trampoline. Thanks so much for your kindness, Glenda and Bill! See you in Boston sometime soon! 


WYOMING

Wyoming made a dramatic entrance. The pictures can’t do it justice, but here they are:



MOSEYING THROUGH JACKSON HOLE

Here’s Karen…

KAREN: Jackson Hole is a cowboy village just south of Grand Teton National Park. I loved it. My favorite part was the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, which was packed with cowboys, drinking, and two-stepping. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us in with three children. (Note to self: Come back another time without children!)



GROPING OUR WAY THROUGH THE GRAND TETONS

KAREN: We left Jackson Hole and spent the next fifty miles driving slowly in the dark trying not to hit any large animals who might suddenly leap into the road. There were bright blinking signs everywhere warning us about frequent fatal collisions with wandering elk and buffalo! Nice relaxing ride!

EVAN: We ended up getting to Teton National Park at 11PM and we went to a park ranger and asked him where the cabins were. The park ranger said all the cabins were full. We protested because we had a confirmed reservation. (MARK: This is true!). The ranger said sorry but we could still camp. And so at midnight my mom and dad set up the tent by the headlights of the car. The next morning when we were ready to leave we tried to turn on the car but the car battery was dead! And so we had to get the park rangers to get a truck to jump-start our battery.




AVOIDING GETTING EATEN OR GORED IN YELLOWSTONE PARK



Zoe will now describe Yellowstone Park. Note: She did this in English, so no words were changed:

ZOE: I saw a lot of buffalos and I couldn’t stop looking at them. I saw a buffalo that was in the water and it swam all across to the other side. I saw tons of buffalos and I saw just right now some cows (MARK’s comment: She means now, two days after Yellowstone Park, because we’re now driving through central Wyoming now as she’s talking and I’m typing) but not a lot of cows, just a teeny bit. And we were about to see wolves (MARK’s comment: She’s talking about Yellowstone again) but we couldn’t because we needed special binoculars ‘cause they’re far, far away. And we went in a bridge where we could see a bunch of volcanoes (MARK: Not really—they were steaming geysers with very hot springs and bubbling mud) and they were really, really stinky (MARK: from the sulphur) and we couldn’t touch them because they were lava and they were hot and if you touch them that would be weird.





Camping in Yellowstone was quite the experience...

MARK’S VERSION: Karen was very nervous about sleeping in a tent in bear country. Who can blame her, right? There were signs on every corner warning about bear safety. But Karen was way nervous. I mean way. She kept jumping at the slightest sound. And then at 4:30 A.M. she woke me up by pounding hard on my chest several times and then whispering urgently in my ear that she’d heard some kid in a nearby tenting screaming and that there was a bear outside. Now, it’s possible that there was. I don’t know. But in the morning I asked the nearby campers and nobody knew anything about it. But there I was at 4:30 in the morning, wide awake and freezing in my underwear wondering what the heck I was supposed to do about the possible bear outside our tent.

Still, she’s cute so we’ll keep her.

KAREN’S VERSION: Ok, I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to sleep with bears (especially after hearing about how some kid in Utah was pulled out of his tent by a bear a few weeks ago!). So, here I find myself putting up a tent at MIDNIGHT in the middle of bear territory…which I was constantly reminded of as I saw warnings (don’t leave food for bears, every year people are attacked by bears etc..) posted at the camp entrance, the women’s bathroom etc! On top of that, I got lost in the pitch darkness trying to find our tent…lovely. Night one without sleep. Then the next night we camped in Yellowstone and I decided not to be a wus and go with the wildlife adventure.Yeah right! Not only were there signs warning about bears everywhere, there were signs warning about getiing gored by buffalo too!! Mark thinks I’m insane, but YES, I did hear a bear growl in the middle of the night which scared the @#$% out of me!! Granted, it might not have been close by, but I heard it loud and clear! I had to pee very badly all night long, but there was no way I was leaving the tent! Later I heard a child screaming insanely (maybe he saw something, maybe the bear I heard? ….he is probably ok, but I know a kids cry and a kids scream of fear!!) Enough said, I woke up Mark and was completely panicked! But really, what can one do at 5 am in a national park, there is no where to go except to meet more bears and buffalo which come out especially at dawn! Night two no sleep. I loved Yellowstone during the day, but I think I’ll take a break from camping for awhile!





GOING NATIVE

So, since we’re driving through sagebrush and tumbleweed land, we decided to assign ourselves native names that we’d use until we left cowboy country. Did you ever see Dances With Wolves? There was much discussion and controversy, but in the end here’s what we came up with:

Karen: Flees From Bears
Me: Brakes for Buffalo
Lucy: Screeches Like Cockatoo
Zoe: Little Deer With Barbie Laptop (Zoe came up with that on her own)

Evan was difficult. We considered Pees In Woods, and Tinkles on Prickers, but we wanted something less bodily. We tried Annoys Like Mosquito but, while it does suit him (sometimes), it still wasn’t quite right. In the end we settled on Acts Like Monkey.

YEE-HAWING AT A CODY, WYOMING RODEO

Three hours west of Yellowstone is Cody, Wyoming where, last night, we got to go to a rodeo.

LUCY: We got the best seats in the rodeo. And suddenly lots of cowboys, horses and bulls came on and got knocked over. And then they were chasing baby cows and they tied them up by their feet and their heads and it was unbelievable because all the cowgirls lost and all the cowboys won. I wished at least one of the cowgirls won. Then this clown called out for all the kids to come down to the rodeo stage and me and my brother and sister went down there. There was lots of dirt. The clown said for all the kids to roll around in the dirt. Me and my brother did but Zoe didn’t. It was fun. There were lots of baby cows running around with ribbons around their tales and I was chasing after them but then my new cowgirl hat blew off and kids were about to step on it so I went back to get it. My brother would have caught the cow but he had flip-flops on. And then we went in line to get our hats autographed and the three cowboy clowns signed my hat. It was really good. It made me really happy.

EVAN: What was really interesting was that they put little kids on the bulls and they did bull riding and barrel racing. I think I’m going to do that when I get back to Cody.




VENTING A BIT ABOUT THE REAL AMERICA

I’m going to gripe just for a moment.

So, the rodeo MC made a political joke putting down a major presidential candidate (I don’t want to get political here so I won’t say who the put-down was directed at, but it rhymes with Shmillary and it involved a cow) and then he asked the crowd, “Anybody here from the east coast?” A huge roar followed—I’m guessing more than half of the people in the stands. Then the MC followed up with, “I’d like to welcome you to the United States of America. This is the real America.” Huh? So, the east coast isn’t the real America? What’s up with that? And I might point out that the vast majority of the space in the middle of the country is empty. Empty as in nothing at all. Nada. No people. No towns. No buildings. Nothing. Shall we review?...


So, yes, of course Wyoming is part of the real America—and a lovely part, too—yet I can't help pointing out that if you look at where the majority of the American people actually live, well that’s nearer to the coasts. And we citizens of the coasts represent the real America as much as that rodeo MC does.

Okay, I’ve said it and now I feel better. Thanks for humoring me. I’m done griping.

BACK ON THE ROAD

4:34 PM: We’re driving again, roaring down I-90 near Gillette, Wyoming heading toward South Dakota. Flees From Bears is at the wheel. Penelope, our minivan, is still doing okay. I think the occasional rattling is coming from her exhaust pipe, which shakes a bit when we’re idling. Its probably missing a screw or something, but every now and then I push the exhaust pipe in with my shoe and the rattling gets better. All good. :-)

SOUTH DAKOTA, MT. RUSHMORE, AND THE STURGIS MOTORCYCLE RALLY

12:09 AM Wednesday, Aug 8:
We made it into South Dakota around 7:30 this evening and then booked it over to Mount Rushmore before the sun set. We made it!



Here we are doing the obligatory impression of Mt. Rushmore:


We didn’t have any hotel reservations (we’re living life on the edge) and it turned out that this week just happens to be the huge annual Sturgis motorcycle rally, attracting about 100,000 Harley Davidsons in around the Mount Rushmore area. I have to admit, we were sweating it out for a little while, but in the end we did manage to get the last room available in the last hotel in Keystone, SD, where I’m posting this blog. It’s biker heaven out there. There’s loud partying, loud engines, and more bikes in the parking lots than I may have ever seen before. Karen, Zoe, and I walked around outside a few minutes ago and talked to a few bikers.

 

We have a wake up call for tomorrow at 7:30 AM. We have 650 miles to drive through the badlands. I can't wait!  Next stop…Minneapolis! 

--Brakes For Buffalo

LEMONADE MOUTH (Delacorte Press, 2007
I AM THE WALLPAPER (Delacorte Press, 2005)
www.markpeterhughes.com