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Friday, August 30, 2013

Cleaning Barley for Beer. The Old Way, My Way

Bud grew barley this year and low and behold, it produced nice seeds because he didn't green chop it. So me, being the opportunist I am, snagged 200 pounds of uncleaned grain. Under normal circumstances, with normal people, one would buy clean grain from the brewing store and be done with it. Not only would it be nice barley of a sort fit for the brew kettle, but it would be malted. Screw that, I want to go primitive.

I wanted to start from bottom up and make a beer of my own doing. Grain from the field is natures way because come the revolution it will be of value to just go out get some grain and make beer. A person has to have beer. I mean, God put grain on the earth so we could have alcoholic consumption and in turn a nice two beer buzz. God loves a buzz if she didn't why would we have all this other nice stuff---you know, all this stuff we have, like friends and squash and cars (oh we made those), and lakes.


The machine I used is a Kenosha Fanning Mill made right here in Kenosha. I wanted to keep it local and support labor right here in my home state---only problem is the patent is from 1870 and it was probably made not long after that, so most of the workers, all of the workers , are long pushing up daisies. I will have to drink a beer in their memory.

I found the mill at a yard sale and for $50 it had to be mine because I suspected there would be a need to clean grain at some point after fossil energy ran out. Can't believe it. Right here under my beer guzzling nose was the opportunity of a life time. Catch this fantastic You Tube video of me doing beer preparation. Fellini at his best, some say. 

http://youtu.be/aDpbOXVIGjs

Today we cleaned 20 pounds of grain in a few minutes. Got rid of chaff, exotic seeds that mostly looked like ragweed, and numerous grass hoppers, all very dead and not happy and a bit of dirt. It was big fun and fueled with muscle power--that had been spiked with the numerous beer we drank last night. Plus the exercise. Win, win deal, I tell ya.

What it amounts to is I am on my way to a natural, locally made beer, I mean a beer from scratch. Now I just need to learn to malt it and that can be done, it would appear, without any more heavy equipment. I have the brewing outfit and a great attitude so Annie bar the door. Ya gotta love the simple life. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Missionary's Position--Industrial Revolution

I love these machines. There is something about them that draw me in, but I am not sure what it is. This monster is a Romley, a fuel powered tractor that was largely used to break sod on the prairie knifing multi- bottomed plows through virgin grassland. Surely, they were used for other tasks from thrashing to mining, to lumbering, for clearing and changing the land. .

It has two cylinders, two damn big cylinders, a massive fly wheel and a steering system reminiscent of the wagons we made as kids--just a couple of chains on the front axle. . It chugs along slowly but with a certain authority the belies anyone's efforts to stop it. There must be limits to its power, after all, it is over a hundred years old. Still I believe it is an image of the burgeoning revolution of the time, the industrial revolution.

To start it, one very big dude, or maybe a couple have to move the cylinder in the correct position, just at the beginning of compression, and then pull hard to turn it over. If the gas mixture is there, and I am sure it is not real exact but just lots of explosive fuel, it fires, and the beast is on its way. I should say it is on its way once the crude clutch engaging device is activated by a primitive lever. 

I suspect the machine is a metaphor of some sort, a symbolic creature that represents the changes taking place at that time. Included in the long list of changes are the breaking of native ground, and the ever-present need of mighty humans to use fire to manufacture the great iron beast. Yes, strong wealthy farmers were needed to start it. Most importantly, the one-time allotment of the very finite fossil fuels in the form of oil had to be developed and refined--- and so went the revolution.


The machine above was the precursor. It is steam driven and fueled with wood or coal but also represents that transition, maybe an earlier part of it. The gas powered machine is still bigger, still more foreboding, more a monster, an industrial monster unleashed on the world. The steam engine was burning wood, a renewable resource the Romley liquid fossil fuel.

I suppose I am struck by the power of man and his machines and sometimes wonder just how good they have been for the earth and its total environment, how good for all the other creatures some already gone for good. Are these machines in a way evil? They are almost frightening. They were made to consume just like much of all the things we humans have produced with our industrial revolution.

I still like them and marvel at what they are, a creation of man, every ounce a creation of man, all that steel, all the engineering, the physical effort to put it all together. It is a beast but one has to wonder what the beast has done. It, the beast and the metaphor, were in use when I was born and it has contributed to this wealth my generation has so happily sucked up. Still, is the machine good or bad?





Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Peppers---The Surprising Delight of the Garden

I haven't written much of late primarily because in the summer it stays light so long I have to stay outside and mull over the many interesting things of the summer. That list is long but right now I will relate the story of the pepper.

It seems that one evening we were invited to my brother Crow's home for an evening of banter and Christian Fellowship, or was it pagan fellowship---they are all the same. See one religion ya see 'em all. We were deep into a spiritual discussion on the merits of the garden ( previously mentioned) while noting their ( Crow's family) many fine features and criticizing his weaknesses such as the lame-ass pepper plants and the less than spectacular tomatoes.

It is well known in our family it is good to be critical of individuals as a way of raising one's own ego or self esteeme which ever comes first. Some of his things suck the big one but others are rather handy like his onions.

It is also fair game to pilfer some of his efforts by simply grabbing it and consuming it on the spot while doing a critique of that particular vegetable. Again, the purpose is to belittle failed efforts and yet compliment, if lightly, the successes.

There in his miserable garden was this stunted pepper plant that had on it some rather colorful red peppers of the smaller persuasion. It was not recognizable as being of a hot sort but one probably of a sweeter demeanor. We were about to have a nice meal outside among the throngs of biting insects (just kidding) and diving fruit bats all infested with various parasites most suitable for human occupation.

While I had in had a nice brew of my own making, I took a small nip on the end of the selected pepper and found it to be most pleasant, sweet, flavorful, reminiscent of our years on the Mediterranean and fit for consumption. Confident I had chosen carefully, I took a great bite of the jewel-of-a-pepper thinking to follow it with a gulp of barley pop. Sweet Jesus, I made a mistake. I have never been wrong before, but I have made mistakes and this was one of them.

My head fell back and my eyes rolled into their sockets, my tongue swelled and burned much like it had when tortured in the war--you know with the hot iron on the tongue. My breath was short and my pulse increased to 2000 beats. The only solution was the beer and I had no choice but to use it as a coolant much like ethylene glycol is used to cool a motor. I couldn't swallow the beer and it began to boil. My eyes were half closed and while I was unable to speak numerous profane thoughts passed through my now inflamed mind.

I tried crackers and cheese and vegetables (no more peppers) and was about to start eating grass when it finally began to dissipated. I looked around and do you think there was one once of sympathy? No, not one. Only laughter and derision, and accusations of theft, and disrespect, of weakness and even of stupidity.

I was deemed a loser, a man of weak character. Personally, I think it was a trick, a way to make a compassionate man of me, an appreciative individual who will never say another critical thing about anybody's garden. Well, my mouth is better but my mind is not apologetic and I just hope that one day Crow handles one of those peppers and then touches his eyes or better yet some private parts. Life is good.

Fricking Fracking---Revolution Watch

 There is so much noise about Fracking it is hard not to pay attention to it. I mean, this procedure, which is not new and the oil plays have been known for 40 years, is rumored to set us up to have business as usual (BAU) for  who knows how many more years. People are dirtying themselves, filling their pants that is, over what they think is really a big deal. 

The desire to keep this fossil fuel burning thing going is so strong that we Americans (Amurikans), the press and the government (Gubbermint) just falls all over itself ranting about our possible energy independence. (For Christ sake we import 9 million barrels a day now) What frackin' nonsense. The graph below put together by Ron Patterson at www.peakoilbarrel.com tells a sad story--and the truth that has been known by folks on the inside for a long time. Basically, it is the Red Queen Affect where they have to drill more and more wells just to stay even on production---and the production is slowing. The graph is of the Bakken play in the Dakotas. 


Ron puts it this way, "As you can see in the last six months they added half the barrels per day as the previous six month period and just over one third what was added in the first six months of the surge ending December 2011 even though more wells were added, on average, than during those six months.
One thing most everyone in the media cheering section is missing is the fact that the more barrels produced the greater the decline and therefore the more additional wells required to replace that decline."

I find it sad that rather than deal with the impending issue of diminishing energy supplies we just party on and cheer with each new drop of oil found---oh ya, that is the same oil that is creating global warming. But I did hear someone say that was junk science. So what the hell, guess I will go price a new SUV, maybe a Inquisitor Bloatmobile with the 50 Cal. roof mount. 


Gardens are Damn Strange Things

Every year we plant a large 2000 square ft garden, both for entertainment and for the great food we get from it. Yes, it is also exercise and a hobby, and I could throw in education. This year we have had all the above attributes but the last one is most noticeable.


In this world or Perma-culture agriculture and of great pontificators about the need to grow ones own food, there are always some things that seem to get left out. I don't know how many times I have seen presentations, or read articles where some affectionato of gardening goes to great lather about how one just chucks some seeds in the ground and out come all these great veggies---I hate the word veggies. Too yuppieish and herbal-kerbal cute.

It always seems so easy with the tidy raised beds and magical watering systems, and lovely people tripping ever-so quaintly through their agro-land. They even have these gardens in cities where they claim they can feed every last starving soul in Detroit by just digging up the old fallen slums. Makes me sick. (Did you know the the people of China now tell their children to finish their food because of all the starving people  in Detroit? )

It is just so cute with some trendy, gentrified , upper-middle class yahoo cleanly picking a nice cluster of bug free kale. I will admit, and the photo above will confirm, I too am attractive, content and very full of myself over this one lousy tomato that at first viewing might feed half of Chicago. There is more to the story, and this is the important stuff.

Gardens don't just turn out perfectly, you know, with every thing planted being robust, bug free, fat and sassy, and packed with dripping nutrition. One can bust an ass only to find out that while the carrots looked down-right powerful, as they did this year, once pulled the little sons-a-bitches are about an inch long, pudgy, rather worm eaten and in some cases rotting. Oh, real nice stems and leaves but not jack for carrots. Not so hot if carrots were to be a feature.

The red potatoes planted in March are kick-ass, big and solid and, I must say, tasty, if not nutty in tone, not pretentious but muscular. However, the Russets planted a month later had a period of three weeks were the rain did not fall, so these suckers are all small, puny and if we depended on them to get through the winter we would be cold dead by February---just like the Irish in 1829.

The fricking broccoli did this thing where the plants get massive, but have they put out a single flower head, that would be the part we eat, no! It is like global warming has shut them down. Never saw it before and it sucks. George H. Bush loved broccoli. He would have been depressed to the point of quitting---oh shit a missed opportunity.

The point is one can think gardening is easy and fun and you can get all the food you want right in your lovely mid-western backyard. That is bull shit---actually I could use some for the garden. Only when folks have to raise their own food will they find out how difficult it is  and how Mother Nature is really a bitch at times. We do have some good things like that tomato---and others.