Beer
I used to brew beer a lot more often before I started blogging.
October 26th, 2009
The anonymous YouTube folk hero speaks out
The security cameras only catch
one side of the story. Notice how they stick
at the 38-second mark, keep me standing
still as a parking meter for long seconds
only to skip
faster than light to the far wall
& its chorus line of coolers.
Just because you’re looking down
doesn’t make you omniscient.
What appears to the straight-laced
like a shopping trip gone awry
was really a pas de deux
with some wild weather.
True, I am loose as a flag
flailing around its pole,
buffeted by winds you barely feel.
But drinking is an escape into the open.
I round an aisle or pull on a door handle
& the cross-wind catches me;
I try to walk like a sober person & I go down.
And there on my fundament
I begin again,
exploring the deep
contingencies of consciousness
with all four limbs at once,
supple as a newborn.
Luck — as the madman
of Chu told Confucius —
is lighter than a feather,
but no one knows how to bear its weight.
Be it a 12-pack or a bowl of candy,
as long I cling I’m anchored
to the spot.
But in the end, in the part that got cut
from all your amusing remixes,
when I let go & just sit for a minute,
my body remembers on its own
how to evade the world’s
persistent embrace
& I rise & walk.
March 30th, 2007
Walking into town this morning along the railroad tracks, I noticed this structure under the highway overpass. While it might look like a homeless encampment, I suspect it’s the work of local teenagers. This is right below the end of our mountain, where some kids had a clandestine campout last fall and almost set the woods on fire. Fortunately, one of our hunter friends found them in time and helped put out the blaze, before politely suggesting that they party elsewhere. I think this is “elsewhere.”
Of course, it isn’t just kids who like to get messed up in the name of fellowship. I don’t know if the Independent Order of Odd Fellows is still active in Tyrone, but they built a damn fine building. It looked pretty as a postcard this morning.
I considered wandering around and shooting a bunch more photos of Tyrone, but really, between this photo and the last, you can get a pretty good idea of what the town’s all about. (I have a few other photos here.)
On the way back, the late-morning sun backlit a hillside of blossoming red maples. This is always one of the first trees to blossom in spring, along with the pussy willows. The end of Plummer’s Hollow was rather badly logged back in 1979 and 1985, and these maples are one of the main beneficiaries.
Red maple used to be restricted to moist woods and swamps, but over the last fifty years it has proliferated in all kinds of forests in Pennsylvania, for reasons that aren’t fully understood. The relatively recent practice of wildfire suppression is often blamed for the decline of oaks, though, and fire sensitivity would certainly explain why red maple used to be confined to wet areas. And while red maples are beautiful trees, they don’t have anywhere near the wildlife value of oaks.
Maple blossoms aren’t the only fire-colored thing right now. ‘Tis the season for doppelbock, according to the Beer Activist. At 8.3% alcohol, one bottle of these is just about all you need. Suddenly, a campfire in the woods seems like a pretty good idea.
January 4th, 2007
I don’t know if I’ll have time for a regular post today, but in the meantime, I’d like to call to your attention to two promising new ventures. The first is my buddy Chris O’Brien’s fabulous new Beer Activist Blog. Chris is the author of the recently published book Fermenting Revolution, a very fun read (I got it for Christmas), which takes writing and thinking about grain-based fermented beverages in a whole new direction. If you like beer, be sure to stop by and give him some encouragement so he’ll keep blogging. He just finished a series on the Twelve Beers of Christmas. Here’s an excerpt from #12:
Avery Brewing in Bolder, Colorado and Russian River in Santa Rosa, California both brew Belgian style beers they independently named Salvation. When the coincidence was discovered, rather than become adversarial, they chose a path of cooperation. Instead of competing for the rights to the name as other breweries might do, they decided to live and let live, and even decided to brew a special beer together that is a blend of their Salvations.
The result is a beer they named Collaboration Not Litigation Ale.
*
A just-launched blog carnival aims to showcase “the best ecology and environmental science posts of the month from all across the blogosphere.” Oekologie sounds as if it will be considerably more science-focused than Festival of the Trees, but I think it ought to meet a real need. Here’s what they’re looking for:
Oekologie is a blog carnival all about interactions between organisms in a system. While Circus of the Spineless might look for a post discussing the hunting techniques of a trap door spider, Oekologie is looking for posts discussing how a trap door spider’s hunting techniques affect prey populations or its surroundings. While Carnival of the Green might look for a post discussing a big oil policy decision regarding ANWR, Oekologie would accept a post describing the ecological consequences of pipeline construction in the area.
Again, we are looking for posts describing biological interactions – human or nonhuman – with the environment.
Topics may include but are not limited to posts about population genetics, niche/neutral theory, sustainabilty, pollution, climate change, disturbance, exploitation, mutualism, ecosystem structure and composition, molecular ecology, evolutionary ecology, energy usage (by humans or within biological systems, succession, landscape ecology, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, agriculture, waste management, etc.
The deadline for submissions to the first edition is January 13.
July 10th, 2006
Yesterday afternoon, I drank up the last of my homebrew. Plummer’s Hollow will be dry until I get around to making some more. So it was a bittersweet occasion. Hell, it was a bittersweet beer.
But don’t be alarmed — I wasn’t drinking alone. I never do.
For one thing, there were the flies. Not the kind that bite, but the kind that just want to land on you and walk around a bit, pausing every few steps to rub your grime off their forefeet.
A good, strong stout should help you appreciate, you know, the little things: The songs of the birds. The weave of your jeans. The way you don’t feel anything one way or the other when you kill a fly, and you begin to wonder if that makes you a potential sociopath.
I got many glimpses of the chipmunk that lives in my herb garden as it hurried back and forth to its burrow, climbing tall weed stalks to get at their seeds and riding them down to the ground. I thought about my grandmother, who used to hand-feed chipmunks when she and Grandpa lived here for several summers back in the 1970s. In all likelihood, she fed this very chipmunk’s great x 30 grandmother. I can’t help feeling that creates a special bond between us. Not special enough to make we want to try hand-feeding it, but pretty special.
Through the slats on the porch railing, I had a good view of a crowd of garlic, though I wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop. People tell me I should decapitate them so their bulbs will grow bigger, but I can rarely bring myself to do so. They have such character! I love watching them uncurl, finally pointing their bills straight up like bitterns. And when their heads split open and the children within grow beaks of their own, I scatter them far and wide. Slowly but surely, I’m turning the lawn into a garlic patch.
From time to time, my eyes strayed back to the book on my lap: Jim Harrison’s The Shape of the Journey: New and Collected Poems. I was reading the section of poems called After Ikkyu and liking it pretty well. Harrison is a good drinking companion.
But mostly, I looked at the beer. As I mentioned, it’s homebrew, so I wouldn’t have to carbonate and bottle it. Three years ago, in fact, I left a couple batches in the carboy and just siphoned off a pitcher whenever I got thirsty. I don’t particularly need the mouth-feel of carbonation; I do it for the foam. What do wine drinkers look at? I’ve never understood that. Beer is beautiful.
__________
UPDATE: With the last photo, I meant to reference Dsida Jeno’s “Poem of Darkness,” which I recently became acquainted with thanks to frizzyLogic. True, Jeno himself mentions coffee. But what better than stout for a “dark and bitter drink” into which, “one dank brown evening,” to “melt and sink”?
May 22nd, 2006
Yesterday morning, I went to show my friend K. my patch of mugwort – the main flavoring agent in the beer we’d been drinking the night before. It’s out behind the shed, where I once had a perfectly round vegetable garden when I was a kid, but was forced to abandon the site when the mugwort took over. I had planted a few sprigs among the beds because a friend of my mother’s had said it would act as a natural insecticide. The same qualities that drive off insects – you can lay dried sprigs of mugwort among your clothes in lieu of mothballs – are proof against the commoner molds and bacteria that can ruin a batch of beer. It does as good a job as hops, with a similar effect on flavor, but without the latter’s soporific effects.
We found the mugwort patch in the possession of a box turtle, who did not seem at all happy to see us. I thought it was probably a female trying to lay her eggs, but when I came back later in the day, she had moved about four feet away and was still looking pensive and withdrawn. Perhaps she was looking around for the right spot – or doing something else entirely, who knows?
Come into animal presence.
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
A front blew in after lunch, while I was taking a nap. It was cold and drizzly when I lay down, and clear and windy when I got up. After tea, I went out with my camera, but took very few pictures. I was mostly content just to look at things. I dropped down the powerline a hundred feet or so to get out of the scrub oak zone and have an uninterrupted view: widely spaced clouds and cloud shadows all the way to the horizon, plowed fields alternating with patches of green. The big red barn in the middle of the valley had spilled its herd of Holsteins into the pasture.
A pair of red-tailed hawks lifted off from the trees below me; I lost sight of one right away, but the other circled far out over the valley, flapping, searching for an updraft. It rocked and veered wildly in the wind. One moment it was a mile away, the next moment it was coming in low over the trees. Each time it swung around so the wind was at its back, it let rip with that famous banshee cry so often wrongfully imputed to eagles in the movies, because, no less than a wolf’s howl or the midnight laughter of a loon, it’s a literal Call of the Wild. But even as I thrilled to the sound, I couldn’t help thinking that the hawk was simply saying “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn’t
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm brush.
On the way back through the field, I kept thinking that I ought to run across a newborn fawn at any moment – the grass is long enough, it certainly seems like the right time. Instead, I surprised a mother turkey with poults – or rather, they surprised me. The hen must’ve been sitting on her brood to keep them warm, because she burst up out of the grass right at my feet. I had my camera at the ready, but couldn’t decide whether to try and photograph the poults, who were rapidly disappearing in one direction, or the hen, who was doing her broken wing act in the other direction. As I dithered, the poults scattered and froze, making them impossible to find, and the hen ran too far away for a decent shot. I sat down for a while, but was unable to wait them out.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
This morning I woke up around 2:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I snapped on the light and read for an hour. I’m reading Jared Diamond’s new book, Collapse, and I’m still in the first section, the chapter about Montana. If I lost sleep more often, I’d make more progress.
When I do get back to sleep, I dream about animals. In one scene, I’m with a crowd of people watching two fishers run along a rushing stream, much larger than Plummer’s Hollow Run but otherwise similar in its surroundings. The fishers find and corner a raccoon, kill him with a quick bite to the throat, and load his body into a small canoe. They tie the canoe to a rowboat, and each grabs an oar. “It looks like they’re taking him down to the river,” someone observes. Some sort of Viking burial seems to be in order. “Wow! Doesn’t this prove that animals have beliefs about the afterlife?” I say. “Not necessarily,” someone replies. “The fishers are probably just trying to send a message to other raccoons!”
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
The others have continued on up the difficult mountain trail, but I linger at the campsite. I’m tired of backpacking in my bare feet; I must have footwear. I cut short lengths of saplings, and look about for vines. Instead, I find the corpse of a small hawk with an immense white wing locked in its talons.
Meanwhile, people are lining up in front of a small trading post beside the lake, which is about to open for the season. The white woman who staffs the place walks by and sees me trying to tie saplings to my bare feet. “Would you like some string? I might have a loose piece or two I could give you,” she says with a smile. “That’s O.K.,” I mumble. I don’t want to waste much more time. By now, the others will have noticed my absence, and might be thinking of turning back.
I pull several of the longest pinions from the white wing, which might be from an owl, I think. An old woman with skin the color of mahogany stops to watch as I try to sew up my strange wooden moccasins with the midribs, threads like flexible knitting needles. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, gachó?” Her tone is grandmotherly, but I get the feeling she might be enjoying a private joke at my expense. I look more closely, and realize she is no ordinary human being. I wake up still mulling over my response.
An old joy returns in holy presence.
–Denise Levertov, “Come into Animal Presence” (The Jacob’s Ladder, 1958)
April 17th, 2006
ravens
climbing into
each other’s sky
circling crying
out
*
above the road bank where
the hepatica has just come into bloom,
the corpse of a porcupine
carrion beetles clamber
through the quills
butterflies cluster on what’s left of its mouth
a hole spanned by the long, curved
railings of its teeth
& down below, the pale blue blossoms
swaying on their stems
*
On Easter morning, I took a plastic
envelope of ale yeast from the refrigerator,
placed it on the floor, & brought all
my weight down on it
to break open the enclosed packet of nutrients.
Within hours, the envelope had swollen up
like a sheep’s stomach
with afflatus from the resurrected yeast.
Now I will feed it malt & honey
& bitter herbs. It will pass
this brew through its multitudinous body
& turn it into beer.
The empty tombs of its spent cells
will drift to the bottom of the bottle’s
brown sea.
November 14th, 2005
The first frost came on Friday night as we sat around drinking. At a certain point, we had to bring the beer in from the porch to keep it from freezing. While I slept the dreamless sleep of inebriation, the air was crystallizing around every leaf and blade of grass, like frozen foam from the season’s drained cup.
I love the way a beer with good head retention leaves a record of its passing in the white, lacy rings on the side of the glass. It’s a good argument for sipping rather than chugging. But that’s the funny thing about consumption, isn’t it? The more attached you become to the act of consuming, the less you enjoy it. To get the most out of a beer – or anything, really – you have to take it one sip at a time.
The bark of pignut hickories forms rings, too, healing over the lines of holes drilled by yellow-bellied sapsuckers. They are slow-growing, long-lived trees, seemingly unaffected by the intensive tapping of their sap. Their nuts aren’t as sweet as those of shagbark hickories, but the squirrels still seem to catch most of them before they hit the ground.
The red, black and scarlet oaks are the last trees on the mountain to turn color, long after the understorey black gums, sassafras, witch hazel and spicebush have shed their leaves. By holding onto their leaves so long, they risk damage from early snows or ice storms, but oaks are very good at sealing off wounds to prevent infection from spreading to the rest of the tree. And shedding leaves, it turns out, is about more than just letting go; new research suggests that trees attempt to poison the ground against competitors with the chemicals that form in their leaves as they turn color.
Within the space of a few days last week, high winds stripped the ridges mostly bare, and now suddenly one can see for hundreds of yards through the woods. The rising sun hits my front porch an hour earlier, even as the dawn comes later. I don’t think of winter as a dark time, but a time of clearer light and more interesting shadows. While vistas are opening up, life is turning in upon itself, rediscovering the rewards of contemplation and of altered states.
Who can blame shamans for trying to become bears, those champion sleepers and masters of retention? Right now, they’re living quite literally off the fat of the land, but when a bear enters hibernation, its large intestine forms what is called a fecal plug. Winter, in other words, is the one time of the year when a bear does not shit in the woods. You can walk along enjoying the dawn or sunset sky without a thought for where you put your feet.
May 18th, 2005
by Li Bai
(a.k.a. Li Po, 701-762)
I.
In the middle of the flowering grove, one jug of beer.
Drinking alone – no friends or family near -
I raise my cup, invite the moon to join me.
Counting my shadow, we’re a party of three.
But moon’s a lightweight, doesn’t know how to drink,
And shadow simply matches me cup for cup.
For now, though, they’ll do just fine, I think.
Spring is here, my friends! Let’s live it up.
I start to sing; the moon sways to and fro.
I get up and dance – shadow reels in disarray.
Sober, we crave the company of some jolly fellow;
Drunk, each goes his separate way.
Freed of all ties, yet bound forever more,
Let’s get back together on the galaxy’s far shore.
2.
Come April, and the village of Xianyang lies deep in fallen blossoms. Who can bear to be alone with sorrow in the spring? Who can gaze on such sights as these and stay sober? The unseen Maker rolls his dice: for you, wealth and a long life; poverty for you, and a life cut short. But one mug of beer can balance life and death, even out a thousand things that confound the intellect. Drunk, I lose track of heaven and earth, sitting alone on my mat, unmoving, unmovable. I end by forgetting that I ever existed at all: pure joy, then, for the no-one left behind!
3.
If Heaven above be not besotted with beer,
why should a Beer Star appear in heaven?
If Earth, too, be not a tippler,
why do we find a Beer Springs on earth?
With beer thus beloved above and below,
drinking beer can hardly be against nature.
I’ve heard a clear brew likened to a sage,
while the slang term for a cloudy beer is saint.
Since I’ve drunk deep of saints and sages,
what need have I to search for spirit guides?
Three cups, and the Great Way lies open;
a gallon, and everything resolves into Suchness.
Simply strive for beer and find contentment.
Don’t speak of these arcana to the sober ones.
_________
This translates three of the four sections of the original poem. The first section best imitates the rhyme and meter of the original.
“Sage” and “Saint” were code words for strained and unstrained beer during a period of prohibition in the early Tang Dynasty.
For other translations of ancient Chinese beer-drinking poems at Via Negativa, see The guest (Du Fu) and Night drinking at the western pavilion of the Flower of the Dharma Temple (Liu Zongyuan).
May 12th, 2005
by Du Fu
(712-770)
It’s spring, so the water’s high
on both sides of my house.
Watch your step.
I’m used to greeting seagulls -
whole flocks of them, every day!
Please excuse the fallen blossoms.
With no other visitors,
I haven’t swept the walk.
You’re the very first guest
to enter by the wicker gate.
Living so far from the market,
our meals are plain – no
fancy dishes. And poor
as we are, our beer’s
a little stale. But
we can invite my old neighbor
to drink with us, if you’re willing.
I’ll give a holler over the fence:
“Come help us finish off
the rest of this beer!”
__________
This translation is dedicated to my friend Chris.
Beer: The Chinese word jiu refers to alcohol in any form. Since most undistilled fermented beverages in East Asia come from grains rather than fruit, it seems more accurate to refer to them as beer rather than wine.
May 7th, 2005
by Liu Zongyuan (773-819)
We gather at the Jetavana
Sunset Pavilion,
immerse ourselves
in drinking meditation.
The mist gives way to darkness.
Water laps against the steps.
The blossom-laden trellis glows
in the moonlight.
Never let your exhaustion show
to Venerable Inebriation.
One glance and it’s clear
which heads have yet
to turn white.
__________
This translation is dedicated to all the bloggers gathering at the Cambridge Zen Center and elsewhere in the Boston area this weekend: Beth, Pica, qB, Lorianne, Leslee and Abdul-Walid.
Jetavana – One of the first Buddhist monasteries, a converted pleasure-garden. The poet probably knows it from the opening of the Diamond Sutra, a very popular text in Tang Dynasty China: “Once, the Buddha sojourned in the Jetavana Park with an assembly of twelve hundred and fifty bhiksus…”
immerse ourselves in drinking meditation – literally, “together pour samadhi beer (rice wine)”
March 27th, 2005
The Good Friday edition of NPR’s National Geographic Radio Expeditions, The Sacred Corn Beer of the Tarahumara, put me in a very religious mood.
For the Tarahumara, the astringent, homemade corn beer is a sacred social lubricant – and during Easter week, or “semana santa,” the entire town of Norogachi turns into a giant brewpub. Corn kernels are soaked, ground up, boiled and spiked with a local grass to help the mixture ferment.
The Tarahumara (who refer to themselves as the Raramuri) are a linguistic group of 120,000 who share a common language and have preserved their culture through isolation and resistance. For them, beer is an elixir for healing, a barter item and a divine beverage.
“God taught the Raramuri how to make corn beer,” says Guadalupe Espino Palma, the traditional governor of the Norogachi district. “We make offerings of tesguino to God himself, and He drinks it also. We use tesguino for dancing, and we enjoy drinking it.” Even getting drunk is a spiritual act, he explains.
Bill Merrill, a Smithsonian Institution anthropologist who’s spent 30 years studying and working with the Tarahumara, says the tesguino chases out the “large souls” within, leaving only the “little souls.” “And so when people get drunk that’s why they act like children,” he says. “Because the souls that are controlling their actions are the little souls, like little children.”
Paradoxically, by keeping to their traditional customs, the Tarahumara – like the Yaqui and several other indigenous peoples of Mexico – have preserved what was also the Medieval and Renaissance European way of celebrating major religious holidays. The Jesuits who originally missionized among them, beginning in the late 16th century, introduced elements of Old World village religion, but were also generally tolerant of syncretism. And putting on communal pageants and brewing various types of beer are customs with ancient pedigrees in the region, so it’s hard to know how much innovation the missionaries were really responsible for.
It’s a shame that drinking alcohol has become such a thoroughly profane activity in modern times. Only since the Industrial Revolution has it become cheap and practicable for ordinary people to obtain alcohol at any time and to drink in private – essential preconditions for the spread of alcoholism. Even among contemporary Tarahumara,
“It’s easier to get drunk on a couple of beers or a bottle of tequila than to make tesguino and share it with everyone,” says Carlos Palma Batista, director of the Raramuri Education Initiative, a Ford Foundation project to help preserve native language and knowledge.
The Easter celebrations of the Raramuri are a big draw for tourists. By custom, participants will drink, dance, drum and carouse for as long as the tesguino holds out, whether two days or two weeks. Spring planting will wait.
And during this corn beer communion, in place of “happy Easter,” the Raramuri will say to one another “bosasa” – “fill up, be satisfied, be contented.”
I celebrated Easter by bottling my latest batch of homebrew. I’ll admit I’m still brewing with malted barley; my friend Crystal Dave, who sent me the link to this story, said I should try making tesguino.
Maybe I will. After all, brewing corn beer is an age-old Appalachian custom. The problem is, the damn Scotch-Irish always insisted on distilling it into whiskey. And I don’t think they ever shared any of it with Jesus.
December 25th, 2004
After yesterday’s post, readers might get the impression that I am lacking in holiday cheer. Far from it! In fact, I have a mugful of “cheer” right at my elbow – enough to make me sing mindlessly to the computer as I click through my blogroll. Don’t be thinking it’s some Christmas carol, though. For some reason, the tune stuck in my head right now is “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?”
*
My major Christmas present from my parents this year was a new, super-adjustable desk lamp with incandescent and florescent bulbs. It’s basic black and highly functional in design – the kind of thing favored by graphic artists, one suspects. It will replace the funky little lamp I have been using to save my eyes from the glare of the computer screen. Yes, my parents have become enablers for my blog-addicted lifestyle.
*
On our way back from getting a Christmas tree on Tuesday, we swung by the Amish store where we buy many of our staples (whole wheat flour, brown rice, basic herbs and spices, etc.). My mother gifted the women who run the store with a loaf of chocolate tea bread, which prompted immediate reciprocal gifts of a large jar of canned peaches and a little jar of hot pepper jelly. Then, just as we were about to leave, S. came running out and asked if wanted some of the ornamental kale from her garden before she got rid of it. “Sure,” I said, and took the better part of one, big plant.
The kale was limp from having been through a couple months of freezing weather, but it still smelled and tasted good and strong. I thought its festive colors would be perfect for a light, Christmas Eve supper, and in fact I was rather pleased with the recipe I came up with. I like to think of this as a brand-new holiday tradition, as I recently heard someone on NPR describe something or other.
Ornamental Kale and Walnut Sauce with Pasta
Clean and chop into 2-inch squares 4 – 6 c ornamental kale, striving for roughly equal quantities of green and purple leaves.
In a large saucepan, sauté a hellacious amount of minced garlic, about 1/4 t dried red pepper flakes and 1/2 c ground English walnuts in 1/4 c olive oil at medium-low heat for several minutes, until kitchen begins to reek. Then add kale, a couple glugs of red wine and about 1 1/2 c canned tomatoes, chopped, with juice (about 1/2 c). (Fresh tomatoes are tasteless and virtually devoid of nutritive value this time of year. Save your money.) Lid the sucker and let ‘er steam for a bit.
Meanwhile, cook pasta. I used about 12 oz whole-wheat shells, but other chunky sorts of pasta would probably work just as well. When kale is pretty much wilted, add salt (not much) and black pepper, 8 kalamata olives, slivered and half a can of reduced-sodium chicken broth. (Vegetarians can try substituting soup stock or, better yet, a good miso broth.) Give it a minute or two to heat up, then mix in the drained pasta and a buttload of parmesan or romano cheese.
*
I might’ve added something else, but I think that’s all. Some of my culinary experiments prompt my parents to say things like, “Well, that was very, um, interesting!” But this time, they both went back for rare second helpings. However, I must admit that the pairing with a raw cabbage salad was slightly unfortunate. Last night I had to be careful to keep the blankets tightly pinned to my body every time I turned over in bed, if you get my drift.
*
Now that I’ve largely gotten over my childhood greed, and prefer actually to receive boring presents so as to avoid all excitement and the loss in sleep that entails, my favorite part of holidays like Christmas is the feasting. Well, O.K., maybe I’ve just substituted one kind of greed for another. At any rate, the other new recipe I’m inordinately pleased with this year is also my own invention, though I fancy it’s fairly similar to what my medieval European ancestors may have consumed this time of year: wassail! I served it to some visitors on Wednesday night, and two out of three were highly enthusiastic. (The third objected to the high licorice content – a fair complaint, if you don’t like licorice.) I won’t give the entire recipe, since it won’t mean anything to anyone who isn’t a homebrewer. But for those who are, here’s the gruit (herbal mix used instead of hops):
-> loose-packed pint dried mugwort
-> 2 oz dandelion root, roasted
-> 1/2 oz coriander seed, crushed
-> 1/2 oz Indian sarsaparilla root (Hemidesmus indicus)
-> 2 oz wild ginger root (Asarum canadense)
-> 2 oz licorice root (“dry-hopped” in primary)
-> 1 c (4 oz) dark baker’s cocoa
I’ll probably post the complete recipe in the homebrewing section of my other website at some point. In the meantime, anyone who wants to learn more about brewing traditional, unhopped ales should persuse my misleadingly named Short Treatise on Homebrewing and the True Meaning of Gruit.
*
I feel confident in recommending this gruit because my friend Chris, who is a trained beer taster, was one of my guests on Wednesday night. He regaled us with a number of fascinating tales of his exploits in Africa, of which (owing to the lateness of the hour and the strength of the brew) I remember only this:
During a tour of a paper-making cooperative in Malawi last month, Chris said, the guide kept pointing to these very large, dark sheets hanging up to dry and saying “This paper made from the elefandong!” And each time he would laugh uproariously. Chris smiled and nodded, unwilling to admit he didn’t know what the hell the guide was saying. After the third time it happened, however, he decided to follow up. “Now, what exactly is this ‘elefandong’?”
“Elefandong? You know – elephan’ poo-poo!”
I now know what I want my first, commercially published book of poems to be printed on…
*
My older brother called yesterday with, among other things, some news about his first offspring, expected in mid- to late-January. “They’ve decided on a name!” my mother informed me last night over the purple pasta repast. “They’ve decided to call her Elanor, after a character in Lord of the Flies!”
I’m sure William Golding would be proud.
November 9th, 2004
Edit (2-23-07): The Zulu Brew Route article is now here. The other article referenced below has moved here. Chris O’Brien now blogs at The Beer Activist, which includes a category for posts on African beer.
The new issue of Fermenting Revolution is up! Highlights include a portrait of an Angolan-Belgian brewer who makes the world’s first fair-trade certified beer, and Chris’s “On the Ale Trail” column, Exploring South Africa’s Zulu Brew Route.
Even before I read the column, I found myself saying the words “Zulu Brew Route” out loud, over and over. Then I scrolled down and noticed several photos of bare-breasted women, which always makes me crave a beer for some reason. Then I read the article. Most of the best microbreweries make lagers and pilsners in the German immigrant tradition, Chris explained, though most of the outstanding up-and-coming brewers seem to be Zulus. But he did visit the country’s largest maker of traditional sorghum beer, as well.
Somewhat surprisingly, Andre didn’t mind sharing with us the fact that all the beer they make follows one recipe, yet they market it under a variety of different labels. He said customers often insist there are differences among them.
Chris and his girlfriend even attended a faith-healing ceremony:
Several dozen people gathered in a large clay and thatch hut to seek solutions to their problems from Eunice Khonzaphi Ndwondwe, a faith healer of some renown. The ceremony included a couple hours of singing and some dancing, but the reason people come is to speak with the healer personally and be cured or helped. This is where the beer and vodka come in. Zulu beer and Castle lager were both passed around the crowd, as well as a couple bottles of Smirnoff. A few attendees played noisemakers that were circles of wire strung with beer caps.
I am ashamed to admit that, until now, virtually my entire exposure to South African religion has consisted of a couple volumes of Desmond Tutu – not just a great man, but an engaging writer and a fine theologian. Now, I’m thinking that the Zulus, at least, sound like a people who know how to keep their spiritual priorities straight.
September 18th, 2004
Long-time readers of this blog may remember me writing about my friend Chris, who’s researching brewing techniques in Africa and elsewhere. He just uploaded the latest edition of his on-line newsletter, Fermenting Revolution. The “On the Ale Trail” column compares the “real ale” movement in England with homebrewing traditions in Ethiopia:
This Ethiopian ale is called tella, and it is brewed from barley malt and the leaves of a green bush called gesho (scientific name: Rhamnus prinoides).
In the past year I have had some pleasant adventures drinking this stuff in the highland towns and villages of this ancient kingdom-nation. Just a couple weeks ago I visited the islands of Lake Tana, fabled to have once been the home of the holy Ark of the Covenant – you know, that old testament relic thing that Indiana Jones was seeking in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Well, the Ark was nowhere to be found, but I did stumble across some of the best tella I have yet to taste. Somehow that figures since this batch was brewed exclusively for the monks inhabiting this particular monastery. Somehow, men of the cloth always seem to have the best beer, be it the Trappists of Belgium or the Orthodox monks of Ethiopia.
In any case, I was glad they did. And when our guide noted that my interest had been piqued by the prospect of a taste of this brew, he offered me a large can-full straight from a huge crock turned on its side and stuffed closed with something or other. Despite the brew’s primitive trappings, I was only too eager to oblige.
It was surprisingly soft, well-filtered, pleasantly bitter, slightly herbal in aroma, and damn thirst-quenching, especially after a several hour equatorial trek.
As a brewer of gruit ales, I was most interested in the herb used in lieu of hops. A paper on poisonous and medicinal plants in Ethiopia in fact refers to Rhamnus prinoides as “hops,” but otherwise web sources indicate that R. prinoides is called “dogwood” in English – though it’s no relation to American and Asian dogwoods – and “blinkblaar” in Afrikaans. It’s very common and widespread. A medicinal database describes it as a sedative. One website I found includes a description of its cultural uses:
The chief use of this tree is magical. It is widely used by African people as a protective charm to ward off lightning and evil influences from homes and crops and to bring luck in hunting. The South Sotho name ‘Mofifi’ means ‘darkness’, and in Lesotho they say “darkness overcomes witchcraft”. This tree is also used by Africans to cleanse the blood, to treat pneumonia, rheumatism, sprains, and stomach ache, and as a gargle. It is also used in the treatment of skin complaints and respiratory infections.
Presuming that similar beliefs about this plant occur in Ethiopia, its use as a brewing herb offers a direct parallel to European folk brewing practices, where popular gruit herbs such as tansy, angelica, rue and St. John’s wort were credited with apotropaic properties.
September 3rd, 2004
*
Grace
On the last day of summer,
drifting slow as hope through
the thick air of evening
she chances into
the plume of CO2 from
my breath, follows it upstream
to my arm’s telltale heat.
She hovers, then slowly sinks
the last few inches straight
down into my pelt with all
her landing gear extended,
proboscis going into the skin even
as the slight craft of her body
still rides the hairs down,
her feet stretching one
by one down, down,
& I am here.
Lord, I am here.
She is beautiful & blameless
& I in a mood to share
the beer in my veins, watching
as her banded
abdomen turns dark, inflates.
A long minute later
she pulls out, rises unsteadily
& sails off singing
her single note.
Then comes a rapid patter across
the field, the yard, staccato
on the porch roof &
into the woods – suddenly
it’s pouring & the treetops
are bending, swaying under
the weight of it
before the first drops reach
the forest floor.
A wheal rises where
the mosquito took the only
blood supper of her
purposeful life. While I sit
waiting for God knows what
it has fallen to me,
what she no longer needs:
the goad of her saliva.
Her fierce itch.
__________
For a place-based essay on mosquitoes by another central Pennsylvania writer, see here.
