Zymurgy and the indoor igloo

Week 11 notes
One of the things I dearly loved back before the Shock was making homemade beer. If you've ever done this you must know there are two ways to do it. First, you can go the harder route and make "all grain" beer. This is where you start with malted barley and possibly wheat (or even corn, rye, etc but usually in much smaller amounts than barley) and undergo a process where you turn the starches in the grains into sugar and extract them from the grain. Or, you can go the easier route and purchase malt extract, which has undergone the previous process at a factory, where the sweet liquid has been concentrated. You have to dilute it yourself...and from there, the two methods are essentially the same: you boil the "pre-beer" (or wort) along with hops or other herbs, cool it somehow, and add yeast. Then you let it sit for a couple of weeks in a fermenter (a big container, like a glass carboy). During this time the yeast turn the sugar into alcohol and CO2 and other things. Then you possibly transfer it to another fermentation vessel for more conditioning (up to 6 months for really strong brews like Barley Wine), and bottle or keg it. This whole process is great fun and if you do things right (like follow a good recipe and maintain SOLID SANITATION PRACTICES) you end up with something magical. I could go on and on about it and there is still information on-line about it for more details (i.e. DON'T TREAT THE ABOVE AS A HOW-TO GUIDE).

But with the Shock, I wonder how feasible this will be. Many folks may say, hey, this guy can make his own beer, but it takes a lot of raw materials to start out with. First of all, malted barley. I could get sacks of the stuff at about $1 per pound or even less, shipping included, but it always comes from maltsters that are many many miles away (it ain't a local food for me). Hops can grow here but not very well, and you can substitute many different bitter herbs although this changes the character of the drink even though its interesting. A look at USDA statistics on barley producers in Tennessee shows none, although there do seem to be some in Virginia (but they are probably growing inferior 6-row for animal feed...although you can make beer out of 6-row). And, when you are making all-grain beer, you REALLY need a good heat source because the starch transformation process needs temperatures around 150-158 F to really work, and you usually are working with 20 or more pounds of grain at a time. Then when you are ready to boil, you are looking at 6-12 gallons of wort that has to be brought to a rolling boil. I used camp cookers (people use them for turkey fryers, for example) and propane, but when oil goes up in price, propane does to. I suppose I could find a way to use wood to do this, but I still have to get the raw materials. Other interesting things you can make include mead and wine. For the former I don't bring things to a boil, I just pasteurize it to kill unwanted bacteria that can spoil the brew, but you have to get honey and that's going to be very precious.

I didn't talk about the fermentation process much, but you actually want ales to ferment at around 60 F which requires temperature control...which requires energy, or a cave. My basement actually works great most of the time for this. Lagers must be fermented at cooler temperatures, say 45-50 and then they undergo very cold conditioning near freezing temperatures for an extended period of time. This brings me to another topic, the indoor igloo. A homebrewer named Ken Schwartz had a great idea for a fermentation chiller, which is like a mini refrigerator that is powered by ice, a simple thermostat, and a little fan. See home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/chiller/chiller.PDF if you are interested. This "device" could be built on a bigger scale to furnish as an indoor igloo for suburban houses that are undergoing harsh winters. The idea: build a larger chiller, big enough for people to huddle in like and igloo, but maybe leaving out the ice bay. I'd still put in a fan and thermostat, though. Park it near your wood stove, possibly with an opening there. Then get the family together and let their body heat keep each other warm. The house itself would have the thermostat set at 40 or so to keep the pipes from freezing. It wouldn't be much for standard of living, but with the Shock, I don't think a lot of people will be able to afford to move anyway.