Brew Ha Ha

What better to do on the hottest night of the year than savor an icy, cold, refreshing, locally-crafted beer?

How about make your own.

OK, so beer can't be made entirely in one night, but all you need to get started is a good stretch of a few hours. Beer is ultimately just another form of food preservation. Much like freezing, canning, dehydrating, jamming and salt curing, beer brewing is part of a long tradition of taking a freshly harvested food product with a short shelf life and making it last longer. In the good ol' days longer meant "a sufficient period of time to get through the long, harsh, cold, winter when no fresh food was available"...talk about a food desert. However, I am sure the delicious taste and relaxing qualities of this beverage had nothing to do with the growth of beer's popularity. How else were people expected to use all their barley and wheat before it went bad?

We can specifically thank fermentation for making this good brew happen. Oh dearest fermentation, what would we do without you and the delicious sauerkraut, wine, kimchi, yogurt, kombucha, soy sauce, vinegar, chorizo and bread you create for us? I could go on here...but I won't. Basically, fermentation is the chemical process in which carbohydrates (sugars) are transformed into alcohol and carbon dioxide in an oxygen free (anaerobic) environment thanks to the work of yeast or bacteria (or both). The best part, there's a special word for the scientific study of fermentation: zymurgy. (Which is also the convenient title of the American Homebrewers Association magazine).

Making beer at home requires a bit more equipment, patience, knowledge, space and time than other food preservation endeavors, but that's part of the fun. The upside is, as most home brewers proudly spout, there's nothing in home-brewed beer that could kill you - unlike, say, low-acid vegetables and their friendly resident botulism. Plus, there are a good number of beer brewing instruction manuals, for the beginner to the advanced, to help you along the way.

Saturday, as the mercury was rising mid-day, we found ourselves embarking on an activity that has long been on the to do list: beer creation. Technically, it's more of creating the right environment for yeast to turn barley tea into beer through the fermentation process, as the yeast does most of the work. Somewhat spontaneously, we got underway, inspired by a free afternoon and a prominently displayed homebrew book at the library. Nikki set out as the master brewster...and I her sous-brewster and documentarian. Our two-woman team historically appropriate, as many of the original beer makers were women, hence the term brewster. (What was Punky doing in her free time?)

We moved swiftly, selecting a recipe from The Complete Homebrew Beer book (Black IPA), taking the dog for a quick walk (it was hot out!), and heading to the Wine & Hop Shop on Monroe Street (which we already visited on our first day in town). And there all swiftness stopped. With a well-researched and detailed list in hand, we perused the store for almost two hours. We gathered our basic equipment like a large stainless steel brewing pot, a 6-gallon plastic bucket with special lid, siphon hook thing, and big glass carboy. I had never purchased a siphon before, nonetheless a large brewing sock or bottle filler or #2 plug. We were a bit giddy, and we also pretended to know exactly what we were doing.

   

Nikki asked pointed beer brewing questions to the very helpful and very patient store staff while gathering ingredients for the process. How to determine the amount of hops needed? Where to find Irish moss? How exactly to use the electric milling machine in the store (to crack the malt so the maximum sugar is extracted)? Which air lock comes best recommended? We pulled bittering hops and aromatic hops from the cooler after much debate. We selected our three malted grains from the enormous bulk selection, and then milled them. We picked the correct yeast from the cooler, with 300 billion organisms in one tiny pouch. All while munching on hops candy, and still pretending that we knew what we were doing.

The process of shopping brought us one step closer to understanding the actual steps we were about to undertake. At least for Nikki. I got distracted by all sorts of things like cider making (yes, they rent cider presses), why my first batches of ginger ale didn't turn out well (I didn't let it ferment long enough) and the fact that all homebrew supplies seem to be made in Oregon. Finally, finally, we checked every item off our list. Our newly acquired purchases in hand, we broke a sweat walking to the car in heat of the day.

Our loot, all collect at the register.

Ingredients Ready!

This is a good time to introduce the basic process of brewing beer, to the best of my knowledge, with some guidance from my master brewster.
 

They gym sock and malt

1. Bring three gallons of water to about 150-160 degrees on the stove. Take pot off heat. Steep a large gym sock full of your selected malted grains in the hot water (off the heat) for 30 minutes. Okay, so it's not a used gym sock, it's a specialty muslin brew bag big enough to hold almost three pounds of grain. To me, it looks funny. At the end of this stage, you have three gallons of malted barley tea. Just flavored water. In our household, this process began around 10 pm.

More gym sock action

2. Sparge. Yup, you heard me. Remove your enormous gym sock from the brew pot, place it in a colander over your brew pot, and pour warm brewing water over it to extract the last of the steeped goodness from your gym sock. Around 11:25 pm, after resigning from my sous-brewster responsibilities for the night and heading upstairs, I heard quite the harumpus in the kitchen. I traipsed back down the stairs to see a frustrated  brewster surmising the wall, stove, floor and more covered with brown, wet barley tea. As she was sparging the gym sock, the colander slipped and splashed into the brew pot, sending beer tea all over the kitchen. I wish I had photos of this. We cleaned, I giggled, she completed the sparge, I went back to bed, and the brewing continued downstairs without me.  After sparging, the beer tea is brought back up to a rolling boil. The spent grain (aka the contents of the gym sock) was saved as a delicious treat for the chickens at the farm. More on that to come later.

3. When boiling resumes, the pot is taken off the heat. At this point the liquid malt is added to the brew pot and stirred until fully incorporated at a rolling boil. This liquid malt, slightly sweet and more viscous than maple syrup, is a condensed version of the beer tea from step one. Its purpose is to...ummm...I don't know. My guess is that you would have to use so much grain in your gym sock that it's worth it to cheat and use the condensed liquid malt.

4. With the liquid malt fully incorporated at a rolling boil, add the bittering hops to the brew pot and let it roll for 45 minutes. Nikki selected Northern Brewer hops, at 12 AAU (alpha acid units) which is hoppy for an IPA, but not overly bitterly hoppy (ick). During this long boil , and instead of watching water boil, Nikki started a brewster's journal, re-re-re-read the beer recipe, sterilized the equipment for the next steps, did some dishes and danced - all while preventing a foamy layer from establishing itself on the top of the pot.

5. After the lengthy 45 minute boil, one pound of demerara sugar, Irish moss and yeast nutrient are added to the brew pot and boiled another fifteen minutes. The sugar provides "food" that the yeast eat and turn into alcohol, the Irish moss is for clarifying the brew and the yeast nutrient is (yet again I am guessing) a 'vitamin' that encourages the yeast to eat and ferment. I have no idea if that is right.

6. As we approach the end of the brew pot phase, half of the aroma hops are added to the brew pot, Cascade hops in this case. Then the fun starts.

7. As you now know, yeast are the rock stars of the fermentation process. And just like rock stars, they make specific, elaborate requests for their lodging. The yeast request a comfortable 72 degree, oxygen free living environment while they are 'on tour' in your brew. It would be so easy if they enjoyed the boiling temperatures in your brew pot, but unfortunately that would kill them. So, you now have to do your best to get the contents of your three gallon pot of boiling water down to 75ish degrees in less than 45 minutes. The tactic used here: ice and cold water constantly flowing around the brew pot as it sits in the kitchen sink. It took an hour, on the first try...not too bad. This is a good time to point out that after at least two and a half hours of full-blast gas use on our kitchen stove and an hour of cold water from the faucet...resource conservation in not a priority in home brewing...at least in your first go round. I will leave it at that. 

8. After the swift cool down, a magic siphon is used to transfer the beer tea + sugar + moss + hops mixture to the primary fermenter, aka a plastic bucket with a fancy lid. Although I understand the physics behind siphons, they still amaze me. This step is called "racking" the beer, which also makes me think of playing pool.

9. The almost last step of the first stage of brewing is to pitch the yeast into the primary fermenter, stir, affix the airtight lid and insert the airlock. The airlock lets carbon dioxide out of your bucket without letting oxygen in...as our rock star yeast don't perform well with all that oxygen riffraff around. Then, you live with a big, white plastic bucket in your dining room for 7-10 days as the primary fermentation is underway, ideally in a 75ish degree setting. This last part was especially hard as we are in the middle of a heat wave and the thermostat, conveniently located next to the beer bucket, read a consistent 88 degrees.

10. After the primary fermentation, the brew mixture is carefully siphoned out of the primary bucket and into the carboy. The airlock is affixed again, the six gallon glass jug is carried awkwardly to the basement, where it sits for round two of fermentation. Lonely, and kept in the dark, the carboy stays cool for this slower round of fermentation.

And that my friends, is all I can tell you. Sounds simple enough, no? The basic steps after this include transferring the brew mix to yet another bucket and then filling all fifty 12oz bottles of beer from there. One must also acquire fifty empty 12oz beer bottles, wash them, remove labels, box them in her kitchen, and then sterilize them before use.  I've decided brewing your own beer requires lots of friends: those who bring you their empty brown beer bottles and those who help you drink your creation. Yup, we're in the process of collecting 50 used beer bottles, and I am preparing for some sort of entertainment so we can get through 50 bottle of beer!

Brewing beer, much like any cooking adventure, is just a big science experiment in your kitchen. A fun, messy experiment with no instant gratification. So as we wait for about 5 weeks with our fingers crossed, checking for bubbles through the airlock, all we can do is hope. Hope that this experiment pans out and that we have a tasty beverage to enjoy with friends, and appreciate the talents of brewers who make craft beer for a living (oh, and prepare for our next batch: hop harvest ale).

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As a post note, on Monday morning I brought the spent grain to the farm to be enjoyed by the animals who so graciously give us so much food. Diana suggested the pigs would be the best recipients, and that it would be a fair trade for the whey I steal from their buckets for my bread making. I was excited. During the regular afternoon chores, and at normal pig feeding time, I pour the spent grain from the gym sock onto the pasture with delight, just waiting for six snouts of the young heritage pigs to shovel it across the ground, fighting to eat it all. But instead, nothing. These piggies were perfectly content with their whey and grain ration, and the fruit laden limb fallen off one of the apple trees. Oh well, you can't have it all.

A Few Updates

1. Nah, we don't need that. (Ahem, yes we do.)
The state has come to its senses and decided to provide a letter of support for state agency applications for federal public health grant fund. Phew. Apparently Governor Walker talked Dennis Smith, the Health Services Secretary, into it making this happen. As if it weren't a no brainer from the start and someone needed to be talked into allowing almost $30M in prevention oriented public health funding into the state...but that's just my opinion. More here from the Sentinal Journal last week.

2. Now, even the kitchen sink!
The kitchen is joyfully unpacked, and being put to good use...like pickle making, bread baking and serving as home to all the goat cheese (and not to mention some beer brewing...more to come).

      

3. More pictures, please.
The not-so-bad-life post, especially the part about the farm job, has launched some requests for photos. So, here's one for now. I promise there are more to come, especially with the upcoming home brew ditty!

Dreamfarm from the top of the drive. Photos can't do it justice.

Not a Bad Life

Two and a half days a week I spend hauling milk, washing aged cheese, stirring curds, packing soft cheese, "doing the dishes", squeegeeing the cheese house floor, readying coolers for market, feeding hens, collecting eggs, chasing runaways, forking goat poop from barn stalls, watering baby steers, talking to Jacob sheep, and serving as playground equipment for young goats (I would call them kids, but I don't want to somehow convey that I have children - which I do not). Barn swallows, lounging cats, one fuzzy bunny, two white and burr-covered farm dogs, laying hens producing white, brown, tan, blue, olive green and speckled eggs, buzzing hives of bees, three young steer, twenty four goats for milking (who are out at pasture all day and I hardly see), their offspring, five heritage pigs with the most ear piercing cry I have ever heard and the kindest farmer I have ever met... these are my daytime friends when I am at, what I like to call, my farm job.

Standing endlessly, and joyfully, in the cheese house to make farmstead goat cheeses, the fresh and the aged alike. Hauling milk from the milk room to the cheese house. Meandering into the 'valley' to feed and water the hens, collect their dreamily hued eggs and humorously wrangle the rebel escapee hens back into their fenced pasture. It all takes place at the most beautiful farm I have ever stepped foot on or even seen through the lens of farm photographs (which we all know can lend such a mystic, agrarian daydream feel to any cultivated or fenced land). It's no wonder the place is called Dreamfarm, because it truly is. And there's no wonder why such beautiful land and grass, kind people, sweet goats and hard work turn into some of the tastiest, most savory cheese I have ever been lucky enough to eat. (And no, I am not biased just because I have the great pleasure and privilege of eating it almost every day now.) And that's not to mention the Saturday mornings at the Westside Community Market, helping Diana sell this delicious cheese and the abundant cartons of eggs, talking with the smiling folks passing by and drinking basil lemonade shared by the farmers in the booth next store. (And really not to mention the involuntary nap that occurs after the bike ride home from market).

The farm job is a good one. An early morning pulling on cool and light clothes in preparation for a long day in the humid cheese house. A thirty minute drive, through Madison and beyond, and past grassy roadsides with hilly, tree covered landscapes. An easy drive, still full of appreciation and excitement for the day's work ahead. I love the farm job. In part because I love the work, the environment and the people I get to spend my day with. In part because I know it's another piece in the puzzle to having my own green valleys, rebel hens, barn swallows and all the mischief it entails...one day. By the end of the day (which is not the end of Diana's day, as she still has chores and the evening milking ahead of her, and all the business of running a farm that goes on once the sun turns off) I am sore, tired, blistered, dirty, smelly and grateful. I can't get enough, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Photos can't even do justice to the view over the alfalfa field valley.

Three days of the week are filled with the following: desk sitting, computing, typing, phone calling, e-mailing, strategizing, and not being outside. This is what I call my office job. Admittedly, that sounds pretty lame compared to the farm job, although I bet that depends a bit on your perspective. However, as far as office jobs go, this is my dream job too. I spend my days coordinating farm to school efforts in the Great Lakes Region with the National Farm to School Network. I have the pleasure of talking with people running farm to school programs at the state, local or school level and helping them connect to whatever resources they need to be helpful. And I get to work on national policy issues surrounding farm to school, working to support farmers from the other end of the system: by creating more markets for local and regional producers. Not a bad deal either. And I get to work in a department with some of the neatest people who are working on some pretty dang cool sustainable agriculture projects.

I love both of these opportunities, and the balance they provide throughout the days. Office days bookended by days on the farm or at market are not a bad deal and there is surely no room for boredom. My dream has been, for a number of years now at least, to be a part time farmer and a part time farm to school policy maker. It's hard to believe that balance can actually be true, and that I get to live that dream for now. But, if you were to ask me on a farm job day if I'd rather be at the office job, you'd probably never hear me utter 'yes'. There is something magical about being on the land, carrying buckets of goat's milk or being covered in manure that I just can't resist.

Nah, We Don't Need That...

There are some things that just don't make sense to me, and probably never will. Why cars don't stop for pedestrians in crosswalks, exactly how airplanes fly and anything involving outer space to name a few. Top on that list, for the moment, is why representatives at the Wisconsin State Department of Public Health will not support state organizations in applying for federal public health funding.

Yes, yes. I've moved into a state filled with its own set of quirky political challenges, hypocritical elected officials and angry, angry constituents. Before moving to Wisconsin, I watched the energetic protests at the state capitol, heard the debated over the new state budget, and all the hints of strange and embarrassing semi-scandal. I knew we would be in for some fireworks, but from a distance, it's always hard to tell.

As your eyes glaze over with all this talk of politics, here's the link to food. This week, both the Wisconsin State Journal and the Journal Sentinel ran stories highlighting the failure of State Department of Health to support around 28 million dollars of funding over five years for Wisconsin public health campaigns.  Both the Milwaukee Health Department and University Health Services at UW-Madison applied for federal grants, authorized under Obama's federal health care reform, to support smoking cessation, nutrition and physical activity programs across the state. Each grant application, due July 15, requires a letter of support from the state public health office. In this case, the state declined to provide that support, reportedly stating "Why are we asking for taxpayers' money for stuff that we are already doing?" 

Maybe, the state would support these funds as a supplement to the comparatively low level of existing public health funding in Wisconsin. Or, possibly, the state's relatively high rates of smoking and obesity would be good enough incentive to encourage the Department of Health to hop on board with these grant proposals. A modicum of foresight might even recognize these funds as a potential long-term cost cutting proposal to mitigate the very expensive long term health care costs associated with smoking and obesity related health problems. But no, instead it seems as if politics has gotten in the way again, and this time public health suffers.

Ok, but what about the food?

It's in the programs. Public health funds targeting childhood obesity usually support campaigns for improved nutrition and physical activity. Sure, these are terms that are easy to gloss over, but in reality they mean two things. The first is innovative initiatives that encourage youth to eat and move in new ways. Farm to school efforts, fresh fruit and vegetable promotions, recess before lunch, bike paths and active after school programs (not to mention evaluations that prove their efficacy) are the integral on-the-ground efforts that must be funded. The second is jobs. These grant funds are moving through local community organizations, universities and departments of health; and administered by program coordinators, health educators and public health professionals of all stripes. These funds support these organizations, currently underfunded and overworked, to build capacity by maintaining and adding jobs. It seems a shame to let the potential for 28 million dollars in public health prevention funds to slip through the state's hands.