Low Impact, Low Cost, Low Capital Beer

Items that I put together for the first attempt at low-impact beer

OK:

This is the first effort at trying to figure out the antithesis of the current zeitgeist of the current American home brewing hobbyhorses.

For the most part, American hobbyists view their weird little perversions as a dick matching contest, with hurried and frequent trips to the local homebrewing store of the internet to purchase, at often ruinous expense, the latest geegaw that will prove to their peers that their equipment can beat anyone else's equipment at brewing beer.  It is somewhat akin to "Fishermen" who, when they add in the cost of their boat and tackle and sundry probably spend $55.00 an pound for the fish they catch.

Beer was created by the Sumerians.  2050 BCE was quite a while ago.  All the technical commercial crap is not necessary to the task.

Alulu beer receipt – This records a purchase of "best" beer from a brewer, c. 2050 BC from the Sumerian city of Umma in ancient Iraq.^[1]

So, I am proceeding in the opposite direction.  For this first little effort, I am going to attempt a small batch of beer (1.5 to 2 gallons)<2 a="" and="" apartment.="" dinky="" fits="" gallons="" in="" into="" it="" little="" make="" my="" p="" system="" that="" to="" try="">

Hardware:

1. Stainless steel 2.5 gallon pot with lid, steamer insert and draining thingamajig
2. 1 quart pyrex measuring cup
3. balance
4. big nylon straining bag for the grain
5. small muslin bags for the hops
6. thermometer
7. Some siphon tubing and a hose clamp
8. Fermenting bucket 
9. Air lock

Ingredients

1.   3.25 pounds 2-row barley @ $1.09/lb ($3.54) 
2.  0.25 pounds of Crystal 80 @ $1.69/lb ($0.43)
3.  0.25 pounds of Chocolate Malt @ 1.99 ($0.50)
4.  0.25 pounds of Chocolate Wheat @ 1.69 ($0.43)
5.  1 ounce Summit hops ($2.50)
6.  11.5 grams Safbrew Abbaye yeast ($5.99)

Mashing

OK:  there are a lot of resources out there for helping you work out the details.  For this little project, I used these folks:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/

First step is to put the nylon sack into the pot and put in five quarts of water and stick it on the burner. 

Keep the thermometer close at hand and watch the temperature, when it gets to 169-170 F. (76-77 C.)

Full Stop:  First rule....do not buy a cheap thermometer....

First crack a failure...The temperature was actually around 200 instead of the 170, the grains are ruined, the enzymes dead.  Tomorrow is another purchase of grain and a decent thermometer.

Back to Work:

To Be continued

Yoga Capitalism Ramble

Hipsters Got It:

The capitalism and consumerism that is practiced in this country really is becoming a self-referential bit of a mess.  What is being sold and produced, here and abroad, for the masses in America is derived nearly solely of status symbols and affectations.  That is the nature of American Capitalism.

The stupid expensive cars. The $100 yoga pants.  Iphones and Ipads.  McMansions.

All of these things just don't matter to a life well led.  What they are is a way of flouting one's self-perceived superiority and "success".  The life that folks are leading is a series of purchases required to cobble together a "lifestyle" in order to establish an identity.

Really think about that last sentence.  I especially want to you to dwell on the word that defines our society today.  Lifestyle.  The two roots are obvious enough that I won't belabor them.

Style is the interesting word.  There are a whole series of definitions to this monosyllable (though out here in Orygun the word tends toward disyllabic).  We have a society whose sole purpose seems to be the generation of and maintenance of the surface and the ephemeral.  Education is not about advancing your knowledge, it is about getting sufficient training to allow a future employer to offer you a job.  Government is based on spin.  Taxpayer revolts are about starving the commons for the sake of the self.

Nearly all of our "culture" is cartoonish.  Super-heroes and super-cops fight out in morality plays.

Even our religion is tainted.  Super churches spout a creed of capitalism that would make their erstwhile savior rush into the temple to drive out the money changers.  Christian tenets such as voluntary poverty and human brotherhood are traded for the latest fashion, a new 4x4 pickup and a hatred of the other.

Our lives have become a fulfillment of the ruling class'  wishes for us.  We are now consumers.  I think that it is time that we woke up to it and stopped feeding the machine.  I am trying.  Wish me luck.

1976

You know, it was kind of a crappy year.

Vietnam had finished and the military was in limbo, crying like a whipped dog.  The economy was crap, the first oil crunch had taken a big bite out of the country.  The internet did not exist, ARPANET was not quite a year old and both Microsoft and Apple came into being.

The environment was an issue, Rachel Carson was still being read and mourned,  Paul Ehrlich was being roundly vilified for speaking the truth.  The climate had just made its first big move (the 1976 Shift) and the data was so new no one even noticed.  We had a caretaker President who handed the reins to a good man who tried to change things and who everyone despised for not telling them that they were special.  He appealed to the better angels of our nature and lost four years later to a man and culture that knew we didn't possess anything of the sort.

Our society was still flailing around after the silliness of the late sixties and early seventies.  The yuppies had not been born yet, you just had a bunch of 20-somethings with college degrees who had started the transition from budding hippies to yuppies with a mission to strip mine the country for everything that it was worth in order to feed their own cupidity.

History Rhymes

Our vaunted military is getting to be more and more broken.  Long wars do that to you.  The oil crunch this time is a different flavor, but still a symptom of the same problems.  The internet is now ubiquitous and its utility growing more suspect.  Microsoft and Apple are behemoths astride the landscape, but they are showing their age and their sclerosis.

The environment is worse now, having been ignored for forty some odd years.  We have a caretaker president who maintained the looting begun by Reagan and that continued through both Bushes and a Clinton.

But it will be a little different this time.  Unless something radical happens, whichever of the two idiots we elect will be a one-term wonder.  I think that there is a solid chance that neither of them will get all the way through one term, whether the cause be impeachment, violence, or indictment.  When both major party candidates have an unfavorable metric of greater than 50%, I think that we had better keep our expectations quite low.

So we are looking at the arc of history from the other end of where we were in 1976.  Part of me thinks that we are reaping our just rewards, but then I look at my sons and realize that they will be reaping what we sowed.

Plan of Action

The Best that Google Can Do

It would appear that I have been enjoying writing this little affectation lately.    The damn thing has been in existence since May of 2005.  Pageviews are at 113,486.  It would appear that my best month was back in June 2013 where I garnered >6,300 pageviews in a month.  The best post was "Aisles" with >3,600 page views.

But I have to figure out how best to keep doing this for the next long while.  I have 1,269 posts in here.  I figure that around 100 of them are keepers.  The rest is fill, done to keep my mental constipation at bay.

So here is what I figure.  No more weekend posts, I will use the early time on Saturday and Sunday to lay down foundations and ideas.  And get them roughed out.  Then during the week as I write in the morning, I will flesh out the piece and publish.

That is my plan.  See you in the funny papers.

Friday Shorts

I am breaking into a new habit of writing.

I think that any one who exhibits the lack of time management skills needed to routinely drop by and visit this blog had best not have much in the way of expectations for the Friday post.

This old man is still working for a living, and the days of Friday being the day of partying and fun are gone, gone, gone.  Friday is just scraping by and getting home to rest.

So my screed-generation engine will not be up to the marginal standards that the rest of the site exhibits by the time Friday rolls around.

I do not apologize

Sign of the Times

“The old is dying and the new is struggling to be born; in the interim a great variety of morbid symptoms occur.”
                                     –Antonio Gramsci.

So:  First thing.  Take a look at this:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/draghi-seen-buying-junk-debt-shows-ecb-will-do-whatever-it-takes

So, now the European Central bank is so consumed by maintaining the status quo of theives and liars that they are now willing to buy junk bonds to support the market and the zombie companies.  And the rest of us are to believe that things are going along well.

This is more and more feeling like 2007.  The big money is making certain that governments and the taxpayer are on the hook for the excesses of the greedy.  Goldman-Sachs alumni still do everything necessary to ensure that their ancestral breeding ground is defended.

Nothing has been done to address the issues that collapsed the economy last time.  Truth be told, I am not certain that, even if sensible and honest policies are enacted, the economy will not tank anyway. The rot is deep.

I don't approve of or advocate the proposed solutions to this age old problem that is espoused by the Marxists, but boy-o-boy do the Marxists have an excellent description of the problem.

Capital is doing it's level best to monopolize the means of production.  Automation, offshoring, and immigration grease the skids for this power grab.

The Bourgeoisie is acting as it has always acted.  Sneering quislings who feel that their privilege and their station allow them access to treats that define their superiority.

The Proletariat is getting screwed, getting marginalized, and getting angry.

This game has played out before.  The genius of FDR is that he managed to deflect the storm.

I can't imagine anyone in the current political having the guts to do what is needed.

The best hope that we have is Donald Trump (remember, FDR was a rich fucker just like Donald)

And that my friends, is one itsy-bitsy tiny ray of hope.

Well......

Now lets talk about the economy and it's effect on the political stage and vice-versa.

The votes are in, and it would appear that the "people" have chosen the path continuing the current trajectory.  Trump is a dissident oligarch, Clinton is a bought and paid for henchman of the oligarchs.

So we will continue down the path we are treading.

Now, what should we expect next?  I have a nasty suspicion that, considering the provenance of the two candidates, we will continue to feed the 1% at the expense of the rest of the country.

I would posit that we will begin seeing laws encouraging money coming into the US and complimentary laws discouraging the exit of the same.  I will venture a guess that the rich folks will have to repatriate their offshore money and pay some taxes, but the legislation that requires the money to come back on shore will be watered down to allow a lower overall tax rate for the "richers".

The welfare folks will be whipped, because there is nothing more enjoyable for this country's top 80% than to spit on and sneer at the bottom 20%.  But I think that the bottom 20% will be expanded to the bottom 30%.

The working class is going to take it in the shorts regardless.  The "computer productivity", offshoring, automation, and illegal aliens will continue to erode the working class, the bottom edge of the working class will become the top edge of the welfare class.

The professionals will begin to feel the bite too.  This class will drop from it's 20% to 15% and become even more of a hereditary system.  The education required for this class will become increasingly throttled and reserved for the scions of this order.

The rich will get richer.

That will be the outcome of the coming election.  The mechanism is being wound tighter.  Now we will see how long before it breaks.  Things won't happen quickly, we got some years yet, but it doesn't appear that anything will arrest the trajectory of things to come.

Where do we go from here?

California is voting today.

The election is getting closer and the knives are out.  I rate the chances of the next president as being Trump 55%, Hillary 37%, and Bernie 7%.  The additional 1% is for the strange things that could occur.

So lets talk about those last two.

Things might have a chance for the Democrats if Bernie manages to push Hillary off the bus.  Hillary is a crazy old bitch with a chip on her shoulder and a bad temper.  If Bernie can convince the Democratic party that their current standard-bearer is a losing proposition, maybe, just maybe, the Democratic party can be saved.  If Hillary pulls it off, the defections and angst will most likely insure that the Trumpmeister will be the one redecorating the little in the White House that can be redecorated (Remember, the place is a flipping museum). If Hillary wins, I believe strongly that a lot of folks that normally vote Demo will sit out the election. The folks that like Bernie despise Hillary.  I truthfully think that a lot of Demos will vote for Trump before they vote for Hillary.

Look, Trump is a business promoter.  He wins by saying out-there shit, and pushing people off their groove.  He forces people to react.  That is his style.  He is an averagely honest corporate head that for the most part plays within the rules.  Right now the Republican party is bitching that he doesn't represent them, but in truth, they built him, and now they watch aghast as he rages out of their control.  I hope that they aren't stupid enough to pull a fast one at the convention and anoint one of their zombies.  That will certainly be the death of the Republican party.

What concerns me is that for the first time in a very long time, the procession of our changes in government may be disrupted. If Hillary wins, I believe strongly that a lot of folks that normally vote demo will sit out the election and work to split the Democratic party. The folks that like Bernie despise Hillary.

If the Republicans pull off their shenanigans, the fracturing of the Republican party will be even more likely that the fracturing of the Democratic party if Hillary wins.  The procession of our elections may well be forced off the tracks.

The two-party system has worked reasonably well for a long time.  It has gotten corrupt and stinky, but right now there does not appear to be anything functional ready to take its place on the stage.

The 1% chance is what I am frightened of.  Lots of bad things come out of the dissolution of functioning systems.  Truthfully, not very many good things come out of them.

Monday Morning Blank

Just got back from our yearly attempt at elderly excess.

The folks I hang with during these outings are a pretty nice cross-section of the upper regions of the professional class, hell, one of them is probably a full-on one-percenter.  Now they are all retiring and living the good life.  I cannot stress enough how happy I am for them, they seem to have achieved their goal.

But I notice a certain angst with them, the political discourse has changed over the years, that will always be the case, but this time I sense a certain resignation that I have never seen before.  They are all intelligent and educated folks, and this time I believe that I felt resignation in their voices.

I think that they are seeing, for the first time, that there may well be an endgame.  I think that they also may also be understanding that the world might be working its way to a new way of doing business.  Worst of all, I think that they might be realizing that their positions are not all that stable in the new system that is being birthed.  They don't like the idea much.  Can't say as I blame them.

In a sense, the attitude of maintenance of the status quo has always been the hallmark of folks such as these.  They work hard, play by the rules, and expect to be rewarded for that brief foray into purgatory.  The retirement of golf and crafts was the carrot hung in front of these folks for the past thirty years to entice them to perform the obeisances necessary for a wildly capitalist and exploitative system.  They did what the chose to do and they did it well.

But systems themselves change.  The system we have changed into is where the folks at the top need to keep throwing others off the boat in order for the boat to stay afloat.  They are just now coming to the realization that their ticket that they have punched through dint of 25+ years of hard work may provide less than  what they anticipated.

 Now, some of you might be saying in your brains that these folks deserve it, that they were complicit in the deal going down.  No sir, that dog won't hunt.

In a very real sense, these folks are the folks that really will lose.  They put their faith in the system and rose as high as they could within the system.  They all started out as working class and clawed and scratched their way up from there.  They played by the established rules and succeeded.  It is not their fault that they weren't high enough on the food chain to avoid the coming unpleasantness.

So, just remember, these folks aren't the war criminals who were "just following orders" these were hard working folks who tried to contribute.  It wasn't until after they completed their tasks that they realized the game was rigged and they were pawns the same as the rest of us.

Just Wondering

So, consider these:

1. Resources are depleting whether we have used up half the oil of almost half the oil is the raging question.  I think that we are over the 50% mark and the next 50% are going to be a lot harder to get at and will be a lot less useful due to the loss of efficiency (Lower EROEI).
2. A huge chunk of the citizen population here in the good old USA is being made redundant by means of Automation, offshoring, and illegal immigration.  I do like the term "Unnecessariat" is especially descriptive.
3. The environment is beginning its decline, global warming is happening, regardless of what you think is the cause.  The oceans are souring, hell a third of Australia's reefs are dead.  Pollution exists in spades, if you doubt that for a moment, just take a gander at the skies of Beijing or the state of the containment of Fukishima Dai Ichi. 
4. The upper crust of the society is funneling a greater percentage of the countries wealth into their pockets at the expense of everyone else.  The poor are getting poorer and deeper in debt.  The ranks of the poor are swelling and the professional class is running scared.
5. The aging of the Boomers has created a huge bubble of senior citizens that will become increasingly more demanding as they become unable to work due to age.  
6. The population of workers supporting this whole structure is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the general population.
7. The political infrastructure that controls and governs has become corrupt and unstable.  If your doubt this, go re-examine the current Presidential campaign and get back to me.
8. The Military-Industrial complex seems dead set on confronting the two other major militaries of the world (China and Russia).  They don't seem to be backing down.

I know that this is a full-blown rhetorical question, but here goes anyway.

Do you really think that your life will be the same in five years?

Thai Pig and a Rant

Mother's day and Father's day are commercial bullshit.  End of Quote.

If you need a day to celebrate what may be the best part of your life, you are doing it all wrong. Bud, the parts that you want to be thanked for are all your own damn fault.  No one told you to do it, it was a decision all your own.  Don't expect everyone to cheer.

No card is needed, no present is required, the act is all the gift you should ever hope for.

What this ongoing commercial bullshit does is add to the culture of entitlement that pervades our country

Recipe time again.  I am cooking for the boys, having told them not to play this shit

Take a 12 pound boned pork leg.  Rub it with the following:

Thai Pig

1 cup of Soy Sauce
1/4 cup of vinegar
1 package of dried teriyaki sauce mix
2 packages of Pad Thai seasoning mix
1 can of coconut milk

When I say rub it, rub it.  Take a couple of minutes.

Then I put it into a seal bag (I have my spiffy Cabela's sealer, I spoke of it here) and seal it up

Now let it sit for a day or so, I find that things work best if you leave it out in the kitchen some, but then put it in the fridge when you go to sleep.  One of the great thing about having the meat in a big, vacuum sealed bag is that you can continue rubbing without getting your hands all ooky.

When you are done, bake that puppy at 250 in a dutch oven for eight or so hours, half of it uncovered, until the temp hits 180 and you are off and running.

I shred the stuff and add it to a bed of rice and you are in for some damn fine eating.

You know,most of us old grunts just don't have a problem with that.

The source material for this little bit of screed comes from here.

draft-dodger-donald-trump-gets-heroes-welcome-at-rolling-thunder.html

Now, truth be told, I ever so slightly more impressed with Donald Trump than I am impressed by the Hillary, which is to say not at all.  If these two yahoos are the best that the country can come up with, then maybe we are in a terminal decline.

So this is not a defense of either candidate's draft status (Remember that Billy boy was a draft dodger with the best of them), but rather a commentary on the way that the bulk of Americans thought about the draft in the late 60's and early 70's.

In a nutshell, there weren't that many of us out there in the real world who wanted to get drafted.  All of us thought about it, nearly any of us would have jumped on a deferment with both feet.  We all knew in our soul of souls that it was a stupid war.

My draft lottery number was 250.  I was good to go, went to college on a football scholarship, only joined up when I ran out of other ways to avoid it (going in as a SP4 helped).  Other folks went on their Mormon mission,  4-F and asthma was a gold mine, hell, the biggest drunk in the class went to divinity school and it took...he is still preaching.

But the bulk of the folks who got drafted just couldn't figure a way out of it.  The rest of us got them drunk at their going-away kegger and worried about them for a bit (ironically, we usually forgot about them by the time they finished AIT, which is when we really should have started worrying about them).

The upshot of all this is that no one outside of the serving officer corps, WWI, WWII, and Korea vets had any real issues with draft dodgers.  Hell, I remember going over to the Elks Club and the Legion with my dad and listening to the old timers, they weren't that impressed with the war either.  Sure, you had a bunch of the "My Country Right or Wrong" folks out, but they didn't dominate, they bitched and bought drinks and told you their point of view.

So, when folks like this smiling 30-something reporter, with perfect teeth and an axe to grind bring out the "Draft Dodger" gambit, it is nothing but hypocrisy and a political knifing.

The times have changed a lot, but political hacks haven't

Notes done during a breakfast of Last Night's Pizza

Today is a lesson in perceptions and consequences.  It is also a primer of why, unless some remarkably cruel policies are put in place soon, we will fail in staying a first world power and will go the way of Greece.  There isn’t any moralizing here.  What a democracy spends its money on is its own damn business.  The taxpayer who whines about government largess usually just whines about government largess that he doesn’t receive.

Neither is this going to be a defense of the idea that the sad set of rituals and symbols that pass for the American Dream are worthy of any spirited defense.   This quote from a long ago posting on The Automatic Earth says quite a bit about the current state of affairs.

Some of us chase dreams of wealth, while others simply dream of happiness. But we – almost – all have cars and TV sets and computers and many other possessions that are so ubiquitous in our societies that we don’t even ask anymore why we have them, or what we would do without. We unquestioningly assume they contribute to what we perceive as happiness.

Nope, this is merely a discussion of what I see as the most likely future.  It isn’t a polemic about how, should we choose, we could change the trajectory of a failing country.  It is a simple set of observations about how the change will come to us unbidden and out of our control.

Consider for a moment, this little gem:

Doing a little unauthorized math here, and considering a 63% labor participation rate, for the main body of the labor force (24-60) I am figuring that only 94 million folks are out there working in a serious way (please, don’t bring me to task with some lame anecdote about how some person is really still fabulously productive while celebrating his 99th birthday, I am unconcerned with statistical outliers which make you feel better about getting old).

OK, so the real magic number is ninety-four million supporting two-hundred and fourteen million, or one productive worker supporting 2.27 non-productives human who has a set of desires similar to those who are working along with a fully formed set of rights to vote and petition government.

Now let us look at the levels below the >60 crowd on the histogram.  It is here that I am going to concentrate my arguments.  If there is an age group where long-term thinking is possible that is the age cohort of 25-50.  Simply put, this group has sufficient time remaining in their productive years to plan and execute difficult tasks with a project horizon greater than ten years.  The folks below this age group aren’t truly fully formed yet (but they are pretty damn close).  The folks above them are scrambling like maniacs on the supremely difficult task of getting ready for old age, a task which is becoming increasingly dicey.

There are right around 100 million folks in the 25 to 50 age group.  I am going to arbitrarily assign them a higher workforce participation (70%) than the average and make them a group of around 70 million souls in full productive mode, or twenty-two percent of the population.   It is my belief that this is not an adequate number to support a population the size of the US.  This doesn’t even take into account the number of folks who aren’t working full time or who are not really productive but who are pulling down a salary anyway (probably a distressingly large number).

These seventy million souls would, if allowed the access to resources, could theoretically put together a long-term project that could allow the successful transition to a lower-energy society.  The project would necessarily be quite expensive and have a high possibility of failure, but it could be done, allowing access to the necessary resources and allowing for a “what’s in it for me” to the persons executing the project.

But right now our resource base is steadily dwindling.  Our country’s wealth is questionable and we may potentially be technically insolvent at this point.  The limited resources will be allocated per democratic whim to the 78% of the population with no real desire to lose access to the resources that gives their lives comfort and continuity.  Not to mention the truly astounding amount of fraud that has sucked a major portion of the wealth of the country into the bottomless pit of the rentier class and out of the means of productivity.  I won’t even begin to discuss the truly amazing amount of debt that is hanging over our heads.

I don’t see a way out of the decline and fall of the Imperial United States in the next ten years.  I am hoping for a deus ex machina, but I think that I will be sorely disappointed.  The resources needed to execute a difficult long-term strategy are being sucked dry by an overlarge assembly of needy and low-productivity youngsters and oldsters with a set of manufactured needs incapable of being met.

Now, if I were a nicer person, I would probably have phrased the last statement differently.  It by no means is the “fault” of these folks.  But the cruel reality of economics is that one has to put in more than one takes out to make the equation balance.  We have too many people who by dint of age, ability, education, an intelligence cannot meet this goal.  There is a tendency to demonize these folks.  Parasite, welfare queen, greedy pensioner, shiftless, etc., etc., etc.  None of these appellations are valid, they just stem from the anger of folks who cannot access resources to attempt something to help the problem or who themselves want more than what they already have and aspire to the rentier class.

So the many will take away from the whole the means necessary to slow and control the transition to a low-energy future.  The few that will be sucked dry in the process and the collapsed system itself will serve as a rich compost for the next system to grow from.  Don’t think for a moment that I see this as the preferred option, it just appears to be the most likely.

All these things have always been true.  They raised their heads in the time of Sargon and Augustus.  Louis Quinze knew it in his soul and Queen Victoria laid her dainty head on a pillow of these simple truths.  The collapse of the American empire is not the end of the world or the end of America.  It will be what the next phase of America will grow from.  Things will not be worse.  They will be different.

The new America will not spring into being fully formed as did Minerva, but will be a series of missteps and contradictions.  Might be a theocracy in there.  Might have a touch of a military dictatorship.  Might have a new republic, the whole place may split into a set of warring states.  Hell, we may well even manage to keep hold of the current constitution and make adequate changes to allow it to survive.

But all of these futures will be from a smaller and more constrained set of economic ideas.  The idea that all can live as owners of richesse and comfort on an ever increasing scale will be finally put to rest.