Pursuing Calefaction

I used to look at new year goals as a quick fix to my broken self. “These goals enumerated here,” I would say to myself, “will make me a better person, and I am going to do them right now.” Well, that’s obviously unrealistic, but that’s what young people do, I guess. I have a different outlook on such things now, and it’s not the road of pessimism. Giving up on the notion of a setting goals is foolish, and in any event, I yearn for ritual. The better question to ask than what sort of person I want to be is, what sort of person am I becoming? Because it’s one thing to want to change to some ideal, but another to try to change without taking into account the distance that you need to cover. I suspect that this is the reason so many of my new year resolutions stuttered and stopped–I was trying to lift more than my carrying capacity.

But I have done a number of things in the last couple years that I didn’t think I was capable of. I wrote one novel and most of a second. I brewed beer for my friend’s wedding. I got into grad school. These all tell me that I am heading in the direction I want to be going. I am becoming someone dedicated to education, to science, to writing, to craftsmanship. And there are areas I want to make strides into–I want to document more of my life in pictures, and to be timely about doing so. I have taken scads of them over the last year, but I never seem to make the time to publish them. There are easy avenues to do so, such as facebook, but that has ethical baggage that I’m not willing to take on. Facebook deserves the bare minimum of my personal life. I feel the need to be a self-published person. That’s the whole point behind this blog, my wiki, and my eventual self-hosted status.net site. As Rob Carlson said to me: “Guard your inputs, maximize your output.”

The other side of that, the inputs, is harder. I’m a terrible news junkie. It’s easy to say what you will do, but it’s much more difficult to say what you won’t do. Breaking habits is….non-trivial. (It took me nearly 20 years to kick my nail-biting.) But I think the secret to kicking habits is to supplant them with healthier ones. I changed nail-biting into nail-trimming by carrying around a nail clipper on my person, and every time I started to put my fingers in my mouth I would try to remember to use the nail clipper. So it must go with my Internet habit. I need to supplant the Web site hopping with something more productive. That is what I’ll be chewing on for the next week or so.

So without further ado, here are my discrete goals for the coming year:

• write, edit, and submit one novel OR three short stories
• read 25 new books (that’s two books a month–slow pace, but one must crawl before walking)
• brew 12 distinct styles of beer on my stove
• find paying work in the teaching/tutoring field
• volunteer 50 hours in the local community
• write 50 letters (actual, printed and/or hand-written correspondence)

These are all things I can do and have done severally, but I have never tried to do them as a whole or in such quantity. But I feel I am at the tipping point, and so I must push myself to reach them. It’s not going to be easy, but I have a wiki to keep track of them

What are you thinking about for the coming year?

This food writing thing is starting to look like a pattern. It occurred to me today that by not writing frequently, I’m engaging in a pattern of thought-hoarding, which fits in with my tendency to ’save’ other things (computer hardware and paperwork are the most pernicious of these). So I guess I’ll try to ride the food wave into more regular writing. Being vegetarian (with a vegan partner) means needing a fair amount of creativity in the kitchen, or at least a breadth of good recipes so you can fake it. Most frequently I rely on Vegan Dad (linked to in the blogroll) or Isa Chandra’s lineup of books and online recipes. But I have one recipe that I have been crafting over the last decade that is mostly my own, and nets high marks consistently even from the most steadfast omnivores. That is, my vegan stroganoff.

It’s pretty straightforward, really; it just requires a small amount of preparation. Just before you start veg prep, soak a little less than 3/4c TVP in 3/4c vegetable stock (or a water/soy sauce mix, but homemade veggie stock is cheap and easy to make). Then take a brick of silken tofu (I prefer the Mori-Nu aseptic packs) and mix in a food processor with about a tablespoon of olive oil, 1/4t salt, and about half a lemon’s worth of lemon juice. This is the “sour cream.”

Once that’s out of the way, you just start throwing it all together. Basically you saute over medium heat a nicely-chopped onion and a stupid, ungodly amount of thinly-sliced mushrooms (though you might call it a godly amount if you’re a fungus-worshiper like myself). Add to that minced garlic (or granulated if you don’t feel like mincing garlic), and then some herbs (parsley and thyme are nice), salt, and pepper to taste. Once most of the moisture is gone, add the TVP, which should have mostly soaked up the stock by now. It’ll add a little bit of moisture to the pan to deglaze any scorching. Cook the TVP for about 5 minutes, maybe 10 if you cut the heat down, and then add the sour cream. Let the heat get through it, stirring thoroughly, and when you start to see it bubbling again it’s chow time! I like to serve this over rice or short noodles. Egg noodles are traditional, of course, but if it’s got starch it’ll probably be ok.

This recipe changes just about every time I make it. Sometimes I play with the consistency of the sour cream; other times I change up the herbs or veg base. Celery is not unheard of, nor is eggplant. But I have laid out the basics, and it’s out there for you to play with now. Bon appetit!

Not everything I do is about beer, though it has become somewhat an obsession of mine. But I suspect it is an extension of a much broader field of interest: cooking. I have been learning how to cook since I was 18, out of the house and in my own place (well, with roommates). I remember my first real lesson, too; I was awkwardly trying to get the skin off some garlic cloves and one of my friends’ friends showed me the knife blade trick. But one thing I have done very well for as long as I have been cooking is bread.

The Sidhe taught me the basics. She had her standard recipe, as handed down to her by her grandmother, and I followed that for a few months. (I mostly still do.) But the thing about crafting is that if you have the knack for it, you’ll notice things. Specific details about the material you’re working with, how they behave together, and the subtleties of the changes they undergo as they become a unified whole. And this is true as much with bread as with beer, pottery, metalwork, writing, and even (albeit more abstractly) programming. It is the border between reason and reality–the territory that the ancient Greeks called techne. It’s art. And there’s something maddeningly irrational about it. You can describe the process to someone who has never done it before, but until your friend undertakes the process in turn, nothing whatsoever is communicated. Art lends itself to mentorships, either of the autodidactic variety or the more traditional master/apprentice. But it is the sort of activity that is best done with your whole self thrown into it.

Now, I’ll admit that I used to get a great deal of meditative joy out of hand-kneading dough. But our stand mixer now takes care of that part of the work while I can do other things. The important part to remember, though, is that I’m not just letting the mixer go unsupervised. You can do that, but the important part of the kneading process is the assessment and re-assessment of the dough’s texture. Bread machines are handy for those who don’t delight in the details. But bread is way too much fun to watch at every step to use something like that. The smooth texture of a freshly-kneaded doughball, the smell of yeast doing their part during the rising, and the hollow “pop-pop” sound a well-crusted loaf sounds like when it’s out of the oven all contribute to the satisfaction I derive from baking bread.

And then, of course, comes the eating. Mmmmm, bread. It’s like a lattice of deliciousness. The yeast create pockets of air within a gluten-bound matrix, and this matrix solidifies during baking to create the perfect union of five simple ingredients. Fresh bread is incomparable to any other food. It’s pretty great that after all these thousands of years we’ve been around, the art of making bread has really changed very little. We understand the science much better–but the recipe is not the loaf.

My main brewing efforts have been with my friend, the Unknown Lamer, since last October. We use a mega-burner (basically a turkey fryer), and since January it’s been an all-grain setup with the construction of a 5-gallon mash tun. Since June I’ve been doing this little stovetop side project, in part because I don’t always manage to link up with Clinton in terms of timing. He’s a little closer now that he has moved to Raleigh, but it’s still on the other side of the city. And if you have any sense of cities in the South, that means spraaaawwwwl. So, it takes about 20 minutes to get there instead of 25. Wew.

With my stovetop setup, all I need to do is throw some malt in the pot and get cooking. And that’s the point. I want to continue exploring beer, but a home setup is a little more manageable. OK, I don’t brew as much in terms of quantity–the electric range limits my kettle size to about 3 gallons, realistically. But that puts useful constraints on my process, giving me that much more incentive to figure out how to make decent beer with just what I have. So here’s my breakdown in terms of what I intend to do with this new habit:

• Brew good table beer. First and foremost, my goal is to make reliably yummy alcoholic beverages using malt & adjuncts, hops, yeast, and water. I want to be able to pull this stuff out of the fridge and relish the various flavors and aromas without getting drunk.
• Make beer for an ingredient cost of less than $1 per bottle. Obviously this is not a hobby that will pay for itself, but since I enjoy drinking beer anyway, I might as well at least try to save some money while I’m doing so. Since I’m using mostly household items, I can just write off the small hardware layout I’ve done; the equipment, handled with care, should last me for the foreseeable future.
• Explore the BJCP Style Guide. Beer has a fun and complex history, and the styles that we have come to know and love offer a nice completionist’s prize–”I did these!” And the challenge of attempting the different styles on such a low-budget setup will be all the more fun.
• Improve my all-grain brewing. Having a small side workshop means that I can bring a better understanding of unique ingredients to the table. I can try out different hops and malts in more rapid succession, so I will have greater ability to make impactful aesthetic judgement calls in my Serious Beer.

The small size of my kettle means I can’t reach those high-gravity altitudes, but I have a few plans to take it up a step from the 3.5-4% range I’ve been exploring thus far. And this brings me to the point of this post: I’ll be documenting my efforts with a Youtube channel! Starting in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting videos to share with you about brewing, beer, and the like. I hope you’ll join me.

Time to let the beast out again.

It’s been an unproductive weekend after my final class of the first semester of my time in the MAT program, but I guess that’s to be expected. I feel wrung out. I gave so much of myself this year to becoming someone else that I forgot to remind the new me who I was. So I’m still sorting through the detritus of this mysterious person’s life, coming to a new understanding of the world through the same old eyes. Reflecting on the last stage of my life, I am now in the position of a doctor healing a patient. My patient–me–broke his leg, and failed to set the bone. So it healed wrong. And for the last four years, I’ve been hobbling around on a wrongly-set leg, wondering why I can’t run like I used to be able to.

Note to self: the fact that I learned how to run with a hobbled leg should not be taken as proof that my leg is healed.

So, this semester has been one wherein I had to re-break my leg. Yes, it was painful. Incredibly so. And now, while I am still hurting from the break, I must make sure to set it correctly. This stuff must be obvious to some people. But I’m one of those who learn the hard way. Maybe that’s everyone, and most others are just fantastically good at hiding it. There’s even room to extend the metaphor, but that would just be gratuitous. And nobody likes gratuitousness. (Star Wars references excepted. Those are always ok.)

I am only now coming around to remembering what it is like to be motivated to do things again. The apathy is draining from my mind; I see a path where none was before. I should have taken a lesson from my brewing: nothing can hurry beer along. Some things can only improve with time and rest. I am possessed again of hope.

I have a comet bearing down on my chest. The pressure is incredible. Worst of all? I set the body in orbit to begin with, so it’s my own doing that I’m screaming inside my head. The pressure will dissipate tonight, but that is only the end of this particular cycle. It’ll slowly build again, stronger next time.

Still not giving up.

So, I had mentioned a couple of variables I was fiddling with in this last stovetop batch. I wanted to try priming with maple syrup instead of corn sugar, and I also didn’t use Irish moss, unlike every other brew to date. I can report my findings now.

I primed it with maple syrup against my better judgment. Looking into it, I read about how variable the sugar content is from batch to batch and how it doesn’t really impart any flavor, but I was curious, so I went ahead. Best average I could find was about 5 oz per 5 gallons, but because I used grade B I fudged it a bit toward the upper bound. Bad scientist, I know. I suppose I could take a gravity sample of the priming solution if I were doing it again to nail down a better sense of how much sugar I’d be adding. Anyway, total priming sugar (for the 3 gallon batch) was 4.25 oz in 2 cups distilled water, boiled for 15 mins per usual.

We cracked open the test bottle over Thanksgiving, approximately 5 days after bottling. Usually that would be insufficient time for a proper carbonation. But it fizzed up nicely! On the other hand, I worry that in the next couple weeks it’ll be a little too bright. The Sidhe won’t mind, though–she loves super-carbonated beer. The taste was nice. The Cascade hops have already begun settling down to normal levels, unlike the tart gravity sample I took at bottling. As expected the molasses is quite evident, but alas, no maple flavor comes through. So I can consider maple syrup officially Too Much Work to use for priming. (Sadly, it’s too expensive to use in the main body, either.)

The Irish moss, it’s safe to say, was visibly lacking. The beer was as obscure as pond water–almost no clarity whatsoever. A couple more weeks in the fermenter might have improved it a tad, and that may be the direction I take next, but I think I’ll stick to using Irish moss from now on. It’s vegan, adds no flavors, and makes the beer super-pretty. Otherwise this is a fine red ale. It has a nicely hoppy palate with only a hint of aromatics. The finish is a bit smoky thanks to the molasses. At 3.9% ABV, it’s great table beer. I’m calling this one a win.

Update: I made a label with Labeley!

I have a little story for you–a trivial yarn about meaningless things. But it is 100% true. I am writing it because it serves as much to be something to write about as anything else, and with all the craziness happening here in the US (much less abroad) I thought it’d be an interesting indulgence in the banality of our existence. Feel free to read below the cut.

Read more…

The Sidhe (my partner of ten [10!] years) has been harping on me for ages to get into Fringe. I pick my TV carefully, because unlike her, I find myself engrossed in whatever is on–even if it’s drek. So if I’m going to sit down in front of the TV (or laptop) for passive entertainment, it had better be quality. She watches considerably more television because she can actually multi-task. Really I think she just doesn’t absorb much of it, which suits her just fine. Most of the shows out there are terrible anyhow.

So my last proper TV kick was back in 2008, and I have Ted and Jake Gellar-Goad to thank for it. Those two are political junkies of the upper tier, so their drug of choice, natch, was The West Wing. I ate that stuff up. They conveniently had all seven seasons on DVD, and we were very nearly literally a stone’s throw away at the time, so it was trivial to acquire and return. Fascinating stuff, it was, and spookily prescient of the 2008 presidential elections.

But since then I’ve been wary, mostly just filling in gaps in my experience with Netflix. Going back through Star Trek: The Next Generation has been awful in some respects, but my 13-year-old self who never had cable and read more is thanking me all the same We are also retreading the X-Files, which I only caught sporadically after mid-season 2. I am checking out a new anime, FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, so I suppose that’s “new,” but the writing is delightfully cerebral for the genre. (Don’t bother with the original FMA series–it’s crap.) I also picked up Eureka, which started out rough and soapy. It improves, and is somehow watchable for being essentially soap. But what I really wanted to write about here tonight is a true successor to the X Files’ throne: Fringe.

Now, I’m rather diffident concerning JJ Abrams. LOST was a soap with SF trappings (even the parts Abrams was involved in), and Star Trek was Dawson’s Creek in spaaaace. I admit he goes for and pulls off spectacle very well, but I was completely surprised when I started catching up on Fringe this fall. Specifically at its depth. Watching Fringe unfold, showing you the complexity of each of the characters and the consequences of their very human decision-making, is like stepping into a hot tub, and when you’re all the way in, you find yourself in the 12 foot section and it’s ice cold. The horror elements in it reflect the best and worst of ourselves, and the science is startlingly plausible, but the gripping part is the plot. And because of its nature, I cannot comment except to say this: if you haven’t watched past the first season, you haven’t seen Fringe.

Tonight alone the Sidhe & I have watched 6 episodes, all in season 2. It’s dreamy. I’m hoping to catch up before the hiatus is over. Won’t you join me?

I was going to bottle tonight because Thanksgiving is next week. I even picked up the last element of my brewing kit today at the 5th Season gardening store–the Thief. But I didn’t get my bottles into the oxyclean bath yesterday, and looking at them today they were sufficiently funky that caution is advisable. (It’ll help with getting those pesky labels off, too.) So they’re soaking in my spare storage container overnight, and tomorrow I’ll steal my gravity sample and get these puppies carbonating. The beer looks good, clearer than I had expected given the lack of Irish moss. Obviously only bottling it will prove anything, but I’m excited to find out!

I picked up a mesh bag today as well. I’m thinking toward using specialty grains with my next couple batches now that I have the extract process sufficiently down on my stovetop setup. It will add complexity to the body, and, I hope, a few points of gravity. My next step beyond that is using a 2-quart enameled cast-iron pot to try a mini-mash, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Update 11/18/11: Bottled a case plus three singletons, and a bomber for the table. I hit my final gravity, and I’m looking forward to the result after the maple carbonates it. The clarity is abysmal, so that’s that. Tasting the sample, the molasses comes through strong as expected. But it should quiet down after a month or so in the closet.