Running it into the Ground

It's true that Ken and I pretty well ran the subject of religion into the ground before Old Dog joined us, but that was some time ago and, since Old Dog expressed and interest in it, I thought it wouldn't hurt to resurrect the topic. Ken and I will never agree on religion because we are starting with two different "givens". I believe that God exists and Ken does not. So there you have it.

I thought we had also run the beer topic into the ground, but maybe not. Ken obviously knows more about it than I do because he has considerable professional experience, while I am somewhat of an amateur. It's like they say about art, I don't know much about it but I know what I like. It is my understanding that the main variable in beer is the amount of hops they put in it. More hops makes for what they call a dry beer, while less hops makes for what they call a sweet beer. I have always preferred a sweet beer to a dry beer, but that's just me. Of course there needs to be some hops in there or it wouldn't be beer.

I used to make my own beer back in the 80s and 90s, but it wasn't from scratch, it was from what they call a kit. I would buy this can of syrupy concentrate that contained most of the ingredients, all I had to add was sugar, water, and yeast. First you boil the can of stuff with some water and the sugar added. Then you put about five gallons of cold water into a six gallon plastic vat, add the stuff you boiled, and then sprinkle the yeast on top. Then you put on the lid, which has a hole in the center for the fermentation lock. That's a plastic gadget which allows air to escape but doesn't let any outside air get back in. The fermentation process generates carbon dioxide which, if not allowed to escape, would eventually blow the lid off the vat and make a big mess. If you left the vat open to the outside air, you would risk wild yeast drifting in and turning your product to vinegar. After fermenting for a week, you siphon the liquid, which is called wort at this point in the process, into bottles, being careful not to disturb the sediment that has accumulated on the bottom. You can drink the wort, but it tastes yeasty and will be much better after the secondary fermentation that takes place in the bottles over a period of three weeks. This is when you find out if you put too much sugar in at the beginning. If you did, the finished product will taste more like whisky than beer, provided that the bottles don't explode before you open them, which happened to me once. After two bottles exploded, my hypothetical wife ordered me to dump the batch if I couldn't find a way to prevent that from happening again. I uncapped all the remaining bottles and stored them in the fridge until I could drink them all up. The beer lost all it's carbonation but, like I said, it tasted more like whisky than beer anyway.

I don't remember how many years I made my own beer, but I quit after the manufacturer "improved" the formula, which means they added more hops to it and raised the price. They actually did this three times over the years and, after the third time, the product had evolved into something that I didn't like anymore. It's just as well that I quit, though. I was making and drinking six gallons of this stuff a week, and the alcohol content was somewhat higher than store bought beer. I expected my consumption rate to increase when I went back to store bought, but it didn't, so I was getting less alcohol in my system for the same amount of beer. This proved to my satisfaction that I wasn't a true alcoholic, like that goofy doctor had said I was back in the 70s. If I was, I would have had to increase my rate of consumption to satisfy my craving for the level of alcohol to which I had become accustomed. I have always drank beer because I liked the taste, the alcohol was never a consideration. I tried that non-alcoholic beer when it first came out, but I didn't like the taste as much and it was more expensive than regular beer, the lack of alcohol had nothing to do with it. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.