A while ago Wednesday, Jan 23 2008

When I came in to post today, the only posts in my list say “posted a while ago” sigh. I’ve always wanted to be good at keeping a journal, but then, I just never have been.

The semester started this week, and I am teaching Microeconomic Theory, which is in my opinion a fun class to teach. I’ve realized that people sometimes get overwhelmed the first day because I do a very intense review and make everyone participate – reviewing some simple models they learned in intro, reviewing definitions and giving them some new ones that I would like to seem familiar to them when we get to it in the material. I like to start off the semester strong – we can always slow down later.

I’m also taking a class, which is being taken by way too many students I myself have had in class! I’m planning on taking Calc 3, which I never managed to take as an undergraduate student – let this be a lesson to all wanna be economists. I like the professor a lot, and I’m looking forward to seeing someone else’s teaching style first hand.

Last night, I made mead with Sarah, Chris, and Andre…it was a good deal of fun, and took HOURS – next time, I’m starting earlier. We also made an experimental beer that Andre dubbed “Slick Walk Honey Wheat” after I fell twice, on the phone with him, walking home through campus. It was a very slick walk.

The honey wheat was made with this basic recipe:

About 1.5 pounds each of honey, dried light malt extract, and a wheat malt extract
a teaspoon of yeast nutrient since honey doesn’t have any
an ounce of Hallenauter hops, boiled with the wort for 15 minutes
and 1.5 gallons of water

Well…the wort was boiled first without the hops, and then for a second 15 minutes after adding the hops, and I at first put some chunks of ginger (left over from the mead – a ginger mead recipe, obviously) but then changed my mind and took it out, and the only things that were actually measured were the can of wheat malt extract and the yeast nutrient…so this is one of those things that will live once and then will forever be remembered. In two weeks, I should know if those will be pleasant memories.

The mead smelled terrific going into the carboy…honey, ginger, gypsum, irish moss, citric acid, and yeast nutrient…I may add herbs to some of it when it’s bottled, in about a month and a half. I will be drinkable in about 3 months, but will continue to improve in flavor for about a year – I’m thinking christmas presents.

Hopefully, I will write more soon….

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Brewing Beer Monday, Jan 7 2008

I’ve always kind of wanted to make beer and/or wine…there’s something magical about creating alcohol, an intoxicant that has been around for a good long time and a part of most cultures around the world. Beer used to be one of the staples of the British peasant diet and, as long as they were eating it with whole wheat bread and not white bread, it provided a pretty good diet.

I would say that I have a healthy respect for alcohol as a drug. I am very mistrustful of it, and mistrustful of drinking it too often. I’ve seen alcoholism, both in the older-person-sending-themselves-down-the-drain way, in the younger-person-not-getting-much-done-but-drinking way, and in the person-of-any-age-needing-to-stay-a-little-high-all-the-time way. None of them are all that pleasant fo the observer, friend, lover, child, or co-worker, and I imagine they aren’t all that pleasant for the drinker either. I don’t have a problem with more-than-slight amounts of alcohol as part of celebration rituals, or with a drink with dinner, or with the occaisional alcohol-linked holiday (i.e. New Years Eve in this country), but I don’t like it as a ubiquotous social lubricant, as a form of escape, as a crutch to relax, or as a right of passage into adulthood. I also don’t like binge drinking – personally, because I don’t like the hangovers, and I view any activity that makes you want to die the morning after with a certain amount skepticism – and intellectually because it feeds into to so many problems – violence, rape, and cultures of drinking and unconsciousness. It is difficult to live fully consciously when you are drunk.

That said, I like good beer (more so than good wine). I think it tastes great…it’s food. Monks brew it (Omegang Abbey Ale is a new favorite of mine), and I bet it made the abbey glow a little brighter. I love the idea of taking quality ingredients, performing a little magic, and turning it into something people have been drinking for centuries. Since it’s made 5 gallons at a time, and doesn’t keep forever, I imagine I will be giving away a good amount of beer I brew myself, but I’m ok with that…I think I will probably also be expanding my repetoire of food recipes containing beer. I’ve always loved dishes made with alcohol.

There is currently a five gallon class jug filled with brewing beer sitting on my kitchen table…there is a thick plastic tube stuck in the mouth of said jug, siphoning off some of the foam, parts that, according to my brewing book, would make my beer taste yeasty and bitter. Given the yeasty smell of the foam coming out of this tube, I believe the book.

This batch of beer was made with a packaged malt extract kit, flavored to make Porter. My opinion is that the yeast that came with the kit was a bit old, since it didn’t make the wort (unfermented beer) start to ferment…I added a second package of fresher yeast, that came out of a refrigerator rather than off a shelf, and the magic started. It seems like there are varrying degrees of processed in terms of what you make beer from – you can purchase cans of thick, gooey malt extract that is flavored with hops and everything and just boil it in water and go, you can purchase dried malt extract that needs to have hops added (hops can be added as flowers or as processed pellets), or you can make the beer from actual malted barley and whatever other flavors you want to add, straining the pieces out before you start the fermenting process.

For the first time, I thought I’d try a kit, but next I think I’ll go for broke and use an actual recipe. I’m not a huge drinker, but I do really love a good beer, and I can imagine having a lot of fun becoming a brewmaster over the next few years (although I think I’ll have to give away a good amount of beer in the process). There seem to be so many different ingredients you can use, and there are so many different types of beer (I was spoiled in this regard by going to graduate school in an area with some good breweries)…I’m thinking I’ll try an herbed, dry honey mead next time.

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New Years Saturday, Jan 5 2008

I had a very nice New Years at the First Night Celebration in town, stopping at Circus Cafe for a while, and then hanging out at my place. My friends stayed until about 3pm the next day, so it was a nice two day adventure (I’ve always liked to have adventures on New Years). I have three resolutions this year:

1) Cook more: last semester, for some reason, I just didn’t cook. I ate a lot of Espo, a lot of uncommon bagel sandwiches (with or without soup), and a lot of Pink Store pizza. This is, of course, not my ideal diet. I moved into my apartment only just before the semester started, and so I never got into the habbit of cooking. I’ve been hanging out with my friend Marla a lot, and she is a really good cook, cooking the type of healthy food I like to eat…this is what partially inspired me to make this resolution. So far, I’ve been doing well. I’ve made a few simple dishes, a big pot of soup (some of which is now frozen), and I haven’t eaten out except for a few lunch dates.

2) Be more informed about the world around me, like I was before graduate school sucked up all my energy: When I was in college, I knew a lot about what was going on in the world. I was very informed, I read the New York Times, every time I wrote a paper, I would read a ton of news articles about Africa. I knew what was going on in the world. Once I got to graduate school, I had far too much homework to be able to read like this…my papers were about theroetical this, intellectual debate that, not about what was going on in the real world (even though this is what I really care about). I went from knowing about a lot of current events to knowing about what I was writing about specifically – the war in Sierra Leone. To fulfill my resolution, I’ve decided to start by reading the Economist and Mother Jones, two good, well written magazines. I find newspapers very frustrating with too many repetitive articles, too much fear mongering, and too much about the war…so, I’m going to skip on those for now.

I like New Years resolutions .

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