Jesus in the Closet

Baby Jesus has always been welcomed by our daughters. The Christmas story is fairly pleasant and child appropriate (minus Herod’s infanticidal tendencies). There are lots of animals, singing angels and locals visiting the newborn in a barn (though in Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus is a cave over which was built the Church of the Nativity). Here baby Jesus is appreciated and celebrated.

Adult Jesus, not so much.

Once, when Dalia was two and a half, I’d just put her to bed and as soon as I shut her door she let out a piercing shriek. I rushed back into her room. When I asked her what was wrong she just said, “Please check my closet, Dad.” I shrugged, turned on the light and opened the closet door.

“There’s nothing here that’s unusual,” I said.

Dalia wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure Jesus isn’t in there?”

“You want me to check your closet for Jesus?” I asked, trying to keep myself from laughing. I expected to check the closet for monsters, ghosts, Coco the Stealth Cat who regularly slips into the kids' rooms, but I didn’t think I’d have to be checking it for Jesus.

Dalia was not joking. She was genuinely worried. “I don’t want anybody in my room while I sleep except for Mama and you. Grandma said that Jesus was with me all the time and I don’t want him in my room while I sleep.” 

How do you describe to a two year old that she should take things metaphorically, not literally? How do you tell children that sometimes words don’t mean what they say but they aren’t necessarily lies? I tried telling her that there was no bearded, robed man in her closet and that Grandma didn’t mean for her to be frightened of Jesus. He was really quite a nice guy.

Luckily my daughter is smarter than I was at her age. “You mean it’s just a say?” she asked. 

“Yes,” I replied, “it's just a saying.”

“Like when Mom tells me I’m in her heart? I’m not really in her heart. Blood is really in her heart. Really I’m in her feelings.” I laughed. This is what happens, I guess, when your Dad is a biology teacher and your Mom was a veterinary assistant; bedtime conversations turn towards organ functions. “Yes. Just like that.”

She seemed satisfied and snuggled back under her covers, but not without having me check under her bed to make sure Jesus wasn’t there either.

Three C's of Beer Bottles

Tonight I bottled beer number 74, a stout that I’m hoping will have a smooth, but grainy malt profile. It’s the ninth and last brew I’ll finish in 2011. Moment of silence. . .  Now continue reading.

There are really only two ways the homebrewer typically keeps beer: in bottles or in kegs. Each has its advantages and drawbacks. Bottles are convenient units for giving beer away as gifts as well as storing and aging beer (honestly, I’ve never done this. Save aging for wine and baby boomers. Beer should be imbibed!). Kegging carbonates the beer faster, under pressure or using yeast action and bottling sugar like bottlers do. It's also really cool.

I’m a bottler. I don’t buy separate bottles for brewing. Instead I am Earth and finance friendly and I recycle the ones I’ve used or my friends have used (check out this article on how to drink greenly). I clean them, remove the label (if I’m not feeling lazy), sanitize them, and they’re good as new. 

As I was washing bottles this evening, I realized that there were some that I liked better than others. Not all bottles are created equal. Most of my bottle judgmentalism is superficial, but there are bottle characteristics that are important to the beer itself. Let me introduce you to the three C’s of beer bottles.

2 cases of #74 on my kitchen floor

1. Color. Beer bottles should be brown or completely opaque. One of the essential ingredients in beer is the soft leafy cones of my favorite plant, hops (Humulus lupulus). Hops contain lupulin, the bitter flavoring and preservative found in beer. Different styles of beer are brewed with differing amounts of hops, but all hops react the same way when struck by sunlight. Lupulin breaks down into smelly chemicals in the presence of ultraviolet light. This can result in what is lovingly referred to as a “skunked” beer. Dark beers like porters and stouts block out a good amount of light and are not at as much risk from this process, but lighter beers, especially hop-loaded styles like ESBs, Pale Ales and IPAs are more prone to this. Brown bottles block more ultraviolet light than green or clear bottles. I’m not sure why anyone (including Corona and Newcastle) would ever bottle beer in a clear container and encourage people to drink them outside in sunlight soaked locations, like on a beach.
2. Caps. Screw off top bottles are the bane of homebrewers. You can’t get a good seal on a bottle that is designed for a screw off top. The only thing I do with these is return them for the deposit. Maybe I’m a little strange, but I’ve actually NOT purchased good beer because of the screw off top issue. For a few years Sierra Nevada bottled their ales in these types of bottles. When I was given the option to purchase a brew of similar quality, I selected the regular capped brew (I think my choice was Southern Tier Brewing Company in this case). I am glad to report that Sierra Nevada has switched back to regular caps.
3. Contour. We can often recognize a particular brand of beer by the shape of its bottle. Guinness draught. Who doesn’t like curves? Bass. Long neck that smoothly blends into the rest of the bottle. One of my favorite bottle shapes is the one used by St. Peter’s brewery. Old fashioned and solid (unfortunately they are sometimes green). Bottle contour is less about the beer itself and more about the experience of drinking (assuming you are without your trusty pint glass). If it feels right in your hand, you’re more likely to enjoy it. I’m sure Freud would have a field day with this. 

There are many other aspects of bottles that I consider as a home brewer. The glue breweries use to stick on labels (Saranac has notoriously hard to remove labels; Southern Tier and Dogfish Head brews have labels that come off easier). The weight of the bottles (heavier bottles are less likely to break under the capping process). In the end, any vessel that can store and then deliver excellent beer to my palate will do, but sometimes it’s more than just what’s on the inside that counts. 

Floating Signs

I love to brew (and drink) my own beer. To me it is a fusion of both science and faith, of technology and mysticism, and, well . . . it’s beer.

The science of brewing is straightforward and multivariate. Both ales and lagers are made from malted grain, hops, water and yeast. Put them together and a few weeks to a few months later you will probably have beer. How you put them together is a question that can be answered ad infinitum. Each recipe can be crafted differently than the last. What style should be brewed next? What types and roasts of malts would yield the perfect color? How much and which varieties of hops should I use to produce earthy, citrusy, or floral aromas? Brewing is a playground for those who love to question and to experiment.

The mysticism in beer brewing lies not in the preparations of the brewer, but in the metabolic enthusiasm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Ale yeast. 

Outside of my family, yeast may be my favorite type of organism. 

After choosing the right recipe for the style of beer to brew, mashing the grains, boiling the “wort” with specific amounts of hops added at different times, after all this organization and control, the rest of the process is left up to single celled fungi that eat the sugars and the organic compounds surrounding them. We have a taste for their wastes; alcohol, carbon dioxide, and esters that lend the beer different flavors. Though I can comment on the chemistry of yeast excretions, compare yeast subspecies, and comment on the fruitiness or dryness of their wastes, how they turn a slurry of brown sticky liquid into beer is more like magic than anything else.

Yeast magic (which scientists sometimes call “fermentation”) can last anywhere from 3 days to two weeks and during that time I am in the dark. I’ve taken a step into Kierkegaardian discomfort, full of hope and worry. I don’t know exactly what is happening in the mystical bucket and I want a sign.

One of the ways to tell what is happening on the yeast front (and easing my faith-challenged mind) is by taking measurements of the density of the brew at different times. To measure this, I use a hydrometer. 

A hydrometer is essentially a beer buoy. In denser liquids the hydrometer floats higher, bobbing about near the surface. In less dense solutions, the hydrometer sinks. By comparing the first measurement (original gravity) with subsequent measurements, a brewer can calculate the amount of alcohol produced by the yeast and can get an idea of how close the beer is to a final target (final gravity) and final alcohol amounts.

The hydrometer won’t tell me what the beer will taste like in a month, or how it will age, but it will tell me approximately how much maltose my yeasty friends are or are not using. It can tell me whether the young brew is going to be sweeter or more dry, or even if the yeast cells are done with their magic. It is a floating beer sign.

It occurred to me as I brewed my last batch (a stout with a sweet grain bill and hops I harvested in 2010), that I could really use a type of hydrometer for my daily life, a kind of floating sign that could give me some general feedback about how I’m doing as a Dad, a husband, a teacher. Then I realized that I had several. My daughters (who at their young ages lack any kind of filter and tend to be very overt in their signing). My students. My wife (who, thankfully has a very kind filter and allows me to be my geeky self the vast majority of the time). My family and friends. 

This blog is about floating signs. 

It’s also about beer.