63 comments on We'll run out of beer before we run out of oil
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Balderdash!
You can make beer out of any darn grain you want.
Don't limit yourself, there's lots of great beers made from lots of different grains (heck, I've seen milk beer even).
I'm a homebrewer my self as well. I'll brew anything (once anyway).
Seriously, do you you have a recipe for self-sufficient post-oil beer. I really would like to be able to make my own beer when you can no longer go to the store to buy beer or it's ingredients.
I once made a beer completely from sprouted wheat berries. But it is a fair amount of work and the resulting brew was definitely an acquired taste.
However, should circumstances demand it, I'm sure I'd acquire that taste.
To make beer from barley or wheat from scratch requires knowledge of a process rather than a recipe. You are manufacturing something. Equipment to grind and cook grains is required.
Basic idea: sprout grain, roast grain, grind grain, cook grain, ferment grain, bottle liquid.
Ok, so I grow a grain, get it to sprout. Roasting it should not be a problem. Grind it in a stone depression with a rock. Boil it to make the Wort. What about yeast?
How do we induce fermentation if we can't buy yeast?
It will ferment on its own. The yeast naturally occur on the grain.
People use commerical yeasts in order to get a more controlled and complete fermentation.
At least for barley and wheat, the cooking part is not particularly simple. You don't boil it. At least not at first. Instead it's heated to a certain temperature in order to encourage the conversion of starches into sugars.
Here's a great article: beer making at it's most basic as the ancients did it.
http://brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue2.5/hitchcock.html
The author suggests that there is a symbiotic relationship between beer making and bread making. i.e. You use the yeast produced in the brewing process to make bread rise.
I've tried it, and it most definitely works. The bread has a wonderful mild beery flavour that doesn't seem out of place at all.
About 30 years ago, in what was then Zaire near the borders of Uganda and Sudan, I came upon a bunch of boys whooping it up at the local saloon. Actually, it was a few sickly looking locals hanging around a mud hut with thatched roof.
I don't know how ancient the recipe was, but there was little evidence of barley. I tried some. My stomach never recovered.
Give me the IPA.
Farmers in the US used to homebrew as a matter of course.
Making beer the old fashion way is easy. Get some barely. Soak it in water and let it dry (malt the grain). Crush it. Soak it in hot water for an hour (mash the grain). Remove the grain and boil the grain soup with hops (these grow like weeds on a vine). Let it cool. Add some yeast. Let it sit for 2 weeks. Bottle/keg it. Enjoy.
Check out this book. It has a chapter on self sufficient post oil beer
Modern Home brewing is even easier. Get a can of malt. Boil it with some hops from the store. Let it cool. Add yeast. Wait two weeks. Bottle/keg. Enjoy
But I sure hope the world never gets to the point where you can't go to the store and buy beer (or even the ingredients for it). We'd be in for a world of hurt that even a cold glass of suds wouldn't fix.
There's another good point. Refridgeration or ice, how do we do that post-oil. I know they drink it warm in Europe, but I'ld rather not if I don't have to.
cellar temperatures.
Lagers come from Germany and are served/fermented colder because their basements are colder.
Ales come from England and are served/fermented warmer cause their basements are warmer.
This ice cold beer idea is an American invention. The colder a beer is the less you taste it. And with American pale lagers, that's what you need to do.
But if you're hard up, beer is about the hardest alcoholic drink you can make. Colonial Americans drank rum and hard cider which are really much easier to make. Americans didn't start drinking beer until the mid 19th century when German immigrants brought it with them.
Making cider is easy. Get some apple juice and let it sit out in the open un capped. Wait a couple of weeks. Enjoy.
Check out the book "A self sufficient life" I linked above. The author covers all these things (albeit a little briefly).
At last, sense. Cidre is most pleasant and more than suitably intoxicating. Perfect with food, ideal with pudding. Not to mention the countless pints one can consume with mates in the local.
From scrumpy to that Frenchy sweet and bubbly stuff, it has a range beer can only envy.
I made 10 gallons for the first time this year. Bottled first batch 2 weeks ago. smuuuck! WOW was it tart. Seems the yeast ate all the sugar. 0% sugar content, 12 % alcohol, had to add concentrated apple juice to sweeten it back up.
It is easy! Wash, grind and press your apples. Put the juice in a carboy and add a fermentation lock(I added some sugar but not required). It's worth the money to buy both a sugar meter and a alcohol meter. They will answer your questions.
Helpful website (sells stills too). http://www.mainbrew.com/ make your own ethanol(hic!)
Cheers!
D
I learned how to make both cider and beer this year. Cider is much easier to make. Use apples or pears. I would say that making really good cider is not so easy though. My home made beers tasted really good, comparable to a good microbrew, but the ciders were not of the same quality as store bought hard ciders.
There's a book by Jessica Prentice called Full Moon Feast that compares different kinds of beers from around the world. She actually does this for all sorts of food processes, including bread making. Anyhow, not only are different grains used, but different flavorings. In old Europe all kinds of herbs were added to flavor beer. For some reason a German law was eventually made saying it had to be hops. Ancient libertarians and anarchists were aghast.
If you want to sprout your own grains (malting) study carefully what this means and how to do it. YOu are not waiting for the grain to actually start making new leaves, only for the process of starch converting to sugar inside the grain. You can't SEE this happen. Must use water, heat and known timing, perhaps taste, to know when the process needs to be stopped by roasting.
Making wort requires a temperature of about 150 F, too hot and the chemistry isn't quite right, though the process isn't all that finicky.
You obviously haven't been to Belgium yet.
When I lived in Michigan there was the place called the Cadieux Cafe in Detroit where they offered every Belgian Beer they could get their hands on.(They also had feather bowling which is an enormous amount of fun.) The Belgians sure are prolific in varied beer production! (I don't know if Cadieux Cafe is still there or not, but definitely worth it if you live near there. They also have a restaurant where they feature buckets of steamed mussels.)
Just looked on the Web. They are still there, and apparently have ghosts!
http://www.miparahaunt.com/id39.html
http://www.cadieuxcafe.com/
thank you for summing it up. as a homebrewer, which is easy, i thank you for explaining to the masses the simplicity. it's really very easy to homebrew! i encourage everyone to get into homebrewing. do you happen to have George Washington's recipe for homebrew? i doubt it's a wimpy 3% 0r 5% brew!
thanks!
Making beer and wine post-peak will be even more important than it is now if society collapses to the point that the ingredients can no longer be found in a grocery store. The ancients used to make a lot of beer and wine bc/ without modern methods it was difficult to keep the water supply clean. Beer and wine keep for years without the risk of water-borne illness. This advice is even found in the Bible (1 Timothy 5:23) when Paul encourages Timothy to "drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities".
At least, good wine grapes seem to grow on much different sites than grains. And I doubt that anyone would seriously want to use grapes for ethanol. It would take about 36 bottles of wine to make a gallon of ethanol.