Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Mead in America

Last weekend, we brewed the first concoction of the year: a classic mead. AKA honey wine. AKA worst hangovers ever.

Honey is amongst the first substances ever fermented. Last I checked, the oldest evidence of mead was discovered in pottery jars in Northern China, dated to 7000 BCE. The chemical analysis revealed a fermented mixture of rice, honey, and fruit. So it's more of a sake/mead. I suggest this brew also resulted in mean hangovers, especially for the scientists involved.

According to the Masters of the Public Domain, the first known description of mead is in the hymns of the Rigveda, one of the sacred books of the Historical Vedic religion, dated around 1700-1100 BCE.


Here is pic of our mead, post brew, cooling down in the bathtub so we can pitch the yeast. Note the sterile conditions, which is very important when performing science.

Brewmaster Brian was forced to supply one of his freeweights to prevent the kettle from tipping over. Yes, it's true that the barbell is, in fact, saturated with Brian's sweat, but this actually improves the science due to a phenomenon we have identified as "tainting it with the taint." In a sacrifical taint, we ensure the quality of the rest of our sterile environment.

Sounds stupid, doesn't it? It works.

Assuming the yeast will take ("Hey look, we're in a sea of food! Let's poop out some alcohol!"), our mead will be drinkable by summer, delicious by winter, and absolutely divine in about a year.

Not too sure about 9000 years from now.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Salt Point Foray


A couple friends requested more mushroom postings. So here's some pics from a recent fungi foray in Salt Point, CA. Above is a cup fungus known as an "orange peel." Overall, it's been a weird year for mushrooms due to the erratic rainfall, but we found some nice specimens on this trip.

Mostly we encountered Candy Caps. The fruiting was really obscene. They were everywhere. These delicious lactarius species smell like maple syrup. I walked away with bags full of these little guys, with hopes to add them to my pancakes and cookies. People also flavor homemade ice cream with candy caps too. I've got a whole mason jar filled to the brim, just waiting for the butter to hit the skillet.

The other highlight of the trip was the fruiting of coral fungi under the cedar and pine. I'm told they're edible, but they look too much like brains for me to dig in.


We're heading out tomorrow to our local mountain - Diablo - for some good ole car-camping fun. Can't let the rain keep us inside, or it'll be April before I breathe the fresh air again!

Thursday, February 01, 2007

On the interpretation of dreams

Before I build my castle of words
let me say that this dream
I am about to verb-alize
is not really a story
even though it will begin, introduce
some tension and then conclude,
poorly.

Morever, this dream really happened to me
and it happened before
the tricky puns begin to eat at the froth of detail
left behind when the tide of my voice
falls back,
not yet expressions of my sexuality or
life choices or
perceived difficulties with networking at social events
where cheese is cut into cubes.

There is no sex, actually, or froth, or even
clean moist stacks of cubed cheeses,
only a few remembered moments which scratched an itch
before I could disarticulate the sensation from
The Word, the muscle from the hide.

So before I build this castle of words
let me say that this dream existed
before I skin myself like a rabbit
hung from a rafter exposed,
glinty, drying in the air.