A Puzzle Story – Just for Fun

This is a PUZZLE story, and is a bit more understandable if you read it out loud…

Piece Tastes Good

That sighed of the river that forms hour boarder now bruise ail four all to sea! Wee tact a notice on hour billboard write away, “Know Ail, Bier oar Other Alcohol on Hour Sighed!”

Soon they dug into they’re coughers and sent cruise of guise to build a saloon on the river! Wood ewe believe the shear vise displayed? Weather they can reed hour sine oar knot, weir bread better than them and wheel have nun of it!

This mourning, the devils lured too, then for, then ate and then moor of hour citizens to trudge waste deep across the shallow blew boarder. Many were already at the bar with boos! How could they chews this? I told them awl know!

Then I saw a mail of rank, maybe a kernel, they’re at the bar with my Ant Mimi. He past her a bottle and pointed at me. She urged a waisted fellow to grab an or and roe her back here.

“Deer, just try this Fare Bare Bitter, yule like it!”

Her words wade heavy on my sole, Ant Mimi the Matriarch. Aye had two take a sip. Won moor. Hmmm, won moor.

Weave decided knot to weight to build a bridge too hour fare and sonny friends on the far sighed.

Better Late than No Brew At All

Back I May, I never dreamed I’d be so overloaded with work this long. Right when I got my new business set up and was emptying the cabin of all valuables for a massive clean-up, I got my job doubled along with having to put more hours in. So, cabin time should be depressurizing time but I’ve have WORK stamped into my bones. Work at the cabin means cleaning up so I can bring my plunder back where I can actually find and use it (yick) or writing/editing/designing for publication. Thus you all have seen stories for a few weeks. When I edit and collect the ones you folks liked best into one volume, I intend to format it, design a cover for it and send it out on its own. Big plans have I!

See? Work…the first and last of my consciousness. Imagine my great alarm when I went to the basement for a few more bitters or porters to stage upstairs and discovered there were only six bottles of anything left! OH NO! So, look what happened pretty quickly:

Look at the log I keep on the cases…never have I had such a late start. Heck, I’m usually all done by now, but I still have at least two more double batches (100 bottles each set) to do before chilly weather sets in!

I have added this to my WORK list, so it shall be done. Here’s to the hope that I can report the two buckets I left to ferment are bottled and two more are started after the weekend!

The Last Batches

Nose flattened on the old grindstone, I got all my beverages bottled last weekend! Hooray! That’s three of the six-gallon merlot wine batches, a six-gallon Old Ale and a six-gallon Yorkshire Bitter. That came to 34 fruit juice bottles of the wine and 44 bottles of the ales. For the uninitiated, scrounging, cleaning and sanitizing all of those bottles is more work than making the stuff.

That’s all for this year; in fact this is the latest in the year I’ve put any up. Cleaning and stowing all of the fermentation buckets, the bottling buckets, the airlocks and stacking the final finished good really drove the end of summer theme into my brain.

Fermentation does not need to end, though, as I am a fermentin’ fool. In the past, I bought plain yoghurt from the grocery as a starter. Those batches turned out okay even if a little soupy. I remember making a slobber-good coffeecake with some of that, but it wasn’t too toothsome for straight eating. This time I bought a dried starter from Adventures in Homebrewing and some unflavored gelatin for a more robust ferment and for help with thickening. It’s on the calendar for next weekend!

A Lament for Hopped Malt

I started a flirtation with fermentation as soon as my kitchen in the cabin became operational. I was, however, confined to yogurt (success), cheese (not worth the effort) and bread. When my alcoholic husband left, I felt free to try ale and mead.

I’ll save mead for another time (it’s better with age) and count off the merits of hopped malt.

Number One Merit: Quick and Easy

Clean equipment and sanitize it.

Add one can of hopped malt to a 6 gallon sealable bucket.

Add about as much plain malt, liquid or dry.

Get a couple gallons of water very hot and add, stirring to disolve it all.

Top up to about 5 gallons with fresh, clear well water.

Stir in yeast.

Put the lid on the bucket. The lid needs a hole to plug in a bubbler vent to let the fermentation gases out in a sanitary manner.

Leave it to next week.

Pour it into a bucket with a spigot at the bottom, adding a little corn sugar for carbonation.

Bottle and cap.

Merit Two: It comes out consistently darned good!

Don’t drink too much at one time.

Notice no boiling, no array of esoteric ingredients, faster, fewer steps to mess up, no need for specialized tools.

Anybody says this is not brewing, I refute the notion with emotion. I say I don’t grind the flour but I still claim to make my own bread. I don’t milk the cow but I still make my own yogurt.

So now that I’ve gone on about how easy and generally great it is, why don’t we all go get some! Too bad, my usual supplier says the main manufacturers aren’t making this stuff anymore. It’s hard to find now, woe upon me. I did get an unsolicited email from a supplier I’d never heard of and they show they have most of what I had been getting for years. I’ll give them and try and hope I don’t receive cans close to expiring.

Does It Hold Water?

Today I really ought to start a batch of porter. Hot near-summer days with no air conditioning are great for fermentation. I have my fermentation buckets clean and sanitized. All of the ingredients are at hand, rarin’ to go. I can almost taste the deep brown brew.

My well water is muddy green. It flowed crystal clear, better than anything from a plastic bottle, only a month ago. Then we had two bam-bam deluge rainstorms that flooded fields around for miles. My well head is situated high above that, however some of that fast flowing water washed into the well anyway.

The well is only cased (PVC pipe) 40 feet down, the other 120 feet is just drilled. My theory is that that the saturated groundwater may have caused the drilled walls to erode inward at some level. I know the whole well did not collapse because I can still pull plenty of water from the submersible pump that remains at about 150 feet down.

After the first flood I ran copious amounts of the muddy water out to flush the well. It began clearing. The second storm flooded quickly with the ground so saturated. I tried flushing again, getting much more mud out. Now the water is a little muddy with a green tint.

I know how to use bleach to shock the well, killing the green, I simply hate resorting to that. Any other ideas? Does my cause theory hold water?

Piece Tastes Good

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