Horizon

Graeme, this is a great idea. I always wanted this site to be in part a book club, and we experimented with something along those lines very fleetingly at the start, but it never got going, my fault in good part. I will dig out Burmese Days (which I have also not read in years) and join you. Perhaps, since you've kicked this off, you could post how far you've gotten so far and how far you plan to read each day so we can keep roughly in step (try to keep the pace relaxed!)

The more the merrier, I say! So far I've only read the first two chapters, so we're pretty good for starting out. I'm a fairly robust reader who tends to read commuting to work, and so far I've done (more or less) a chapter a day, so how does that sound?

I suppose establishing the scene is crucial but I am surprised by Orwell's, let's say, obsessive use of time and clocks to open his novels.

By the second sentence in Burmese Days we know it's 8:30 on an April morning.

The Clergyman's Daughter opens with "As the alarm clock on the chest of drawers exploded like a horrid little bomb of bell metal..."

The first sentence of Keep the Aspidistra Flying: "The clock struck half past two."

In Animal Farm we find out right off the bat that it's night, and late enough for Mrs. Jones to be snoring.

Then in 1984, of course, there's the wierd clocks and it's April again.

Thx, Bobby, never noticed that about clocks.

And trust Orwell to focus so early on the expression of status tensions through different versions of English -- a subject that didn't become a staple of cultural criticism until much later.

Synchronicity: I was thinking last night about that reproach to the too-correct servant in Burmese Days, thanks to a book of "verbo-visual non-fiction" by the unclassifiable poet/essayist/graphic artist Michael Kasper. Several of his essays, including one titled "Colonial-English," argue that there are layers of fully intended irony in the very different, grammatically jumbled, and easily mocked language of some Indian and African colonial literature -- and that merely laughing at it, or merely finding its lack of formal correctness embarrassing, misses a lot of the intended meaning. He starts out the "Colonial-English" essay with a quote from Chesterton:

The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny.

From Chapter Two, the Orwell humor I love...

Mrs. Lackersteen's speech:
'Oh dear, this heat, this heat! Mr Macgregor came and fetched me in his car. SO kind of him. Tom, that wretch of a rickshaw-man is pretending to be ill again. Really, I think you ought to give him a good thrashing and bring him to his senses. It's too terrible to have to walk about in this sun every day.'

And this on MacGregor:
He had no prejudice against Orientals; indeed, he was deeply fond of them. Provided they were given no freedom he thought them the most charming people alive.

thanks to a book of "verbo-visual non-fiction" by the unclassifiable poet/essayist/graphic artist Michael Kasper. Several of his essays, including one titled "Colonial-English," argue that there are layers of fully intended irony in the very different, grammatically jumbled, and easily mocked language of some Indian and African colonial literature -- and that merely laughing at it, or merely finding its lack of formal correctness embarrassing, misses a lot of the intended meaning.

Impressive that he could get all this across in pictograms.

Say, I like this idea, too. I'll try to keep up, but my commute isn't long enough to guarantee steady progress.

Not in pictograms. Illustrated. Though he had a thing in there about a Lettrist experimental poet who really did use pictograms.

Getting back to Burmese Days, is it a fair objection that it's too close to A Passage To India?

Not in pictograms. Illustrated.

I've been reading a verbo-visual book about brewing beer recently. I had never realized how avant-garde that was.

Enough already. ;-p

We drove by a beer supply store in the Richmond District on Friday & wondered who shopped there. Think it was on Geary. Are they any good? And BTW can you make stout from that roasted barley sold as tea in Korean groceries?

That was probably SF Brewcraft, which is where I shop. It's on Clement. He is reputed to have the best selection of grains on the west coast.

I'm sure you could use some of that barley, but in order for it to be fermentable it needs to be malted. A lot of beer recipes have some percentage of "specialty grains" which aren't very (or at all) fermentable but add flavor, body, proteins for head retention, and so on. I've never heard of using Korean tea, but it's not unusual to add roasted barley of some kind to stouts. It darkens the beer and can give it a bitter, coffee-like flavor. I don't think it's ever used in high quantities.

We have a very nice and very tipsy "imperial" IPA on the way. It's about the same recipe they used to make in Burton in the 19th century for export to India, but will probably have a little more alcohol.

Do you do all-grain batches, or use extract? Just wondering, because minerals in the Burton water did interesting things to mash pH.

My apartment is pretty small, so as yet we are doing partial mashes with a fair amount of extract. I hope to do all grain in the near future, kitchen space be damned.

Actually, we didn't use Burton salts this time, so I guess it won't be such a good recreation. But it is much higher gravity than your usual modern IPA, like the old style. Next time I think I'll change the recipe to make something more authentic.

What happened to your mash, anyway?

I haven't done an all-grain batch myself yet, but have been doing some experiments with it for my next big project. I'm hoping to make a hefe-weizen from wheat grown by my wife's relatives in Kansas. This will require either malting the wheat myself (which has proved a bit problematic), or combining six-row and unmalted wheat.

All this has gotten me into the science of brewing, and I've had to dust off my high school chemistry, as well as buying a batch of test tubes and watch glasses. Most recently, I've discovered that a multi-hour protein rest not only breaks up the wheat gluten -- Go Beta-Glucanase! -- but also increases my yield by about 40%. At any rate, the excellent How To Brew site has a fascinating essay on how water quality affects the types of beer that can be made in Pilsen or Dublin.

Not being much of an IPA fan, I'd never heard of Burton ales, but according to the site,

Burton-on-Trent - Compared to London, the calcium and sulfate are remarkably high, but the hardness and alkalinity are balanced to nearly the degree of Pilsen. The high level of sulfate and low level of sodium produce an assertive, clean hop bitterness. Compared to the ales of London, Burton ales are paler, but much more bitter, although the bitterness is balanced by the higher alcohol and body of these ales.

I had no idea you could add salts to modify your tap water to Burton levels -- cool!

You increased your extract by 40%? So that's what a protein rest is for. I guess it should also give you better clarity, too. I've never tried anything with wheat before, I imagine the results are a little different for barley.

Malting your own wheat...now that is hard core. I would be afraid to try it. Sounds really easy to mess up.

Have you seen a book called Brewing Lager Beer? The guy who runs SF Brewcraft said it's the best introduction to mashing, so I picked it up. It goes into enough detail to run your own brewery, so if it's chemistry you're looking for I think it's recommendable. I used to copy down sonnets on my high school chemistry tests, so it's a bit of a challenge for me.

You increased your extract by 40%? So that's what a protein rest is for.

Actually, I'm suspicious that the multi-hour rest between 90F and 110F might have acted as an acid rest as well, and brough the pH down to a point where my alpha- and beta- amylase rests were much more effective. Or maybe it was the phytase or something. Getting 1.069 out of an 8oz grain to 1qt water mash that had only yielded 1.048 was a total surprise, so I'm going to have to isolate variables more. Might have to get one of those nifty electronic doodads for measuring pH.

Sounds really easy to mess up.

It is with rye -- apparently a bad batch can give you ergotism. With wheat, it's pretty simple: soak, sprout, kiln, tumble, and winnow. My problem has been kilning -- I don't have a dehydrator large enough for 10lb of grain.

Thanks for the book recommendation. So far the best brewing book on all sorts of from-scratch concoctions is the Alaskan Bootlegger's Bible, which starts off by assuming you have no access to a brewing store. I've also had good luck reading New Zealander home distillation sites, as they also seem to have poor access to brewing supplies.