Backyard Honey Brown Bowden Ale

Okay, never before have I wondered as I began fermentation, This could really be an awful, or awesome, beer.

Usually, it's all high hope and high fives.

We started with a Northern Brewer Nut Brown kit: which would have an OG of .1040 and only fuggles as a basis. Thinking I could go one better on a proven winner, I added a pound of 40l caramel, a couple doses of Casade leaf hops, and 3 cups of honey.

Please Lord, help me to stop fermentation before everything gets out of hand. OG: 1062.

Steep:
.25 lbs English Chocolate Malt
.25 lbs Belgian Special 8
.25 lbs Belgian Bisquit
.25 lbs Briess Special Roast
1 lb Briess Caramel 40l

Boil:
6 lbs Maris Otter malt syrup
1 oz American Fuggles pellets - alpha 4.2 (60 mins)
60 oz quality Kirkland honey (15 mins)
1 oz Cascade leaf - alpha 8.9 (30 and 10 mins)

Dry Nottingham yeast

Gravity after steep: 1020! Gravity after extract: 1030. Gravity after Monte added too much honey: 1062. heh.

Day 5: Transferred to the fridge. Was super worried that the fermentation was stuck - just no sound or action coming from the corney vent - but took a hydrometer reading and got .1020 ... pretty relieved by that. That seemed high, but a tastetest said that the bitter and sugar are pretty well balanced there. Let it all come together. Will rack in a few days.

Week 4: After 3 weeks of conditioning, there's pretty heavy alcohol and the hops and honey haven't met in the middle ... yet. Fingers crossed.

Week 7: Still a little green. A lot closer than last taste. Good, but not great. Yet! 3 more weeks will tell.

Quaker Maple Wheat

Steeping: I dunno, about a pound? of stale Quaker oats
Boil: 3 x 3lbs Munton's SprayME 55% Wheat/45% Barley (9EBC)
Add: 20 oz Top-Quality Kirkland Brand Maple Syrup
Yeast: Wyeast 3056 Bavarian liquid

41 mins boil with 1.5 oz of Wilamette 4.7% alpha (bittering)
13 mins no heat with .5 oz of the same Wilamette pellets
24 mins to chill and pitch

Got all the ingredients for the Xingu clone with this shipment … realized that this was going to be water, DME, hops, yeast. Too simple! Where's the complexity? So opted for the oats up front for a little mouth feel, and hopefully, just enough maple syrup to leave a hint of aftertaste.

Smacked the pack only before the boil time. Left the corney outside in the 80 degrees down to 70 degrees evening.

Day 2: Used the beer thief to check gravity, to my horror found it at .1090. Tossed in two and a half quarts of good ol' Bakersfield tap to bring it down to .1075.

Day 3: Fermentation is really active, lots of blow off. Took the corney up to the bathtub and half sunk it, wrapped it in a wet towel to wick, and set the thermostat to 72. I know, I have a beer fridge for this, but there's beer in it.

Days 6-13: Stopped fermentation and let the fridge chill everything down. After two days, found that gravity was still at .1030. So, out of the fridge and back into a fermentation mode for two more days.

Day 21: Figured all was well. Started racking the yeast off the bottom, and then pulled a gravity reading yesterday. And, it read .1033 (explain that shite!) so yanked it outta the fridge and warmed it up again, hoping for some fermentation for reals. What the heck??

Got ticked and dry hopped in a half oz of Hallertau (4.2%) pellets. Five days from now I'll put the can back into the fridge, and then rack ... or just serve out.

10 week update:
The idea behind adding in the maple was to add just a bit of snap. Razzlem'dam, it's overpowering. 20 ounces is too much, by far. The bite from it didn't condition out after 6 weeks like it seemed to have been doing up to that point. 10 oz would be too much. I'd go 5 ounces and work up from there, had I my time machine.

Sweet Creamy Stout

Creamy has to do with adding Lactose, here, for the first time. Not because of what you're thinking, gutter-minded one.

Okay, so it's winter-going-on-spring, the wife likes the dark ales, and marathon training demands some recovery drink that's both hearty and nutritious. Time to brew up the first Stout ever in time for it to parade in all its green glory for Super Bowl Sunday.

* approx 1 lb. Quaker Oats (steeped)
* 1 lb. Dingemans Debitter Black (steeped)
* 1 lb. Simpson's Chocolate (steeped)
___
* 12 lb. Amber malt syrup
*. 2 lb. wildflower honey
* 2 oz. Willamette Pellets (4.4% alpha: Boil - 40 mins.)
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* 1 oz. Fuggle Pellets for aroma (4.6% alpha: Chill steep)
* .75 lb. Lactose (we went light on this, because we're old and lactose intolerant)
* a pair of Danstar dry Nottinghams.

Shooting for an OG of 1040-5ish / FG: 1010.

So, I got everything cooking, and begged the wife to find my floating thermometer for me. I'd been waiting for the ingredients to arrive for over a week. One would think I'd be better prepped. Besides a mostly meaty pig of seasonal Brown Ale from Lengthwise and a good attitude, we weren't at all prepared for this.

From 140 to 160, we steeped up the grains and the oatmeals. Pulling out the muslin left brown-black drainage that one would expect from an old oil filter. Noice! We're getting Stoutish now, baby.

Got a light boil going for 40 mins, don't think we really hammered out a protein break. Everything smelled great with the malt and honey going at the half hour mark. Took a preliminary OG: 1043 at about 65 degrees. We're gonna kick some buttocks. Took a couple of mugs out of the wort and poured them into the corneys, after letting them cool, Walker and I added a pack of Nottingham each. He gets the right-side-up keg; I get the upside-down one. (Actually, I get them both, since I get to walk out to the garage and press my lips to the tap anytime I want. But you understand both what I mean, and the depth of my personal determination, responsibility and inpregnable integrity).

Mostly did some talking and stirring, and dropped in the Fuggles and the lactose after shutting down the heat. Walker got to babysit the chiller while I tucked CC in. All got cool, and poured the wort with the team effort we've developed over the long haul of doing this twice. We spilled a bunch but still got 4.75 gallons into mine, and 4.5 gallons into Walker's.

Out the corneys go to the service porch. We'll get a good, hard fermentation going before we go into the fridge. More soon.

Day 3: After two days of super-aggro fermentation at 68 degrees, I was afraid all was going too quickly. Moved everything into the cooler at 62 degrees for a day. Then, racked off some and gave it a hydro reading. 1030 for mine, and 1033 for Walker's. Hmmm. Moving it back into the warm.

Day 4: Now, everything's slowing down. Tomorrow morning, I jack you punks into the fridge at 40 and teach you a lesson.

Day 6: Racking off some of the flocculated yeast and cold slurry, then back into hibernation.

A few more days of that racking-off-the-bottom and the yeast is owning. Ordered a cartridge filter with a 1 micron mesh. It'll be here midweek to Save the Day.

Day 21: Wednesday = midweek, and 3 weeks from boil. Pushed my (read: not Walker's) corneyfull through the filter first, but Charlie's new/old soda kegs are both leakers (suitable for primaries; the other one is fermenting mead as we do this filtration). So, I ran "mine" through into the leaker, ran Walker's into mine after a rinse, then mine back outta the leaker into Walker's, after a rinse. So we swapped corneys, but most notably, "mine" got filtered twice. Ah, we'll see if there's magic in the mistakes.
On a side note, there's a gorgeous depth to the dark of this stout. Watching it bubble back and forth through the filtration hoses was picturesque.
Shame we're gonna have to turn it all back into piss!

Put 'em both on 30 lbs. pressure and shook 'em 50 times - hey! it's a new Crossfit exercise for time! - and put them back on ice. Tomorrow. Tomorrow will tell.

Day 35: So, it's 3 weeks-ish later, and after a long session for Big Sur, and I'm dreaming about spaghetti and a hearty, nutritious stout. This didn't disappoint. We hit the mark spot on with the gravity, mouth-feel (note to self: 1/3 the lactose of others' recipes is plenty good), chocolate and coffee hints all over. We win.

Cracked open the corney and hit it with some gas on Oct 18th, as we cooked up some Honey Brown - fine nitrogenous bubbles, double-barrelled coffee burst and a smooth finish. Wow, where'd this come from?

Walker IBA

Walker does pull down his pants and show his bared arse now and again, but this has nothing to do with that.

We're looking to make an unholy offspring of an Englishy Brown Ale and an India Pale. So, we're going to have some honey/meady smoothness, a sweet finish (FG above 1012, we hope) but with some lots of high-alpha Cascade for a long boil for India hoppiness and a touch of bitter. That's the plan.

* approx 1.5 lb. Quaker Oats (steeped)
* 1 lb. Crisp Brown Malt. 60-70° L. Green and cracked, hopefully with the high alpha Cascade, will add a touch bitterness to the final product, hopefully. (steeped)
* 6 lb. Briess Sparkling Amber DME 13L
*. 1.5 lb. clover honey
* 2 oz. Cascade Pellets 6.3% alpha. 1 oz (Boil - 66 mins.), .5 oz (Boil - 36 ), .5 oz. (Finishing - 6 mins, plus another 20 during chill, bah)
* a pair of Sabrew s-33s (EDME). Optimum temperature: 64-75° F, but I'm gonna have a hard time maintaining that with this new fridge. I'm gonna miss my in-line temp controller.

Shooting for an OG of 1044ish / FG: 1012+.

Got the yeast going in a couple of cups of honey and sugar water. We stuck in in the oven to hide it from prying hands.
Steeped up the Malt and Oatmeal in some old panty hose (where did that muslin bag go?) 50 mins from 100 to 155. It shure did impart some dark color to the wort. Dunno the lovibond, think soda brown.
Added the extract and the honey, 1 oz of the Cascade - 30 minutes.
Dropped in .5 oz of the Cascade, 30 minutes.
The finishing hops - .5 oz - 6 mins.
Took out the boiling hops, but left the tea ball with the finishing hops at the bottom durning chilling. Just didn't fish it out, but in keeping with the IPA nature of this IBA, we'll just let the bitters do their thing. 20 mins to chill down to 80.

...good thing Walker was here to help heft the boil keg, that sucker felt heavy. He earns his namesake this time. Poured back and forth into the two corneys (one of which blew out of the In valve overnight, and has a stuck fermentation after a day - bah number 2).
Rooted out the yeast from the stove, where it had bloomed out of the measuring bowl and gooped up the stove innards like pancake batter. Pitched the very happy yeast half and half into the kegs (about 4 gals each) and put them into the fridge.

OG of 1042. Fudging a bit at 75 degrees, reading at that temp was 1040. So, maybe a 1043, but we're right in the range. The amber extract (and the light yeast, granted) brought the pre-fermentation color back to a maple sugar brown. Happy days!

Day 3 update: Fridge is running cold - 60 - and try as I might, can't get it to get up to 65+ without just shutting down. Corney #1 is blowin' and goin', #2 was leaking pressure, so on day 3 I've swapped into #2 another corney with a good, oxygenating pour. Fingers crossed on #2!

Day 5: Corney #1 is done fermenting; 1011. Nothing ever happened with #2. Every pull on the relief valve has only ever produced a faint burp. I've got 5 gallons of ready-to-condition beer, and 5 gallons of still-waiting-to-ferment wort. Okay, so I have a great idea. I'll chill and carbonate #1 and rack off the yeast to #2. I know that the yeast from #1 is good - if it can wake up and get #2 going, all will be well, right? So, I rack off what's there into #2, put #1 into the chilly fridge, and wait until morning.

Day 6: Just as a thought before running the yeast from the #1 to the #2, I thought "why not run a hydrometer on #2? ... Has it fermented 25%? 50% ... at all?" So I did. It wasn't fermenting at all because it was done fermenting. 1011. Go figure. If it did all it's work in the first day and a half when the valve was leaking, so much the better. But geez.

Now on to conditioning. Day 7, running the C02 at 30 lbs for 3 hours at 45 degrees. Both show really strong coffee overtones and a backbone of honey sweetness.

Day 8: Racked yeast off the bottom of both corneys and blew off the loose C02 to let the ale rest. Bottled up a couple for Walker to try, after I tasted my way through the gradations of sediment. One day of conditioning for #2, 2 days for #1. What a difference a day makes! Both exchanged all the honey flaves for a round nuttiness, with just a splash of coffee surviving. Where did that nutty brown come from? Oatmeal, I reckon - Quaker Oats FTW? Or those cracked green malts? Time to do some brew testing in upcoming batches.

Now to really do some waiting and see just how brown this green beer can be.
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The Bottom Line: What happened at last? Well, the fast-fermenting can grew worse with age. The mutations didn't condition out. The slower-fermenting corney was a brew for the ages, though. A perfect nutty-brown with a little hop kick. It didn't last long, although we tried to parcel it out a pint at a time.

Lesson learned: I'm just using Nottingham from now on. I want a fast fermentation, with no worries. Git 'er done! I'll leave the subtlety for the sweet mead-yeast when we bust some must.

Jarhead Brown Ale

Six pints of this and you should know everything about Military Intelligence.

So Tel Janin wanted to brew and kill on his birthday? Here's what happens when the brewing is on the back burner, and Myth/Unreal Tournament get all your conscious attentions. A rough sketch of the brew process, but will it be a smooth Brown... or a Marine Green beer? Time will tell.

Moral: Sometimes, it's best to brew in the background. Just boil and play.

Shooting for an OG of 1040ish / FG: 1012.

* 2 lbs. Oatmeal
* 1 lb Carapils cracked malts
* 3 lbs Light DME
* 3 lbs Dark DME
* 1.5 lbs clover honey
* 2 oz. Cascade plugs (6%)
* 2 Windsor / 1 Nottingham packets of dry yeast

Boil (Day 1):
Began steeping Grains and Oatmeal in gauze sack from 90° to 172°, made sure that it took a good long time, and dig a little squeezin' on the bag at the end, just to get all the goodness out. Tel stirred in all the DME and the honey, and we were on our way. Man, it was smelling good!
30 mins after a real rolling boil, tossed in the first 1 oz of the Cascade. Never boiled over or anything. What a brew with military polish.
35 mins after; added the second dose (1 oz) of the Cascade. Made certain that we got a good hour of hard boil, and a serious protein break. Not really, we just lost track of time playing on the computer.
Popped in the wort chiller about 20 mins after turning off the heat - a no-no, we know, but we were preoccupied, again. Once the chiller got to cooling, I shook it a few times, and shook the hose clean off the chiller, er, a few times (think I'd learn). We didn't get water directly into the wort, but dang.

Chilled to touch-temperature, mixed the 3 packs of yeast, and tossed it into uncleaned, unsterilized corneys still housing the slurries from Haley Ale. OG: 1040 dead on (!). Both corneys filled to 3/4, just enough head room. Everything looks, smells, tastes great - man, oughta think less and brew more in the future, if I get results like this all the time.

Fermentation (Day 3):
Took about 6 hours (six hours of Unreal Tournament) for the yeast to really begin its blowin' and goin'. After a too-cool night in the fridge at 50 degrees, warmed up to the 65° where we expect to finish at in about 3 more days.

Racked, Carbonating & Conditioning (Day 10):
Okay, fermentation took a bit longer than we anticipated. On day 6, we racked off some yeast and took a gravity reading: 1018 and 1020 for the two 5-gallons - surprisingly, the corney without the slurry was the one that ran to 18. Still a little higher than we would like, so a quick shake, tap on the thermostat (to 68°) and four more days of final fermentation were in order. Which, now four days later, was precisely what the doctor ordered as both corneys now check in at 1012. Perfect!
The slurry is still very yeasty (racked off as much as possible warm, after a couple of days we'll pull some more off the bottom) with a little yeasty bite that may add character, or may make for BitterBeerFace competitions. We'll see. The other batch is already very drinkable - still a touch sweet since the honey hasn't smoothed into the hops and still a bit green, but it smells great. All signs point to this 5 gals as a real winner.
Had to change out a cap on the non-slurried corney, turned on the Co2 to 22 lbs, then took everything down to 45° . We'll wait 3 days, turn off the Co2, then let everything condition cold for another week.

Final Notes (Day 18):
Well, after a little time, a couple of mild rackings and 3 more days at 20 lbs Co2, Tel came by and downed one or two from both corneys, and the verdict is in: It's good stuff, and only gonna get better with a week or two more conditioning. Surprisingly enough, the slurry, which was a bit too tangy a week ago, improved and surpassed the other corney. It's really smooth, and perfectly carbonated. The non-slurried batch sports a more substantial head, and with a week in the Lazyboy, will be simply awesome. Cheers!

A Most Excellent Mash: Chocolate Honey Porter

Trying something new this time. Using a 5-gallon recipe, and beefing it up a little to make for a 8 gallons of wort, and 13ish gallons of beer. We'll see if thin is in.

Shooting for an OG of 1030 / FG: 1002-1006:

* 8 oz. Black Patent
* 8 oz. Roast
* 30 oz. Oatmeal
* 4 lbs Amber DME
* 3 lbs Dark DME
* 5 lbs clover honey
* 2 oz. Fuggles (4.8)
* 2 oz. Cascade (6.1)
* 8 oz. Baker's Chocolate
* Struggle for Yeasty Supremacy: Part II: Using London, Windsor, and Nottingham slurry to see who can do the best with this batch, in the three 5 gallon corneys. May the best microorganism win!

Boil (Day 1):
Dropped the grains into 9 gallons at 140º and let them steep up to 160º for 35 mins. Stirred in the extracts and honey, and once the boil began (at 170mins), dropped in the first ounce of Fuggles bittering. Took that long to get a good running boil - hey, I can make good beer, but I can't afford a good system, okay? I'm also trying to heat the house by boiling on the stove... After 30 minutes of a good boil, added the chocolate and the second oz of Fuggles, and boiled for another good 50. Turned off the heat and let the brew keg cool slowly with the 2 oz of Cascade down to 140º, where we began. Evenly distributed the wort between 3 corneys; one laced with a packet of dry London, one with Windsor, and the third fresh off of a run with the last batch of American Brown Ale, slurried with second-generation Nottingham.
OG: 1042 at 70º before greedily and brainlessly cutting it into 5 gallon corneys with some Culligan water.

My prediction? Nottingham may be aggressive, but you can't beat a slurry of proven yeast. See you in a few to prove me right.

Fermentation (Day 6):
Wrong. Believe it or don't, the Windsor took right off, and was creating some good pressure in only 6 hours. Added some yeast nutrient to both the London and Nottinghams, and tapped in a packet of dry Nottingham, and at the 24 hour mark, the London was on a roll; the Nottingham of all things, hadn't. Got a little worried and added more nutirent to the Nottingham and another, new packet of dry. It took, but wasn't as aggressive as usual (maybe it's because there's more yeast than beer in that bucket).
Let 'em all run to the 5 day mark, when they all began to lose their fizz simultaneously. Dropped 'em into the fridge at 47º to arrest anymore fermentation.

Racking (Day 12):
Pulled yeast off the bottom of the corneys with a quick shot of CO2, and took a hydro of the mixture of all three types after the stuff settled: .1011. A little higher than I predicted, but a sweet beer probably won't be that bad... The chocolate might improve the density a bit, I imagine. Chilled to 40º, and will continue into conditioning, full steam ahead.

Second Guessing (Day 27):
Went in to rack a second , and what I thought would be a final, pull of yeast off the bottom of the corneys only to discover to my horror that the hydro had the gravity at .1012. I admit it. I got nervous. I got crazy. I got a screwdriver and heated the fridge up to 54º. I'll let it run for a week, then chill it back down and rack twice. Sigh.

Finally Happy.
Okay, it worked. This Porter turned out really nice, with no dramatic variation between yeasts. It's all good, baby.

American Brown Ale.

What happens when you clear the cupboard and try to make beer of it.

If you were baking a cake, you'd probably get out the recipe and read it through to make sure you had all the ingredients you needed before starting to bake. Well, I'm usually that way and more so when brewing, but this time I just winged it, thinking that I had more than enough of everything on hand to have the goods there when needed.
Uh, don't brew this way. It's too stressful, and you may find, as I did, that some of your ingredients ain't up to snuff when you need to be snuffin'.

Shooting for an OG of 1048-1052 / FG: 1004-1008:

* 1 lb. Oatmeal
* 1 bag Doc's Cellar Porter Grains
* 2 lbs Light dry extract (1.5 lbs were boiled in later)
* 4.4 lbs dark liquid extract
* 3 lbs light clover honey
* 2 oz. Hallertauer hops (3.5)
* 2 oz. Cascade hops (7.8)
* 1 old Munton's, 1 old Nottingham packets of dry yeast, which was old stuff that was lying around in the garage. But hey, I figured, if Munton doesn't get after it, Nottingham will.

Boil (Day 1):
Began steeping Grains and Oatmeal in gauze sack from 120° to 180. Poured in the liquid extract at 180°. Added the dry extract, and waited for a real boil (17 mins)
15 mins after a real boil happened, bagged in 1 oz of the Hallertauer.
30 mins after; added the second oz of the Hallertauer, and 1 oz of the Cascade.
45 mins after; stirred in the honey, and popped in the wort chiller.
60 mins after; put in the last oz of finishing Cascade.
The Early Prognostication: I think that it's gonna feel a little underhopped.

Chilled to 80°, pitched the prepped yeast. OG: 1030. I had 3 corneys, one with 4 gallons, one with about 3 gallons, and a last with the bottom-of-the-boil 3 gallons. I was figuring that this last one might turn out either bitter, or the best of the three if the other two seemed underhopped.

Stuck Fermentation (Day 3):
The kicker: The old yeast was old yeast, and dead. That night, no activity. The next day, the yeast had not taken off! I freaked and chilled down to 30°, and called everyone looking for a back up, and ended up getting some from Darin at Lengthwise Brewing.
Since I was a little low on the OG, I boiled up a kettle of water and added 1.5 lbs of dry extract to about 4 gallons of water. This, with a little pouring from corney to corney, gave me about 4 gallons in 3 corneys. All three have an equal mix, equal OG at 1038 and equal head space now, and should end up tasting exactly the same.

Racking (Day 16)::
Sucked yeast off the bottoms of the corneys. Gravity is at 1006 @ 44°. Tasted like a really underhopped, really young beer. Looking good, will wait a full month before taking another sip and carbonating hard.

Carbonation (Day 28):
Okay, so I couldn't wait. I'm carbonating two of the corneys at 30 lbs pressure at 48°....
Kept em on it until Wednesday, when I switched over to the last one and ran pressure on it until Saturday.

End of Conditioning (Day 58):
Took a few tastes from two of the corneys, they're a little thin (for me -- but then, they were supposed to be) and just a little young. I need a little practice in dialing in the carbonation levels. Overcarbonated a bit, but not a problem. And yeah, it feels a little underhopped.

3 months later, this turned out to be a very good brew; smooth and amber, dark with a light body. It just took the honey an extra month to kick in. The anemic hopping turned out to be characteristically American Brown. Whaddya know.

Beer: It Ain't Beer

The Bottom Line: It ain't beer.

We Americans put some really stupid stuff into our beer. We take out some really great stuff from our beer. We don't really deserve to call what we make and drink beer. We pretend we're drinking soft drinks. Where will it end?

We Americans put some really stupid stuff into our beer. That's why it ain't beer. If you plop a turd into a punch bowl, do you still consider the punch bowl's contents punch? Mmmm, poo-nch. Heck, no. But here we are, diluting good golden, sun-ripened heartland barley malt with corn and rice, cooking it up and calling the derivative beer.

The Germans knew we'd try to bastardize beer 500 years ago. In an effort to avert potential disaster, they wrote up the German Purity Law (in thick-tongued English, after a tipping a few back, pronounced "Reinheitsgebot") delineating barley, hops and water as the only possible ingredients used in the brewing of beer. I think it's because they'd tasted Sake and Moonshine and didn't want any parallel Teutonic futures to include beer-mutations made from rice or corn products. Forward-looking race, those Germans.
Anyway, barley, hops and water. That's beer. Since the Germans of 1516 didn't know anything about microorganisms, we give everyone a pass and include yeast in a modern listing of ingredients. Barley, hops, yeast and water, okay. But that's where it has to end! The Germans bombed and bombed and bombed the English during WWII for thumbing their reddened noses at the Reinheitsgebot with their upraised pints of Oatmeal stout. But did the English get the message? Heck no.

And neither did we, obviously. I mean, don't expect me to even go into how we Americans get really, really stupid and add peaches, limes, lemons, raspberry extracts, chili peppers and even Cheerios to our beers. That's not beer! You don't have to have read the Reinheitsgebot to know that nothing good can come of such unholy experimentation.
How long can we show such a blatant disregard for iron German law? It's only a matter of time before the Germans come for us. And we'll have no one to blame but ourselves for the carnage.
Besides, I think the Mexicans are behind it. I think they're trying to start some trouble between America and Germany, then woosh swoop in over our border and reclaim all that land they lost at the Alamo. And then some. The first time someone handed me a Mexican beer with a slice of lime stuffed into the bottle's mouth, I figured that the feller was trying to save me. You know, don't drink the water, and all that. I had no idea he was serious. But now I know what a deadly serious Fifth Columnist he was.

We Americans take out some really great stuff from our beers. Stuff like nutrition, flavor, and the yeast.
Beer is supposed to be a living thing - you know, little living yeasties consuming malt sugars and peeing out alcohol and tooting Co2. That's fermentation, the beer-making process. Open your mouth; taste; swallow water, malt, hops, yeast, peed alcohol; belch tooted Co2. That's intoxication, the beer-drinking process. At least in the countries where people drink real beer.

Here in America, brewing our proprietary beers is not so simple. We have to work to extract all the life from the stuff. Sure, we force the yeast to eat those corn/rice additives and still do their fermentation in lively fashion, but then what? Run the derivative through a filter and strain out the yeast. After all their hard work, is that all the thanks they get? Sure! Next, spin the concoction down in a centrifuge and separate the liquid from the color and substance. Fine! Oh, and then pasteurize the remainder to neutralize any elements left that even remotely show signs of life. Great!
Then, insult to injury, why not sticker the bottle with a Born-On dated label to create the illusion that it's a fresh and living thing instead of the flavorless, bodiless, lifeless corpse of a beer? Because that's what it is, I guarantee it.

As far as the beer-drinking process in America is concerned, the only ones who really get it are the high-school and college students. They're young. They don't appreciate what the breweries had to accomplish to remove the flavor and life from their beers. They only know that it shouldn't come in contact with their tastebuds, so they, in their youthful exuberance and creativity, build beer bongs, shotguns and funnels. And the flow continues.

But it's not beer that's flowing!

Let's hold up for a minute. We don't really even deserve to call what we make and drink beer. We can't in good conscience call this American corn/rice/malt derivative-beverage beer! I suggest that we hereafter use "corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverage" to avoid any misrepresentation. We're drinking corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages! That's why it ain't beer.

We add all this other stuff, we drain the life from it. It's no wonder we Americans pretend we're drinking soft drinks when we're sipping one of our corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages.
I mean, which came first? Lite beer, or diet Soda? Weren't they born-on the same date? Do you really think, oh smug American man with that Coors Light in your hand, that the Germans are going to be drinking light Bier as they marshal their strength for a sudden retributory strike at the heart of America? I don't think so! Don't you know what damage you're doing to the international prestige of The Home Of The Brave? Isn't it bad enough that Aussies snigger contemptuously and the Irish shoot ale from their noses when they talk about how insubstantial our regular corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages are? And yet you have the impudence to purchase a lightened version?
It's people like you who weaken America in the eyes of the world and make America a laughingstock to those who we would hope to lead. OH, sure! You didn't make America a laughingstock; Bill Clinton was to blame for that. Riiiight. Pointing fingers won't deflect attention from that pathetic can of mostly-water you're holding, son.

How twisted, emasculated and weak! How far we have fallen! And here is the ultimate sign that the apocalypse is upon us: the latest American craze is to paint and sugar corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages into lemonade or orangeade lookalikes; or to sweeten them up while simultaneously taking all the coloring and body out to simulate an alcoholic Seven-Up. It's the end of the world as we know it, surely.
But this final step into absurdity might actually be a hopeful, healthy step in the direction of healing. We may snap out of our inebriation to look with eyes that truly see upon that underachieving glass of liquid before us. We may awaken and avert certain destruction if we're actually no longer pretending that we're really drinking beer.

'Cause we ain't.