Making beer involves extracting sugars from grain. This means you end up with a lot of grain that you have no use for, since everything tasty has been extracted, but which needs to be disposed of somehow. I’ve been happy that a friend in the building, after starting a worm farm, ended up finding my spent grain useful, since that means one less wasteful outcome for the stuff. I tend to leave the grain out for him, and he dries it in the sun. Drying stuff in the sun is so common in Korea that one expects to see it: …
Month: February 2012
The “Are you sure you want to come to Russia?” Dream
No, I’ve never been, but I have dreamed about visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most recently, last night. And since I rarely remember my dreams on waking, I thought I’d set it down. In which dream I apparently was seen writing poetry (something I don’t do much anymore) somewhere in Moscow, and this was enough for some organization above both the SVR (international intellligence service) and the FSB (the domestic one) to track me, watch me, and strongarm me by visiting my short-term rental apartment in the guise of a plumber and rendering the toilet unusable. Later, when waiting for …
A Bit of Doggerel
I’m currently trawling through my old drafts of poetry for a project I won’t talk about for now, but one thing I’ll say is that the project doesn’t involve much doggerel. But I figure, since it’ll never see the light of day anywhere else, I might as well post this thing here. Warning: for those who’ve spent too much time at poetry readings, this may provoke flashbacks, either of crass poetry or of poets trying to read stuff that isn’t crass to audiences used to it. (I’ll admit, when I was young I was perhaps as crass a poetry listener …
TEFL Flashback Music
I’ve never had so many flashbacks to the TEFL classroom — or had such pleasant ones — as when listening to My Little Airport. I am so sorry I have no time to call you. I’ve been so busy recently and I don’t want… Good band, on top of it:
Partigyle, Rebooted: Wonmisan Silvered Moon Barleywine
Note: This brew is part of a single parti-gyle batch of beer brewed on the 6th of February. The other half of the batch, Wonmisan Mild Brown Hound, is discussed here. However, the majority of the discussion of the parti-gyle itself is here. I have been considering making a barley wine for quite some time now, but I have never actually gotten around to it until now. Since I am eager to produce a batch of Mild ale for Miss Jiwaku, I figured now would be the perfect time to go ahead and make a smaller (10L) Barley Wine, using …
Partigyle, Rebooted: Wonmisan Mild-Hearted Brown Hound
Note: This brew is part of a single parti-gyle batch of beer brewed on the 6th of February. The other half of the batch, Wonmisan Silvered Moon Barleywine, is discussed here. (The majority of the discussion of the parti-gyle itself is on that page, not here.) For those not interested in the link above, briefly, Wonmisan Mild-Hearted Brown Hound is my attempt at Mild, using the second and last runnings of a partigyle for a barleywine.
Experimental Minibatch: Wonmisan Grätzerexperimente
I now have a tiny, 1L batch of Grätzer fermenting in my brewcloset. This may sound insane, and it probably is, of course, but how it happened is perhaps an amusing story.
Talking Through Bigotry
Miss Jiwaku and I have an acquaintance, a Korean fellow we know, though I won’t say how we know him. (Anonymity will allow me to speak more honestly.) He is a fine sort of fellow, in general, quite professional and creative, easy enough to work with and even at times funny; she and I have learned many things from him, and I hope likewise he has learned a thing or two from us as well. However, there’s one thing that makes it hard for me to get along with him, something it’s hard to put my finger on exactly because, …
The Pangborn Defence by Norm Sibum
I first read Norm Sibum on the recommendation of a man I studied poetry with in graduate school, the notorious and controversial Montréal writer David Solway, who in turn provides the first blurb on the back of The Pangborn Defence. He writes: The fare Sibum provides covers the four spiritual food groups — humor, seriousness, discipline, humility — and is therefore wholesome and nutritive. Knowing David, these words could as easily have been either criticism or praise — or even both — though I think in this case it is the latter. What I’ve read of Sibum’s work in the …
Smoky Brewday: Wonmisan Grätzer
Grätzer is one of those almost-extinct beer styles that people have started talking about again these days. The basic idea is that it’s a 100% smoked malt, low-ABV beer. We’re talking serious smoke, and seriously low ABV, like 3.5% or less. Sounds good to me, so I decided to make some. Thing is, that’s a more involved proposition than I first imagined.