Category: BEER & HOMEBREWING

Steam-Powered Brewing and Gibson & Sterling’s The Difference Engine, or, Research vs. That Other Thing

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I mentioned a while back that I’m listening to an audiobook of The Difference Engine. Well, I’m pretty close to the end now, and enjoying the hell out of it. One phrase that comes to mind is how Edward Said described the novel as a form (in the process of explaining why understanding novels were useful to understanding imperialism), in Culture and Imperialism: Note the highlight: “an incorporative, quasi-encyclopedic cultural form.” That is not only something I aspire to in my own fiction writing, but it most definitely is true of The Difference Engine, except it’s sort of a weirdcyclopedia, …

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Isinglass

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There’s some wonderful information in Peter Mathias’ The Brewing Industry in England 1700-1830, especially if you’re looking for funny details about the world of London brewers in the 1730s that could be hacked into alchemical-industrial conspiracy. For example, isinglass: It’s basically made out of fish bladder, and it’s used as a “finings”–that is, you dump some of it into your finished beer (in powder form, I think, though I’ve never used it myself), and it pulls the yeast to the bottom. In other words, it clears up your beer, and it was the main way of doing so prior to mode recent …

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He’s No Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but…

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I know, I’m late to the party, but lately I’ve been reading Sydney Padua’s the webcomic The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (coming soon as a book, apparently?), and, well: Everyone loves Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and for good reason: though he was more like the Tony Stark of his age–“accomplished” barely touches how important an engineer he was during his short but influential career in early Victorian London–the Wolverine-like look he gets in Padua’s comic (and, well, in the photos, really) is, er… I’ll put it this way: as Padua has noted, he’s an extremely popular character. He even got …

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Yeast, as Understood in 1736

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  I’m really glad I was able to get a second opinion on one little detail that has become of great importance to my ongoing novel project. That is: how well did brewers understand the function of yeast in brewing back in 1736? It might sound strange, but that detail is incredibly important in terms of a lot of things going on in the book! During my visit to Korea, I got a chance to read a fair bit of Jamil Zainasheff and Chris White’s book Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation. I wasn’t particularly blown away by the book: …

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Ale & Beer in England in 1722, the Hop Fair at Stourbridge

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In his book A Tour through the Eastern Counties of England (1722), Daniel Defoe writes on hops and the hope trade at Stourbridge Fair in 1722, but also discusses some details of the brewing industry, such as the difference between ales and beers (as the terms were then used). He marveled at the woollen goods on sale, but also at other commodities that interested him more… namely, hops…  More beneath the cut.

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