Yeast, as Understood in 1736

  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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Back on Track With “The Company of Distillers”

So, I’ve finally figured out what the hell was wrong with the novel I’ve been trying to write, tentatively titled The Company of Distillers–why it was so damned stuck after I reached basically the halfway point or so. It means excising most of what I’d written since Christmas–about half the text I have on hand now–but that’s for the best, and I have a clearer picture of where it’s headed now. (And a clearer picture of what I was doing wrong, not just in this book but in the other one I’d been working on, too.) What helped me, besides …

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The Economics of Beer and Brewing in Gin-Craze London

I’m trying to get a handle on London Brewing during the 1700s (especially during the Gin Craze), as part of the research for the novel I’m writing set at that time. What’s interesting is how English brewing transitioned from being primarily a small-scale industry, to being a large-scale industrial business with international reach, during this precise time. I found an interesting bit of information about the transition which is worth talking about: From 1748 to 1830, the transition is massive: brewing went from almost 60% smaller business, to 15% smaller business, even though the scale of production (and, presumably, demand on …

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Research Springboard

I’m currently bouncing back and forth between two major writing projects that are so different that they really do serve as a break from one another: the language of each is quite distinct, the characters and their trajectories rather different, and so it works for me, right now, to switch from one project to the other when I start to run out of steam on whichever one I’m currently working on. At the moment, I’m working is about alchemy and conspiracy, a story that begins at the height of the Gin Craze; that is, a time period I used to …

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Gin Craze Story Drafted…

As I mentioned on Twitter the other day, I recently finished a draft of a weird novella with the working title, “In the Company of Distillers.” I guess the best way to explain the story is that it’s set in London at that part of the 18th century Gin Craze just prior to the government’s second attempt (and the first serious one) at Gin Prohibition… As far as the makeup of the story, it’s probably easiest to explain it more like the way one does a gin-based cocktail, that is, in the form of a recipe: two parts alchemy one …

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