Beer is made from water

With all the fanfare surrounding beer, it’s often easy to forget the beverage is made mostly from water, and that the profile of the water being used greatly determines the profile of the beer. To most of us, the attributes that characterize our favorite beers are both tangible and intangible. You may like the features of the subtle, balanced, or extreme malt or hop profiles, the clean or ester laden aroma supplied by the yeast, the session or imperial alcoholic strength, or the long sweet or quick crisp dry finish. Underneath these perceivable descriptors, however, is the understated flavor of the water used to brew the beer.

Throughout history, sources for clean drinking water in urban settings have been difficult to maintain. Before the scientific and industrial revolutions and subsequent upgrade of health standards, one simply did not know if the water was safe to drink. Back then, people drank a lot more beer, wine, cider and distilled beverages, not out choice, but necessity. For beer, the full flavor brews collected from the first rinse of the grain bed were reserved for special seasonal occasions. The second runnings made the common, everyday beer and the diluted third rinse was fermented into small beer for children. Fermentation of the varying levels of malt sugar in the water into alcohol, a natural preservative, protected the beverage from spoilage; and as any home brewer quickly learns, beer will only make you sick if you drink too much! Louis Pasteur’s discovery of bacterium has since negated beer as a basic need, and beer in our country is now not as often consumed solely out of necessity.

Nonetheless, beer is mostly water, and the varying sources of water used across the globe for brewing beer has played a major role in the formation of contemporary beer styles. Not out of coincidence, major centers of brewing formed around good sources for water. Brewing beer takes clean water, and lots of it; gallons are necessary for each pint you sip. As outlined by home brewer extraordinaire John Palmer in his ineffaceable book How to Brew, the two most famous sources for brewing water are the Pilsen region of the Czech Republic and Dublin in Ireland, where clean, hoppy, golden pilsners and dark, malty stouts are brewed, respectively.

In examining why Ireland’s water favors stouts and the Czech Republic’s pilsners, one begins to understand the dynamic evolutionary formation, based on varying water profiles, of the world’s beer styles. To brew beer, warm water is added to milled malted barley and allowed to rest together for a short period of time. This process is termed mashing. (Barley that has been malted was momentarily allowed to sprout, then quickly dried, capturing the plump starch inside the husk). The added warm water activates enzymes on the husk of the malt kernels which in turn convert the starch into malt sugar - which is soon drained off, boiled with hops and fermented by yeast into alcohol. However, if the mixture of malt and water is too alkaline or acidic, unwanted flavors will also be extracted, along with the malt sugar, into the eventual beer. Therefore, two factors determine rather or not the sweet sugar water will make a good product: malt and water composition.

Let’s first take a look at malt. Since the advent of Porter during the industrial revolution, beer is brewed from both plain malted barley and also malted barley that has additionally been kilned at varying temperatures and humidity. (Non-malted barley that has simply been roasted black is also used, especially in stout, along with other adjunctions such as sugar, wheat, rye, corn and oats). The pale colored malt yields a golden beer while the addition of other malts to the recipe changes the colors and aromas. For this discussion however, what is most important to understand is that beyond color and flavor, varying degrees of malt color and kilning impact the pH of the mash rest, which impacts the flavor of the sweet sugary wort run off from the mash. The darker the grain, the higher its acidity; therefore, adding a very dark grain, like roasted barley, to pale malt will have the effect of increasing acidity and therefore reducing the pH of the mash rest, as pH and acidity have an inverse relationship. Add no colored malts and the pH contribution of the grains remains on the high end.

The alkaline or acid contribution of water in the mash rest is determined by the water’s content of dissolved salts or minerals. In Palmer’s classic water profile examples, Czech water is remarkably low in calcium, magnesium, bicarbonates and sulfates: minerals which define “hard water,” and is therefore exemplarily termed “soft”. These “salts,” as brewers often refer to them, harbor pH buffering traits which, in relation to the recipe’s malt, can help reach the threshold necessary for a desirable mash pH. The soft Pilsen water mixes well with the lower acidity of pale malt, producing a perfect mash environment and yielding a soft, bready, golden beer whose subtle hopping clearly comes through. Higher acid malt, like roasted, black or brown, would reduce the pH below the range, negatively impacting the flavor profile of this famous beer style. Therefore, without the addition of brewing salts such as calcium, gypsum (sulfate), or magnesium, good beers of color are simply not made in the Czech.

The example and history of Dublin’s water and famous beer Guinness is then revealed: the extremely high levels of brewing salts dissolved in Dublin’s water, such as bicarbonate from the island’s underlying gypsum, are far too alkaline to achieve a proper mash pH, and pale beers brewed here without dilution of water hardness are overly harsh and unpleasant. Arthur Guinness used the highly acidic non-malted roasted barley to counter the astringent flavors of pale beers brewed in this region and in turn created the single most renowned beer in the world. Major brewing centers such as Burton-on-Trent (IPAs), Vienna (Red Lagers) and Edinburgh (Malty Ales) fall in between the extreme examples of Dublin and Pilsen and established themselves by honing in the proper malt and hop combinations in accordance with what their water had to offer. Organically, beer brewed in harmony with the water tasted best and such breweries stayed in business.

Beyond pH of the mash, brewing salts dissolved in varying water profiles contribute directly to the flavor of beer. In Michigan, municipal water was ounce drawn from below our cities, and was especially hard in Grand Rapids in particular. Now however, most water is drawn at near surface level from Lake Michigan, giving us our current low levels of calcium, bicarbonates and sulfate – and high chlorine. Regional breweries deal with this situation differently. In general, Michigan breweries heat the water to remove the excess chlorine, and add the necessary salts to buffer the desired mash pH. The impact of calcium sulfate (gypsum) and calcium chloride on the flavor profile of a beer, however, does not go unnoticed. These two indelible brewing salts are the key to honing a beer’s intangible characteristics. Sulfates contribute to a beer’s dry, crisp, fast finish, drastically enhancing the hop profile of a pale or IPA. Calcium chloride enhances the malty characteristics of a beer, rounding out sweet aromas and visceral residual sugars with a specific poignancy. The proper balance of these brewing salts can turn a muddled, confused, impotent mess into a complex, purposeful fermented statement.

So next time you sip a beer, try tasting on a new level. Pick a simpler pale ale style from the board. Swirl the carbonation from solution and allow the sample to warm. Smell and taste the malt and hops first, but then continue to focus attention. Swallow, and as the structure washes down, taste at the front of your mouth. You should taste either a predominately sweet or salty aftertaste. If the finish was especially dry and the hops more present than the malt body, chances are your perception will trend salty, as gypsum was used to enhance these characteristics. If the malt body just can’t be beat and the hops are always fighting for recognition, chances are the gypsum levels are lower than the calcium chloride. Within this realm, I believe, truly lie the reasons behind beer preference - if you’re honest with yourself, that is.

Craft Beer: Redrawing the battle lines

For the past couple generations of beer drinkers, the differences between a good beer and a cheap beer were obvious. Good beers were usually ales which came in an amber bottle, had some hop aroma and flavors, a varying range of color, actual flavor, were drank warm and could be expensive. Cheap beers were always yellow lagers, usually available in a can, were served too cold to taste, tasted poor when warm or sober and were, well, cheap. Much like American politics, there was a clear line in the sand and each side’s members were firm in their beliefs.

The brewers of cheap beers, i.e. Coors, Anheuser-Busch, Labatt and Miller, however, have stepped up their game in response to the exploding popularity of craft beer. I haven’t seen a beer commercial with a bikini in it for too long now, instead they all focus on the quality of their malted barley, their imported hop aroma and their long standing history of integrity in brewing. What are those Michelob people talking about “crafting a better beer?” Are we being fooled by multi-million dollar ad campaigns or is Michelob actually brewing a solid Dunkel Weisse?

Tonight I decided to pony up and try a few of these macro produced micros. I’ve just decided beer should be judged on its own perceivable merits rather than by my preconceived artisanal ideologies. I figure I’m an open-minded reflexive thinker; besides, the industry is rapidly changing and I don’t want to be left out. The lines between craft and corporate really are becoming blurred, and every brewery has the same intentions at heart: selling beer.

American Pale Ale is my favorite style of beer. Its nearly unitary resolve of citrus hop nose, medium malt backbone and assertive crisp bitterness calls to my senses no matter what the dish or season. Michelob’s Pale ale claims Yakima Valley, WA dry hop additions over an English style malt bill. The actual nose, however, had much more subtle malt sweetness. I could, however, smell and actually taste hops. In fact, the tenuous body left quite a bit of bitterness exposed, bravo! No Sierra Nevada, but it definitely stands on its own qualities.

The Dunkel Weisse dark wheat ale was also surprising. Banana and clove nose with a persistent cream-tan head, just like a real German. The color was possibly a little light, but the flavors were layered starting with sweet, pasty malt and yeast textures then finishing dry, with fruity-esters and humble but resolved roasty bitterness.

The last two I tried were porters from Michelob (owned by A.B. who is now owned my Belgium’s InBev) and Canada’s Labatt. Both were drinkable, the Michelob even enjoyable.

So what’s going on here? A lot of beer drinkers and brewers are confused, even miffed. So before you too get up in arms, let’s consider the new world of beer that this trend represents. No longer does drinking a product brewed by A.B. mean you are drinking swill, and why should it? We all know drinking a craft produced beer does not necessarily mean you’re drinking a good tasting product. Were we really ignorant enough to believe just because Bud and Coors Lite tastes like dirty penny tea these brewers couldn’t construct a good batch of ale? Contrary to common knowledge, the brewers of A.B., Coors, Molson, Labatt and others are arguably the best in the business and it’s about time they bottled a product the epicurean can enjoy.

Need craft beer fans or producers worry? Hardy! The next age of beer is finally here, old traditions have ended and new curvy lines are being sketched, redrawn and erased. Labatt pushing a porter is pretty good news to me. A.B. releasing an American Ale, Michelob advertising a Pale Ale – sounds to me like we won! Prohibition homogenized beer selection in the U.S., people eventually became bored with swilly yellow fizz drinks, the craft beer revolution offered the antonym alternative and now the big boys are listening. Welcome eclecticism! Don’t mistake me, there’s obviously big differences between quality craft beer and these A.B. imitations, however, the resemblance is significant: consumers are trending toward flavorful beers.

Incidentally, I smell a backlash in the near future. If craft breweries want to stay craft, they best dearly guard the attributes which separate them from corporate powers, namely dynamic and experimental brewing. The craft journey has gotten us to this point: bourbon barrel aged monsters, triple dry-hopped megaliths but also rejuvenated session beers, vinous acidic sippers, style bending ingredient infusions and bacteria inoculated cellar dwellers. Corporate brewers have come in on the ground floor with pales, wheats, porters and stout – but they could quickly climb. One thing they cannot do, however, is take a chance. That’s what we can still only ask from our craft brewers – break the rules and let’s see if anyone ever figures it out. That sounds like an artist to me, not a machine.

The Wisdom of Ali El Sayed

Eating is not as simple as it to be. Just a few short years ago most of us Americans were blissfully unaware of the story behind our food – slowly we’re beginning to understand how naive we have been. In the industrialized West (and East), food is produced for profit but not necessarily for healthy consumption. The path our food takes – from plant or animal to plate – has become mired in industrial confusion. Most all of our food is delivered to us courtesy of fossil fuels, genetic modification and corporate agro-businesses who determine how major producers grow their products; none of which has to do with good eating. Meanwhile, a fewer number of people actually cultivate the food we all need to sustain ourselves – and our steady population expansion – which decreases diversity and increases the risk of disease, famine and generally unhealthy food choices. However, journalists, scholars, academics and chefs like Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Morris Berman and Alice Waters finally have the average person at least questioning what it is they eat. For answers, more and more people are turning to their local farm markets, organic food stores and local chefs.

Recently, while roving New York City’s boroughs in search of food and drink, I met a man whose wisdoms and philosophies personally addressed our sad eating circumstances. His name is Ali El Sayed, owner/cook/sage of the humbly titled Kabab Café in Astoria. My friend and guide, a fellow gourmand, brought us on a good night. The tiny mosaic decorated Egyptian diner (twelve seats) bordered by bodegas, a hookah lounge and his brother’s restaurant, was empty. At times there can be a wait. Soon Ali entered, asked if we were hungry, and then told us everything he would cook for us. No menu – no prices, just food. Did we eat meat, fish or vegetable he wanted to know? Before any conclusive decision was made, Ali set before us small platters with various spices and herbs and a tiny bowl of peppers, lemon juice and oil. Stove hot falafel followed with porous humus and evergreen baba ganouj.

Ali El Sayed told us to drink some wine and enjoy, food is for savoring, not devouring! (He could tell we were hungry.) The simple Middle Eastern spices primed our palates and related us to the future courses. I began to take mental notes as Ali continued to feed and enlighten. It may have been the Malbec, but food wisdoms seemed to pour from the man like spices from his tins! The more he spoke, the more I understood the culture of food Ali embodies and expresses. His poignant lessons made sense in this our world of senseless eating.

Ali first said food should be enjoyed, not gobbled up; basically summarizing the entire Slow Food movement. Eating slowly evokes the mind along with the senses. Work was put into the food you are eating. Care was taken in the cultivation, processing, and preparation of your dish. Savor the flavors and textures. Recognize the experience for what it is: time spent nourishing your body and mind. If you’re patient you’ll discover fulfillment for more than merely for your hunger.

Ali said patience will be rewarded. When you live in the city, long lines may be a way of life. Instead of dwelling on the wait, try slowing down and enjoying the things around you. If it’s good food you’re waiting for, it’s worth it! At Kabab Café, Ali is your host, waiter, chef and friend: a busy man considering you are not the only one dining. A mixed plate will soon be out with hot round bread and warming wine for you to prime with while he begins a desert and critiques the history of Middle Eastern food in the US. We have all become accustomed to immediate gratification, which creates a paradox when it comes to good eating. A short (or long) wait while the food is being prepared is an indication of care and love in the kitchen. In the case of Ali, who prepares the food literally inches from your table, one is actually able to experience this passionate process. Quick food may pacify your impatience, but it will not nourish like a paced and respected dining experience.

Ali said food should be flavorful. If not, why eat? To enjoy a meal you may have had to patiently wait for, it must taste good. Food grown or purchased fresh locally generally tastes best and proves to be the healthiest for your body – and soul, Ali would argue. As it turns out, local food also costs less because of reduced transportation and storage times and builds the local community and economy. The Kabab Café is definitely out of the way from the train line and a little walking is in order. You may find the same thing in your neighborhood. Maybe the best grocer, farm market or chef is not on your block or commute. Taking the time to find restaurants and stores which aspire to stock and serve regional fare will connect you to your food, community and develop your food culture.

Ali said Food connects us with our past. Queens is as a culturally diverse place as any on earth. The United States as a whole is a conglomerate of the world’s finest peoples. Originally from Egypt, Ali has gifted Astoria and New York City with rare traditional Alexandrian cuisine. His cooking is indelible to his former and current cultural residence. All of today’s foods and cuisines have storied histories; to partake is to acknowledge their successes. Our multiplicity of foods represents our varied cultural contributors better than any census. Digesting a new cuisine mentally and physically is an investigation into what we are as a people.

Ali said food should be shared. Dining in the tiny Kabab Café felt like Ali had welcomed us into his home. He personally showed us how he prepared his lamb cheeks, liver and sweetbreads. He spread his spices before us and showed our minds how to understand his cooking. Medium size dishes were set in the middle of the table and we shared each new carefully plated entrée. To participate with another person’s food culture is to share; just as we diners were eating from the same bowls and boards. The culinary experience combined teaching with learning, cooking with eating, talking with drinking and patience with reward. And as any chef knows, the most rewarding part of cooking is serving.

As the seasons change, so should your cuisine

A year ago this month I wrote in Recoil a piece called “As the leaves change color, so should your beer.” Seasonality, I argued, was the antidote to the lassitude afforded by drinking one’s favorite beer all year long. Fall is here, ready or not, and malty brown ales can help one coax. When it gets a little colder, a potent stout is effective. Really cold out? just nip some apple brandy. Hops move spring forward and hefeweizen dries the summer sweat off of one’s brow – all facts the brewing industry has by now educated most all but the greenest consumer. Now, these seasonal taste arrangements may prove true, both historically and contextually, but the foods which accompany these styles have only recently been available year round.

Human culture is inextricably linked to the seasons. Rational efficiency, coupled with ever increasing technology, however, has allowed for many of us to be removed from the ebb and flow of gradual seasonal drift – most likely to our detriment. This modernization is nowhere more evident than in the arena of food. Compared to past and foreign cultures, we Americans eat a lot. We also eat whatever we want, whenever we want it. This is not to say that we are inherently selfish gluttons. Actually, the greed begins long before we eaters partake – on the highways of the industrialized food chain – an arrangement we find ourselves at the bottom of.

For a little context, imagine that not until the mid 1970’s was California produce available nationally. The time period grocery stores across the country began stocking cantaloupe, asparagus, leeks and tomatoes year around and out-of-state, as opposed to seasonally, represented an economical crux – food was now being produced cheaply and abundantly enough to make cross-nation refrigerated trucking profitable. Other food producing regions soon branded and followed suit. (Washington apples, Wisconsin cheese, Idaho potatoes, etc.) What was once a luxury is now commonplace.

In order to make this happen, we the people sold out the farmer, subsidized his living to keep speculated prices low, divided agriculture and horticulture, standardized, pasteurized, homogenized, genetically modified, privatized and patented every congruent and painstakingly evolved farming process from fencerow to fencerow. What’s left is the indistinguishable mess located somewhere between farm and fork.

Today we’re feeling a backlash from this unsustainable system. Basically food, which was once a necessity and human right, has since been transformed into a commodity – a currency which is ultimately used to make the wealthy wealthier. And while we Americans are no longer starving in masse, diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease increasingly ravage our population – especially minorities and the poor. A pathogen based pandemic is sure to follow. Keep following me here and you’ll be rewarded with the knowledge of why drinking a local beer or buying a half-peck of fruit in season can help change these dire circumstances…

As West Michigan citizens, consumers and eaters, we’re in a great position to join a national movement towards sustainable, ecologically friendly, economically viable and efficient food production. Ask any agrifood sociologist or Lamont resident and they’ll tell you many farmers here have been cultivating using non-conventional (typically sustainable and organic) methods for generations. Why the stubbornness? It’s proven cheaper and more productive. There may not be a national or global alternative to industrialized food, but there is an antidote in West Michigan: buy your food, and beer, seasonally and locally.

Shopping and eating seasonally takes some practice, especially if you’re used to always getting what you want. Which brings up a good point – in getting what you want, are you really getting what you want? Fast food is an easy example: parts and pieces of who-knows-what assembled cheaply and efficiently as possible from across the globe. No one wants to be overweight and unhealthy, yet millions of us line up for unethical and unhealthy meals every day. No point in blaming the individual here – eating can be expensive, and these outlets can feed a busy family cheaply and easily. They are also extremely convenient and accessible – qualities CSAs and farm markets lack. So for those of us who can feasibly manage, eating locally, sustainably and seasonally will be hard work.

Start by learning about what is actually in season at Aquinas College’s Center for Sustainability: www.centerforsustainability.org. The delights of eating in season are three-fold. One, food in season not only tastes best but is actually better for you. Two, your dollars spent on food (think of it like a vote) will not be used to support long-haul trucking, international shipping, packaging or the bedeviled oil industry – instead your money will remain in and enhance your community. Lastly, as an eater who prepares local and seasonal fare, you will become an actual participant in an accessible and sensible food network – one which will surely enhance your and other’s well-being.

Preserving the Harvest

As the summer winds down, I’ve been filling my crisper, root cellar and freezer with bushels of the bounty my garden, family’s garden and local farm market has to offer. Fruit and vegetables, like beer, taste best fresh. They also taste best locally grown – heirloom and farm fresh varieties tend to be grown for taste as opposed to simply transport and storability. However, no matter how many good foods came into fruition this past month or so, we’re all limited to how much of them we can eat. Greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peaches and now apples, pears and squash; it seems like you’ve just arrived and already the weather is cool and your harvest is nearing its end. Human culture is based on this seasonal change, and before Trans- national and continental refrigerated transport, everyone was required to eat “seasonally”.

Nobody, however, was happy with just squash for four months of the year, so techniques such as freezing, drying, fermenting, pickling, salting and canning were slowly developed and perfected by the world’s cultures for preserving and storing the harvest for the long winter months ahead. As kitchen authority Harold McGee writes, “Fruits and vegetables can be preserved indefinitely by killing the living tissue and thus inactivating its enzymes, and then making it either inhospitable or unavailable to microbes.” Peoples of the past utilized the natural preserving qualities of salt water, dark caves, lake ice or simple holes in the ground to achieve this end. Today, canning and fermenting would allow me to savor my modest harvest over the darker months to come.

To get started canning, gather the necessary knowledge and supplies (the university extension publication found at: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/pdf/pnw/pnw355.pdf is an excellent guide.) Minimally, you’ll need a burner, enamel canning pot, jars and lids and canning salt along with the various spices called for by the recipes. Almost anything can be canned for prolonged preservation. I decided to make some simple tomato sauce from my neighbor’s excess Roma tomatoes, also Colorado Hot Mix, banana pepper rings and bread and butter pickles which would preserve my green, red and hot peppers along with small cukes from the market. The process is simple: wash and prepare the vegetables, heat with spices on the stove and ladle into hot jars. Secure the top on the jars (making sure to wipe the contact lip clean) and process in boiling water for the time designated by the recipe (usually about ten minutes). As the jars are removed, the contents cool and compress, vacuum sealing the lid. Throw the ones that don’t seal into the fridge and eat them first. Wait a few weeks for the flavors to meld and enjoy!

Beyond hot pack canning, my next step was to try fermenting some food. Pickles and cabbage for sauerkraut, two of my favorite foods, were currently cheap and abundant. To ferment pickles or cabbage, the vegetables are submerged in acidic salt brine which inhibits the growth of unwanted microbes. Lactic bacteria naturally residing on the vegetable’s skin, however, go to work fermenting the vegetable’s sugars into lactic acid, carbon dioxide and alcohol. McGee explains, “(lactic bacteria) leave most of the plant material intact, including its vitamin C (protected from oxidation by the carbon dioxide they generate); they often add significant amounts of B vitamins; and they generate new volatile substances that enrich the food’s aroma.” A whiff of my week-old sauerkraut and I knew exactly what McGee was getting at. Pungent and sweet veggie fumes now slowly seep up from my basement and trips to the kegerator inevitably end up with a fermented dill pickle sampling.

Grassfields Cheese

At the heart of West Michigan’s Dutch farming tradition, nestled along the Grand River just south of Coopersville, sits the small village Lamont. From downtown Grand Rapids, it’s a short but slow paced thirty minute drive west on Leonard. Upon arrival, however, one feels that they’ve headed significantly further from the modern city and its expedience. On Lamont’s outskirts, a mile west and another north on the unpaved 60th Ave., Jesse and Betsy Meerman and family raise Holstein, Normandy and Jersey milking cows on their Grassfields farm and make traditional aged Dutch cheeses from their unpasteurized and non-homogenized cow’s milk.

To most of us, cheese is yellow foodstuff processed from milk products and other small print ingredients, chemicals and additives at a distant factory. Not so for Jesse Meerman, the sole cheese maker at Grassfields, for who cheese is an art, business, lifestyle and practical manner in which to utilize his dairy herd’s excess milk.

Since 2002 the Meermans have been selling “cow shares,” a program in which people pay for the boarding of a cow and receive its milk in return, to an ever increasing number of families. Now totaling 9 cows which supply 115 families, Betsy Meerman explains the growing popularity of their raw, unpasteurized milk, saying, “People want to know where their food is coming from.” As we stood outside the milking barn, she stressed how her customers seek authenticity and “real products” which taste better and are better for you. This type of critical consumer mentality, now so chic and trendy in our academic and professional city life, is just ordinary common sense out in farm country.

Past the milking barn and silo is the cheese shop, which also houses the cheese making and storage rooms. Here Jesse met me amidst many of his busy family members, especially babies, to explain his dairy work. Every few days he’ll draw fresh warm cows’ milk directly from the barn into a large, shallow steel vat in the sanitary cheese making room. With tiled floor, stainless tanks, hoses, bottles of iodine sanitizer and an air of sterility, the resemblance to a brewery is strong. Cheese is made from coagulated milk solids so rennet is added to the warm ripening milk to encourage this physical change. Next, various bacteria cultures are gently stirred-in according to the desired cheese style. Milk sugar, called lactose, is converted by both natural and inoculated bacteria into lactic acid or is run off in the residual liquids, making these aged raw milk cheeses perfectly suited for those who suffer from lactose intolerance. After a rest, the curds are scooped with plastic colanders from the clear liquid whey and are then formed into 13 pound wheels. The whey is fed to pigs and the young cheese wheels are then boiled in heavy salt brine which will protect the food from bacteria during the 3 – 6 months spent ageing in the adjacent environmentally controlled room. Meerman currently makes six varieties including Edam, Gouda, Cheddar and the same with various herbs and spices added.

Without succumbing to pasteurization, the Meermans must always be wary of bacterial contamination. Their cows freely roam rotated grass pastures, which is indelible to the operation. When allowed to live and eat in a natural, outdoor environment, free from antibiotics, corn based feed and cramped manure filled living conditions, these healthy and happy ruminants produce healthy and clean milk. The milk from conventionally farmed dairy cows, however, is unsanitary must be pasteurized. Unlike organic and biodynamic farming, modern industrial farming practices go against the nature of cows and must be heated before safely imbibing. Also, at Grassfields, each batch of raw milk and subsequent cheese is tested scientifically for microscopic intruders where as in conventional practices fewer tests are done in the hope that pasteurization will clean it up in the end. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Organic and raw milk farmers will tell you pasteurized cheeses, not raw cheeses, have been culpable in all recent human pathogen mishaps.

Both the raw milk and cheese have additional benefits afforded to them from the lack of physically and chemically damaging heat pasteurization: the naturally occurring enzymes and animal friendly bacteria alive in raw milk create a hostile environment for foreign microbes and potential pathogens. Producing raw milk and raw milk cheese must be done then in accordance with the laws of nature, which are ever present on this organic farm. The Meerman’s cheese making seems a predestined process, one that they are managing stewards of, rather than the sole contributing performers. First the sun, then the grass, the cows and finally the bacteria perform the actual intrinsic, microscopic work from which cheese results.

How’s it taste – exquisite! Creamily textured and strongly aromatic, the complexities easily outshine any store bought pasteurized equivalents; a pure and simple pleasure to enjoy. Like wine, the time spent ageing in a cheese cave hones the product’s attributes, often simplifying over-complexities and rounding out overt flavors and aromas. Eat the cheese warm, never cool, which masks its depth. For me, the real test of cheese is how well it melts, so I tried it with this recipe for Nebraska style Mac & Cheese:

First, gently heat some white wine in a large sauce pan while bringing a gallon of water to boil on another burner. When the pan is warm, slowly layer in thin slices of Edam, Gouda and Lamont Cheddar. (The recipe works especially well with various left over cheese ends and bits.) The sauce may be tempered with a little milk or butter, but the cheese and wine seem to work out fine alone. Add elbow, shells, or your favorite pasta to the water and boil until tender, careful not to overcook. Drain the pasta and combine with cheese sauce in a shallow baking dish. Top with yesterday’s bread crumbs and bake at 300F until the top begins to brown. Serve with pan steamed local broccoli and green beans.

Grassfields cheese is widely available in West Michigan; locations are listed on their website. Meet Jesse and Betsy Meerman in person downtown Grand Rapids at the Guest House September 11th where they will be sampling their cheese along side wine at Siciliano’s Michigan Wine Tasting. Details: www.sicilianosmkt.com and www.grassfieldscheese.com.

H 2 Ohhhhhhh

Gene Simmons walked jubilantly into the classroom. Not Gene Simmons the rock star, but my new Sociology professor at the local community college. This late middle-aged man with frazzled grey hair and a hidden, but tested vigor shook his head and laughed cynically. “If water is free,” he questioned, “why are we all buying it?” This was 1998. The American consumer, now readily paying money for something that was generally abundant and free, flummoxed Sociologists and delighted corporate bottling companies. This was a cultural crux perfect for analyzing late capitalist American, convincing evidence of our exponentially mindless consuming. A new need had been created – plastic bottles of untraceable water filled somewhere by someone else – and we were ready to pay for it.

Today’s trendy bottled waters did not, however, start out in plastic, but glass. Green, light blue and clear glass imported from the French Alps or Italian glacial springs filled with mineral laden naturally sparkling water preceded the present craze. These opulent products helped evolve a relationship between exclusive status and rare imports, one that is even more widely exploited today. (The best example being Bling H20.) Born out of locales where the public drinking water really was in question, they slowly became more common and profitable in the US market. At your grocery store, what was four feet of low traffic shelf space five years ago is now its own isle.

Sales have doubled since 1998 and as far as individually packaged beverages go, only soft drinks are more popular; so why the boom? We didn’t drink water from 16.9 oz. PET bottles growing up, so why do we now need cases stacked in the garage, pantry and refrigerator?

Obviously, we all need water to live. Only now it seems we need a specific brand of water. Here’s the message the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) exudes: Tap water is for the common, unscrupulous person. Its integrity has been questioned and faults have been found. The daily Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests are evidence of its inferiority. Bottled water is clean, healthy, natural, and tastes the best. You buy a case at Costco for three dollars!

In actuality, tap water, being regulated by the EPA, is much more closely monitored than bottled water; which is not to say that all US municipal tap water is perfectly safe. Alternately, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looks after the bottled water industry, and it’s a wonder more of us aren’t dead. Bottled water is not subject to anywhere near the same regiment of mandatory tests and evaluations as municipal water. Much of the testing is in fact voluntary and even that little bit of oversight is deemed unnecessary as long as the product is not moved across state lines.

Coca-Cola Corporation and Pepsi, producers of Dasani and Aquafina, respectively, dominate the current bottled water market. But before all the filtering, reverse osmosis and chemical flavor posturing, these products actually started out in a public water supply, not a pristine spring somewhere in the mountains. Coke and Pepsi are actually selling public water. So despite the minimum bottled water testing requirements, I’m sure they understand what a contaminated bottle of water would do to their profit margins. Drinking these particular products will of course not make you sick. They will, however, end up in your landfill and out last every living thing on this planet. Also, it takes more water to make a bottle of Dasani than is actually in the bottle, which is absurd. Unfortunately, convenience and the resulting profits neutralize irrationality.

Some would also call bottled water healthy, which in a sense it is, considering the corrosive and fattening high fructose corn syrup alternative. Yet ultimately it’s the water which is healthy, not the use of 17 million barrels of oil annually to make the packages.

The commodity is wrapped up nicely with what the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tagged “a perception of purity.” Most of us do not really know what’s in our water. With all the world’s diseases, food pathogens and other health concerns, we’d like to at least believe that the cold plastic bottles of water now found in each and every convenience store are safe for us and our loved ones. Just like the health propaganda of margarine and the real butter scare, we wanted it to be guilt free and eagerly swallowed everything we were fed. It takes a long time to expose such authoritative chicanery.

A survey of the various bottled and municipal water watchdog groups turns up problems with both old and new ways of hydrating. Pharmaceuticals and poisons are commonly found in major public drinking water sources, and who knows what’s in many of the various brands of bottled water. With water now off the list of assumed health products, it seems there’s nothing left that we can take for granted. As far as food goes, our innocence has been lost and our trust broken by corporate food industries.

So what should we drink? Bottled water, a product of the loosely regulated free market, or municipal source tap water, a continually contaminated and cleansed natural resource? If we follow each option to its logical conclusion, it seems that the choice is ultimately one between private corporations and public governments, a curious position which has inspired me to tap my own personal artesian well. The bottled water industry, regulated by the FDA as a food item as opposed to a public need, seeks only to make a profit. Public water sources attempt to supply potable drinking water within a non-profit based framework. Both systems, along with irrigation and many other major public and private uses of water, rely on much of the same natural resources and will therefore always be at ends.

Becoming aware seems the first step towards healthy water consumption. Let’s stop assuming everything for sale is safe. And for the cynically critical, not everything is deadly, so participative decisions do make an impact on your and other’s health. If your local tap water is convincingly safe, try to choose it over the stuff sold in plastic. Currently only 1 in 5 plastic water bottles are recycled, so pay attention to your personal waste. Let’s question this bizarre system of single serving throw away packaging while simultaneously demanding clean water from our public sources.

Soy Bomb

Up until recently, soy milk had been a staple food item in my family’s diet. Like with millions of other Americans, lactose intolerance kept cheese and milk intake to a minimum, and the soy industry had a tasty answer for our dry cereal bowls, baked breads and cakes and other culinary needs. While soy was slowly integrating itself into my home cuisine, I was broadening my food awareness in other culinary areas: pasteurized and homogenized milk, out-of-state produce, Thailand shrimp farms, processed “cheese”, Genetically Modified veggies. All of these and many other ethically and environmentally questionable food items were making it into our grocery basket unnoticed on a weekly basis. Nowadays, instead of blindly purchasing and consuming, my family investigates the food we eat. We've since become conscious of the fact that our country does a very iffy job of feeding itself.

Soy milk is touted as a delicious and easy to digest alternative to cow’s milk. Its mainstream image is that of healthy, nutritious and conscious eating. The problem with those ideas is that nobody knows if they are true. There is, in fact, as much evidence that imbibing soy milk on a daily basis may be as harmful for you as it is said to be healthy.

In his book On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen, respected food authority Harold McGee explains that the soybean, along with canola and corn, account for a vast majority of all the genetically engineered food we eat, which is 75% of all processed foods. It’s no wonder then that soy milk was there when my family’s lactose intolerance seemingly called for it; we’re a target market! Millions of dollars and decades of industry funded research and flavor manufacturing have resulted in the soy milk we now see packaged for sale at all grocery stores. Its naturally beany flavor, unacceptable to Westerners, has been removed and its heath benefits government approved. A miraculous, meat-free, high protein, easily cultivated and processed food is now available for your consumption. Now that we’ve heard meat and potatoes are no longer safe, eggs are unhealthy and milk is unnatural, soy seems then to be the answer. But before you pour another tall glass of sugared and cooked bean juice, let’s take a look at some of the arguments against soybeans and the soy milk industry.

Thousands of years ago the Chinese and then Japanese first cultivated the soy bean – as a fertilizer. Soy bean plants were tilled back into the earth to prepare the soil for farming and the beans were only eaten in times of famine. The bean itself was a poverty food. Fermented salty soy foods like miso and soy (shoyu) sauce eventually entered the Asian diet later followed by soy beans which had been cooked and processed into solid foods such as bean curd and tofu, both of which make up the majority of soy bean processing in contemporary Asia. However, unlike what the modern soy industry will tell you, the Chinese and Japanese have not been gulping down chocolate, vanilla and plain soy milk for thousands of years, the notion that they have is quixotic. We therefore cannot possibly understand its potential health effects on Westerners by studying the health of people in the East. Not only do they eat less soy than we believe, theirs is usually less processed or fermented. Our American heated and chemically altered soybean products seem to pose the greatest touted risks.

Upon survey, one finds that the story of American soy consumption is intimately tangled with many varied health topics. A quick Google search yields information on soy and its petulant relations with Osteoporosis, coronary heart disease, cancer, hormone production, and especially mineral ingestion, Thyroid function, antinutrients and baby formulas. Interestingly enough, for every study which says soy milk helps fight cancer, lowers cholesterol and is good for babies, there’s others which say not so. While plowing through documents, evidence presented to the Food and Drug Administration, articles and other similar scholastic pieces, I found it helpful to inquire who was funding the reported findings. If the sale of soy milk was paying the bills, nothing bad was said. Others have steadily hoisted a black flag. Harold McGee’s take is consistent with our incomplete understanding of this bean: “It’s too early to say whether soybeans are more beneficial to human health than any other seed, or whether it’s a good idea to eat them often.”

Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD, writing for the Weston A. Price Foundation, a non-profit food awareness group based in Washington, D.C., are adamant about the dangers of soy consumption for our society. While their attack is more easily understood by chemists and nutritionists, they basically argue soy is too highly inadequate nutritionally to be used as a replacement by vegetarians for dairy and meat. One reason is phytic acid, known as phytates, which occurs at excessively high levels in the soybean, and serves to “…block the uptake of essential minerals-calcium, magnesium, iron and especially zinc-in the intestinal tract.” Processing the soybean does not alleviate this effect, however, these levels are much lower in traditional soy products like soy sauce, which, unlike highly processed soy foods, also contains anticarcinogenic substances not found in soy milk. Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, author of The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food, agrees, adding: “All modern (unfermented) soy products carry a load of antinutrients and toxins including protease inhibitors, phytates, saponins, isoflavones and other components that have been proven to cause digestive distress, immune system breakdown, thyroid dysfunction, (and) reproductive problems.” Many other health professionals had much of the same to say.

Also, there’s the concern about hemagglutinin, a blood clotting agent found in unfermented soy products which slow the body’s oxygen respiration, the growth depressant trypsin, the toxin lysinoalanine, dangerously high levels of MSGs, and some other flavor and substance additives which are at best suspect.

Most US soybeans, which represent half of the world’s production, are originally processed for animal feed or soy oil which is made for hydrogenated fat products like margarine and shortening, foods which surreptitiously replaced butter. Consequently, butter has gotten a bad rap. As butter consumption has steadily dropped, heart disease and cancer have risen rapidly, paralleling soy, corn and canola oil consumption. With modern food production technology, the insipid byproducts of soy oil can be processed further into the spray-dried protein-rich soy protein isolate (SPI) powder laced with all the questionable soy components listed above. Much of this is then turned into the controversial soy baby formula which contains not only the phytates, but also high levels of aluminum while lacking cholesterol and lactose, ingredients essential to breast milk and healthy infant development. While adults may intake soy as part of a varied diet, new babies only drink their formula. Not only then is soy missing the basic things our body requires from staple foods, it could actually be detrimental to our health. Few “staple” foods are further from “natural” than soy milk.

If soy is so unhealthy, how and why is it becoming more and more popular? In reading about the powerful soy industry, its meetings, campaigns for consumer acceptance, lobbyists to the FDA, thousands of dependant growers, millions of planted acres, development of new products like soy yogurt, soy ice cream, cosmetics, and other model consumer goods, it was easy to see how we bought into it. The soy industry, headed by Archer Daniel Midlands, the world's major soy processor, fought for years for FDA and consumer approval of its products and continues to do so. Millions of dollars of advertising works on Americans. If it’s supposed to be healthy and is widely available, cheap, and made to taste good, we’ll buy it. For the vast majority of us, that’s all the further we need to investigate. Learning about where our food comes from is a thing lost in the confusion and spectacle of late capitalist America. Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig eloquently explain, “Advances in technology make it possible to produce isolated soy protein from what was once considered a waste product—the defatted, high-protein soy chips—and then transform something that looks and smells terrible into products that can be consumed by human beings. Flavorings, preservatives, sweeteners, emulsifiers and synthetic nutrients have turned soy protein isolate, the food processors' ugly duckling, into a New Age Cinderella.” From toxic, inedible byproduct waste to our dining room tables, that’s where soy milk comes from.

Speaking out against soy is uncommon because of how powerful the industry really is. I’m pretty sure Wide Eyed just lost a sponsor. The soy industry spends millions on advertising and those are dollars the media does not want to lose. It also payrolls major PR firms which insert pro-soy reports in newspapers, magazines and politician’s mail boxes. However, if you start putting your ear to the growing cracks of this highly exposed industry, you’ll begin to hear others rumbling about the health myths of soy. Here’s a quote from the beautiful www.Silksoymilk.com: “Soy milk is loaded with vitamins and minerals your body needs to maintain peak health. It also provides special nutrients called isoflavones that scientists believe may help reduce the risk of certain cancers and provide other important health benefits.” The Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) has categorized soy isoflavones as GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) with the FDA, but not everyone agrees. In an article submitted to the FDA by Michael Fitzpatrick and the Weston A. Price Foundation, estrogen-like isoflavones are condemned as under-studied and toxic. His biggest worry: “The potential for chronic endocrine system and reproductive toxicity and alterations to the immune system.”

I now understand that while soy milk may contain vitamins and minerals, almost none of them are naturally occurring. The phytates found in soy milk reduce the body’s ability to absorb such nutrients anyway, so what’s the point? The health consequences of soy milk are still mostly unknown, and that’s what scares me the most.

Beer and yogurt: tasting the difference

Quintessentially, brewing beer is cooking food. One who participates in the practice invariably begins to see food and drink as more than staple necessities, and those who enjoy craft beer eventually begin to ask for more from the solid foods portion of their diet. If good craft brewed beer, made in the spirit of homemade goodness, tastes so much fuller, more malty and flavorful than the dumbed-down stuff, perhaps then other foods may have more to offer too.

In modern times, food is manufactured predominately with the producer’s, not the consumer’s, needs in mind. We eaters and drinkers have our minds made up for us. Really, it’s true. Millions of dollars of advertising and lobbying has us all eating artery clogging margarine and shortening, thyroid disrupting soy milk, and defatted and elutriated skim milk; none of which tastes even relatively good. That was not our decision. It’s time we make our own food again or at least start buying it from people who care about more than just profits derived from the sale of a commodity. It worked for beer, saving us from the dark age of post prohibition yellow lagers, so where else can we apply this model? How about yogurt and cheese?

Traditionally, cheese is a food made from milk: the nutritious life-giving liquid mammals use to feed their young. Humans utilize the milk of a specific group of mammals called ruminants which evolved from deer and possess the ability to produce milk from their natural diet of fibrous grasses. They include cattle, sheep, goats, water buffalo, yaks and camels. Before modern plastic packaging, homogenization, pasteurization and refrigeration, people quickly drank milk before it soured and solidified. Cheese, thought to have originated when an ancient middle easterner filled the yak stomach she was using as a camel pack with fresh milk and then left it in the sun, is created when the protein rich solids (curds) in milk coagulate and the other liquids (whey) are run off. Making cheese was simply a way of preserving the edibility of milk. Butter is much the same in the sense that the milk solids, fat in particular, are massed together and the buttermilk rinsed away. Sour cream and yogurt, fermented milk products which include the complete milk liquids, are much creamier.

“One of the remarkable qualities of milk is that it invites its own preservation,” writes food authority Harold McGee in his masterpiece On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Yogurt is one of the best representations of this miraculous microbial process. Like the relationship between yeast and malt sugars in beer, naturally occurring bacteria convert milk sugar (lactose) into lactic acid which preserves the altered milk and inhibits the growth of competitive pathogens. It also makes it taste smooth and tangy. Folks who have a digestive problem with dairy products most likely do not have enough of the enzyme lactase in their small intestine to eat up the lactose before it enters the large intestine and wreaks havoc. Fortunately, milk bacteria Lactococcus and Lactobaccillus, encouraged to propagate in yogurt, take care of the lactose problem, allowing easy and comfortable digestion.

Yogurt and beer have lots of other similarities too. No longer do brewers or dairy producers rely on wild yeasts or bacteria to ferment their sugars: isolated and highly predictable cultures are now used instead. The better the ingredients used, the better the product. Also: the fresher the better. For beer, aromatic hops are most pungent in brewery fresh beer. For milk, the only ingredient in yogurt: the closer to the dairy the better. Most all people buy homogenized and pasteurized milk and milk products. We didn’t make that decision. Most craft beer is unpasteurized because heating food is cooking food; why cook something that’s already done and ready to eat? However, modern milk is produced using highly unsanitary methods, making pasteurization indelible.

To keep the ignorant masses safe from last century’s plagues, the FDA has hence banned the sale of unpasteurized milk. Milk is now in its prohibition. However, a few rum runners are working loop holes known as “cow shares” in order to stick it to the man and deliver farm fresh, sanitary, organic and necessarily local raw milk. The farm cannot sell you milk, but they won’t keep you from buying the cow, or at least part of it. With a cow share, what you are technically paying for is their care of the animal, but we all know what’s really going on. Here in West Michigan are two great places to contact if you’re interested in farm fresh natural milk – grassfieldscheese.com and lubbersfarm.com. The health benefits are extraordinary – check out realmilk.com – and the taste? Remember your first sip of IPA?

Most all the cheese, butter, yogurt and sour cream commercially available is made from pasteurized and homogenized milk, so obviously its possible to make great food despite these industrial processes. Only twelve dairies in the US even make cheese from unpasteurized milk that they themselves produced and Grass Fields in Coopersville is one of them (you can find it at farmer’s markets, organically persuaded grocers, and on their farm.) For beer, the equivalent would be if a barley, wheat and hop farmer fermented and sold her own ales and lagers. I’m not sure if that has ever happened.

Being a beer connoisseur has hence led me to ask more from all food and drink. I’m not sure if there’s much of a difference flavor wise between generic band yogurt and the big specialty producers, especially considering FDA mandates, because yogurt is such a simple thing. Cheese, however, is not simple. Processed “American” and other similar Kraft or generic inexpensive “chunk” cheeses really deserve another title altogether in order to properly describe their attributes; how about “Macro-cheese?” The good stuff, like good beer, is produced in far smaller batches by far smaller diaries with a much larger price tag. Don’t feel like paying for it? Make it at home.

My first attempts have been with culturing yogurt. The process goes something like this: raise a quart of milk to 180F and chill to 116F. Stir in yogurt starter culture and hold temp in a thermos for 6 – 12 hours or until the milk coagulates. Refrigerate and enjoy; preferably with fresh local blueberries, cucumbers, or Naan bread. Try sicilianosmkt.com for the yogurt and cheese making info. Get crazy, share a cow, eat seasonally and make your own food!

The craft beer facade

The beer brewing industry is made up of three major segments: large domestics, imports and craft. The post prohibition dominance of conglomerated domestic breweries has since homogenized most of the world’s beer into cold yellow fizz. For decades now, U.S. craft breweries have fought back, reinventing flavorful lagers and ales and steadily educating a consumer base for their products. Although still relatively small, the success of craft brewed beer is beginning to weigh on the other segments, forcing major adjustments in the world of brewing.

All beer is made from four natural ingredients: barley, wheat and/or rye malts, hops, water and yeast. Mega breweries, like Anheuser-Busch, Coors and Labatt supplement the malt portion of their recipes with corn and rice (known as adjuncts) to lighten and cheapen their products. Craft breweries typically use more expensive versions of these ingredients and brew their products relatively inefficiently while large scale breweries use cheaper ingredients and but much more efficient methods. By the numbers, the Brewers Association defines a craft brewery as producing less than 2,000,000 barrels a year and large breweries more than that amount. This results in $10-$15 retail priced 12 oz. six-packs of craft and $6-$8 six-packs for large domestics. However, like cheap gas, cheap beer is a thing of the past. As barley and hop farmers continually opt for the more profitable subsidized corn, soy and biofuel crops, no brewery is safe from rising ingredient costs. This agricultural change, along with the lessening value of the U.S. dollar and increased global climate change, exasperates production expenses and forces brewers and beer drinkers alike into a new world of challenges where things are no longer quite what they seem.

The large domestic brewing industry segment is dependant on sales growth, not mere sustainability, which has been difficult to achieve with costs perpetually increasing. Yet there’s another problem for the big breweries: the craft beer segment just keeps growing, 12% in 2007 as compared to non-craft’s static 1.4%, hence cutting into their profits. Even though breweries at the top of the U.S. beer market are still growing, the increase isn’t happening fast enough. These challenges are stressing the current shape of the beer industry and cracks are starting to show. In response, large breweries like A-B and Coors are brewing products which resemble craft beer in an attempt to move into the growing market. This confuses both the definition of craft beer and the people trying to buy it. At the other end of the business, Belgian beer conglomerate InBev (Beck’s, Bass, Stella Artois) is attempting a takeover of A-B, the last “American Owned” mega-brewery, furthering homogenization of what the world understands as “beer”.

One may wonder how a large brewery like A-B could even make a craft segment product, and the fact that they do calls into question the definition of “craft” itself. The Brewers Association distinguishes using production volume, Dogfish’s Sam Calagione adds that a craft brewery must be independently owned and utilize expensive and flavorful ingredients. Craft beer brewers and drinkers understand what Calagione is saying, but the concept is still a little ambiguous, especially when one considers all breweries must turn a profit. Just like the big boys, the business is to turn beer into money.

However, domestic and craft brewed beer is different not only in formulation but also in conception. Domestic producers take these differences with them as they pry into the craft market, driven by their crazed need to constantly secure new markets for future sales growth. Although not all craft breweries are guiltless in this policy, many of them do realize not every gas station in every state, not to mention across the globe, needs to have a cooler full of their product. Or do they?

Such circumstances enculture mirrored phenomena within the brewing industry segments. While A-B, Coors and the rest try to sell craft-like products to increasingly educated beer drinkers, craft breweries continually look to grow and disseminate their products to more and more markets. While the business models may be similar in theory (increase profits), large domestics and craft breweries obviously have differing approaches selling to craft beer segment consumers: large breweries imitate craft products while craft breweries attempt to convert domestic beer drinkers. Both sides take it personal.

Here’s what you’re going to get from large domestics: consistent, light body, light flavor, easy drinking, large budget, colored and flavored lagers and wheat beers. A-B’s “Sundog Amber Wheat” (I thought New Holland made Sundog?), “Stone Mill Pale Ale”, “Wild Blue Blueberry Lager”, “Michelob Marzen”, “Shock Top Belgian White” and Coor’s “Blue Moon” are all designed to dupe the consumer into believing he or she has just purchased a small hand- crafted beer, possibly even made locally from the finest and freshest ingredients available. Craft brewers vehemently oppose both the actual beverage in the trendy bottle and the attempt to pass them off as being independently brewed. They argue these products are tenuous imitations of true craft quality products. Less harsh and concerned critics may just find they like these beers, no matter their lack of brewing integrity, helping level the playing field in the craft brew arena.

What you’re going to get from craft brewed beer is largely determined by the individual brewery. It’s well known craft does not necessarily imply quality; however, most successful and many not-so-well known craft breweries produce high quality historic and experimental styles of beer. True iconoclastic renegades, such as Jolly Pumpkin, Dogfish Head, Founders, Three Floyd’s and Surly breweries (note the vast disparity in production volumes) seem to actually brew what they want as opposed to what is wanted. However, the current grass roots and online network of support for these and other ultra hot breweries seems to have created a special environment in which successful growth feels imminent.

As far as craft brewer’s complaints against “culture vulture” duplication attempts, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. One-dimensional, commercially hyped proxy craft beers may eventually earn themselves a small niche, probably right next to Pete’s Wicked “Strawberry Blond.” Not likely will craft beer consumers confuse a Jolly Pumpkin “Madrugada Obscura” with an A-B “Wild Hop Lager.” Come on guys, I think you can handle them. But if you are new to craft beer, read the small print!

recoilmag.com volume 8 issue 7 july 50

Raw Milk...in a Pasteurized World

A dive into the world of Raw Milk is vertiginous. With just a little questioning, our basic health and diet concepts, which we naively assume to be given truths, start to melt apart like good mild cheddar. As Americans, we’re supposed to eat less fat, and lower our cholesterol. Whole grains, veggie snacks, skim milk, fat free chocolates; these are a parent’s weapons with which to help their family fight obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. So how come they’re not working? Could the way we process our milk and dairy products be part of our nation’s health problems?

In the debate between conventional dairy wisdom (mandated pasteurization and homogenization, grain fed “super-cows”, large scale farming) and the Raw Milk campaign (no pasteurization, grass pasture fed cows, organic and smaller farming practices), personal education is most likely the path to wisdom and a useful understanding of the subject. One the one hand, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, representing convention, informs us: “The pasteurization process uses heat to destroy harmful bacteria without significantly changing milk's nutritional value or flavor. In addition to killing disease-causing bacteria, pasteurization destroys bacteria that cause spoilage, extending the shelf life of milk.” Raw Milk advocates argue, “Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer.”

To summarize the positions, the largely funded pasteurization proponents argue that the vitamins and flavors lost during the processing of milk are acceptable collateral damage considering the total health benefits of eradicating human pathogens, and they have financed the research to prove it. The less funded opponents feel pasteurization is not only unnecessary, but symptomatic of a society dangerously disconnected with the food it eats.

Since its institution over one hundred years past, pasteurization has greatly reduced human suffering and increased mortality. Today it’s the law, with its particulars mandated separately by each state. If we were only to weigh the greater good afforded to dairy consumers over the past century by the practice of heating milk before imbibing there would be no valid argument against its practice. So what gives? Conventional “proven” wisdom is not often taken to task. Generally, American consumers do not question what the scientists and policy makers at the U.S. FDA tell us. It’s a very confusing world and we must trust to their wisdom. However, the core of the Raw Milk position is not based on falsifying the FDA’s testimony, rather in exposing what it has no interest in addressing: blatant problems, alternatives and natural, holistic betterments. The negative effects created by pasteurization are little known, under-researched and, arguably, no longer even necessary. For whom then is the sustentation of pasteurization good for, the consumer or the dairy industry?

Raw Milk advocates will tell you that a combination of better dairy practices and modern refrigeration neutralizes the necessity of pasteurization, arguing the disease causing organisms which occur in pre pasteurized milk are simply a result of a haphazardly managed, inorganic, “we’ll clean it up at the end with heat” philosophy. ww.Realmilk.com, the website for the Campaign for Real Milk, funded by the Weston A. Price Foundation, will tell you that modern dairy farms do not operate in the cleanest, healthiest, and most ecologically concerned manners, and why should they? Pasteurizing the dirty pathogen laden milk before packaging should clean up the mess. The campaign critically evaluates our modern dairy farming practices waving pasteurization as its black flag and shaming homogenization, standardization of fat percentages, fat free fetishes and other ultra modern practices, exposing them for what they truly are: the cheapest and easiest way for the dairy industry to get their products to market.

According to critics of institutionalized pasteurization, heating milk physically destroys nutrients, healthy bacteria, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is touted to have anticancer properties, along with those pesky human pathogens. The FDA’s own research has yet to prove similar results. Along with applying heat, Homogenization is employed to standardize and control the fat content in milk. This is done by force filtering milk through tiny holes, breaking down the milk solids and inhibiting the rich cream to rise to the top, completely altering the physical and chemical properties of milk.

Raw Milk, being unheated with its milk solids intact, contains higher amounts of fats and cholesterol than its processed and homogenized counterpart. In our processed and preserved diets, fat and cholesterol are supposed to be the bad guys. Unfortunately, too few of us currently understand that there are many different kinds of fats and cholesterol, some bad, but many necessary for survival. In general, these two chemical substances affect our circulatory systems. According to www.raw-milk-facts.com, “Overeating sugar or white flour products causes a spike in insulin, the hormone which, besides controlling blood sugar, also triggers the formation of fats destined for storage. The fats in raw milk aren't the problem. It's the half a bag of chocolate chip cookies you're dunking in it.” Raw Milk’s cholesterol is similarly healthy in that it combats levels of clogging plaque cooked animal cholesterols found in many of our diets.

So where does this leave low fat milks and the highly revered skim milk? Since such a large portion of milk is water, and homogenization and other separating procedures are used to remove and reprocess the rich top cream and buttermilk, the dairy industry has a large excess of extremely low fat content “milk”. Even they have little to say about the benefits of skim milk beyond its low level of fat, and the Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions is calling them out: “When children are denied the high-fat and cholesterol-rich foods they need to develop normally, the result is behavior problems ranging from autistic withdrawal to uncontrolled consumption of processed food.” The short piece, titled “Food Puritanism” published last fall, concludes that tasteless plain grain, skim milk, low fat diets encourage fits of “food pornography” – binge eating of candy, processed sweets and sodas – and an unhealthy diet pattern of extremes.

Is the FDA then a puppet of the powerful “got milk?” dairy industry, conspiring to deprive Americans of health and well being? In learning about the benefits and concerns of Raw Milk and pasteurization, a complex paradigm in which the individual, family and community confront the machinery of bureaucratic industrial progress is exposed. Pasteurization and homogenization simply works better for the dairy industry, its regulatory agency, and the total infrastructure for production and distribution of dairy goods. But what’s good for the system isn’t necessarily good for you.

Is Raw Milk then the answer to our society’s dietary woes? The Raw Milk renaissance itself, like home beer brewers, wood burners, clothe makers, small self sufficient farmers, and other self empowered pioneers, is symptomatic of a much wider collective movement which began in the 1960’s after one unofficial and two official wars, of closing the gap between us humans and the natural world. Like home wine, vinegar, maple syrup and cheese makers, Raw Milk drinkers and producers are not in the business of replacing the current infrastructure: they simply attempt to bypass it.

Even if legalized, a Raw Milk industry would not work on a large scale. For one, many of the benefits of unpasteurized dairy products are determined by the cow, goat, sheep, water buffalo, yak or moose’s diet. The dairy industry is currently grain based and Raw Milk yields the most health benefits when the cows, Jersey instead of Holstein, are fed on green grass pastures. Cows are ruminants, natural grass eaters, and do not do well living on grain, soy and alfalfa diets. Breeding and drugs keep the modern dairy cow going and increases the milk production but ultimately shortens their life span. The cow’s overused teats and udders react by filling with white pus which must eventually be centrifuged away from the milk. The conventional attitude towards this: no worries if a little pus gets in the milk, pasteurization will take care of it! Therefore, today’s dairy farming practices make pasteurization absolutely necessary.

Any hope for change in sight? On a large scale, no change will happen until consumers shift their support away from large industrial dairy producers and begin to seek out healthy alternatives. How about trying to buy your milk from a local dairy farmer? If this isn’t possible, at least inquire about where your milk comes from and how it is processed.

The Raw Milk debate should help remove a little bit of our nation’s naivety concerning our diets. Milk fat and cholesterol are not the enemies – processed, refined, additive laden, artificially preserved sugars, vegetable oils and flours are. It cannot be stressed enough: not all Raw Milk is the same. If it’s not produced in a sanitary manner, it could prove deadly! However, disconnecting ourselves completely from this sweet, nutritious and life giving fluid may also prove to be yet another small step towards our civilization’s demise.

Interview with Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head craft brewery

Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery talks about his sense of purpose

In 1993 Sam Calagione, owner of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery based in Milton, Delaware, home brewed his first batch of beer out on the East Coast. The local craft beer scene at the time was limited and underground; Calagione was about to change that. He took a look around, checked to see which way the mass beer trends were flowing, and decided to swim upstream. No light lagers for Dogfish; instead, Calagione opted for candied fruits, old world spices, continuous hopping regiments and parameter shattering abv’s to distinguish his creations. Two years after his first batch, Calagione opened Dogfish Head Brewings and Eats. Back then he brewed ten gallons batches, now he puts up 100 barrels each brew session.

This spring Dogfish invaded California with this mighty three beer line-up: 90 Minute IPA (9% abv), a continuously hopped Imperial I.P.A., Midas Touch (9% abv), an anciently inspired honey, saffron, Muscat grape and barley based elixir designed to please both beer geeks and Chardonnay drinkers alike, and Palo Santo Marron (12% abv), a strong Brown Ale aged in massive and moneyed Paraguayan wooden vats. Currently he’s been touring the nation speaking about his latest of three books: He Said Beer, She Said Wine. As you’ll find out below, Calagione’s Yankee ingenuity and rugged individualism epitomizes America’s artisan food and craft brewing culture.

Wes Eaton: Would you give us some back story to your experimentation with non-traditional ingredients with some culinary insight?

Sam Calagione: Sure. When we opened in 1995 we were the smallest commercial brewery in America. At that time there were 800 US breweries. I researched what I wanted to do, I was just kind of a manically obsessed home brewer and back in my apartment in Manhattan I was creating beers while I was writing my business plan. I was always trying to make beers like nothing that was out there. Then, just as now, the domestic beer landscape was dominated my three breweries: Miller, Coors and Bud, and they’re all essentially making very slight variations of the exact same product: a light lager beer. So I knew from the get-go I had no interest in brewing those kinds of beers. That’s when the concept of off-centered ales for off-centered people came about. Basically, we’re never going to appeal to the majority of people out there, so let’s just have fun and brew for ourselves, and hopefully there’ll be a growing community of hard-core beer folk that want to explore the outer-limit of what beer can be. We opened our restaurant with a tiny, inefficient, ten gallon brewery, and we had to brew two, three times a day, that small scale allowed me to experiment without too much risk. I’d go into the kitchen of the restaurant and take some coffee or raisons or licorice root and incorporate them into that day’s brew. Our reputation for brewing exotic brews came from those humble beginnings.

Eaton: Talk about the relationship between wine and beer. What do you want people new to this cross roads in alcoholic beverages to understand?

Calagione: Wine culture is further evolved than beer culture in America. The average consumer understands that an amazing bottle of Merlot can justifiably cost three times as much as a crappy bottle. That same consumer is just now beginning to understand that an amazing four-pack of wood-aged, 12% abv beer fermented with organic brown sugar, as is the case with Palo Santo Marron, can still be a great value at three times the price of a six-pack of generic lager. The West Coast is recognized as the premier wine region in America and the average consumer in that region is more open to the idea of approaching beer with the same respect.

Eaton: How do you think your distinct beers will be accepted here in California?

Calagione: It actually helps us that the wine culture is so evolved on the West Coast because our beers are very wine like in their flavor profiles, alcohol content and their food compatibility.

Eaton: You’re known to many as a poet, builder, brewer, filmmaker and writer – was brewing the key to the actualization of your passions? How do you define yourself?

Calagione: I’m the brewer first; the rest of the stuff is just hobbies. I mean for me they all kind of augment the making and the selling of beer. I write the books as educational programs and components which teach people how to brew and get comfortable with drinking beers that have non-traditional ingredients. I try to teach people just what Dogfish is, that’s sort of what the first book is about (Brewing Up a Business), and then He Said Beer She Said Wine is all about making wine people comfortable appreciating and understanding good beer in the context of food and beer people understand wine in the context of food.

Eaton: I read Raison D’Etre was designed as a beverage that would be the ultimate complement to a steak dinner. Is food pairing always this important at Dogfish?

Calagione: Yeah. Right from the beginning we knew that we were going to be brewing beers that were a lot closer to wine in alcohol content, complexity and food compatibility. The best way to highlight that was to pay careful attention to what foods we recommended pairing with each of these beers. Since we opened as a restaurant brewery, we also had the ability to feature on our menu the idea that for every great food item there is a perfect beer match. A lot of times, like in the case of the Raison D’Etre, we were actually designing beers backwards from what would be the ideal partner in the food world.

Eaton: Beyond beer, Dogfish distills distinct spirits which stress the definition even of “Extreme Beer.” Are these natural evolutions of continued fermentation exploration or intentional directions for Dogfish?

Calagione: We use our mission statement as a dynamic compass. If you pull out the word “ale” and put in “distilled spirits” it still rings true. We’re not doing what the big distilleries do; we’re following our own path as we do in our brewery. In the case of a distillery product like our Brown Honey Rum, (which is) aged on honey while it sits in oak, which is very unique, it’s perfectly in keeping with our vision. Our distillery is 1/1000th the size of our brewery, but it’s still a fun little project that we think adds vibrancy to what Dogfish Head is all about.

Eaton: Dogfish is also known for its historical and ancient ales like Midas Touch and Chateau Jiahu, talk about these experiences and recipes.

Calagione: Certainly the majority of our recipes come from our own inspiration, we think about which unique ingredients will work in a beer that have never been used before. But we sort of stumbled into being this specialty brewery for ancient beverages, and that’s right up our alley. (Ancient recipe beers) are like liquid time capsules. They allow people to come face-to-face with the history of civilization, not just the history of fermented beverages. In the case of our Chateau Jiahu, it’s got a 9,000 year pedigree and is recognized as the oldest know fermented beverage. This also silences the naysayers about the validity of “extreme brewing” because it shows that at the beginning of civilization people were making really exotic, multi-fermentation sugar source beverages to celebrate special occasions. Therefore, Chateau Jiahu has sake yeast, sake rice, and hawthorn fruit. Midas Touch has honey, grapes and saffron. We’re doing another ancient ale with the oldest known chocolate discovered in Central America. Before humans were eating chocolate they were drinking it as a fermented beverage. The beer (called Theo Broma) therefore has Chilean cocoa nibs, cocoa powder and tree seeds and is coming out in August.

Eaton: There is a culture clash within the brewing and drinking community over the ambiguously termed "Extreme Beers". Talk about your role in formulating these out-of-bounds beers. When you began brewing high gravity, sugar and spiced infused exotic brews did you know you were taking part in the next movement of the American Craft Beer Revolution?

Sam Calagione: I don’t think it was anything that conscious. Our motto of off-centered ales for off-centered people wasn’t really derivative of anything of the mid-nineties. Nobody was focused on strong, exotic beers when we started. We were considered sort of side-show freaks and black sheep, like what we were doing was novelty. But again, as beer culture started to evolve and expand, this niche within the greater craft brewing niche became extreme brewing. While we didn’t come up with that term for it, (extreme brewing) was all that Dogfish did since the day we opened. Our brewery was recognized as a pioneer within that niche.

I don’t think there’s that much backlash (against extreme beer.) There are a few isolated brewers who don’t like the term, but at the end of the day it’s not really up to us to give it a name, it’s up to the consumer. It’s sort of an elitist position to rebuff extreme brewing because the people have spoken and they want these kinds of beers. Look at the growth of breweries like Dogfish, Russian River, or Allagash, who brew these exciting and unique beers which people really enjoy. Beer is subjective. No brewer should be so elitist as to determine for people what they should be drinking.

Eaton: Nine years ago the storied “Beer Hunter” Michael Jackson and you spent a day together. Raisin D’Etre, Chicory, Shelter Pale and Immort Ale were already on your menu and a new 30 bbl brew house was being constructed. Talk about the changes you have seen in our beer culture since then and your contribution to this dynamic enclave.

Calagione: In that era Immort Ale was among the first wood aged beers since craft breweries came about and was (also) exotic, incorporating maple syrup, peat-smoked barley and vanilla beans. Frankly, we could barely give it away. Nobody was willing to pay $13.00 for a six-pack of beer, so we had a real tough time. We started as the smallest brewery, today we’re one of the fastest growing breweries, and I think the 35th biggest brewery in the country out of 1400. While I’m proud of all that growth, what I’m most proud of is that we never discounted or dumbed-down our beers in order to achieve growth. That shows that while we’ve been very lucky to be able to stick to our original mission and achieve this incredible growth, it’s really indicative of how far the average beer consumer’s I.Q., experimentation and interest level has come.

Eaton: As you and Dogfish Head redefine the term “beer”, do you find the conventional terminology frustrating or do you see it as a necessary challenge?

Calagione: Frustrating. Not because of a few people who take shots at extreme beer and want things to be like they were 100 years ago, but because our government is very restrictive in the licensing process. When we go to get a beer label approved or new beer brand that has a non-traditional ingredient they make you go through a million steps. They’ve very subjective on their definitions. For instance, they will not let us call the Theo Broma an ale, even though it’s fermented with ale yeast. Because of all the special ingredients we need to call it a “malt beverage”. That undermines what we’re doing. “Malt beverage” sounds very generic compared to “ale”. The bureaucratic hoops that we have to jump through just to present these unique beers are stifling.

Eaton: What really makes a craft beer craft beer?

Calagione: Three things: craft beer comes from an independent brewery with no ownership from a big brewery and is made by a traditional brewery which uses barley or exotic, more expensive and flavorful sugars and not the cheap rice and corn that the big breweries use. Also it has to come from a small brewery, defined by the Brewer’s Association as less than two million barrels (annual production). The consumer wants to know where their beer is made in the same way that they want to support their local coffee roaster, local baking company and to buy locally. The big breweries are seeing the small craft breweries growth and that that’s where the excitement in the beer industry is. They’re trying to co-opt that growth and in essence act as culture vultures and try to confuse the consumer as to what real craft beer is.

Palo Santo Marron is an example of what Dogfish Head is all about. There’s no precedent for it. All other breweries are aging beers on oak, kind of the go-to wood of the beverage industry for malt whiskey, wine or beer. We do some beers in oak, but we found this really exotic wood from Paraguay. A high-end flooring salesman brought us some samples and we did a test batch and aged some beer on it. It has really high resin content and the alcohol, which acts as a solvent, strips the natural oils from the wood and we found that it imparted this amazing, unparalleled, caramel, vanilla character to the beer. So we went for it, went all out, and built the biggest wooden brewing vessel made in America since before prohibition out of this exotic wood. Each tank that we built cost $110,000. The return on the investment in this tank in measured in decades not even years, but we’re a private company we don’t give a shit. We’re not being held to invertors to make more profits every quarter. This is a labor of love. While this is a very expensive project, it’s one that we believe enhances what our company is all about. Will it ever sell as well as 60 Minute I.P.A. or Raison D’Etre? Probably not, but we don’t care; it’s just another beer that we’re excited to drink and we’re glad people are excited to try it as well.

Eaton: I’m excited; I’ll be drinking that one tonight.

Beer, Maple Syrup and Balsamic Vinegar

Experiencing the multitude of styles and flavors found in beer, from sour Belgians to bitter German Pilsners, opens new culinary worlds. Each of the world’s beers at one time accompanied a cooking style and culinary tradition. Sipping on Belgian and German ales in particular inspires me to try chewy baked pretzels, heavy brown sauces and tangy fermented vegetables. When I’m not brewing at home, I’m trying out everything from beer-can chicken to Saison reduction sauces and stout Balsamic Vinegar glazes. The excitement and satisfaction I get now from exploring new and different foods is a direct extension of my earlier exploration of the beer styles of the world. A growing comprehension of the basic mechanics and chemistry used in making the foods I cook and eat and the beers and wines, meads and ciders I serve along side contributes a wholesome and rewarding feeling to the daily deeds of my life. A connectedness is being created where once indifference and even frustration accompanied the thought of cooking dinner seven days a week. With this in mind, maple syrup and balsamic vinegar, my new favorite food interests, succinctly embody both my culinary and brewing sensibility. Here’s a little bit about my experiences making and enjoying these exquisite liquid foods.

Heading to our family’s cabin early each spring to tap Sugar Maple trees and make pure maple syrup has become an annual tradition. The process is similar to boiling up a batch of homebrew, only much less complex. Sap is collected from the maple trees and evaporated down to syrup; in concept, it’s that simple. In Michigan, Sugar Maples are abundant and sap flows twice a year, in late fall and early spring. Using a brace bit and plastic tapping spiles our small group taps 50 to 60 Sugar Maples three feet up on the southeast side of the tree trunks near Big Rapids a couple weeks before the snow begins to melt. Hoses are run from the taps to three gallon covered buckets tucked in the snow against the trunk of the trees. Once the weather balances around 40 degree days and 20 degree nights, the sap begins to flow and much celebration takes place. While the sap is being collected, our makeshift evaporator, consisting of a large shallow pan and two burners, is constructed. To make Grade A, lick-out-the-pan quality maple syrup, all you have to do is boil. Sap is approximately two to four percent sugar, so to get it to the required consistency of 65 percent sugar, a lot of sap, time, and fuel is required. Forty gallons sap, 14 hours and 30 pounds of propane gas later, you’ll get something like a gallon. We have plans to upgrade our operation, but for now, I still flinch when someone asks for a little bit more on their pancakes. Our family’s virgin batch from four years past is still the most superb; the intense, clean, low viscosity, honey-like sugariness surpassed my expectations, an experience similar to my first experience with Italian Balsamic Vinegar.

As a home winemaker I’ve learned to keep my wines away from air, less they turn to vinegar – surely a dour mishap; and ever since I have had no interest in the liquid handed to Christ in place of water. That was until last fall’s trip to Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, where I was treated to an ordered tasting of aged Balsamic Vinegars. That’s right: they poured the vinegar into small cups and we sipped! Beginning with three-year and up to 30-year aged samples, the flavors grew from sharp acid and blackberry juice to heavily fruited Lambic with an intense, palate-coating tactile acidic sheen. I had no idea vinegar could be a delicacy! I left with a new appreciation, a small and expensive bottle, and a basic conception of its creation.

World class Balsamic is made in Italy from the juice of the red Trebbiano grape and is graded and certified by an exclusive Italian governing board. To make, the grape juice is allowed first to ferment, like wine, into alcohol, and is then stored in large wooden vats and barrels. These age-old vessels (some up to 500 years) are air porous, allowing the fresh wine to slowly breathe and evaporate. Acetobacteria, the secret agent for all vinegar-making, has steadily built up in the walls of the wood. This bacterium, which is naturally found in the air we breathe, slowly digests the alcohol into something new: Balsamic Vinegar. The longer the vinegar ages, the more evaporation that occurs and the more concentrated, and valuable, it becomes. Vinegar can be made at home and I’m looking into it.

These new food discoveries, derived from my passion for beer, have all helped to reshape the way I approach time in the kitchen. Cooking, which was once a dreary chore, is now my favorite part of the day.