A Troubling Development

…if you’ll excuse the pun.

In the mail a couple days ago I received an invitation to a “neighborhood meeting” on my street, sponsored by a real estate developer planning to build a large new apartment building just down the street from me.

Blognation

I don’t mean that title as it might be interpreted, in the “Web Triumphalist” (thanks, H2otown!) sense; I don’t particularly believe in such nonsense — indeed, I’m opposed to nationalism in all its forms, with the possible exception of Red Sox Nation. It would probably be clearer to adopt that Munroe kid’s pronunciation: “blagnation” would better convey what I mean.

Point being, of course, that I have shamefully allowed F&A here to sit stagnant (though I might prefer to think of it as “lying fallow”).  I’ve got a longer post in the works, but I haven’t been having much free time to, well, work on it.  So there may be a bit of filler now and again, either dull ruminations of this sort or the dreaded link posts, before I get to it, but I hope to keep it not entirely devoid of interest.

Coming up, probably some more posts about beer; I really don’t intend for Matters Zymurgical to so predominate, but it’s often easier to write about, as I’m typically just describing stuff I do rather than attempting to marshal strong arguments for a position.

Mash Tun Progress

On Friday my order of CPVC pipes and fittings arrived, so on Saturday I spent some time working on the mash tun project. I’ve got the lauter manifold mostly done now, and building the sparge manifold will go quicker now that I know what I’m doing a little better. I still have to figure out how the outflow will work, and that’s going to mean actually modifying the cooler itself, so I figure I’m about a third done overall.

Pictures of the manifold assembly process after the jump.

Current Brews Status

I checked on my two current brews last night. The barleywine — slightly modified from the “Big 10/20 Barley Wine” recipe at beertown.org — has been proceeding very slowly since racking off the ale yeast and pitching champagne yeast, but from its original gravity of 1.132 it was down to 1.092 when I racked it, and it’s now at 1.077. It’s got a ways to go yet, so I think I’ll need to make up a small starter of the champagne yeast to try to get it going.

When I racked the barleywine, I decided it would be a shame to waste its yeast bed, so I brewed a coffee porter (which for lack of a better name I’m calling “Dark Roast”) and put it in the same carboy on top of the old yeast. It was down from 1.060 to 1.022, or about 5% ABV, when I checked it last night, which I’m willing to consider good enough, so I racked it, and I’ll probably bottle next weekend. It tastes very good — nicely roasty, with a coffee flavor that’s distinct but somewhat subtle — so I’m quite pleased with how it came out. I’ll post the recipe I used for it a bit later; I’m thinking I may start putting up recipes as pages under the main Matters Zymurgical tab up top, rather than as regular posts.

Mash Tun Plans

Since I’m planning to make a foray into all-grain brewing, I’m going to need a mash/lauter tun. I’m working mainly from John Palmer’s instructions in his excellent How To Brew (the 1st edition is conveniently available online, and I have the paperback 2nd edition as well), with some planned modifications of my own (I am a homebrewer, after all!).

Getting Involved

A couple of months ago I moved from Waltham, MA to neighboring Watertown. I liked Waltham very much, and have been missing it (in particular, missing being a few blocks from the fantastic Watch City Brewing Company, which I cannot recommend highly enough). One thing I always felt like I should have done, but for one reason and another in my five years in Waltham never did, was to get personally involved in some way in local politics. I’m not interested in running for or holding office, but I’m mighty sick of feeling like I follow the news, read up on political theory, and get agitated about the state of affairs I see, but don’t actually do anything about it.

Recently, I came across H2Otown.info, a Watertown-focused blog and news site. It seems to be quite active, and from a quick perusal it looks like quite a lot of local politicians, businesspeople and interested citizens participate there. Several town councillors have accounts, for example. I hope that my initial impressions are accurate, and H2Otown is an indicator of an engaged and active political culture in my new hometown. Indeed, this is the sort of thing I’d love to see in every town, and I wish I’d known about it sooner — as it is, I don’t think I’ve had enough time to learn about the candidates for tomorrow’s Councillor-At-Large election to vote in it, something I feel bad about.

Another issue, of course, is that something like H2Otown is only going to be found by those who are sufficiently interested, sufficiently motivated, and who also have easy access to the internet and leisure to engage in online discussion. So it’s great as far as it goes, but does it go far enough? Is it feasible to try to greatly broaden participation, or will that inevitably run up against Shirky’s Law? In short, when extant structural bias in society is, perhaps unavoidably, reflected microcosmically in a site like H2Otown, which is (presumably) intended to increase civic engagement across the social and political spectra, what can or should be done to work against that bias? Or is this mode of political engagement merely new, in beta as it were, and should I relax, and assume that as all future generations grow up not knowing an Internet-less world, access will naturally spread outside of the privileged few to whom it is currently, for the most part, restricted?

I sound, perhaps, more down on projects like H2Otown than I mean to. I do think it’s a great idea, and I’m glad to see it’s there. I look forward to participating in an at least nominally town-wide discussion of local politics, policy and governance, and indeed, as I said above, I would be thrilled to see such sites start to sprout in more towns.

The Problem of "Hillary"

I’ve been noticing a trend in media coverage of the Presidential campaign lately which I find rather disturbing. Or rather, this trend is one of several disturbing things about modern Presidential campaigns, but it’s the one I’m going to talk about here.

World Champion II

It’s half-past midnight on the East Coast, and the Red Sox just swept the Colorado Rockies to win their second World Series in three years. In 2004, to celebrate, I put together a recipe I called “World Champion Strong Red Ale” — clearly, it’s time for a reprise.

The original WCSRA was an extract brew with specialty grains, but I think it’s time to make the leap to all-grain brewing, now. From what I’ve been reading, it sounds like a large cooler fitted with a manifold of slotted pipe for drawing off the wort is a popular DIY mash/lauter tun, so I’m going to try that out. Planned recipe after the jump.

Well, Here I Am

Following the well-worn path from silent obscurity to the much louder obscurity of the roiling, cacophonous din that is the storied Blog-O-Sphere, I set out with the traditional First Post.

“Hey out there!” I shout, “Listen to me!  I have things to say!”

“You and a million other schmucks,” replies the Web. “Get in line.”

Well, we’ll see how this goes. Real posts to follow, but at least the page isn’t empty now.