I picked up a six pack of Modelo 'Barrillitos' from the abarrotes as I headed home. Not because it's a great beer but because it's cheap and I can reuse the bottles in the future for my homebrew. I carried my bolsa outside into the bright light and as I turned the corner to start the climb home I saw a dead man on the street.
Laying on his back, his worn clothes matched the color of the dusty cobbled sidewalk. His grey eyes staring blank through half opened lids at nothing just beyond the tree branches. Two plastic bolsas were at his feet, the contents of his morning grocery shopping spilling out. Some bananas, a pepper, tamarindo. A small clutch of pedestrians looked down at him from their improvised ampitheatre, some making the sign of the cross while a short policeman stood by impatient for the ambulance to come fetch the body. I'd crossed the steet to get a better look. I don't often get to see a dead person, in fact I've only seen one other in my life, many years ago.
He was the father of a friend, and was dressed up and put on display at the funeral parlor near his Salinas home. I had no emotional connection to him, only met him once before so approached his prepared body with only curiousity. He was unmistakably lifeless, but that recognition wasn't obvious from the color of the skin, or its texture but from the lack of energy that it normally emits, an energy that you don't pay attention to except in its absense.
The man on the street lacked that same energy and it occured to me that all the connective energy was gone too, like removing the ligiture from muscle. Some invisible energy that could be described as strings or twine that binds the man to his family, friends, the familiar things of his life. The defining history, the events. All that energy evaporates too, leaving a stillness around the body, a magnetic void that is perceptable on a level apart from intellect.
I continued up the street towards home glancing over my shoulder every once in awhile to see if the body was still there. When I turned up Calle Mesones the buildings blocked my view and I quit turning back. On the next block the city buses shouldered up along a stretch of road under construction. Piles of cobbles and sand kept them from getting too close to the sidewalk where the locals lined up to board. They formed a line, leaning against the warm walls of the colorful concrete buildings eyeballing the placards in the bus windows that displayed their destination. Mega, Santa Julia, Soriano, Mexiquito.
As I got closer a newly arrived bus veered in close and shuttered to a stop by a pile of rubble. Passengers climbed down from the rear doors through a heavy cloud of diesel fumes and dust while others entered the front. After a moment it pulled away, cranking sharply into the road to avoid the debris but the rear tire nearest the sidewalk rode up over a cobble pile, compressing the stones with its extreme weight. A split second later several of the potato sized stones shot out from the pressure, a birdshot blast of granite projectiles, they blew into the line of pedestrians before anyone could react. Some ricocheted off the building walls, thudding and cracking with their force. Painted concrete spintered into the dry air. I froze in place, while the crowd, now alert, moved about in jerky motions brushing concrete fragment from their clothes. Then a young boy, maybe ten years old stood from a crouched position by his mother. A quarter sized divet of flesh missing from his forehead exposing the bone. Blood began to form and then drain with intensity from the opening and he stagger stepped toward me. I knelt and held him by his shoulders to prevent him from walking into the street and he looked at me absently from behind his pain and shock, blood running down his face. The bus driver stopped and climbed down from his perch as I and the crowd yelled for help. He approached with cautious alarm and then motioned for the mother to quickly help the boy on board. I stood watching as the bus pull away with the wounded, wondering if his going on the bus was a wise choice, but it's not my place to question the drivers logic, I'm just a witness here.
When I reached home I let out the sadness that I felt, a sadness born of my impotence to help or make a difference in either persons life and the recognition of my own mortality. I let the emotion run out of me feeling sympathy for the boy, the dead man and myself as I considered our innocence in this life and how little protection it gives.
insulated it by securing a couple pillows off our bed, held in place with a piece of rope I found on the roof. This worked suprisingly well at maintaining a temperature of 150f. I let the grain mash for and hour and a half before performing a batch sparge. Normally, I mash for an hour but in this case I did an iodine test after an hour and found that there was still a lot of unconverted starches. Then I sparged by draining the mash tun completely once, filled it again with 170f. water, stirred, let rest for ten minutes and drained again.
s? In a beginning boil volume of six gallons my specific gravity was 7 brix or 1.028. At this point I have to make some assumptions in order to figure how well I did in the malting process and how efficient I was at extracting the sugars from the mash. I am going to use my personal historical records of previous brewing sessions as a data point to make comparisons. Unfortunately, I am unable to determine exactly how effective I was at malting the grain but if I make another assumption that my mashing procedure was 71% efficient then I can also assume that in my malting process I created a potential of 1.0265 instead of the commercial malt that typically is 1.037
t. Much of it is over modified and just as much is undermodified. Does anyone have an idea why that would be?
isco through a brewing course that I was teaching in Soquel, California. He would make the drive down from the Bay area each weekend to attend. He arrived here in San Miguel a few days after us and I joined him at Antigua Capilla as he brewed up the first batch of beer to be made at his new hotel. Later, I was left in charge of bottling the beer because he had to return to the states before the beer was ready. Fortunately for me, I was able to squeeze a 49th bottle of beer out of his five gallon batch and kept it for myself.
cked it open and poured the gold colored German hefe weizen into my mug. This beer is slightly hazy which is normal for this style with crisp carbonation and off white head. Great aroma of clove, banana and a big spicy flavor that comes across with defined clove and some flower essense. A great example of the style and a success for the first brew on premise for Antigua Capilla.
significant amount of grains that do not show any rootlets or even chit and this has me concerned. I will be giving this growth period another two days before starting the drying process but I will dissect a couple of the grains to confirm the acrospire growth before that step. As I turn the germinating grain by hand, I keep finding a variety of beans.
Grains with rootlets .
