Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

I've started a second batch of home brew now that I have a big house and more space. Already put too much yeast in a few bottles to the point when I popped the cap, the beery foam shot straight up into my face --- chunks of brown froth everywhere.

Some home brewers get downright scientific about the process but not me. I just dump in the DC tap water, malt, corn sugar and yeast and hope it doesn't blow up in my face too often and tastes half-drinkable.

I like drinking micro-organisms --- the most basic form of life --- in my beer. You can't get that in commercial beers, where it's all been strained out (with the exception of hefeweizen). The taste of yeasty ferment isn't suitable for the modern palate, used to consuming plastic packaged salad and meats that no longer look like animals. Yeast in bottles or cans also isn't conducive to the elephantine industrial food system with its multi-thousand-mile routes, burnt diesel fuel and waste.

Let's try an analogy that I once saw on the Science Channel. Spread your arms wide apart, straight out on either side. Life on earth began at the tip of your left hand middle fingernail, and then progressed through its history across your left arm, past your chest and neck onto your right arm, until present day at the end of your right hand middle fingernail --- four billion years later. Now imagine this: from your left hand fingernail until your right arm's elbow joint, the only life on earth were micro-organisms like the yeast in the bucket in my basement. The existence of human life comprises merely the over-hanging tip of your right hand middle fingernail.

Whenever I see that yeast-fart of a CO2 bubble coming from my brew I get a little primordial thrill.

*Main character in Jack London's 1904 book, Sea Wolf.