Brewed Musings

Brewed Beverage of Choice:  Some homemade Mead given to me by a  pub regular

Music To Calm My Nerves:  Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) - Digable Planets

As the train whisked me through the west hills of Portland on my way to work this morning, a few things popped into my head as I tried to read.  Both are sort of related - related in a way because one was borne from the other in an organic flow of mind seeds flowering into some sort of colourful plantlife.  The first thought was a sort of displeasure and sadness that I do not really write on the train because there is little in the way of privacy.  In Milwaukee, the bus ride was a great place to write despite the bumps.  There was always one or two places where people would not disturb me.  But on the MAX here in town there is no place on the train that is safe from someone sitting next to you or someone looking over your shoulder, etc. etc.  So many letters to my friend RL or my brother have gone by the wayside because strangers look on whilst I write.

From this one innocent little thought came the next thought of how I figure it is fortunate that I got my degree in History because I cannot write fiction.  I have often wanted to be a writer, but as you have seen, my thoughts do not flow in complements long enough to make a good story.  Don’t get me wrong. I have some pretty good ideas about stories but cannot form them into more than an idea with great images.  But with history I can form a pretty good image with lots of research and facts.  The words and ideas flow like the Yangtze River.  It is the same with my poetry.  I do not have to draw an idea out into a bigger picture.  Simplicity is the key.

The thoughts could have blossomed more, but my stop came.  And so I picked up my bike and walked on out the door, threw my empty cup of joe into the trash and prepared to ride on except…flat tire!!!  In the half hour I had been on the train, my tire went flat and I had nothing to pump it.  I could see that it was going to be that kind of day.  And it was…Up until this afternoon when some of us at the pub had a meeting to discuss the brewer’s dinner we are having at the end of November.  Time to geek out!

I wish I could properly convey the enthusiasm and geekiness through these mere words on a computer screen.  But, alas, it is not possible.  But I will give it a go.  In August we at the brewery created our 4000th brew: a Weizenbock.  To celebrate this wonderful event, I thought it would be great to have a brewer’s dinner.  Surprisingly enough, the powers that be thought that was a good idea as well.  So today we went through and developed the menu, paired the beers to go with the selected menu items with the coup de grace being the Weizenbock.

The event is going to be held in the house on the property which was the original pub but has now been relegated to catering events.  But on one night in November we are taking it over for a nice night of beer geekdom.  Even now I can see it.  The fireplace going.  A nice pint of ale in the hand.  Just the thought of it makes me feel like I am at home at Von Triers in Milwaukee.  Oooooohhhhhh, RL we need to go to Von Triers!

But I have to curb my enthusiasm.  It is still a month away.  Too bad though.  It will have a great beer menu of English Pale Ale, Altbier, Nut Brown Ale, Smoked Porter with Smoke Oysters, IPA, and of course the guest of honour, Weizenbock.  If you are in Portland, this is one not to miss.  If you are not in Portland, sorry.  But the holidays bring brewer’s dinners all over the country.  Find one in your area and tell them the confucian brewer sent you.

Prost!
the confucian brewer

Brewed Beverage of Choice:  A Pint of Roots Toasted Coconut Porter (Stomach Thing-y finally gone!)

“Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order and security. The chief madmen claim the titles of general, admiral, senator, scientist, administrator, Secretary of State, even President. And the fatal symptom of their madness is this: they have been carrying through a series of acts which will lead eventually to the destruction of mankind, under the solemn conviction that they are normal responsible people, living the lives, and working for reasonable ends. Soberly, day after day, the madmen continue to go through the undeviating motions of madness: motions so stereotyped, so commonplace, that they seem the normal motions of normal men, not the mass compulsions of people bent on total death.” [Why do we allow these madmen to] “go on with their game without raising our voices?  There is a reason:  we are madmen, too…Our failure to act is the measure of our madness.” - Lewis Mumford, “Gentlemen:  You Are Mad” (1946)

I came across this quote as I was riding the train to work this morning and it occurred to me that Lewis Mumford could have easily been speaking about the events in this decade rather than the onset of the nuclear age of the mid to late 1940s.  The most important part of the quote to me is not about the madmen running around the hallowed halls of our government.  It is the part about our “madness” for not acting on the measures in front of us.

For the past few years I have made the statement to many of my friends that the decade of the 2000s is truly the 1960s without balls.  We are Eunuchs castrated by fear brought on by the McCarthy-istic Patriot Act.  It shames me to admit that I am one of these Eunuchs.  We were given a chance to look inward after 9/11 and we chose to look the other way.  We have had chances to stop what has been progressing, but have failed to get up as much as a burp.  We want to do something, but have no courage to stand up for what is right.  If our society were the student at Tiananmen Square, we would have run far away from the tank.

But lately I have been kind of re-phrasing my comments.  I still believe we are a society of eunuchs paralyzed by fear.  But if we are a mirror to any decade it is the fifties: the decade of McCarthyism; the decade of the burgeoning arms race with the Soviets; the decade of the suburbs and financial prosperity in the middle class.  But even with the modifications we are Eunuched grandchildren of the fifties because we do not have the Beats as our social conscious.

So far the best I have come up with as my revolt are the “What we need is another …” phrases which I use to raise awareness to our lack of action.  What we need is another Malcolm X!  What we need is another Cesar Chavez!  What we need is another Beat Movement!  It may be small, but it can be effective.

So I got off the train with a lot on my mind.  If we truly are a mirror image of the fifties and things go cyclical, well then I guess the revolution is coming.  Let us hope it as promising and we can all hop on the train as it passes.

Prost!

the confucian brewer

Brewed Beverage of (non)Choice: A Cup of Echinacea Tea - I have a stomach thing-y

The other day as I was riding into work on the train I decided that my mind needed some time off after months of deep, progressive thought.  During this time of thoughts my mind was devouring such topics as Lewis Mumford’s organic regionalism philosophy on urban planning; how silly it is for our Republican Governor Nominee, Ron Saxson, to propose a perfomance pay initiative for teachers - something the Teacher’s Union would never support; and the sociology of the pub.  But my mind became full and so I decided it could take some time off, unknowingly mere hours before the affects of a stomach flu hit me.

And so I thought I would give you a picture of what my mind immediately latched onto right as I stepped off the train with my bike.  Not only will you see how demented I can be, but how much pop culture can seep into anyone’s conscious.  I will lead you into the whole scene because there is no other way without the use of video…and there is no way Matt Groening is going to give me authorization to show that.

Bart Simpson is in a Forestry Ranger Station standing before the figure of Smokey the Bear.  Smokey here is being used as an interactive education device.  On the stand in front of him are two buttons: one labeled “you” and one labeled “me.”  And so the following begins…

The figure of Smokey says, “Only who can prevent forest fires?”  Bart looks at the stand and presses the button labeled “you.”  The figure of Smokey responds, “You have answered you, referring to me.  That is incorrect.  The correct answer is you.”

And so you have an even better idea of how strange I can be.  I tell you it is a lot funnier in my head.  And now back to my stretch of recouperation.

Prost!

the confucian brewer

Brewed Beverage of Choice:  A Pint of Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Beer

With the new look on a site all my own, I can finally do what many of my friends have been requesting for many a month.  The requests were of a wide variety but all centre around one key fermented beverage: BEER.

As a brewer and self professed beer geek I am often asked what my favourite beer is, or asked to give recommendations based on a drinker’s specific pallette, or asked to define the difference between this style and that style.  My excitement then takes over and the inquirer, frightened by the excessive amount of foam frothing around my mouth, runs for the hills screaming, “The brewer is mad! The brewer is mad! Run for your life!”

So what am I trying to accomplish with BrewU?  After all, there are numerous places on the internet and in print where one can find all the beer and brewing information they would ever need.  As an historian, a brewer, a Confucian, and over all student of life, I hope to bring a unique perspective on beer that can be an aide to the everyday folk that read Brewed Musings.  Anyone can simple re-produce a flavour profile of a particular style of beer rating point for point what the flavour should be, what the aroma should be, etc.  But how does that benefit the drinker?

What I will try to do is bring in some interesting historical notes, personal anecdotes from my days spent brewing, and what I look for in a particular beer, along with the flavour profiles and commercial renditions of particular styles.  I wil NOT rate specific beers.  My personal pallette is quite different than any of yours.  Plus, I open myself up to a vast amount of criticism my frail ego cannot handle.  The fun of this is to do the research and studying on your own.  Therefore my rating may lead one of you away from the best tasting beer of their lives.  Anyway, a five star rated Flemish sour ale would only be useful to Flemish sour ale enthusiasts.

Another function of BrewU is that you can email me at confucianbrewer@confucianbrewer.com with your personal recommendations (there are geographical regions of the U.S. I have yet to hit,) suggestion of topics for me to touch on, or your own personal beer related anecdotes.  For me, beer and pubs are the essence of community - one that brings together people of a variety of backgrounds and beliefs under one big roof.  I want to share my passion as well as surf the similar passions of others.  So we start a new era in Brewed Musings next week with one of my favourite beer styles both to create and consume (especially in the fall): Altbier.

Prost!

the confucian brewer

Brewed Beverage of Choice:  A Cup of Refreshing Stumptown Coffee

Currently Reading:  Mumford: A Life by Donald Miller

The beauty of owning a dog is that once or twice a day you get to turn your mind off and walk that dog around your neighbourhood.  Sometimes depending on the weather you can walk for up to three hours, especially if you own an English Setter that has no end to energy.  This morning was just one of those instances primarily because it is sunny and 70…Quite a rarity in October in Portland.

Thanks to an article in Dwell, I picked up a biography on Lewis Mumford, an architecture and literary critic, sociologist, and urban planning critic, which has inspired me to take longer “constitutionals” on my days off through my local neighbourhoods.  What better way to do this than with my best friend in walking, The White Wonder.  We get up and head to the coffee house for a bit of coffee and some reading.  And then after I am satisfied with my morning, we head off into one of the nearby neighbourhoods for a long stroll.

Today we went into the Mt. Tabor/Hawthorne area and just kind of meandered.  I peered at the architecture, got the ‘hood’s “feel,” and just marveled at the stamina of The White Wonder.  The best way to get to know your city, your home, is to walk through and study it.  This has been a project too long in coming.  I loved walking through Riverwest and the Lower East Side in Milwaukee.  I did not get to do it too much in Chicago because it is far too large and it would take forever to get to some of the neighbourhoods.  Plus I did not have a dog.

I now have a new found love for the city I live.  It took 7 long years but I have accomplished it none the less.  And now that I have aching dogs from wearing the wrong shoes, I need a beer.  Go on and get out for a short walk in the area you live.  If anything it will reduce your stress and you can turn off your mind without turning on the television.

Prost!

the confucian brewer

Brewed Beverage of Choice: A Pint of Olde Suffolk Ale (An Oak Aged Old Ale from Jolly Ole England!)

Books Recently Read: The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest: Alvin Josephy; Hold the Enlightenment: Tim Cahill

Several months ago I was in Seattle for the wedding of two very dear friends of mine. While in the city I was able to hang out with my friend, The Hazletok, who now lives on the East Coast and we taunt each other back and forth about drinking beer in nice weather, late at night, or in the presence of a beautiful woman. (Hazletok by the way did all of the real work in setting up confucianbrewer.com.) Hazletok and I also share a common interest in another brewed beverage, coffee!

One morning we found ourselves up at an ungodly hour for two people who were supposedly on vacation. What did we do? We grabbed our books and headed to the cafe. And it was while we were at that cafe I realized that I was not doing any “studying.” The enlightenment came as I peeked up from Big Sur, a book I had read twice already to see The Hazletok reading a thick book on, if memory serves me correctly, Oppenheimer.

There are very few people who can challenge me just by being in the vicinity. Hazletok is one of those people. Over the past several months prior to this enlightenment I had been musing on something that had been bothering me but could not put a finger on what it was. The lack of “studying” was apparently what had pushed me into my ferocious bout of lethargy. Now I was bound and determined to cure the ailment as soon as I got back to my native Portland.

As I peroused my book case looking for the perfect book to be the bandage, one stuck out: The Nez Perce and the Opening of the Northwest. This was a book I had tried once to finish but my mind was still in adolescence at the time. Six hundred pages on something as deep as the history of the Nez Perce is not something a 24 year old should tackle. Since moving to the Northwest though I had become more tempted to take out the book and finish it. Now my chance was upon me.

It felt good to be in the thralls of “studies” again. (I keep putting “studying” in quotes because while I am not going to school, as a Confucian, Buddhist, and historian/philosophiser, I will constantly be studying til the day I die.) I tried taking a class at the local community college several years ago, but it did not work out. The teacher told me that I could be teaching the class, which ended all the enjoyment of it knowing I was not going to really learn anything new. But now I was learning something new and different on my own terms.

It takes some very thick skin to study Native American History. It is history and you have to treat it as such. But as a man of Wonder Bread descent studying American Indian History, there has always been a nagging fear in the bowels of my mind. The fear is that one day I will run across a relative in my research and it is quite apparent that person did not do something of valour.

And there it was, on one of the pages, staring at me with its black and white ghoulish eyes, the name of one of my father’s distant relatives. My fear had been realized. This relative, I am sorry to say, was part of one of the deadliest massacres in Nez Perce history. My heart sank. My stomach was ready to revisit the lunch I had eaten earlier. I wanted to shed a tear, but the thick blanket of skin I grew at my days at UWM did not allow it. And so I was left to process it. Several hours later I was pages past it, but it was still lingering back there in the dark recesses.

It is easy to say we are not our relatives, because of how true that statement really is. I am not that man. I’d like to think that if I were living back then, I would not have followed in his shoes. But that is irrelevant. The important thing to remember while studying history is not what happened when and where. I will be the first to tell you I cannot remember certain dates that are supposed to be “important.” And yet I graduated with honours in History. The important thing about studying, history or anything, is how we can use it to better ourselves and the community around us. It is amazing what one can learn simply by sitting silently in a cafe miles from home.

Prost!

the confucian brewer

PS: Today was Columbus Day. In the future refuse to celebrate it!

Brewed Beverage of Choice: A Cup of Guayaki Mate Tea (I was watching PBS…)

Hello everyone to the new Brewed Musings with a new look and a new address. It took a while to get in the making and please be patient whilst I still go through the new construction. It is as new to me as it is to you.

I know what you are thinking. What is with the name change? Why did you change from Zen Brewer to Confucian Brewer? Are those not two different religions? Do you change philosophies as often as you change your shirt? We are confused Mr. Zen Brewer or Confucian Brewer or whatever your new name is.

All this brings me back to my days at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Even though I was studying Native American history, there were only so many classes offered in that area. Plus the department was quite adament that I study some other histories to round out my experience. Following their recommendations I enrolled in many East Asian history courses. It was my belief that studying the history of those living in the Far East would aide in my studies of the Tribal people of this Hemisphere. That and the fact that I had studied enough European history and found that it tended to bore me.

It was in one of these classes, The History of Buddhism, where I met a wise professor of East Asian philosophy by the name of Dirk Vorenkamp. (Not really a name you would expect of a professor on the History of Buddhism.) In the first class he digressed into a very interesting and relevant side story, a style of teaching I found exciting and one he had mastered by the time I took his class. The story, he theorized, tried to explain the vast number of Buddhists, Confucianists, and Taoists throughout the world.

There was a census taken several years prior to this class and the census takers were trying to figure out why there were so many Buddhists, Confucianist, and Taoists in the world when the population numbers seemed to contradict the findings. It seemed that the lay people of the continent of Asia do not see themselves as being of one religion. The lay folk had beliefs that were Buddhist, some that were Confucianist, and some that were Taoists, etc. So on the census form they would check all the religions they believed they were. To them there was no conflict and they need not be confined to one set of beliefs. That, they felt, shall be left to the monks who studied and lived their monastic life.

Since that fateful class I have done some studying on Buddhism and much more on Confucianism. I have never seen myself as completely Confucianist despite the fact that most of my belief system follow that path. Buddhism has its hold in areas. To this day Catholicism still has a healthy role in my life even though I consider myself a recovering Catholic and have not been to mass since 1990. The saints still amaze me and before every brew I make a small “prayer” to Saint Arnold of Metz, the patron Saint of Brewers. (Side thought - Anyone who was raised Catholic will still feel its affects no matter how far they have distanced themselves from the religion and the church. Any person who says differently is only fooling themselves.)

So yes I did change my moniker to Confucian Brewer and Brewed Musings has moved to confucianbrewer.com, but I am still Zen Brewer, Franciscan Brewer, and Taoist Brewer in addition to my Confucianist roots. To limit myself to one religion, to one philosophy, is to put limitations on who I can become and how far I grow while I am still wandering the planet on trains, busses and bicycles. Tunnel vision will only allow you to see grey concrete walls and a blinding, distorting light.

Prost!!!

the confucian brewer