Wort & Words

Saturday, donning our Russian Hats with the obligatory ear flaps that made us look like Disney's Goofy, my brewing comrade and I cooked up a Russian Imperial Ale. Originally brewed by an English brewmaster for Catherine the Great, it is essentially a British Stout with a super-sized amount of dark malt and hops.

For those not in the know, malt is the starch-to-sugar component that yeast consumes and the output is alcohol. The more sugar, the higher the ABV. Hops, on the other hand, are the bittering or acidic element of beer. Like a see-saw, beers are some balance between the sweet malt and the biting hops. Beers go one way or another on the spectrum typically. What is unusual about the Russian Imperial Ale it is large in both the malt and the hops.

Not sure what this conveys about the national character of Russia and the Czars. My Russky hat came with a Hammer and Sickle and Russian Star emblems to adorn the front fur of the hat. I decided that to wear these pieces would be equivalent of wearing a swastika and I tossed them in the trash. I was thinking about putting them on the front of the hat as a joke but then concluded that it was no joking matter. Hitler and Stalin, in a race to the bottom of Hell, probably would tie. Stalin had a perspective that people were machines to be discarded at will. Hitler's ideology was more biological in that he saw undesirable people groups as bacteria. A materialist worldview opens the door of Hades.

As Tim Keller notes, if your origin is insignificant and your destiny is insignificant, guess what? Your life is insignificant. We must be more than what makes the stars. For stars implode and explode and we cry no tears. Why should our creation and dissolution mean more? Ask the scientist and philosopher of the age squirm when questions like this are asked.

Well, back to brewing.

The  brewing of beer has a lot of parallels to writing a book. In fact, I stopped homebrewing to concentrate on my book. The audience of the book is like the water of the Wort (pic above). Hopefully, it has been boiled and converted the malt's starch of potential to the sugar of active interest. I am not convinced that books create an audience. The audience is already there with something in their souls, a question of sorts, that needs to be answered or fulfilled. This is not to suggest that all of our inclinations and hungers are good. Many are not. But, the hotter the issue, the better chance the questions are purer or at least should be. It is a pity to see hungry and thirsty people continuing to try and quench existential desires through that which has provoked such hunger and thirst to start with. What is needed is soul force not more of the dainties of the world that are here today and gone tomorrow along with the appetites passing away with it. The heart remains empty and alone. Hot desert sands and ghost mirages.

A writer also needs an edge to his or her writing. Like hops. Saying the same old things the same old way does nothing to attract literary palates. A writer who does not address the bitter elements with life without offering better uses for bitterness besides depression and desolation, really are not worth being read. Adversity is a good teacher of what really matters. The acid erodes the irrelevant and the passing. What remains is battle-tested. Scarred perhaps but stronger because of the testing.

Yeast is an interesting element of the ingredient list of beer-making, the catalyst. I had a Scofied Bible with Commentary where he made the comment that all yeast and leaven references in the Bible were showing the evil of yeast/leaven. Although I was hardly an informed biblical scholar, I knew that was bullshit. Matthew 13:33 is where Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to leaven. I figured if Scofield got that wrong, yeast/leaven in the Bible is neutral depending on what doctrine it foments and ferments, I concluded that Scofield and his crazy premilennial dispensational theology was probably pretty poorly thought out. I came to the understanding of Covenant which is the biblical basis for faith, not a dispensationalism, which is like dysentery that drains the Bible of power. As if God has to come up with Plans A, B,C, D, E, F, depending on the whims of puny man and the Big Devil.

I lost that Bible unintentionally. Maybe it got raptured? The best loss that ever happened to me. It was a prison of bad theology leading to cultural disengagement and disinterest in the culture of the world. Instead, pull sinners out of the fires just to have them go cold as a stone in Church.     

Yeast also does it work with or without air. It is one of the few organisms that can prosper in an anaerobic or aerobic environment. I admire that trait of survivability. How about us. Do we depend on ample oxygen (favorable conditions) to prosper? Or can we work when conditions are not ideal?  We pitched the yeast into the Wort and trust that God will bring good out of it all. I saw this poster at my Dad's house yesterday. I have always imagined Paradise to be a sort of Library. Or Brewery. Or both.