drone

Today, a small batch of strawberry and elderflower mead and a rather larger one of Belgian tripel beer were ready for bottling. Usually, my involvement with the brewing process is marginal, and limited to two activities: 1) sticking caps on bottles and 2) happily imbibing the end result. But as the resident brewmaster general can’t use his hands, I had to do everything today. I was under very strict instructions.

The turban is apparently a necessity. Hair must be covered up. And, it turns out, I am a thoroughly non-sterile sort of person. Lots of me had to be sterilised. Several hours of washing things followed: arms, funnels, tubs, jugs, tubes. And bottles. Lots and lots of bottles. Then there was some boiling, a bit of pouring, some measuring, and lots more pouring. I discovered beer is quite heavy when you have to lug it about in large quantities. And Tom discovered what we both probably knew already: that I could never get a job in his laboratory.

I did aim for precision and accuracy at all stages, but I fear I am too constitutionally messy to ever be a great brewer. While, in the craft activities that I enjoy, mess is very often the raw material of my creativity, in brewing, the only thing that mess is likely to produce is bacteria. And bad beer. And exploding beer bottles.

Still, I had fun (apart from the endless bottle washing. I defy anyone to enjoy that) . And, as you see here, I was very proud of my successfully bottled mead . . .

. . .and the strong Belgian beer in its wee bottles. This is my favourite bottle. Before it was used for our beer it contained Old Tom: Strong Ale.

Cheers!

a whole mess of beer

Monday evening brewing for a messy Tuesday. Mr B has devised a beer that should (if it works!) taste like one of my favourite ales, Cairngorm Brewery’s Trade Winds.

Calculations . . .

. . . mash temperature . . .

. . . blending the hop tea (with secret ingredient) . . .

. . . with a watering can?

testing . . .

. . . gravity

thankfully things have moved on a bit since 1973 . . .

generating steam heat . . .

and chilling . . .

finally, there remains only the waiting.

good stuff

Here is some miscellaneous Good Stuff from the past few days.

First, some delayed stuff for a messy tuesday. We finally bottled the winter lager, which has been cold-stored for the past few months. There was some satisfying mess-making:

. . . an even more satisfactory tasting. . .

. . . and finally, the beer-drone (i.e. me) applied the bottle caps.

Next: having so far stuck to my pledge not to buy any new clothes in 2008 (those who know me will testify that this is a remarkable feat), I somehow felt I should congratulate myself with the purchase of a necklace made by Bronwen Deane, a Newcastle-based jewellery designer.

Deane’s work features cranes, high rises and factories, reproducing these familiar images and icons of industrial Tyneside in a new and unexpected context. On her website, Deane writes that “combining these images of brutal architecture with the delicacy and preciousness of jewellery encourages the viewer to examine these familiar landmarks and reconsider them.” I really love her work, and am very pleased indeed with my new necklace.

Finally, some really Good Stuff arrived in the post from the wonderful Felix

A whole bundle of treats from the Missability palace of dreams. This is a fantastic project and I urge everyone who hasn’t done so to check out the website, which includes details of the fabulous second knitted walking stick cosy competition, closing on May 1st.

Thanks Felix x

messy tuesdays (2)

This is the kind of mess I really like

I find textile waste really very beautiful and like selvedges so much that I cannot throw them away. One day I shall find a use for them. As favourite messes go, sewing waste comes a close second to this kind of textile-related mess:

This is rucksack and tent and sleeping bag mess. It will stay messy until it has aired, or until I can be arsed to put it away. It is a pleasing indoor mess which signals that a good time has been had outdoors. And indeed a good time was had this weekend, both in the North:

(snowdance by Loch Assynt)

. . . and in the South

(Pentland skyline)

messy tuesdays

After reading Felix and Lara’s superb manifesto and posts, I am inspired to celebrate messy tuesdays.

“Neat” in the rooms in which I live, is a rare and fragile thing. There are mountains of mess at the margins of the tidy, just waiting to seep in.

You see here one corner of my work pod. Others may more accurately describe this space as a “cupboard”. Note the mess, above, steadily encroaching on the workspace, below. If you are short, like me, the mess is above eye-level and virtually invisible. And in any case, I am fond of the mess: it is a sort of sculptural testimony to space-saving. It is frankly amazing what you can fit in a space three feet by six feet by eight feet high: computer, printer and associated gadgets; three bookshelves filled with books; my entire stash of fabric and wool; half of my packed away wardrobe (I have to rotate clothes between winter and summer); numerous old handbags and pairs of worn out shoes; boxes of photographs; old letters and greetings cards; a frightening assortment of wooden animals; several eighteenth-century prints; a small rug; a clarinet; me sat at my desk, and a commemorative bottle from 1876 in the shape of George Washington.

I love mess. Mess is archeology.

(who knows what crappy detritus hides beneath the keys, or how long it has been there)

Mess is pleasure, and the memory of pleasure:

(last night’s drinks)

And it is the stuff of potential:

(this mess may soon be made into something else).

Mess is good because it is stuff in the process of becoming. It might well become more mess, or it might turn into something else entirely. I am put in mind of Bill Brown’s account of Toy Story, in a great article he published ten years ago. Brown gives a superb reading of the mutant toys under Sid’s bed –”a one-eyed baby’s head on an erector-set spider, a pair of Barbie legs attached to a miniature fishing pole” — as things of tremendous transformative power. For him, these essentially messy objects are suggestive of a “wish to transfigure things-as-they-are.” To me, tidyness is an acceptance of things as they are. Mess, on the other hand, is the wish for transformation.