{"id":365,"date":"2009-02-22T20:31:51","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T03:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=365"},"modified":"2009-02-22T20:31:51","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T03:31:51","slug":"sophic-suds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":"Sophic Suds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/loneprimate\/152707010\/\" target=\"_New\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/53\/152707010_446a33f8fe_d.jpg\" title=\"'When Beer Ruled the Earth', by 'Lone Primate' on Flickr - You should really click through and read the caption that goes with it...\" alt=\"A beer-colored, sepia-tone-like picture of glass of beer overlooking a valley\" style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;\" \/><\/a><br \/>(Image: &#8220;When Beer Ruled the Earth&#8221; &#8211; you should really click through and read the caption that goes with it&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>A fundamental aspect of my personal philosophy is this:  If you <em>cannot<\/em> play with something, you have not mastered it, and if you <em>do not<\/em> play with it, you <em>will not<\/em> master it.<\/p>\n<p>I can sit here and read for hours, but it&#8217;s time I actually put my hands on some brewing again.  I have a pound each of wheat and amber dried malt extract, an ounce of a low-bitterness (~2.9% alpha-acids) pellet hops, a packet of medium-attenuation dried beer yeast, two <span class=\"moreinfo\" title=\"about 2.5 gallons\" onclick=\"alert(this.title);\">39 millihogshead<\/span> plastic containers that I can use as fermenters, an early-20th-century hand-cranked blower\/bellows, a hot glue gun, a gallon of pineapple juice, some air-line tubing, a cabinet full of spices (including, of course, ginger), at least one small room air-filter, several pounds of honey, perhaps half a cup of granular erythritol, glycerol, a whole mess of glass bottles and bottlecaps, a variety of high-caffeine black tea bags, miscellaneous kitchen implements, a couple of copper-coated scouring pads, a selection of two-liter PETE bottles, iodophor concentrate, a hydrometer, a somewhat overstressed and twisted mind, a wife, four cats, and a dog.  What shall I make?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m thinking I should aim for a mildly sweet brew with a ginger bite, perhaps adding a bit of tea or pepper if the sweetness needs balancing &#8211; but of course part of the goal of the exercise here will be to try to adapt to whatever I&#8217;m getting along the way&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Suggestions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Image: &#8220;When Beer Ruled the Earth&#8221; &#8211; you should really click through and read the caption that goes with it&#8230;) A fundamental aspect of my personal philosophy is this: If you cannot play with something, you have not mastered it, and if you do not play with it, you will not master it. I can &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=365\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sophic Suds<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,4,9,14,18,13,6,21],"tags":[50,44,329,61],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brew","category-feedback-solicitation","category-food-science","category-grossly-oversimplified-science","category-hillbilly-biotech","category-me-me-me","category-microbiology","category-play-with-it","tag-beer","tag-brewing","tag-ingredients","tag-yeast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}