Trouble Brewing (well, and actually Arrow as well) (solo)

[Arrow]

Fall 61, 511 A.V.

One green eye opened sleepily. The rays of Syna had not yet reached through his windows, but she had already risen above the horizon beyond the wall of the town. In his sleep, Arrow had shifted back to his day time, human form. With a prodigious yawn, he pushed himself upright and swung his legs over the edge of the narrow bed. The bare floor was chilly on his feet, despite the beleaguered warmth from the hearth which was fighting valiantly to recapture the one room cottage. He heard Trouble stirring and called out a congenial good morning, dressing quickly and stepping out from behind the curtain to assist her in their breakfast preparations. As there was always an abundance of beer on hand, so too there was an abundance of spent grain, or draff, from the brewing process. Most mornings saw the two housemates wolfing down a delicious hot cereal made from some of yesterday’s draff, sweetened with honey if they had it. Typically there was goat milk to wash it down with, or tea. Soon enough, they were done with their morning meal. Arrow was almost always starving in the morning, his more earthy body suffering from the abstinence of his Ethaefal form. After a quick washing up, it was time to get to work.

Almost every day, Arrow would brew a batch of beer, enough to produce about five gallons of end product. Trouble was responsible for grinding up the malted barley they had worked on all during the summer, as the winter, though relatively mild, wasn’t warm enough to dry the grain as the summer sun would. Arrow had traded a stone mason beer for a simple stone mill, about a foot in diameter and six inches high. The two stones sat snugly on top of one another, with a wooden crank handle in the top center to turn the top stone. A small hole allowed for the introduction of handfuls of grain. The mill was useful enough to make coarse flour, but of course for brewing, all that was needed was roughly cracked grain. Trouble would use odd minutes of time during the day to add to the supply of readied barley, and Arrow need only measure it out into the copper lautering tun, eyeballing the amount with fairly decent accuracy.

Water was added and the mash heated in the tun to a temperature well below boiling. Arrow was always careful to keep a close eyes on each step of the procedure. Temperatures could be critical to success or failure, and wood burning fires were tricky to regulate. But his now years of experience had taught him a few tricks. The mash was allowed to simmer for about a half hour, extracting the sugars in the partially sprouted grain which would ultimately be converted into alcohol. At the end of thirty minutes or so, the spigot at the bottom of the copper was opened and the lauter was allowed to drain off through a metal tube into another copper. Trouble would have ready the sieve like pan used for sparging the spent grain, which she would hold over the draff while Arrow gently poured clean hot water through it. The water rinsed the remaining sugars off the barley, which by this point sat on the false bottom of the tun, to keep it from flowing down into the tube leading to the second copper. While Arrow proceeded to the next step, Trouble usually would take on the task of scooping off the frothy tieg (a pasty protein substance) from the draff before collecting the spent grain and preparing it for whatever further purpose it was destined. Beside breakfast cereal, the spent grain provided the two with a highly useful bartering commodity.

With the sweet malt liquor, the lauter, in the second copper, Arrow would bring it to a boil and keep it there for about an hour and a half. Very careful attention had to be paid to it to keep it from boiling over. It was during this phase that flavorings and aromatics would be added. The dried cones of the hops vine were one such bittering agent, added to counteract the sweet taste of the lauter. But Arrow had experimented with a variety of herbs and plants, and on this day he added juniper twigs at the beginning of the boil. Most of the flavorings and aromatics that he preferred to use were those he and Trouble collected, specifically because they were free. His brewing business was very small scale, and he tried to be frugal where possible. In his experimentations, he had also discovered that there some flavoring agents he really preferred to others, and he would often give out samples to anyone who wished to try a new brew, in the hopes of drumming up more custom.

During the boil, he would bring a book into the brewing shed and take a moment here and a minute there to do some copy work. He had to be quite careful, though, to not get too engrossed with reading and contemplating whatever subject the book contained. Towards the end of the boil, he added a small amount of lemon balm, for its aromatic effect. Then shortly thereafter, he summoned Trouble to hold the strainer, as he opned the spigot to allow the unfermented “beer” – the wort – to flow into one of the thick stoneware crocks. These crocks served as the primary fermentation container, and each had a tightly fitting lid which he would bang in place with a hammer once the wort had cooled and the yeast had been pitched. Each crock had an air lock which was crucial to venting the gases produced by the fermenting sugars as the yeast worked its magic. Having awoken one night to the sound of a crock’s lid clattering to the floor, and rushing into the shed to see the resultant mess of yeast gone wild, Arrow was careful to check the air locks several times a day, to keep them clear and functioning. Once the crock was sealed, he moved it, carefully, to sit with the others for the first ten days of fermentation. It was impossible to keep the temperature of the shed constant, so he had had to experiment with various types and amounts of yeasts to determine what was called for in any given season. Beer could be quite temperamental. Judging that the next two weeks would remain warm enough, he had chosen the strain that worked best in a warmer environment and the resultant ale would be much lighter than the colder temperature lagers.

All in all, after about three hours of his morning spent on his brewing, Arrow was ready to open his “shop”, which really meant his cottage, to any customers who might be looking to buy, sell or trade a book (which was rare), or have some copy work done. In the interim, there was plenty to do to keep busy and in furtherance of keeping body and soul together, both his and Trouble’s. Of course, being kelvic, if she had to she could simply shift and fend for herself that way. Arrow was rather touched that she never seemed to think to do that.

With a possible break to spend an hour or two tutoring a pupil, or going out to forage for supplies, Arrow passed the rest of his day until the afternoon, when he began to make his daily round of private homes that bought his beers and the few taverns that had lately become somewhat steady customers. Trouble would usually accompany him, having already seen to her own business, which involved bartering the spent grain to a variety of customers who provided them with a variety of needed items in return. With the goat and cart they “leased” from the old, old woman who owned it, in exchange for draff for feed, Arrow would load up the extremely heavy kegs of finished product and the three companions would be off on their afternoon and evening rounds.

[Arrow]

Depending on the daily temperatures, and the concomitant state of activity of the yeast, as seen through the air lock, on any given day it might be necessary or advisable for Arrow to rack a batch of beer into the wooden casks from which it would be served. On this particular day, it appeared that several of the crocks had gone quiet. As they had been filled between ten to twelve days ago, he thought he had better get to the racking before the yeast began to fail and thus risk the beer going flat. So, after a lunch time meal, Arrow set about scouring two wooden casks, each of which could hold five gallons of beer. This done, he carefully brought a honey-water mix to a boil, for purity, and let it cool. All that remained at this point was to siphon the wort from the stoneware crocks, into the kegs, and add a carefully measured amount of the cooled sugar water before sealing them up. From this point on, the casks would need at least another ten days for the secondary fermentation to occur. The still active yeast would act upon the added sugars to create the gas (carbon dioxide) which gave the ale its bubbly lift, for this time there was no venting. The beer could be sold now and the final phase of conditioning could occur in a tavern’s tap room, if they so desired. The less jostling about the product got, the better, and letting it sit in the same place that it would be tapped had its advantages. But, for the most part, Arrow would store the kegs along side of the crocks, and sell off the contents once fermentation was deemed complete. The beer he sold. The kegs, each with his own mark on it, he retrieved once emptied.

It took no more than a couple of hours to rack the beer and then clean everything up. Trouble was gone to deliver some draff to a man who kept a few pigs to raise for his own use. In return they had already enjoyed the slab of bacon he had traded for the grain. It was in these myriad, small exchanges that the two managed to get by, for the book trade was quite unsteady, his copy work was often laborious and lengthy to get to a final product and payment, and the brewing was still in its fledgling stages. Arrow was hampered by space, and it would have been a great luxury to have an actual storage room where temperatures could be better controlled. Winter would soon be upon them and that would mean brewing lagers and not ales. He quite enjoyed the process though, as it provided ample opportunity for experimentation.

A few hours before sunset, Trouble returned with the goat and the cart in tow. In exchange for providing draff for feed, milking it each morning and evening, and keeping its pen clean, Old Maania, its owner, shared half the milk with Trouble and allowed Arrow the use of the animal and the cart as needed to transport the kegs, which weighed around fifty pounds each. Maania had shown the girl how to make cheese from the milk. That which they didn’t eat themselves, Trouble bartered to others, often the same customers who purchased their beer. It was a sweet deal, and Arrow thought the old woman was as much motivated by her desire for Trouble’s company each day as she was by any profit. She was very ancient and knit up with arthritis, so she could not have taken care of the goat or the milking herself in any event. The old woman and the girl had become fast friends, and Arrow was glad of it, for he sometimes thought that Trouble spent far too much time with just him for company. He had spoken to her about the fact that she needn’t feel so obligated to work all the time. She should really spend some time with children her own age, he would worry. Then again, being kelvic, her age was a bit muddled and deceptive. Trouble seemed unconcerned about it all, saying she didn’t need to play with other children as she had Maania, Cat and Nan, the goat, to keep her happy – oh and Arrow himself, of course. Though not entirely satisfied with that response, Arrow didn’t push the matter, as he knew two things with certainty. The first was that Trouble’s help was invaluable and if she was gone off playing for hours at a time, much work around the place would go undone until he himself could get to it. Secondly, He knew full well how stubborn Trouble was and once she had her mind made up, there was really no way to change it. So, if she was happy with the arrangements, he was not going to complain.

Soon enough, he had two kegs perched on the back of the brightly painted little cart and they were on their way. Their route could vary greatly in length, depending upon where their house had moved to during the night, or day, or where the others were moved to, depending on how you wanted to look at it. Arrow sometimes wondered, if the wall was not encircling the city, would the houses run away altogether? Again, he was quite happy to have the aid of Trouble, whose bird like senses seemed to allow her to keep track of where things were, no matter how they shifted about. So some days they set off to their right, some to their left. One day they might find all of their customers clustered in close proximity to each other. Another day they might be spread out across the entire city. When they located one, Trouble would go knock on whatever door seemed most appropriate, and whoever they dealt with would usually hand her out a pitcher or a small bucket or a crock. Trouble would bring this to the cart and Arrow would pour the desired amount into it from a keg. There were a very few private customers who bought his beer a keg at a time. Most preferred a daily delivery, which of course went flat quite quickly if not consumed. Although, Arrow would often point out to new customers, or old gaffers that liked to argue around a bar counter, that beer, like wine, benefited from some breathing, and mixing with the air for a bit before consumption. So this method of tapping a keg and pouring out a batch and letting it sit exposed for a short while was, in his mind, a good thing.

These daily rounds were in fact accompanied by much conversation, gossiping and chatting. This was why Arrow sent Trouble to the doors, to avoid what he had found could be quite a problem when it was he himself doing most of the interacting. It was also why he tried to get his deliveries done before the sun set. For the most part, these home based customers were women, at least the person they dealt with would be a female. Whether the lady of the house herself, or a servant of some type, it was generally one who, once he assumed his nighttime form, was prone to fits of nervous giggles, or batting eyelashes, or outright flirtatious, and sometimes wildly inappropriate, suggestions. Not every woman or girl reacted this way. But there had been enough uncomfortable situations that Arrow had resolved to do as much business as he could in his day time form, and let Trouble be the conduit for idle chatter and gossip. When attempting to drum up new custom, Arrow of course would take the lead, though Trouble had actually been the source of a good number of their most loyal patrons.

Once they had hit the private residences on their round, they would move on to the small (specifically, two) number of taverns that would buy from them. Arrow’s brewing operation was just too small to keep any tavern in beer on a major scale. It was here that his experimentation paid off. Of the two publicans that favored him with business, one liked to buy a keg or two of something new, and try it out on his customers. He was a brewer himself, and Arrow had spent many, many hours in his affable company discussing everything from technique to ingredients to astrological influences on beer production. It was this man, Aesok, that had convinced Arrow to try his hand at making some wines, which even now were fermenting quietly in bottles back at the cottage. Aesok also had a still which he and Arrow were making plans for, along the lines of distilling some whiskey. The other tavern owner was far more surly and wanted beer only when he was running short of his regular stock. And he wanted only that flavored with hops, no experimentation for him. Arrow had approached other taverns, but so far with no luck. His inability to supply more than a keg a day was just too limiting, though they highly approved of the samples he provided them. The quality was excellent. It was the quantity that was lacking.

This day saw Arrow and the girl getting through their round fairly easily, and as they trudged homewards, Arrow tried not to worry too much about the state of affairs of his coin purse. Having roamed the earth for four centuries, he had come to believe that, regardless of circumstances, “something will come up.”

Continued here