By Dick Cantwell

The Tortoise of the Trades

In these days of disaster and decline it seems that most of us—brewers, that is—have done all right. We offer a product not necessarily armor-plated where economic hardship is concerned but at least pretty resilient when it comes to a claim on small sums of discretionary income. Our establishments, for the most part, occupy a modest span of the range of cost offered to the roving consumer and are thereby often considered a downright sensible dining-out alternative, something in many cases to scale back to. Our customer base is loyal, if not necessarily to any single brand at least to the sector, and each competent one of us can count on at least a share of the revenue moving in our collective direction. It isn’t bad, these days, to do what we do.

For brewing, in some ways, is the tortoise of the trades, long-lived, well-protected and compelling where survival is concerned, an ancient species likely to outlive other, apparently fitter forms of mercantile life. For brewing came out of hardship, born amid the necessity of somehow salvaging spoiled food, for whomever first allowed that store of cereal to get wet and begin to go off was in such straits of economy that simply throwing it away wasn’t an option. It was all bound up in survival. Or perhaps his dad would have been really ticked off.

Let’s further consider brewing’s place in a couple of scenarios of survival, the oft-employed desert island, for starters. We need first of all to make a couple of assumptions, having mainly to do with the barest necessities of earthly continuance such as fresh water and fuel, and not necessarily extending to the parameters of Reinheitsgebot. Answer me this: would marooned Germans go without a fermented beverage which may or may not answer to the name of beer rather than sully a dictate I’ve always considered protectionist anyway?

But back to our scenario. You’ve got water, you’ve got fuel to heat liquid in perhaps a crudely reshaped drum or other bit of fire-resistant flotsam, or perhaps your medium of extract doesn’t require boiling—coconut, for example, or some kind of mash of palm or seagrass. Balancing the inevitable sweetness of an improvised wort or must, you could probably through trial and error come up with something—tree bark, seaweed or something otherwise vegetal to render something sufficiently palatable to build brand loyalty and keep your fellow islanders coming back for more. On second thought, forget what I said about seaweed. Fal Allen used to have parties at which, harking back to his essentially shipwrecked youth, he served his guests a beverage consisting of everything fermentable in the house—honey, maple syrup, canned peaches, ketchup—drunk out of a coconut shell. It’s that kind of resourcefulness we’re looking for. As far as yeast is concerned, you won’t need to call Dave Logsdon or Chris White to get an undisciplined fermentation going. And once you’ve got your island brewery on-line, you’ll be hard-pressed to keep up with demand (look at Kona). If like me you’re the member of a lineage long-excused from military service due to the little-known fishing deferment, you can trade for fish or other foodstuff. You can hire a distiller and diversify your business, and of course with a palm frond or two you can get into the tavern business. Before too long you’re at the top of the trade heap in your little corner of the sun-raked, sea-lashed, inhospitable world--at least until somebody bigger than you decides that what you need is insurance.

My favorite survival fantasy involves brewing after the nuclear apocalypse. You were running a problematical transfer or something far, far underground when a well-distributed skein of dirty bombs burbled into ignition, or perhaps the Big One, in true retro fashion, finally came in over the Pole. When you come topside to finish the crossword puzzle, there’s nobody there, at least at first, until people gradually crawl out of their basements needing a drink. This variation is a bit easier since the way I’ve presented it you’ve probably got at least the rudiments of a functioning brewery, and sufficient stores to continue brewing until you’re able to either scavenge from other, less fortunate locations or perhaps even start growing your own barley amid the wild carrots and sorrel poking hopefully up through the cracks of what’s left of our ultimately transitory world. Of course if all you had is destroyed you’ll have to essentially do a Mad Max version of the desert island bit—fingerless gloves and all. The problem of insurance, or other less structured pillaging is likely to become a factor, but at least you can carry the beer in those Jeepo cans.

Prison, of course, is all about interdependent networks of protection and intimidation, so it’s possible that if that’s where your entrepreneurship takes you, it might become necessary to invite a partner on board. Perhaps your partner has seen the opportunity and taken you on first. Perhaps—well, all this speculation is starting to make me uncomfortable. Let’s just treat the brewing challenge at hand. Depending as it often seems to on bread crusts and other pre-processed foodstuffs, the product issuing from beneath the bunk of the big house brewer has to constitute a style we may as well call Slammer Sumerian. Fortified with jelly and aspertame, possibly bittered with tea or spinach, one has to think that unless it’s literally emetic, the alcoholic constituent of whatever you’re able to turn out will spell success. I wouldn’t think that quality control would be much of an issue, but an enlightened facility might have a microscope somewhere on the premises.

Once several years ago I had as a student in one of my home brewing classes a guy from Saudi Arabia who wanted to be able to go back home and turn out something he could tolerate drinking amid the prohibitions of Islamic code. A challenge to survival, no doubt, but we all know that plenty of beer was produced here during the dark days of the Volstead era, so it can be done. It’s doubtful, however, that a lot of malt is available in Saudi Arabia, so barring a supply of malt syrup intended for cooking, my advice and instruction to him centered more on making mead, or perhaps something using the date syrup he said was a fairly common foodstuff. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and almost anything can be used to make a fermented beverage. I know a guy in Oklahoma who on a dare brewed a beverage from grass clippings, distilled it and flavored it to drinkability with apricots. The path to enlightenment, after all, often incorporates misstep and seeming perversity. The guy who first malted cereal and made beer probably wasn’t initially thrilled with what he had done, but both he and his dad were probably reasonably happy with what he had discovered. The nature of the product we produce pretty much ensures our collective survival, no matter what curves the world throws us.