Ontario Community Newspapers

Waterloo Chronicle (Waterloo, On1868), 5 Apr 1989, p. 8

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PAGE 8 â€" WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY APRIL 5, 1989 Feature Having nearly â€" mastered fruits and vegetables, a new mystery has come along. Yeast. Before Louis Pasteur, yeast was a mystery to everybody. People didn‘t know it was a living thing. They just knew it worked in the fermenting proâ€" cess for wine and beer. That was in November. Verâ€" onica and I have been making our own beer ever since. Trouble is, friends of ours named Kim and Elsa decided we should be making our own beer. They brought over a kit to get us started. Here‘s the process, oversimâ€" plified: We mix stuff from a kit I might have made it through life without giving a second thought to yeast. in "(or Spring /!\ Marriage has helped. My wife, Veronica, has introduced my to things. I now know what broccoli is, although someâ€" times [ confuse it with another vegetable whose name I can‘t remember .3 ALLUP T0 _ w VÂ¥ 10« shop early for bestselection To me, a fourâ€"leaf clover had to be where two busy highways met. I‘m still not sure which end of a carrot is up. I‘ve been an agricultural ignoramus. I had no idea raisins were dried grapes. I thought pimenâ€" tos grew inside olives. I still can‘t imagine people being paid to stuff those little green things with even smaller red things. Richard O‘Brien Chronicle Staff It was only a few years ago I realized pickles were made from cucumbers. Beer yeast works in packs, man \ & SIKCIRTS j P\ "1000" MA; 1 L 2 C,.h ce _ _ %V /A /‘\l\‘ Reg. to $85. It shouldn‘t be surprising to learn this, considering. Yeast comes in a dry form. Before it goes to work, it might not have eaten anything in months. Or maybe it has never eaten anything. Maybe it just sits there, dry and hungry, until somebody throws it in a pailful of future beer. I hope I‘m wrong, but I think a yeast cell must look like one of those monsters that goes around trying to eat the good guys in a Pac Man game. A little packet of the stuff, even smaller than the packets of ketchup you get at fast food places, is enough to convert five gallons of mixture into And it doesn‘t need wings to fly. All it needs is a mouth with a body around it. It‘s right in the middle of its food, so it doesn‘t need arms or legs to get around. Neither does it need fins like a fish. And I don‘t really want to know. I don‘t even think I‘d drink water if I saw it under a microscope. What could yeast look like, if all it does is eat? I‘m glad I can only see the bubbles because I have an idea of what a yeast cell must look like under a microscope. I‘m told that yeast is what makes it bubble. Yeast eats the sugar and some of the malt, produces alcohol and burps carbon dioxide. with water and corn sugar. It sits for a while, bubbling, in a plastic pail. When it slows down and clears, we add more sugar and bottle it. 1984 There‘s a lot to be said about letting a hydrometer tell you when the yeast (we keep com:â€" ing back to that) has done its job and it‘s time for bottling. But maybe I‘m the wrong person to get that from. I just keep getting caught up in the small mysteries and they keep getting bigger. Let me just say that if I can make beer, anyone can. You don‘t have to underâ€" stand it. You just have to do it. ‘Scuse me, while I go drink to I might have mentioned how a capper works and how imporâ€" tant it is to sterilize everyâ€" thing you use in the beer making process. Somewhere along the way I‘ve lost track of What I inâ€" tended. I meant totell you how good the beer tastes and whether or not you can get feeling good on a dollar, deâ€" pending on your body mass. A subscription to Harrowsâ€" mith would be in order. What is malt, 1 wonder. What are hops? I wouldn‘t know barley if I rolled through a field of it. I missed out on the ‘back to the earth‘ days. Maybe it pigs out when it finally hits the jackpot. Along the way it could reproduce, making little yeast cells that help it get through the five gallons. But I‘ll likely never know. I can‘t think about it without realizing that I don‘t know exactly what the yeast is eatâ€" ing. I only see it in kit form, where it‘s aromatic and slow as molasses. Richard holds a bottled sample of his work up to the light to check for clarity. au Nop J to $ y / 6°8>7/ __G°7 _ hous Al Remaj,, l'ng :;311 alld ,'Vl'n ter trven tory N Or..

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