Another aspect of EOTW survival... where's my beer?

Fletcher Knives

Fletcher Knives

STEEL BREATHING BLADE MAESTRO
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I don't know about you guys, but I have been seriously pondering for the past couple of years a very important aspect of my happiness in an EOTW situation, the procurement of suds.

Let's say, you've done a great job of stockpiling water, food, medical supplies, ammo, etc. All of a sudden, you discover an imminent EOTW fiasco about to unfold the next day. Today is your last chance to do any last minute stocking of necessities.

Then, you suddenly remember, "OH MY GAWD. I ONLY HAVE 3 BEERS LEFT IN THE FRIDGE.":eek:

You turn on your TV to see channel after channel of the live news coverage. Stores are being looted everywhere. You realize that if you try to make a way to any beer selling establishment, you'll be caught up in the frenzy. You know that if you want to be safe and be there to protect your family, you have to stay home. ...plus it's Sunday and you live in Georgia. You start to consider your options. No, that won't work. No, you can't hijack your neighbor's beer. He let you borrow his lawnmower. Damnit! There's nothing you can do. WHAT DO YOU DO!

If you're me, you simply sit back, relax, and tell your wife, "honey, I'll be in the guest room for a while. Gotta make another batch. Yell if I need to plug anyone who gets too close to the house."

For the past year or so, I've been looking into home brewing kits. You can get the crappy little kit from Best Buy, etc. for like $100 and who knows how that stuff will turn out. Option 2, spend top dollar on setting up a serious home brewing outfit, that is if you have the dough, which in this day and age, if you're like me, you don't.

Today, a series of events unfolded that solved this problem for me, almost as though is was designed and carried out by the big guy himself.

A guy came in the shop. He milled around the Yamaha Rhinos and Kawasaki Mules for a bit. I walked out and asked if he needed help with anything. We chit chatted for a while and I showed him a few Mules and Rhinos. We discussed pricing. He was kinda on the fence, but it looked like he was going to fold any second. His shirt had a funny beer phrase on it. I said, "cool shirt."
He said, "yeah. It's my work shirt."
I said, "really? What do you do?"
He said, "I'm the owner of asdfghjkl." (asdfghjkl being the unnamed world famous microbrewery and home brewing supply company.)
I said, "let's walk outside for a sec and talk some bidness. Less ears on da street."
After some discussion, we agreed. The deal is, I knock a sizeable amount off the price of the Mule he picked out, and he sets me up with a really good complete home brewing outfit and all the supplies necessary to make a buttload of beer for a long time.

Yet again, the perks of this job never seize to amaze me. Thanks to being in the right place at the right time and selling the right product, now my "where to get my EOTW suds" dilemma is officially solved. I'm going to pick up all the equipment from him on Saturday. I can't wait! I think that after I make a batch I like, I'm going to name it "EOTW". :D

Ahhhhh. One less survival problem out of the way.

Now I can figure out where the hell I'm going to grow my...

tomatoes.:p
 
Sounds like me and the girlfriend are gonna make our way to Alpharetta come the EOTW. Please learn to make a good brown ale.
 
I like beer very much and it shows. *pats his belly* It's often been claimed that beer is the cornerstone of civilization; man settled down to farm after discovering how to ferment fruits and grains. I'm sure that's at least partly true.

However, cider and wine are a lot easier to make and require less equipment. Sure, you can certainly go hog wild on equipment, but honestly you can make good apple cider in the jug the juice came in with a $.99 packet of wine yeast and a $2 airlock. If you own or have access to fruit trees or bushes, you're set, baby! There's nothing better than a chilled glass of homemade strawberry wine. :)
 
Milk is for babies; when you grow up you have to drink beer. -- Arnold Schwarzenegger
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer. -- Dave Barry
Bavarian monks brewed double bocks as sustenance for their Lenten fasts. Since they were allowed drink but no food, they developed a nourishing, high-alcohol beer.
Nothing quenches the thirst like a wheat beer, or sharpens the appetite like an India pale ale. Nothing goes as well with seafood as a dry porter or stout, or accompanies chocolate like an imperial stout. Nothing soothes like a barley wine. These are just a few of the specialty styles of beer. -- Michael Jackson
So popular is beer, the world's best-selling alcoholic drink, that it is often taken for granted. Yet scientific analysis shows that a glass of beer has within it as many aromas and flavors as fine wine. Not everyone understands this, but an increasing number of people do. -- Michael Jackson
Whoever makes a poor beer is transferred to the dung-hill. -- Edict, City of Danzig, 11th Century
Beer drinking doesn't do half the harm as love-making. -- Anonymous
Fermentation and civilization are inseparable. -- John Ciardi (1916-1986)
Give me a woman who truly loves beer, and I will conquer the world. -- Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941)
He who drinks beer sleeps well.
He who sleeps well cannot sin.
He who does not sin goes to heaven.
Amen. -- Unknown German Monk
It is better to think of church in the ale-house than to think of the ale-house in church. -- Martin Luther (1483-1546)
The selling of bad beer is a crime against Christian love. -- Law, the City of Augsburg, 13th Century
A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation. -- William Blake
Beer is proof that God loves us. -- Ben Franklin
It is my design to die in the brew-house;
let ale be placed to my mouth when I am expiring, that when the choirs of angels come,
they may say, "Be God propitious to this drinker." -- Saint Columbanus, A.D. 612
From man's sweat and God's love, beer came into the world. -- Saint Arnoldus
God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
There are more old drunks than old doctors. -- Anonymous
Of doctors and medicines we have in plenty more than enough...
what you may, for the Love of God, send is some large quantity of beer. --
Dispatch from the Colony, New South Wales, 1854
The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be. -- George Orwell (1903-1950)
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer. -- Henry Lawson
Wine is but single broth, ale is meat, drink, and cloth. -- 16th Century English Proverb
At social parties no gentleman ever thought of leaving the table sober;
the host would have considered it a slight on his hospitality. --
F.W. Hackwood, comment on manners, 18th Century England
Beer..."a high and mighty liquor." -- Julius Caesar
Of beer, an enthusiast has said that it could never be bad, but that some brands might be better than others. -- A.A. Milne
Beer, of course, is actually a depressant, but poor people will never stop hoping otherwise. -- Curt Vonnegut, Jr., Hocus Pocus, 1990
He is not deserving the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale, that is, good ale. -- George Borrow (1803-1881)
Ere's to English women an' a quart of English beer. -- Rudyard Kipling
For a quart of Ale is a dish for a King. -- Shakespeare (A Winter's Tale)
I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety. --William Shakespeare (King Henry V)
There's nothing as heartening as the sight of an empty pub in the morning, the shelves full and everything spick and span before the barbarian hordes come in. Them that drinks bottles spoil the look of the shelves but draught is a different story - you never see the barrel going down. -- Patrick McGinley
No poems can live long or please that are written by water-drinkers. -- Horace 65-8 BC
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. -- Oscar Wilde
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. -- Henny Youngman
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy. -- Tom Waits
Beer is good food. -- John Goodman
All other nations are drinking Ray Charles beer and we are drinking Barry Manilow. -- Dave Barry
Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. -- Dave Barry's Bad Habits
The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind. -- Humphrey Bogart
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
Give a man a beer, and he wastes an hour, but teach a man how to brew, and he wastes a lifetime.
He that buys land buys many stones,
He that buys flesh buys many bones,
He that buys eggs buys many shells,
But he that buys good ale buys nothing else.
-- John Ray
Draft beer, not people.
Hey, bartender, a thousand pints of light! -- Second City Players
The last swallow of lager is the worst and the last swallow of an ale is the best.
Beauty lies in the hands of the beerholder.
 
i brew my own beer. it has saved me a ton of money. its a great hobby and makes your really appreciate the craft of making a fine beer.
 
I have a buddy at school who brews amazing beer in a turkey-fryer. Excellent skill to have, especially in a EOTW situation. Imagine the bartering potential!!
 
Dyl, congrats on the deal you managed to work out for yourself! I'm guessing you're off the road now, so I'll have to hit you up for that Izula sheath I had emailed you about!:D
 
vret said:
Dyl, congrats on the deal you managed to work out for yourself! I'm guessing you're off the road now, so I'll have to hit you up for that Izula sheath I had emailed you about!:D
Click to expand...

Yep. I'm making several sheaths starting next week.
 
Home brewing is a great activity and something that I have played with on and off for years. In a true EOTW sitation, however, getting raw materials might be problematic. Technically all you need are water, barley and hops, but hops are not exactly a widely distributed crop and might drop well down any susitence farmers list of crops to grow in hard times.

Having and excees would make for great trade goods, though! :D
 
You can actually rig up a decent brewing setup with but a minimal investment if you try hard enough. My father occasionally whips up some mighty tasty homebrew, and he uses antique bottles that we've found in old woods-dumps from back in the days before recycling and the ever-dreaded twist-off cap. :D

Congrats on the new rig, Dylside, and a wonderful collection of quotes, Pitdog! :p
 
I simply stock pile wine. Wine keeps. The new synthetic corks are rated to 10 years storage provided you bottle under good sanitary conditions. I also have a dad who runs a u-brew shop. So I bottle there and store it at home. At one point we had 500 bottles in the cellar. Then I moved my mother down, and my teenage boy turned 18 (he shouldn't be dipping into the stock but I have my suspicions). It seems my cellar is quite as robust as it used to be.
 
kgd said:
I simply stock pile wine. Wine keeps.
Click to expand...
The same is even more true with hard liquore! I'm not a huge drinker any more, but I keep a couple cases of Irish whiskey under the stairs. Probably enough to keep me sipping for years. :D
 
what brewery is it by the way. i got some beer here from 2007 from a brewery in athens ga. it an imperial coffee stout.

the cool thing about brewing your own beer is you can make it to your liking and usually get about 2 cases of great beer for around 20-50 buck depending on the grain bill. which is great in this economy. i can afford to drink good beer anymore but i can afford to make it myself and i have a keg setup in the garage. if you have any questions i would glad to help. i brew almost every week if i can. also make sure you tell him you want to do all grain brewing its the cheapest to get the ingredients and the best way to mess with the recipes to make the best beer. but extract is fun too. i am a hands on guy so i like being involved in every process of brewing.
 
I'm imagining Bud Light's Real Men of Genius here.

Bud Light salutes you, Mr. Motorcycle Discount Barterer.
You offer great deals on smooth rides and all you require,
is a little reciprocity, and a home brewing kit to power through the apocalypse.
When judgement day comes, the world as we know it will end,
But you won't know because you're down in the basement pouring raisins into a boiling vat. So here's to you, Mr. Motorcycle Discount Barterer,
May you keep the suds flowing, even when ash is snowing.
 
James_Terrio said:
However, cider and wine are a lot easier to make and require less equipment. Sure, you can certainly go hog wild on equipment, but honestly you can make good apple cider in the jug the juice came in with a $.99 packet of wine yeast and a $2 airlock. If you own or have access to fruit trees or bushes, you're set, baby! There's nothing better than a chilled glass of homemade strawberry wine. :)
Click to expand...

Very true - I currently have 5 gallons of 9% apple wine conditioning in my basement. It's basically hard cider with a little dextrose (corn sugar) added to kick up the alcohol a notch.

Cost of 5 gallon batch:

5 gallons of Treetop apple juice and cider, on sale at safeway - $15
2 lbs of dextrose - $5
1 packet montrachet wine yeast - $1
Airlock - $2
Total: $23 (about $1 per 750ml wine bottle's worth)

Equipment:

Brew bucket - $13
Hydrometer - $6
Siphon and tubing for transfer or bottling - $11

I personally use old Pepsi kegs to store this kind of stuff, but a bottle capper and caps will run you another $20 . . or you could just store the cider in the original apple juice bottles.

Total: $32+

The most important part of cider or wine - no mashing or boiling is necessary. You don't need to convert starch to sugar or boil hops to get bitterness. You just mix the ingredients and store in a cool dark place and wait a few weeks. If it doesn't taste good then, bottle it up and wait 2 months, if it still doesn't taste good, wait a year or more. Eventually it will taste good. The stuff in my basement tasted great after 2 weeks.
 
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