Farmhouse Ale Experiment
Last year, before my series of surgeries, I set out to prove to myself that a beer could be grown and brewed entirely within the confines of a small farm. This has been successfully attempted recently by a man on YouTube calling his experiment the "50 Meter Beer Project," but there was once a time when he was not the exception. All Old World farmers grew and malted their own grain as well as maintained their own yeast cakes for hundreds or thousands of years. Only relatively recently has this skill set been lost, or in the case of Prohibition, outlawed. With Prohibition safely behind me, I set out to recreate to the degree possible the ingredients necessary to brew a simple beer. I would at a minimum need barely, hops, water and yeast. I planted winter rye before my surgery, which did quite well until the deer decimated it; spring barley, which was marginal; and hop rhizomes. The water I obtained from the well leaving my only actual purchase the small amount of yeast necess