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How to Read like a Writer

February 6, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Reading is like eating seven-layer dip.

At first salivating glance, you see piles of gorgeous green guacamole. A mountain range of avocado-salsa blend contained between four walls of Pyrex. It is easy to be emotionally overcome by the beauty of the guacamole, thinking that, from this angle, the dip is nothing but guacamole.

But if you maintained this perspective, and someone asked you to recreate the seven-layer dip, you’d be content to mash up 13 avocados, stick them in a bowl, and shove them proudly at your party goers with a grin that says, “I made dip.”

To successfully make seven-layer dip, you have to understand that is has, y’know, seven layers. Beneath the obvious top-guac hides delicious cheese and olives and sour cream and beans. The dip itself is kind of complicated. The flavor comes from a combination of foods, all working together to create a single unified taste.

This is the problem with reading casually, only paying attention to the events of the plot and the overall story. You’re only noticing the top layer of the dip. Sure, you’re learning about story telling and enjoying yourself in the process, but you’re missing out of the other layers of literature that make a story robust and complete.

To recognize the layers, stare through the side of the Pyrex dish. Cross-section, not bird’s-eye. Think of it in a whole bunch of parts and techniques sandwiched together to make an engaging story. Think of it in layers.

Things you’ll need:

-A brain (I’ve found that the one inside your skull is easiest to access)
-A book (preferably something with some literary merit)
-A beer (optional, I guess, if you hate all things that are good)

Step 1: Recognize what you should be recognizing

A lot of scholars have attempted to sum up what makes something “literary” (which usually results in a list of 10/15/18/22/25 “things”). There is a lot of grey area. There is even more debate. Some aspects of literature are forehead smackingly obvious, others…not so much. I covered my take on these a few months ago.

It’s up to your inner Sherlock to decide what tools an author used in writing her book. Which means you need to be paying close attention while you’re reading. Which means you can’t just flop onto a beach chair, plow through a Robert Patterson novel while mutating your melanin, and expect to come out a better writer once you reach the satisfying, bolded, 16 pt, “THE END.”

Therein lies the jerk chicken rub. A lot of us read to relax. It’s our escape from the hellish realities of our grey, damp, corporate dungeons. The last thing we want to do while we read is analyze. I get it, I really do. I’m right there wanting to read for leisure with you.

But I’ll play messenger and deliver the bad message even if it means the king will behead me: you need to turn yourself into an analyst. There’s nothing glamorous about it. If you want to write like the authors you’re reading, you have to study the writing.

Start recognizing when an author like Jennifer Egan uses structure and odd timelines to enhance her narrative. Make notes when you see someone like Erik Larson using dueling narratives and foreshadowing to build tension even when we know how the story ends. Start recognizing that these are deliberate choices made by the authors, not just magic leprechaun luck that innately comes from being born during a significant astrological event.

Good writing is the culmination of a ton of intentional choices that are transposed into words and onto the page. Start learning what those choices are, and why they were made. When you learn them, you can emulate them, and your writing will transcend.

Step 2: Recognize what’s missing in your own writing

Talent is weird. It’s like we’re forced through the water sprinkler of talent as kids. Where the spray of talent-juice hit our brains, we’re awesome. Where it missed, we’re clueless.

Some of us are great at playing with language, turning phrases, being grammatically devastating Others are amazing at building tension through dialogue and scenes. Others can use structure to arrange a story in such a way that it is fresh and unexpected to the point where the reader yells, “no effin’ way!” at the book in disbelief.

It’s good to know what you’re good at.

It’s even better to know what you suck at.

If your stories seem one-dimensional, notice how great authors use back story, probing dialogue, and action within scenes to enhance without being all up in your grill about it. Study the latent symbolism in a work and learn how that helps connect the reader to the story in a more universal, approachable way.

Read authors who are great where you are terrible (also admit that you are terrible at certain things). Learn how they do it. Eat it, process the calories, make that technique part of your physical being. The only way to learn what talent didn’t give you is through mindful application of a stubborn will.

Step 3: Take your time

Unless you’re involved in some sort of underground reading death challenge (and yes, I’m fully aware of what the first rule is), the stakes are pretty low. No one except maybe your book club peeps or that one annoying friend (who really only wants to talk about the book, so her intentions are good) really cares how quickly you read something.

It’s not the Daytona 500 with little paper cars with words on them. You can read at your own pace.

Actually, no. You should read at your own pace. Take as much time with the words as you need to understand them. Reread if you’re really trying to internalize a specific technique, or figure out why something was so effective.

The book or essay or whatever won’t self-destruct after five seconds. You’ve got plenty of time to read. Take it.

Step 4: Take Notes

If you can’t seem to dive deep into the creamy nutrient filled sub-layers of literature, force reading to be more active by gluing writing to it.

If you’re like me, writing in the margins of a book is painful (reading is the closest thing I have to religion, so marking up a book feels sort of like defiling a sacred relic). But sometimes, to remember certain spots, commit the best parts to memory, it is necessary. With the help of our new computer overlords, we can at least do this without taking ink to page.

Open a Word doc or keep a notepad nearby when you read. Write down the stuff you find interesting. Ask questions. Try a certain technique to see how it’s done.

By writing while you read, you’re engaging more than just your eyeballs. You’re introducing your fingers and possibly ears to the dance. The more senses you use, the harder your memory works and the more points of reference it has to build a permanent structure in your brain. It’s science, bitches.

Step 5: Read good shit

Sorry about the “bitches” thing. I got carried away.

None of this fancy advice matters if you’re not reading stuff that is well done. Not that everything you read has to be a timeless classic, but it should at least be worthy of your time.

The old saying is, “You are what you eat.”

In our world, “You write what you read.”

The books and essays and memoirs and news stories and shampoo bottles and billboards and waffle iron instruction manuals will seep into your unconscious. Each one makes up part of the synaptic web of what we understand to be “writing.” Each has it’s place and it’s purpose and teaches us something (even if that thing is what color dye is used in peach-scented Alberto V05).

If you’re going to read, read well. Read up. Spend your time with things that will make you smarter. Challenge yourself and strengthen your writing web.

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” -Sydney J. Harris

Guest Post: Join the Club

February 5, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

To follow up from yesterday’s post about reading, classmate and fellow blogger Melody (from Melody and Words, a seriously great and well written blog) shares her less-thought-of insights into why reading, especially as a writer, is so, so important. If you would like to write a guest post for Literature and Libation, send your ideas to literatureandlibation@gmail.com.

So you want to be a writer? Join the club.

The book club, that is.

If you are serious about writing, start reading. Whether you want to write fiction or nonfiction, articles or trilogies, you need to be aware of what else is out there.

One of the best things about writing is its simplicity. All you need is a pen and paper (and basic literacy) and you’re good to go. You don’t need the fanciest laptop or a highfalutin degree, although those may help. All you need to do is put pen to paper and start writing.

But if you really want to take your work to the next level, hit the library stacks.

Survey the Field

Would an inventor ignore all the new products being released? Would a doctor be able to diagnose a patient’s illness without keeping up to date on modern medicine? Would a scientist forget about atoms just because he didn’t discover them himself?

Writers need to keep current in their field. How else would you know what else is being done in your field? Maybe your fantastic idea about a time-traveling T-Rex who’s really just searching for true love has already been done. Reading is a writer’s market research. It’s how you discover whether an idea is fresh or whether the market for Vampire Angel Viking Sheikh Navy SEALs is oversaturated. (It is.)

If you do have a great new idea in a certain genre, reading others’ work will help you discover how fellow authors have tackled your issue or genre, what angles to take, and what is currently missing from coverage of your favorite topics.

Marketability

Surveying and learning from what has come before will not only help fine-tune your work. It will help you place your work with publishers. Reading The Atlantic will teach you to pitch big-idea pieces, not deep-sea fishing stories. Reading best-selling memoirs will help you find agents, editors, and publishers who have a proven history of representing books like the one you want to write about your childhood in that cult. Reading Seventeen will show you that no one above the age of ten would be caught dead with a magazine like that. Pitch your stories accordingly.

When you read books, magazines, and newspapers, try to put your finger on what their “signature” story or idea would be. What kind of stories are the publication’s editors on the lookout for? It will help you develop a sense of who publishes what.

Start reading with an eye on book covers and bylines. Following the work of other writers will serve as a frame of reference for yours, so that you can correctly pitch your travel memoir to outer space as “Orson Scott Card meets Elizabeth Gilbert.”

Learn Technique

Reading is also the best way to find good examples of great writing. From Cormac McCarthy’s lack of punctuation to Jack Kerouac’s lack of sleep, from Anne Tyler’s empathetic characters to George RR Martin’s fearlessness regarding philandering dwarves and murdered main characters, other writers can teach you a lot. After all, there’s a reason they’re famous, and you get to ride their coattails.

When you see something you like, imitate it in your own work. And when you see something you hate, well, lesson learned!

Find Inspiration

If you’re experiencing writer’s block, pick up a book. Sometimes, simply giving your mind a rest allows your subconscious to work through issues on its own. You may land upon a creative way to solve a problem that’s been stumping you.

Imitating—but not copying wholesale—the work of others can help you overcome an issue you face in your own story. When your character is stuck between a goblin and Gollum, try inventing some fancy jewelry. When the party runs out of booze, hand your Jesus some water. These solutions may not stick through your revisions (of which there should be many), but they may ease you through a tight spot until you figure out what the hell you want your character to do next. (Unless you’re writing nonfiction; in which case, I suggest sticking to what actually happened next.)

Network

In our graduate writing program, Oliver and I spend much of our time reading. Reading the works of great writers and identifying why they’re so good. Reading the works of less successful writers and discussing what they could have done differently. Reading the work of our classmates and helping them expand the good parts and shore up weaker sections. Reading, reading, reading, oh yeah and more reading.

You may not be in a writing program, but you can form your own writing group or join a local Meetup. Not only will critiquing others’ work make your writing stronger, you’ll also establish connections to other budding writers. These classmates, our instructors tell us, are our future editors and freelancers and the people we will talk about at cocktail parties in the future: “Oh, we knew him when…”

Or, if you’re that guy who makes it big, the possibility exists that you might bump into other writers on the bestseller lists at your own, much better, cocktail parties. You won’t want to be caught with a canapé in one hand and your dick in the other when that hot redhead realizes you haven’t read her mega-bestseller at all.

In addition to sounding erudite, maintaining relationships with other writers is important. You might get a glimpse into their writing life, and one day, you might ask them to blurb your book or help you promote that screenplay. A little networking goes a long way.

Practice Jedi Mind Tricks

Most importantly, reading gets you into the mindset of your target audience: the reader. Figure out what you like and don’t like in books, and then do/never do that. Write the stories you wish you could read, and you can’t go wrong.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons

Craft and Draft: I’ll take words that start with “Ad” for $2000, Alex

February 1, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Warning, this post contains explicit grammar that may not be appropriate for people who don’t like grammar. Words like participle and infinitive and adjectival will be used. Parental discretion is advised.

As a culture, we’re rapidly approaching critical mass of “stuff we need to remember.” Kick-off times, meeting times, departure times, closing times. Passwords, PINs, SSNs, and IPs. Some of us have to remember large, complicated matrices and formulas and numbers, others large, complicated designs and abstracts and ideas. We have to remember how our systems work, both technical and physical, where Microsoft decided to hide the “sort ascending button” in this version, who asked who out for beers, and that in order to cook dinner, the oven needs to be hot, and for it to be hot, it needs to be preheated.

There are so many pieces of information to store, catalog, and recall that it’s amazing our brains have time for anything else.

As a result of this constant data-bombardment we inevitably forget things that aren’t important to our daily survival. Things like the specifics of molecular structure or which side of the plate the salad fork goes on or to finally water that poor house plant in the corner of our bedroom. Our brains work like massive databases where the most relevant, frequently accessed, and important information is kept at the ready, while everything else is crammed and stuffed into parts of the brain that aren’t frequently visited. You haven’t completely forgotten the stuff down in the dusty tomes of your archive, but it takes some effort and a big Swiffer Duster to bring it back up to the light of your main study.

That’s where your grammar lives. Unless you’re a ferocious copy editor or the reincarnation of E.B. White, chances are your understanding of grammatical rules has sunk deeper than the Titanic.

That’s OK. I’m here to raise the wreck and help figure all this “grammar” stuff out.

“Ad” Words

I’ve read a lot of contemporary writing advice and the general consensus seems to be, “don’t use adverbs or adjectives unless you really need to.”

In a literary vacuum this is good advice. Don’t write “He walked aimlessly” when you could write “He sauntered.” A good verb will almost always trump a bad verb with an glued-on adverb trying to pick up the syntactic slack.

But to avoid using adverbs and adjectives at all would lead to peculiar if not nigh unreadable language. You could avoid using single world adverbs and adjectives for a while, but to give no description to any of your nouns or any of your verbs seems masochistic for the reader and sadistic for the writer.

The explanation is simple: don’t rely on single words, use phrases. A phrase is a group of words that can stand for a single part of speech. For example, “He ran up the bank of the river.” The simple sentence is, “He ran.” But that sentence is boring and non-specific and no one wants to read it. Enter the adverbial phrase, “up the bank of the river.” Now we know where he ran. That whole string of words equals a single adverbial phrase (it’s also a prepositional phrase, but we’ll ignore that for now).

Of course, you can overuse phrases just like you can overuse single words and turn your prose into an insipid nightmare of nothing but pointless, unwavering description. But let’s pretend you won’t do that because you know better. Please don’t do that. It hurts our brains.

An important thing to remember about a phrase is that it does not contain a subject and predicate, meaning it isn’t a sentence or a clause. “Under the waves” is a phrase because it clearly doesn’t have a subject or predicate (or verb for that matter), it only functions to describe where, in some other, imaginary sentence.

There are two types of phrases: prepositional phrases (which, to everyone’s alarm, contain prepositions) and verbal phrases (which in turn has three sub-forms: infinitives, past participles, and present participles.) For now, we’ll just focus on how to identify and use the larger concepts of adverbial and adjectival phrases, regardless of their status as prepositions or verbals.

To help you understand how adverbial and adjectival phrases work, I’ve called on my friends: “Adjectival Arwen” and “Adverbial Aragorn.”

They are currently in post production of “Lord of the Ings: Two Gerunds”, slated for a 2027 release.

Adjectival Arwen rides towards Rivendell in a saddle made of soft leather

As a refresher (no one is judging anyone here) an adjective is a word (or series of words) that describes a noun. The word “Adjectival” in Arwen’s name is itself an adjective (I’m so meta). You know these words and use them all the time: drunken, sharp, red, gooey, awkward, etc. They add specificity to the noun, so the reader knows exactly which subject the writer meant. You could say “the man” which could mean any random dude, or you could say, “the man with the giant purple mustache” which pretty much points directly to a specific, crazy guy.

Adjectives give nouns unique identity. Arwen is not just an elf. She is a pretty elf who wields Hadhafang, sword of the Elven queens. Adjectives!

We use adjectival phrases all the time without really thinking about it. Any time you try to describe your subject, you’re using an adjectival phrase. It can be as simple as describing the look of something, “Arwen dyed her flowing hair bright red” (she didn’t just dye her hair, she dyed it a specific color) or as complicated as an appositive, which completely renames the noun, “Arwen, only daughter of Elrond of Rivendell, rode out to meet the battle.”

The key thing to remember her is that adjectival phrases always reference a noun. If something is describing the verb, or explaining how/where/when/why the action happened, it can’t be an adjectival phrase.

Adverbial Aragorn fights the orcs valiantly

Adverbs are the beasts that labor in the fields of our language, doing most of the heavy lifting and manual labor. They are words or phrases that describe verbs. These are often the “-ly” forms of adjectives (drunkenly, hazily) but can come in many other flavors.

An adverbial phrase always describes a verb in the sentence. If “Aragorn swings Narsil with the might of his Dúnedain ancestors,” the adverbial phrase (“with the might of”) describes the way he swings. It emphasizes and explains the action of the verb, giving sentence some spice, and clarifying just how the action took place. That adverbial phrase also contains a secondary adjectival phrase that describes what kind of might he was swinging with. Sweet.

All of this stuff builds on itself. Look at the basic sentence first, “Aragorn swings Narsil” then the adverbial “with the might” then the adjectival “of his Dúnedain ancestors.” It’s like a Russian doll of phrases, all of which eventually gives you a sentence that describes multiple things in specific ways.

So, adjectival phrases modify nouns, adverbial phrases modify verbs. All pretty simple, right? You’ll be able to use these left and right, with purpose, to make your writing all awesome now, right?

Right?

If you’re confused, that’s OK. Sentence variation in English is damn near infinite. You can and will have adjectival phrases inside of adverbial phrases that are part of compound predicates with multiple verbs that may or may not be prepositional. They may be part of a direct object or a subject compliment or just a tulle dress that you put on your subject to make it fancier so it will get more attention during its debutante ball. The great part about understanding these rules is that you can intentionally play with them and have fun with your writing, which, with practice, eventually becomes a part of your style and voice.

I know I’ve dumped a lot of ideas on you and presented a lot of unqualified terms. If anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I’ll cover more next week. These guy may pay a visit:

For the record, this is The Pirate of Prepositions, The Appositive Adventurer, and The Clause Clown. They mean business.

How to build your own Mash Tun

January 28, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I know you’ve been looking at your prosaic smattering of material goods, wondering why you don’t have a custom made mash tun to brew all grain beer. It’s OK. I was too. It’s a normal and healthy question to ask yourself.

Until very recently, I had done all of my homebrew with malt extract: big cans of thick gloopy brown stuff that is packed with sugar for the young voracious yeast in your beer. This is great for learning the basics of brewing (it is simpler, takes less time, and is less messy), but it’s an established fact that real home brewers make their tinctures from 100% whole ingredients. Making the move to all grain is like a homebrewing right of passage; the malty vision quest that all young brewmasters must go on to realize their beer-soaked destinies.

All grain brewing basically means that you make your own mash from pounds and pounds of grain, instead of using extract. Aside from making you into a total beer brewing badass, using cracked malt leads to better tasting beer and gives you a lot more flexibility in flavor, color, and final ABV.

But how do you get the sugar out of all that delicious grain?

With a mash tun.

(Kudos/credits to the guys at Maryland Homebrew and Don Osborn for giving me the ideas and confidence to build this contraption)

Things you’ll need:

A large drink cooler (I used an family sized 52 quart Igloo cooler. The key is to find one with the drain spigot on the side, not the bottom.)
A large stainless steel toilet or sink supply hose (I used a 24″ tube, but you can use whatever best fits your cooler)
Two to three feet of 3/8″ plastic hosing (you don’t have to spring for the heat resistant kind if you want to save a few cents)
Two 3/8″ hose clamps (to clamp off the ends of the supply hose)
Various parts to make an on-off valve (I’ll explain this in detail below; you’ll probably have to order these online or get them from a local brewing store)
A hacksaw (to hack things)
Pliers (to ply things)
An adjustable wrench (to wrench things)
Beer! (Yuengling Porter for me, as I had it left over in a sampler my neighbors gave me for Xmas)

Tasty porter on a beer man’s chest.

Step 1: Prepare your supply line

A mash tun is just a large receptacle for grain and hot water. You want your grain to sit and steep inside of it so that all of the delicious sugars blend with the water and make tasty wort. The key here is that you don’t want the grains to come with sugar/water concoction, as they can cloud up (and add nasty chunks) to your beer.

The supply line hose you bought is going to be a filter inside the cooler that stops the cracked malt from entering your wort.

First, hack off both ends of the supply line with your hacksaw. This is easier if you have a vice. I don’t have a vice, so I held it with my super manly hands. Be careful that the frayed pieces of steel wire don’t poke and hurt your manly hands. When you get near the end, if a small section of the steel won’t saw, clip it off using some wire clipper to fully separate the ends from the main tube.

Braided stainless steel is surprisingly hard to hacksaw. Who’da thunk it?

Once the steel beast has been (double) beheaded, use your pliers to pull the plastic lining out of the steel part of the tube. This will leave you with a mesh hose with very fine holes all up and down it. A perfect grain filter if I’ve ever seen one.

The tube now functions like a Chinese finger trap. Please don't stick your fingers into it.

The tube now functions like a Chinese finger trap. That was me being figurative. Please don’t stick your fingers into it.

The last thing you need to do with the hose is fold it over itself two or three times and clamp it down as tight as it will go with one of your hose clamps. This will keep grains for sneaking into your filter through the end.

Please excuse my cuticles. I need a mani/pedi real bad.

Step 2: Install your on/off valve

This is really important. If you just connect a hose to the spigot of your cooler, chances are pretty high that you’ll have boiling hot wort all over your floor as soon as your start to sparge your grain. I tried a few different variations here, and a ball-lock valve with some nice copper fixtures makes for the most solid, leak-proof seal.

You’ll need parts similar to (or exactly like) the ones pictured below:

3/8″ hose adapter, threaded extension tube, washer, inner cooler o-ring, threaded middle piece, outer cooler o-ring, locking nut, ball valve, 3/8″ adapter (+2 hose clamps for the hose on each side)

You have to build this device in two sections: one on the inside of the cooler, one on the outside of the cooler. The “threaded middle piece” sits in cooler limbo, half in, half out, all ready to receive its respective end of the device.

When you’re ready to install the valve, carefully remove the original drain spigot by undoing the plastic bolts that hold it in place. Save this piece as you could always put it back in a re-convert this into a regular old cooler when you need it for a party.

Assemble your valve, make sure the o-rings are tight against the walls of the cooler, then fill it with a small amount of water and check for leaks. It helps to wrap the “threaded middle piece” in some Teflon tape if you’re getting small drips on the outside of the cooler.

Your finished product should look like this:

Tap on, tap off.

Step 3: Install your grain filter

This part should be pretty easy, just connect your pre-fabbed toilet-hose-filter to a piece of 3/8″ inch tubing that connects to your valve on the inside of the cooler. Secure it with hose clamp if you can’t get a very good fit.

Crude, yet sophisticated.

Step 4: Buy some grain and start brewing!

As long as this bad boy doesn’t leak, you’ll be all grain brewing in no time. When using this, make sure to keep it insulated (with towels or blankets or insulated wrapping) so that all that sugar-sucking heat doesn’t escape. Also elevate it so that you can use and abuse gravity to get all of that sparged wort into your brew pot as quickly as possible!

But more importantly, enjoy. All grain brewing brings a whole new level of dorkiness to your homebrewing activities, and puts you one step closer to owning/running your own brewery. Dream big my friends, dream big.

Looks a lot like oatmeal, huh?

Craft and Draft: Grammar (with an “a”, not an “e”)

January 25, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I am taking a graduate level grammar class this semester. I apologize and you have been forewarned.

Grammar is an under-appreciated beast. It seems an inborn relationship, that of writing needing grammar, but very few people truly understand why the two are symbiotic. It’s the Adobe Illustrator of the writing world; everyone knows it can do great things, but very few bother to learn how it really works beyond the very basics. Many people assume they know enough about grammar to get by.

It is equal parts adored and reviled. Non-grammar people love to hate it, and grammar enthusiasts love to hate people who misuse it. It is more often than not misunderstood and almost always misrepresented by misguided, albeit well-meaning supporters.

Grammar carries on its back a latent fear, the summation of all of those painful elementary school lessons that you never quite learned and definitely don’t remember now. It causes unwanted mental disruptions in even the best language handlers. It vexes young editors and senior writers alike. It reminds a lot of word-people that their grasp on this whole “English” thing is more slippery and tentative than they care to admit.

There is nothing to fear about grammar. It is (when its guts are dissected and carefully examined) the math of language. The formulas and order of operations that keeps everything in line. It dictates how and when we can use certain patterns, and gives us a standard to mold our writing around.

If the goal of writing is to convey a message, grammar is the vehicle the message drives. It is the jeep that tumbles over the rocky terrain of complex ideas. Without grammar, writing would be an incoherent jumble of words, out of order, misspelled, with no rules governing how to decode and understand the message.

Without canon grammar, we’d all spell and write (and sound) like Chaucer.

Nobody wants that.

So, why do you need to understand grammar? Why should you care if your language is passive or you’ve split tons of infinitives or overused conjunctions in a sentence like I did in this one?

To oversimplify: clarity.

My wife has a motto, “Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can.”

If you can’t clearly present your idea or argument because of muddled grammar, what’s the point of writing it down and sharing it with the world?

1. Grammar is your friend, not your enemy

I really dislike the term “Grammar Nazi.” Not only does it apply all sorts of unnecessary (and frankly tasteless) connotations, it also perpetuates a culture where the only way to fix bad grammar is to ridicule and demonize it. Nazis wanted to create a perfect master race. Grammarians just want people to be accurate. Big, not-so-subtle difference.

If we’re forced by some weird societal zeitgeist to have a catchphrase for grammar-sticklers, I’d prefer “Grammar Ninja.” Instead of loudly declaring your hatred of poor grammar while wearing large boots and screaming at people to correct that use of “their” to “they’re”, sneak in under shadow and assassinate the bad grammar. Move like ink from the tip of a pen, flow through the errors, slice out mistakes. A good editor/writer will seamlessly, stealthily, efficiently correct grammar without making a big show of it, all ninja-like.

Comma splice? More like comma slice! Puns are great.

Comma splice? More like comma slice! Oh man, puns are great.

Godwinning grammarians makes grammar seem mean and harsh and evil. Grammar is anything but. It is there to help you organize your thoughts and be as articulate as possible. It is that really well qualified buddy who wants to help you with that start-up company, if you’d just stop ignoring all of his calls.

You wouldn’t yell at your wrench for not being able to loosen a bolt. You’d yell at the bolt, or your pathetic upper body strength, or the person who tightened the bolt in the first place. So why be mad at grammar for your poor sentences? Figure out what went wrong and why, and fix it.

Any sinking sentence can be repaired with the proper application of grammar. Remember that the next time you get mad at someone for using a possessive apostrophe to pluralize a word. Help and use the grammar, don’t shun and hate the grammar.

2. Grammar is a toolbox, not a single tool

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that almost anything in life can be explained by drawing parallels to Lego, especially writing, editing, and other literary endeavors.

The word “grammar” is not just an abstract, but also a collective noun. It stands for all of a writer’s tools: tense-wrenches and structure-screwdrivers, appositive-augers and subordinate-saws.

Just like the word “Lego” is a catch-all for the blocks and fasteners and mini-figures. You have 2×2 blocks and 3×1 blocks and those weird “L” shaped blocks, and little men with swords and helmets that make up the abstract concept of Lego.

You could just stick the blocks together however so struck your fancy at the time, and I’m sure people would recognize it as something built out of Lego. But to turn those little plastic blocks into something that other people want to look at and in turn appreciate, you have to follow the rules in the instruction pamphlet.

Grammar is the same way. You can loosely throw around constructs and still get some vague message across, but if you want your readers to understand your point and have a meaningful reaction, you have to be as clear as possible. Being clear means acknowledging the rules set forth by contemporary grammarians and reading lots of Strunk and White. Any misplaced subjects or confusing adjectival phrases or malapropisms will distract your reader from your message.

Top vs. Bottom: The difference between, “This a tree.” and “This is a brown and green tree, made of Lego.”

You wouldn’t use a screwdriver to hammer a nail (even though it could work), so you shouldn’t use weak adverbs where a strong verb could do a better job. Good grammar (and good writing) comes down to the best application of the best tool in the right circumstance.

Figure out which tools are already in your grammatical toolbox, and which ones you still need to acquire Learn what each tool does and how it can be best applied to strengthen your writing.

When you’ve mastered your tools, your message can’t help but be clear.

3. To break the rules you have to know the rules

I’ve never been a big fan of rules. Rules by their nature are restrictive, and I don’t like anyone or anything to tell me what I can and can’t do, as a general life philosophy.

I do however appreciate why rules exist. Rules are for the people who don’t quite get it yet, and serve as a universal basis that everyone can understand and work from. It is good to have rules, so that anyone can fall back on them and say, “well yes, I guess that works, but the rules say to do it this way” should there ever be any confusion.

But, as the cliche goes, “rules are made to be broken.” Most creativity would be stifled if it were forced to always follow a set of guidelines, so the very act of creating something new often defies an existing rule set. In order to be fresh and innovative, you’re going to have to smash down some rule-walls and tell the standards police to shove it up their textbooks.

With that comes certain responsibility. A responsibility to understand what rules you are breaking, and why breaking them is a good thing. The only reason to ever break a grammatical rule is for style, effect, or voice. If you’re breaking a rule for another reason, chances are you don’t understand the rule in the first place.

The only way to effectively play with grammar is to first make grammar your bitch.

Ever wonder how really rich dudes and corporations get away with not paying a huge amount in taxes? It’s because they (or the people they employ) know the tax rules better than they know their own children. They know just how far they can bend a rule without breaking it. Just how much of the gross income can be claimed as international revenue. Just how many legal donations will lead to huge tax write-offs.

If you want to bend (or even break) the grammatical rules, you first have to study a lot of grammar. Not just the basic stuff you learned in school, but complex grammar including usage, phrasing, colloquialism, etc.

If you try to break the rules without really knowing the rules, people will notice. You might break the rules too much, or too little, or in a way that doesn’t make sense which will make your writing look sloppy and unprofessional.

And most importantly, if you’re going to break any rules, make sure you’re doing it for a reason that will support your voice, theme, or message.

Breaking them for the sake of breaking them, just because you don’t like them and want to see them in pain, is no way to go through your writing life.

I made "Gangsta Gandalf" because I know and have studied the rules of LOTR for years.

I broke the rules and made “Gangsta Gandalf” because I know and have studied the rules of LOTR for years.

Under Pressure

January 22, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

We’ll get back to good ol’ Literature and Libation classics as soon as my blood pressure normalizes.

I like to think I’m a healthy guy. I may not be a triathlete with bullet-deflecting-abs, but I run three to four times a week and lift weights when my body cooperates. I drink, but within reason, when reasonable. I eat well. Lots of veggies and fruit and not lots of cheese and oil-soaked sausage patties.

In direct correlation, my blood pressure is normally pretty great. 120ish over 70ish, depending on stress levels and how scary my attending doctor is. I’ve got good energy in that range. Energy that I can work with and mold and bend to my focused, writerly will. My normal blood pressure equates roughly to me feeling normal.

Enter the post-operative low-blood pressure monster. He is a cunning predator, waiting for the least opportune times to sneak in and put you on your ass. Low blood pressure is the worst kind of duplicitous; he’ll convince you that you feel great while sitting down, then hit you across the back of your head a hammer made of orthostatic hypotension, giving you a head-rush like you’ve never experienced.

And never wanted to.

As I was recovering from my recent procedure, I passed out for the first time in my life. OK, that’s lie. I’ve passed out before, but almost always as side effect from falling out of a tree, colliding with a soccer player, or generally doing something stupid that resulted in a surface harder than my skull winning our impromptu headbutting contest.

But I’ve never passed out in the middle of feeling otherwise great. It’s incredibly unsettling, akin to the feeling you have right after you discover you’ve been Jedi mind tricked and those were in fact the Droids you were looking for.

The actual sensation can only be described as “mortifyingly unpleasant.” You’re embarrassed that you suddenly forget how be conscious, but also get the joy of feeling like 100,000 tiny spiders are crawling across your brain, interrupting synapses, spinning webs of confusion and nausea.

It’s not something I’d do for recreation, that’s for sure.

I opted for an epidural instead of general anesthesia because hell, why not? I always wanted to have a baby. After the numbness in my legs had melted to a comfortable, dull buzz, I just had to wait until my vitals were back in acceptable ranges. My pressure had pretty much stabilized, I was feeling good, cracking jokes, getting the entire back-story of my nurse (she emigrated from the Philippines in 2002) because I’m the kind of person who is obnoxiously inquisitive even when barely conscious.

The doctors and nurses both cleared me to leave. I stood up from my special medical chair with no issues. Managed to get my tshirt and underwear on still feeling fine. Then I made an attempt at my jeans. I think I let my head hang a little too low, or moved a little too quickly. Before I could process what was happening, I collapsed into an Oliver-shaped pile on the floor. My nurse yelled for help, and the next thing I remember I’m on my back with an oxygen mask stuck to my face, talking to a doctor I’ve never seen who had apparently just emerged from a nearby operating room.

My systolic blood pressure had dropped into the 70s, which had in turn dropped me. It took hours for it to get back to where it was supposed to be, probably because it got lost in all the roadwork being done inside my bones.

For the past few days, I’ve been suffering from the scorched earth aftermath of a body incapable (or unwilling) to consistently maintain its blood pressure. The day after I got home, supposedly hydrated and closer to normal, I nearly passed out from the heat and activity of a shower. My wife saved me by giving me Oreos and telling me to close my eyes and breathe. Short walks to the bathroom and back feel like Baggins-esque odysseys to Mount (porcelain) Doom. I only feel lucid when sitting sedentarily or when sprawled across my bed like a decorative afghan.

But I can’t go through my life being an afghan.

It will take my body a few weeks to recreate the marrow and blood that was taken during the operation. Apparently, I’m in a fateful 10% of patients who have issues with blood pressure post-donation. I should blame myself for always wanting to be different. Until then, I’ll have to keep my activities low impact and low stress.

Guess that means a lot of writing. Recovery is hell.

I joked that I always wanted a baby when opting for the epidural. My wife and sister got me this balloon. My family knows me well.

How to Homebrew: Back to Basics

January 14, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

In honor of my first batch of all-grain beer, this week on LitLib is all about homebrewing!

I fell into my homebrewing hobby as a side effect of growing up in a household that consumed and appreciated a lot of alcohol. My dad used to make what I can only call “odd” wine: carrot, rhubarb, banana, and other things you won’t find at the local liquor store. Our basement was a menagerie of white buckets, glass carboys, empty green wine bottles, and a utility sink over flowing with sodium metabisulfite and thick bristled white brushes.

I learned how to brew the same way a kid learns how to use a Q-tip; through a lot of painful trial-and-error. One of my first batches ended up at about 2% alcohol because I added four gallons of water to a single gallon of actual brew. An early batch of English style pale ale had the delicious added flavor of rotten-eggs sulfur because I did the entire main boil with the lid on the pot. I never made anything undrinkable, but I certainly made a lot of beer only its brewer could love.

As my brewing skills slowly evolve, I spend a lot of time poking through homebrewing forums, looking up recipes, learning about proper yeast pitching temperatures, sometimes even stumbling upon a some unexpected pictures of pimped out kegerators. This has given me a pretty broad knowledge of various homebrewing techniques, but I still have yet to find a single, succinct overview of the very basics of brewing.

So I decided to make my own.

In addition to this guide, I am happy to answer any and all questions about the basics of homebrewing in the comments below!

What is homebrewing?

Without sounding dense, homebrewing is brewing that is done at home, without commercial equipment. It usually means brewing on a significantly smaller scale (5-10 gallons as opposed to say, 7,000,000 gallons) with significantly less control and consistency in the final product. It encompasses beer, wine, cider, and any sub-genre therein, but does not include distillation, as that is illegal and should be left to those few (with even fewer teeth) in the Appalachian foothills.

Despite popular belief, homebrewing is pretty safe. There are some minor threats that come from over-filling or over-sugaring, but for the most part, it’s a low risk, high reward hobby. In a poor attempt at humor, Buffalo Wild Wings lampooned home brewers with a less than flattering commercial. The truth is that most homebrew, even the poorly sanitized or drank-too-early, isn’t going to send you to the ER with GI issues.

And if you don’t believe me, believe science! Yeast eats sugar and poops out carbon dioxide and alcohol, which has the added bonus of sterilizing the liquid. Alcohol disrupts the natural equilibrium of water outside of any bacteria cells, killing them as osmosis forcefully pushes water out of the cells to reestablish the balance. Thermodynamics are awesome. The only obvious health concern is mold, which aside from being visible and gross, usually makes the beer so foul tasting that not even the most self-destructive frat boy could stomach enough to make him sick.

So you want to be a home brewer?

First, ask yourself why.

If the answer is to save money on your alcohol, you need a new/better business model. While the ingredients-per-gallon cost is pretty cheap, you have to factor in equipment and opportunity cost. In the long run, you’re not going to save yourself an extraordinary amount of money by making it yourself.

If the answer is to impress your friends, I hope you’re patient. An ale takes on average 3-4 weeks to be ready to drink, where a lager takes 6-8 weeks. Wine of almost any variant takes even longer. Your first few batches won’t likely win any contests either, so it’ll be a while before your friends start greeting you as “Brewmaster.”

If the answer is for fun and because you’re so stubborn you have to try to do everything yourself, then you’re at least temperamentally ready to fire up your boil pot.

What do you mean you don’t understand these words?

Veteran home brewers like to throw around a lot of jargon and hardly ever qualify any of it. It’s like they expect us to figure these things out, as if there were some kind of widely available, magical book that contained definitions of things.

This is list of the things I had to discover on my own, but it is not nearly exhaustive:

Wort (beer) – a mixture of grain sugars and waters that will be fermentted into beer
Must (wine) – the same as wort, but with different sugars, including fruit pulp
Yeast – eukaryotic microorganisms that are obsessed with eating sugar and produce alcohol as a biproduct
Sugar – alcohol is formed in beer and wine based on the amount of added sugars, which are introduced to the brew bia fruit, grain, honey, or other sources
Sparge (beer) – the process of removing sugars from cracked grain using very hot water to create wort
Fermentation – the process of yeast converting sugars into alcohol
Primary fermentation – the initial conversion of the sugar into alcohol after yeast is first introduced to the worst/must
Secondary fermentation – the secondary conversion that removes extra sediment and allows time for the brew to settle/clear/mellow
Priming – adding extra sugar after secondary fermentation to promote carbonation in bottles/kegs/growlers (only applicable if you want to carbonate your beverage)

What will you need?

Before I get into the actual equipment that is necessary, I’m going to point out a few things you should have that often get overlooked by early brewers:

Experience drinking what it is you’re brewing (know, at least roughly, why you like certain styles and what they’re made of)
Basic cooking skills (if you can’t boil water without scalding yourself or manage temperatures on the fly, you’re going to struggle to brew anything)
Upper body strength (seriously, a gallon of liquid weighs about eight pounds, so a five gallon batch will weigh 40+)
Patience, commitment, and persistence (a full brew can take most of a day, and can’t really be hurried)

As for the gear (you can buy all of this stuff online, but be a good member of the community and pick it up at a local homebrew store, if reasonable):

A stove (like the one you usually make pancakes on)
A sink (like the one you usually leave dirty dishes in)
Towels (and not your wife’s good towels; don’t even look at them)
Your ingredients (this is going to vary wildly per type of brew and recipe, think of it as the “food” part of your recipe)

1 x brew boil pot w/lid (large aluminum or stainless steel, 5.5 gallons at minimum)
1 x plastic brew pail (these are the infamous “white buckets” used for primary fermentation – 5.5-6 gallon)
1 x lid for your brew pail (if you seal it, they will brew)
1 x air lock w/rubber bung (there are several styles of air locks, but any will work)
1 x glass carboy (this is for your secondary; the brew will sit and clarify in this)
1 x big metal spoon (for all the stirrin’ you’s gonna be doin’)
1 x container of a no-rinse sanitizer (never use soap, try not to use bleach)
1 x large thermometer (or just get an infrared temperature gun already)
1 x auto-siphon (this will save you a ton of headaches and sticky spill spots on your kitchen floor)
6 x gallons of water (distilled, spring, anything clear and tasty)

You’ll also need bottles, growlers, or a keg for your finished brew, but that’s up to you (as I won’t be including bottling in this overview).

You’ve got all the stuff, now what?

This is a high-level, technical overview of the steps involved in brewing almost anything. Some specialty brews requires steps other than these, but that’s what a recipe is for!

Boil/sanitize your wort/must without the lid on the pot – If you’re brewing beer, you’ll want to bring your wort to a rolling boil in your brew pot. If you’re making a fruit based wine, you don’t need to achieve a full boil just raise the internal temperature to ~175 degrees.
Add any other ingredients – like hops, spices, etc. – while the pre-brew is still hot.
Put the lid on your pot and rapidly cool down the liquid using an ice bath or something similar.
Pour your cooled wort into your primary fermentation vessel.
Stir the wort vigorously to oxygenate the brew, then add your yeast.
Seal your bucket and wait for primary fermentation to finish (the bubbles in your airlock should slow down considerably)
Siphon the brew into your secondary vessel, avoiding any of the settled sediment.
Allow your brew to settle/clarify as per the recipe.
Bottle/keg your brew.
Enjoy!

Clicky for biggy.

Guest Post: “Losing” NaNoWriMo

January 9, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

It’s pretty easy for me to ramble on about NaNoWriMo after two successful years. But what about those who aren’t filled with the zeal that comes with typing that 50,000th word? My friend and fellow blogger, Phillip McCollum, shares his insights about “losing” NaNoWriMo, what he learned, and why losing isn’t a bad thing in this crazy game of writing. If anyone is interested in writing a guest post for Literature and Libation, please send your ideas to literatureandlibation@gmail.com.

I’ve been convinced for a while that Oliver and I were brotherly warriors in another life, swinging swords side-by-side on the medieval battlefield and sharing flagons of ale afterwards. As soon as he mentioned a guest post, I realized his mind and my mind had already started down different paths to the same destination. Having just reached the end of NaNoWriMo with Oliver crossing the finish line, we both knew the other side of the story had to be told.

The side of the losers.

Please understand that I’m not trying to be self-deprecating here. The fact is that in order to “win” NaNoWriMo, you must have written 50,000 words toward your novel by 11:59:59 PM on November 30th (according to whatever time zone you’re in, I assume). Having only completed 31,509 words by the appointed deadline, the logical conclusion is that I “lost” NaNoWriMo.

Losing doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game and anyone who tells you otherwise has a lot to learn about losing. Not only do you get to refine your game for next time, but everyone loves a comeback.

If you took part in this past NaNoWriMo, maybe you cranked out 49,999 words and just couldn’t find another that wouldn’t look like a fresh scratch across your brand new Jaguar.

Or, like me, you slammed your foot on the pedal coming out of the gate, but discovered you lacked the staying power to see things through the monotonous middle and into the finish line.

Everyone makes their own mistakes, but I’m sure we share a few generalities. I hope that sharing my lessons will resonate with you and at least get you to think about what you can do better the next time around.

Focus and Research:

I made a huge mistake here. I waited too long to think about what I was writing. I mean really think. I had a basic idea of setting, time period, historical events, and characters. I even posted a blog entry of things to research after I finished writing. I figured I could just run with the story and make up things as I went along. I had some scenes roughly drafted and ready to spit out. There would be plenty of time after the first draft to fix the small mistakes, like my ancient Egyptian priest growing frustrated with his flaky Internet service.

What I lacked was focus. I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted this book to be. Historical fiction with a touch of fantasy? Fantasy loosely based in historical fact?

Without a clear cut path, I was crossing streams. As I made my way through the first set of scenes, I found myself wanting to be more accurate concerning historical events. There I was, 10,000 words in and coming to the realization that a month or two of research would have benefited me greatly.

What do you mean my antagonist wasn’t a king yet when this village was attacked? Okay, well then I guess I just need to put more focus on his father. But I don’t want to write about his father. That’s a different story than what I’m trying to tell. So now I need a new source of conflict since that battle didn’t take place. I need to research more. But I don’t have time. At a minimum, I need to get 1,667 words out tonight.

I’m sure you can imagine this situation snowballing and then realizing that while you may be writing lots of words and exercising your prose muscles (still a good thing), what you write will not be publishable because it’s a pile of scenes that mean absolutely nothing.

When scenes trump story, the whole idea of a coherent novel goes out the door.

Lessons Learned:

I need to know where I want to focus before writing. Specificity is important because it helps me prepare and keeps me on track. If I ever decide to write a book by the seat of my pants again, I’ll make sure Historical Fiction is off the table. In my opinion, that’s a genre which requires a lot of upfront research and planning.

Maintain a Timeline:

The idea of a timeline fits snuggly with my previous point. Without proper research, how can you be sure your imagination is synchronized with historical record? Call it trying to juggle too much information in the little time I had to write. Call it laziness. I never put together a timeline of events and backstory. In fact, I remember spending a couple of hours scouring the Internet for decent timeline tools, when in reality, that time could have been better spent hobbling together something in a spreadsheet. The perfection bug bit me again. I didn’t need the perfect tool, I just thought I did.

This left me completely unorganized. Things were happening when they shouldn’t have and people were making speeches long after they kicked the bucket.

For example, the idea behind my novel came from some reading I did about an Egyptian city named Naucratis. The historical figures I found myself compelled to write about, well, I’ll just say that a basic timeline would have shown they weren’t even around to see Naucratis being built. They only missed it by, oh, a few centuries.

Oops.

Lessons Learned:

All I need is a simple spreadsheet to start. One column for scene/historical event, another column for date. Something this basic would do wonders for ensuring that I’m not making a mistake such as the one illustrated above.

Plotting/Structure:

My last couple of novel attempts have gone the same way. I would begin an outline and type up brief synopses of anywhere from ten to fifteen scenes. Then I found myself anxious, so I started writing, telling myself that I could pants the rest. Well, as you now know, that was a bad idea.

I find that I have a lot of fun writing the scenes I’ve already outlined and am not concerned about whether or not I’m saying what I want to say. I know they fit into the outline I drafted. If they vary a little bit, cool, no big deal. I don’t mind tweaking my outline to accommodate.

But when I reach the end of the scenes I’ve outlined and find myself facing the blank page, somehow scrubbing the shower becomes the most important thing in the world. A few more excuses later, the guilt becomes overwhelming and I’m left with one question: Now what? I can throw some more conflict at my characters and pull some new goals out of thin air. That’ll fix them, right?

But as I’ve proven to myself over and over, chances are, it won’t.

Lessons Learned:

I need to know where I’m going and I need to put it down on paper. This gives me the confidence to write freely, knowing that I’m not just writing to write, but I’m writing toward the story goal.

Characters:

After reading that George R. R. Martin usually drafts character biographies hitting sixty to seventy pages, I proceeded to hang my head in shame.

I didn’t spend enough time fleshing out my characters before writing. I came up with basic bios, but without nearly the amount of depth they needed. Too vague. Too much on the surface.

And that’s just for the ones I made up. For the real historical figures, I should have researched them as much as possible. If my target audience includes history buffs, I can’t be loose with the facts and prevailing opinions.

Character traits are one thing, but I also found I had another problem with them. Going back and looking at my scenes, a lot of times, my POV character of the moment was a bystander. He would sit and watch the world turn, occasionally answering a question or making some absurd speech. He was lifeless automaton and would only act when I turned the crank.

Lessons Learned:

Be a lot better at fleshing out my characters. Make my characters active. People don’t want to read a novel where all the fun stuff is happening around your character.

“If you can accept losing, you can’t win.” -Vince Lombardi

How to Brew Sweet Vanilla Sack Mead

January 2, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

New year means new brew. The brew kettle is all sanitized and ready to boil here at Gray Breweries, and it is just a matter of what is going into my big ol’ white buckets first.

Last year I had several dreams that coalesced into waking recipes: a traditional British Pale Ale with caramel as a finishing sugar, a first attempt at a noble hopped Pilsner, and several fruit and spice variations of sweet mead. I bought 10 pounds of Vienna Pilsner malt, all five noble hops, and some Budejovice lager yeast in support of my first ever all-grain beer. I’ve also had 15 pounds of white clover honey taking up precious shelf space in my brewing cabinet.

Personal laziness dictated which to brew first. I can’t do an all-grain beer yet, as I haven’t completed my home made mash tun (stayed tuned for that adventure in a future post). Sparging is pretty difficult without a mash tun, so merry mead making it is for me!

I guess 2013 is to be the year of sweet, sweet honey wine.

Things you’ll need:

Honey (lots of it – 15-20 pounds of white clover, but orange blossom is permissable)
Water (4-5 gallons of spring water)
Fresh vanilla beans (3-4 bourbon, Mexican, or Madagascar beans, depending on taste)
Good vodka (I used Stoli, but anything not in a plastic bottle should work)
Sweet wine yeast (I used WLP720 Sweet Mead/Wine, but something like Yeastlab Sweet Mead yeast M62 could work, too)

Grade A or Grade get-the-hell-out-of-here.

Step 1: Infuse!

Let’s do the easy part first. Using a good, sharp, elvish blade, slice your vanilla beans lengthwise, then chop them into three or four pieces (depending on length). Once they’re all nice and split, drop them into the vodka. It will take a while for the vanilla to seep into the vodka and create an infusion, so just seal your jar or bottle and set it aside. By the time you’re ready to rack your mead, you should also have some delicious home made vanilla extract, too!

Do not be tempted to take the shortcut down the well-worn path of store-bought vanilla extract. The preservatives in the baking stuff can completely ruin the flavors of your honey, which might result in five gallons of something tragically unpalatable.

Word to the wise: no matter how good the beans smell while you’re cutting them, do not eat them. They do not taste like you’d think (or hope) they would. They’re actually sort of sour. Weird.

It takes about 3 weeks for the beans to fully vanilla-fy the vodka.

Step 2: Stir and Sanitize!

Traditional sweet mead is incredibly simple. Honey, water, yeast. Nothing else. Nothing fancy.

But with great simplicity comes great responsibility. You need to be attentive when adding your honey and sanitizing your must, as it is the most crucial step to making good mead. Anything that touches your water or your honey needs to be sterilized (seriously, everything). You have to keep stirring to make sure no honey settles on the bottom of your pot and scorches.

Every time honey gets scorched, a viking in Valhalla sobers up.

Note: Honey takes up a deceptively large amount of volume. Roughly 10.67 fluid ounces per pound, for anyone trying to do math and stuff. Be sure to leave enough room in your boil pot to allow for all that yellow sugary joy. I started with three gallons, just to be safe. You can always add more water after the must is sanitized to make up the difference.

Once the water has reached ~130 degrees or hotter, you can start to add your honey. You don’t want to add it much earlier, or it will pool on the bottom like a lazy salamander. Or something. You’ll want to add all the honey and then let the entire must get up to at least 160-170 degrees for 15 minutes to make sure it is free from any unwanted yeasts or sneaky mead-ruining bacteria.

Honey by any other name would taste just as sweet.

Step 3: Keep stirring!

You need to make sure the mixture homogenizes, so keep stirring aggressively. The pre-mead will develop a thick, white froth. This is normal. And awesome.

The mixture should turn a dandelion yellow and smell intoxicatingly decadent. Honey is probably the best thing ever. Probably.

Don’t forget to re-sterilize your stirring spoon if you leave it out for too long, or if it touches those gross kitchen counters of yours.

I’m like one of those cappuccino artists, except with booze.

Step 4: Cool and Pitch!

After its relaxing, stress-relieving hot tub, you’ll need to cool the must down before you pitch any yeast. Too hot and the yeast will burn to death and die horribly, too cold and they’ll go into hypothermic hibernation.

I’m in the process of making a brass coil wort/must cooler (apparently I have a lot of half-finished projects), but until it’s done, I’m using the classic “fill the kitchen sink with a crap load of ice and promise your wife it will only be in there for an hour, tops.”

Four hours later, your must will probably be the appropriate 70-75 degrees needed to pitch the yeast.

I highly recommend investing in an infrared thermometer if you plan to brew often. It saves having to sterilize a normal thermometer over and over again to take readings, and is fun to shoot around the house like you’re an Imperial Stormtrooper.

I use liquid yeast as it saves having to rehydrate dry yeast and create a starter, which I’ve never had much success with. It’s a little pricier, but I’d rather have something that works on the first try, to prevent the headaches of the second, third, and fourth tries.

Use a large spoon (sterilized!) to create a maelstrom in the middle of your mead and then pour the liquid yeast into the center of the honey storm. Stir once again in the opposite direction to fully aerate your yellow brew.

If you shake this vigorously then try to uncap it with your teeth, it may explode in your mouth, which is generally unpleasant.

Step 5: Wait!

So you’re all like, “OK great, but you promised me vanilla!”

I know. Patience is a virtue and all that.

From my research, adding vanilla beans directly to the fermenting must can lead to all sorts of problems including stuck fermentation and off-flavors. It is also possible to over vanilla your mead(I know, I didn’t think that was even possible either), and by chucking some beans in you lose all control over how much flavor you have in the final product.

When fermentation slows and you are ready to rack the mead into the secondary vessel (probably after a few weeks in primary), then you can add your home made extract. Go slow and only add a little bit of a time, sampling every week until you reach the desired balance of honey and vanilla.

In four to six months, you should have a very sweet, very smooth mead ready for drinking, sharing, and toasting! Cheers!

Literature and Elation: 2012/2013

December 27, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

If I were asked to describe this year in three words, I would say:

“I can’t describe this year in three words because that is far too few words and to do so is really only a silly exercise in trying to minimize a ton of exciting events into a representative, easily digestible symbol.”

-or-

“Really freakin’ amazing.”

In summation, this year I: got married to the greatest lady in the history of ladies, started and fell in love with grad school, was Freshly Pressed (twice! I know, I still can’t believe it either), was published in a few other places, wrote 50,069 words of a “novel”, read 18 books (see the note on grad school), and did my first ever podcast, all without dying or developing any sort of serious psychosis.

I wrote exactly 150 posts on Literature and Libation this year. 51 beer reviews, 21 How Tos, 11 Craft and Drafts, and 5 Forgotten Fridays. If, on average, I wrote ~750 words a post (total guess), that’s ~112,500 words for 2012.

I’d say, without reservation, that is was a pretty awesome year.

A lot of people make resolutions as the new year turns its notebook to a fresh piece of paper, but I don’t like that idea. “Resolution” has a self deprecating connotation, as if you need to resolve some issue with your life, or make improvements to some less than perfect life-area.

Stop beating yourself up with the resolutions! Be positive, dammit.

For me, 2013 will be about trying new things. I’ve got a whole brew-kettle of ideas that are fermented and hopped and almost ready to drink. You’ll be seeing things like:

Guest posts!
Videos!
Essays!
Longer form thingies!
Contests!?

But that doesn’t mean I won’t be doing my usual reviews, How Tos, Craft and Draft posts, or Forgotten Fridays. They’ll still be here, and hopefully I’ll be able to come up with some schedule for posting that isn’t “whenever I randomly feel like it.” No promises though.

Did anyone else have any written successes this year? Any plans for 2013?

And don’t give me any resolutions. You don’t want to see me angry; I’m likely to write a strongly worded letter.

All of these things happened to/with/around me in 2012.

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