BrotherBart said:
Some Like It Hot said:
Brotherbart, I respect your opinion on wood stoves a great deal, but corn in beer? NOT! "I'm from Milwaukee, and I oughta know" (If you're old enough, you will remember that son from a Pabst beer commercial.)
According to the Reinheitsgebot (German Purity Law) adopted in 1516 and still the law in Germany, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. And certainly Germany is the expert country on beer. I know that there is rice in Budweiser (it says grain, but I hear it is mostly rice) but I don't consider that actually beer, nor would I drink it except in desperation. Anybody who puts corn in their beer is not really making beer, in my opinion and the opinion of many others. In the U.S. it flies because we make a lot of crappy beer, but real beer doesn't have corn in it.
According to many sources, but I will just quote Wikipedia here:
"American-style lager beer is a common variety of beer, a type of pale lager, traditionally made and drunk in North America, but also popular in much of the rest of the world. It derives ultimately from the Czech Pilsner, but is characterized by a much lighter color and body and the frequent use of rice or corn as adjuncts."
Rice is actually number two with corn being number one. Some prefer rice because it contains less oil than corn but it slimes up the brewing equipment something fierce.
And as to considering Budweiser beer, I leave that to the people that drink Bud. The largest selling beer on planet Earth.
BeG:
I agree. In college we tried to drink Coors, as the real beer. Three cans and before the real party started I had all the symptoms of a hang over. Found out the processing of the "rice" in Coors was causing a mild allergic reaction, so I switched to Millers. BTW, what's brewing in Tumwater? I used to follow brewery ownership, but when it got to be three, I stopped. Frankly, I liked it when you could get fresh Strohs on the West Coast. Oh, and Hank's in Portland is still my favorite. Calemarie or crab and a Henry's Dark is as close to heaven as......... Wait what was the topic?
I want to chime in here. AG-Ethanol, if you have researched so much about agricultural alternatives, tell us your twist on bio-diesel, straight veggie burners and other alternatives. We are placing a lot of marginal farm land in corn production that is depleting the soil, what crops are soil building and can be used as fuel courses? I'm a city kid, family history were homesteaders, first to bust the soil kind of folk, even have a famous ancestor that built the San Bernardino Ranch Irrigation system. I read a lot from creditable Agricultural experts that disagree with our current direction. Admittedly I am not a fan of ADM, Simplot and a few other fertilizer/seed and "farm management companies". Personally I'd enjoy talking about the future of soybeans, or sugarbeats, near and dear to the farmers in my area. Often thought about converting the "residue" from beat processing into pellets like they do with distillers grain. But can't get past the smell. There are lots of farms out hear that grow dry Winter wheat, it's not irrigated, and frankly is seeded and left to mature, but there is profit if you have enough land. We grow a lot of hay, well did until the fires. It feeds beef and dairy cattle. There's rye grass and even alfalfa. The big fertilizer companies go broke in Utah, no business.
Someone asked you earlier about the economics of corn, what does it cost to produce and what does it cost to make a gallon of ethanol. You have recently posted you have an economics background, can you give us a rundown of the actual cost of a bushel of corn, what it creates through processing in ethanol. So a farmer needs $4/bu to make a living, but others have pointed out there are no family farms, who's getting the four bucks?
I have a friend who is a very well respected economist in social economics. Made quite a name for himself in the US and abroad. Several years ago he said to me, I know agricultural economics, but working at WSU has taught me something I never would have thought about. I know nothing about agricultural economics. He told me his knowledge really came when one of his grad students took him down to coffee in Pullman at a diner, across from the local brokerage company. They had a ticker running on the commodities markets and futures. All the window booths were full and all were obviously farmers. They would talk until the right markets came up and all talk stopped. To shorten the story, my friend got a front seat after awhile and got the farmers to open up. They new the market because they knew it from the beginning. Those good-old-boys were sitting on thousands of bushels of wheat waiting for the right time to sell. They made money, every year, some through insurance, but most through knowing their crops. Farmers I know and have talked to are not real happy with things right now. They say their costs are not stable, the most volutile are fuel, fertilizer, adn weed/pest control. When it looks like they are going to get ahead, the overhead goes up. Most are moving from contracted crops to free market crops. No beets, no corn, no seeds, lots of alfalfa, hay and rye grass. One guy I know will not contract his hay until December. He has eight trucks, with duals all rebuilt and sons or sons in law to drive and he's looking at customers in California. He delivers. He used to be a major player in sugarbeets until White Satin stopped buying in his area.
Admittedly, all my information is anecdotal, but is real case. Would you share some of the same?
Oh, BTW, a friend who is in my business has a family farm in North Dakota. He's too old to farm, can only put in a 12 hour day, said he's going to take 2,500 acres next year, plus his land bank and seed it in switch grass. Seems SDSU wants to make pellets. Hmmmmmm
