What to do when government shuts down the breweries and distilleries:
I was taught to brew by Harry Rickel, of Detroit. He was a lawyer but his people had been in the malting business for years, and he knew all about brewing. He sent me not only detailed directions but also my first supplies, and after they ran out he found me a reliable Lieferant in Paul Weidner, of 350 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit. By 1922 I was no longer dependent on Weidner, for a number of dealers in home-brewers’ materials had sprung up in Baltimore. One of the best was a retired brewmaster named Brohmayer, who had set up a shop for the sale of home-brewers’ supplies. He knew the chemistry and bacteriology of fermentation and gave me some very useful tips. Also, he supplied me with the best German and Bohemian hops and very good malt syrup.
At the start all home-brewers made their beer too strong. It took us a couple of years to learn that we should be sparing with the malt syrup, and especially with the corn sugar that we used to reinforce it. My first brew, put into quart bottles with old-time wire and rubber spring-caps (for the sale of crown corks had not yet begun) was bottled too soon, and as a result most of the bottles exploded. They were stored in the sideyard in Hollins Street and the explosions greatly alarmed our neighbor, William Deemer. As soon as we had mastered the trick August and I made very good beer—or, rather, ale, for that is what it always was, technically speaking. When I was married in 1930 and moved to an apartment in Cathedral Street, I set up a brewery there. I had kept a sort of cellar-book from the start, but the early years of it have been lost. Here are some entries for my last six months in Hollins Street in 1930:
1. One can German light malt; one can German dark; one can Guilford; a pound and a half white sugar; two ounces American hops. Brewed March 9; bottled March 19.
2. Three cans German dark; a pound and a half corn sugar; two ounces Bohemian hops; corn sugar in bottles. Brewed April 20; bottled April 23. Bottled too soon. On opening the first bottle the beer boiled out, and I threw out the whole batch.
3. Five pounds Brohmeyer malt; five ounces German hops; a pound and a half corn sugar; one ounce hops in crock at the end of fermentation; Chattolanee water. Fleischmann’s yeast. Brewed May 28; bottled June 1. A light, somewhat flabby brew.
4. Five pounds Brohmeyer malt; five ounces German hops; two pounds corn sugar; one ounce hops in crock; Chattolanee water; Fleischmann’s yeast. Brewed June 1; bottled June 5. Good flavor.
[From “H. L. Mencken: The Days Trilogy, Expanded Edition,” edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. Copyright 2014 by The Library of America, New York, N.Y.]
Old Life 
I love hearing stories like this.
My dad grew up in Wyandotte just outside of Detroit. He has told me similar stories of how his parents and grandparents would make liquor and then sell it on the street by hiding it in baby carriages under blankets.
One time the house got raided and the bottles were thankfully hidden under a pile of laundry.
And now I live in North Carolina in the birth place of moonshine. Rum runnin’ on both sides of my family tree.
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JAS, I’ll bet they jaywalked habitually, too.
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I’ve grown in appreciation for Mencken exponentially since I first read him in college. In fact, just yesterday I bought a beautiful second edition hardback set of The American Language and companion volumes. Have you read it, D. Hart?
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CW,
If the customer is on the other side of the street, they certainly weren’t going to walk to the end of the block.
Jaywalkin’ in the D.
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Reminds me of “Boardwalk Empire”.
Speaking of shows, finished the first disc of the first season of “The Hour”. Good stuff.
Also finished up Eric Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales” — highly recommended — especially “My Night at Maud’s”, “Claire’s Knee”, and “Love in the Afternoon”. Best to watch all 6 in order, though. Netflix has the Criterion editions. Make sure to watch the special features, including the interviews with Rohmer. This is world class stuff.
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I love Mencken’s writings as well. But, his views of the South were appalling; one writer compared him to General William T. Sherman when it came to their depradations of the South.
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Jon Winokur, “A curmudgeon’s reputation for malevolence is undeserved….. They don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s absurdities. They’re just as sensitive and soft-hearted as the next guy, but they hide their vulnerability beneath a crust of misanthropy. They ease the pain by turning hurt into humor. . . . . . They attack maudlinism because it devalues genuine sentiment. . Nature, having failed to equip them with a serviceable denial mechanism, has endowed them with astute perception and sly wit.
http://www.butnotyet.com/2013/04/can-you-be-a-christian-and-a-curmudgeon/
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My favorite curmudgeon, Bill Wmith—
n my opinion this kind goeth not out by Van Til. You don’t pull Wilmot back from the brink by telling him he must begin by assuming the whole Bible and every tenet of the Christian faith or he will never get his faith back. Perhaps part of his problem was with too much reliance on the evidentialist apologetics of the Hodges and Warfield, but presuppositionalism will not put solid ground under his feet. Telling him he is suppressing the truth in unrigheousness will feel to him like what he had been doing before he gave up his faith. To tell him his problem is not intellectual but moral will seem strange to him when he feels like he is finally being honest.
Nor in my opinion will it work to point out the implications and/or consequences of his new beliefs (or non-beliefs). He saw these things for himself – the meaninglessness, bleakness, and hopelessness of a world without God. But, implications or consequences are themelves not good reasons to reject beliefs. Wilmot’s problem was that he became convinced of atheisim and then, rather than pretending he still believed, faced the results of not believing. You don’t overturn a conviction a person believes is grounded in reality simply by showing them that the conviction has bad consquences if followed to its logical conclusion. The issue is not, “What are the consequences of this belief?” but, “Is this belief true or not?” For Paul it is not just that he should be pitied but that faith and preaching are in vain, and he is a liar, if Christ has not been raised.
http://thechristiancurmudgeonmo.blogspot.com/2014/09/this-minister-lost-his-faith.html
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Peter Berger: The opposite of faith is not unbelief but knowledge. I know that the skyline of the city I see from my desk is Boston and that this is where I am right now. I don’t need faith to make this affirmation. I do need faith if I affirm that there is the city of God, beyond all the skylines of this world, and that this city is the eternal destination intended by God for his creatures. Christians in particular should not deplore the fact that the pluralist situation points them back to the proposition of the New Testament: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/09/of-faith-and-doubt
from Bill Smith quoting Updike’s novel
His wife is practical, angry, and scorning
:
Clarence, we all have moments when life seems empty and not worthwhile. But they pass, and WE PUSH THrOUGH them for the sake of the children we have brought into the world and all those others who depend on us…You have cold-heartedly decided to inflict on your family an entirely needless sacrifice…I thought I could make a man of you. Well all I have done is make a pretty mess for myself and the three harmless souls I brought into the world…
Her counsel is to think and read less and pray more.
DGH—What about the Christian who is not given to self-consciousness? Is his plumbing any less valuable or virtuous because he can’t conceive of a philosophically coherent system that will explain how his knowledge of the leak and his experience with fixing such leaks depends upon the ontological Trinity? If he simply begins his day asking for God’s blessing, thanks God for strength and sustenance, goes about his job, provides for his family, and leads family worship – that is, if he simply goes about his routine and seeks to honor his maker, but cannot fathom the theories that would turn his activities into the self-actualized doings of an epistemologically self-conscious believer, does that make his knowledge of plumbing, his love of family, and his enjoyment of pizza invalid?
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Seth, I’ve dipped in here and there. Mencken’s prose there is more vanilla but it’s still funny at times. Look at the section on expletives (especially hell).
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Richard, thankfully Roger Goodell is not Mencken’s commissioner.
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