Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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How to brew beer, Zimbabwe style

An excellent post on Field to Feast, a blog of “Africa-inspired writing, cooking and eating”, describes the process of making (and drinking) some of the local brews of Zimbabwe. “I don’t think I’ve heard of a grain or fruit that isn’t made into some sort of beer or liquor,” Carolyn, the author, writes. She goes on to describe brewing a batch of chikokiyana, a quick-fire beer made from maize. It does point up the human propensity to turn anything fermentable into an alcoholic beverage, even if it is something of an acquired taste. But it isn’t just home brewers who use a diversity of raw materials. Some big brewers have adopted a similar strategy.

Of late, my own web searches for articles about sorghum have been overwhelmed by news about a sorgum-based beer from brewing giant Anheuser-Busch. The beer, called Redbridge, is being touted as good for drinkers who are allergic to gluten. It also represents a deliberate attempt by the brewer to develop new niches for different drinkers, based on a diversity of raw materials, to boost sales and prevent swings in revenue. Sounds an awful lot like using several species and varieties in a farming system to increase production and stabilize yields.

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The place of meat

I just had to link to Tom Philpott’s latest over at Gristmill, for its truly wonderful headline: In Seitan’s Lair.

Seitan, for those unfamiliar with it, is what you are left with if you wash a good lump of wheat dough under water. All the starch goes down the plug, leaving you with a ball of essentially pure wheat gluten protein that can then be fashioned into various meat substitutes.

It crops up late in Philpott’s musings, as an aside on vegan cooking, but if I had been smart enough to think of the headline I would not have let its irrelevance to the whole article put me off either. Anyway, the entire article is worth a read because it tries to put meat-eating into context, reminding us that meat fattened on grain is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that good farming requires diversity, of which livestock should be a small, but important component. Just as meat can be a small but important component of a good diet.

To the vegetarians and vegans who take a different view, I would point out only that animals are awfully good at turning things we humans choose not to eat, like grass and acorns and household scraps, into things we do, like lamb chops cheese and prosciutto. It seems wasteful not to use them in that way.

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EU conserves sheep and goats

Not sure what to make of this. A European Research Headline piece of news gives some information about a project to use molecular genetics, socio-economics and geostatistics to decide which populations of sheep and goats are worth conserving. But the article doesn’t actually say anything about the project’s conclusions. And when I looked earlier today the project web site had not been updated since Agusut 2006. That’s annoying because the results could well be interesting and I’d really like to know how they analyzed the information and how they used it to advise policymakers.

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Welcome Bankers

A warm but somewhat belated welcome to everyone visiting from Tangled Bank 72, so ably hosted by Ouroboros, and the other blogs that have linked to us this week. We’d have put the mat out earlier, but my esteemed colleague Luigi, who wrote the article on new software approaches to taxonomy and identification, is traveling and temporarily out of reach. (I have no excuse, other than the demands of paying work.)

Anyway, aside from kicking around and seeing if there’s anything here that attracts your fancy, we’d also like to enlist your help. If you come across any trifles that relate to our obsession with agricultural biology, please toss them our way. We look, but we can’t find everything, or even a small part of everything. There’s a contact form, or you can simply comment on any item. One of us is generally keeping an eye on them.

Thanks.

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Japan’s genebank

Looks like the genebank of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Japan has revamped its English web site. There’s a request form, too. So, use it! More people ought to avail themselves of the treasures in genebanks, and it isn’t hard to do. It makes use of the genebank, which adds to its perceived value, and it could bring you joy and delight in your fields or gardens.