Called it!

In case the grid ever goes down--I mean really down, as in complete societal collapse, no wifi, cannibalism, that sort of thing--and in the aftermath we’re reduced to small, tribalistic, local agrarian economies, I call brewer!

I could go a few ways with this. I could explore the simple, beautifully efficient parliamentary procedure of calling. I could break down the various ways the "grid" could go down and the harrowing events that might follow. I could examine the economic implications of the industrial and post-industrial ages. Or I could talk booze. 

I think the choice is clear. 

God seems to have made the world in such a way that it just wants to ferment. Wine practically makes itself. Expose grape juice to the air, and yeast will find it and do its thing. Beer’s a little more complicated, but not much. Barley right from the field needs only to be soaked and dried a few times, and it’s ready for yeast (some Belgian beers are still made using open-air vats. The wild yeast that comes in on the breeze does the work). Let’s face it: where there's cultivation, there's fermentation.

I’ve thought about this, and I’ve thought about the other jobs I’d like to have: the village blacksmith, the village baker, the village cheese maker (that’s right, cheese), but I keep coming back to village brewer. Here’s why...I think: making your own adult beverage out of something as commonplace as juice or grain has magic to it. It’s alchemy, and it makes me say wow. There's no wow in bread. I like bread. It's just that it makes plain sense to me. You mix stuff together, heat it up, and it cooks. It, or something like it, happens every day in most kitchens. Cheese, now that’s a little more interesting, but not much. It's still a process that seems to be in the cook’s hands the whole time. Separate curds from whey, add a little flavor, you got cheese. But beer...Beer’s mysterious.


It also spans more disciplines than mere cooking. Yes, at first it’s culinary. It’s mixed like soup--grains and hops are steeped, spices are added, yeast is pitched. But then it goes in another direction. It goes scientific. You have airlocks and fermenting carboys, surgical tubing, and hydrometers. Your wort (the malted barley, grains, hops, and yeast mixture) sits in a dark, cool place for weeks where chemical reactions change sugar to CO2 and alcohol. Then the bottling. The process has now gone from culinary to scientific to industrial so that different apparatus is needed--bottles, a bottle capper, a bottling bucket, priming sugar for carbonation. Your kitchen’s an assembly line. A week or two later, you have something that should not have come from a kitchen or basement but from a pub or a 7-11.


I’ll say it again. It’s magic.


A long time ago, before cities became the centers of culture, there was the expectation that if you got good at something, you really could be the best around. Of course, the around was much smaller, no bigger than your village. But still, you could ply your craft or trade and be appreciated by those who found value in it. Yeah, it still happens today, but not on the same scale. You get good at something now, and maybe the people in your department or on your floor or branch will notice, but odds are there’s a guy in the next cubicle doing the same work. And odds are real good that the work you’ve gotten good at is the work that offered the best prospects for a paycheck.


Take my own job--teacher. Today you couldn’t throw a copy of the best-selling and widely-acclaimed Dragon Haint across a room and not hit a teacher. But in a little, post-apocalyptic village, you’d have just one, probably teaching in a one-room school house, and everyone around would know exactly who the teacher is. They’d probably call him or her “Teacher.” And next door to Teacher would be Smithy who lives next to the Millers who are neighbors with the Masons and the Bakers and the Treecutters (whose name might change in later generations to Wood or Sawyer). And just up the rode, in a brown wooden house would live the Brewers. No more Beals. I’m Brad the Brewer now, and when my boys marry, they’ll be raising little Brewers, expanding the shop, carting our brew all over lower central Michigan. And someday my great, great grandson will make brew commercials on the moving picture screen.

Or, maybe my sons decide to be the village something-else. If the village is still small enough, that is. That’s one thing we’ve lost to modernity--the chance to be the village something. But maybe we'll get that chance back. 

Go ahead, Heidi, roll your eyes, but the grid’s going down some day. Better call your job now before someone else does. 

I call brewer.