Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Sean teaches Margaret about brewing alcohol. They talk about fermentation in general and then walk though how to make beer and cider.

Guest Info

Sean (he/him) can be found at https://seanvansickel.com/

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Sean on Brewing

Margaret: Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This week we're talking about fermentation. We're talking about little things that eat things and then poop out alcohol. I actually don't really know because I'm the one who's going to be asking these questions and I record these introductions before I actually do the interview. So, I'm going to be learning more about fermentation and we're gonna be talking about alcohol, but we're also gonna be talking about all kinds of other stuff too. And I think you'll get a lot out of it. And first, we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. La la la, la la la la [Margaret making musical melody sounds]

Margaret: Okay, we're back. And so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess like a little bit about how you got into fermentation?

Sean: So my name is Sean. Pronouns are he/him. Well, I actually started with, with cider and mead because I had a harder time finding commercially available cider and mead that wasn't just kind of like a novelty product or obscenely expensive, you know, imported from like Basque country or whatever. So that's, that was kind of where I got my, my kickoff on fermentation. I worked in commercial fermentation doing sour beer production as well as like conventional clean, you know, canned beer, and then actually worked in sales and distribution with beer for a while.

Margaret:Okay, so this is really exciting because I've always kind of wanted to get into this. Well, I've kind of wanted to get into everything, which is the whole reason I started this podcast, so I could ask people about how to do things. But fermentation...so you can format things and it makes them different? What is fermentation?

Sean: So fermentation basically is either yeast or bacteria breaking down almost always some form of sugar or carbohydrate. The main thing that is being produced by that is co2. But a nice little side effect that is often produced is alcohol, right, or lactic acid is often produced especially in the presence of bacteria, specifically in the presence of lactic acid producing bacteria. We call them you know, LAB is the abbreviation that's used. So, fermentation is happening generally-when people are referring to it--they're referring to yeast fermentation. So the most common yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, right, beer yeast. It's the same. It's called beer yeast. But that's the same yeast that's used to ferment wine. It's use