Tiny Bubbles

I had an idea for a short story this weekend, and so I wrote it, and this is the result. I'm not sure whether this is the final form or not. I kind of like it, but I'm not absolutely thrilled with the result. I'm not sure if I should work in more elements, make the story longer, and I'm not sure if it's too overt or too subtle. Perhaps this idea, and this story, will just have to ferment for a while until I'm happy with it.
--Liam

My friends and I are rather great fans of a certain fermented consumable.

Please understand, when I say "fans", I do not mean that we are addicted, like so many poor slobs, or that in some measure we cannot do without it. Perhaps "snobs" is a better term for us. We do not like any of the "mass produced" product available, advertised by macho males and scantily clad females, and certainly can not abide anything with "Lite" in the name.

No, clearly we are snobs. We will spend ten times, twenty times, even thirty times as much for a quality, hand crafted specimen, and spend a good half hour over it, comparing notes, discussing subtle nuances of flavor, aroma and texture. We could never be like those poor addicted sots for whom the next "fix" was always just around the corner, poor things for whom the pleasure of the product has been lost over time to the base bodily cravings. It’s just too expensive to consume enough of the ones we truly adore to create that level of dependence.

I must admit, however, that when it comes to devotion to the art and the craft, some of my friends put me to shame. While I abhor the mass produced swill as much as any of them, I content myself with frequenting establishments which "brew" their own heady mixtures. I’ve always wanted to try making a batch myself, but it takes the expense (and the dedication) to whole new levels. With little mouths to feed, the added expense for what is, at the end of the day, a hobby can not be justified. And I’ve never had the patience necessary to wait nor the organizational skills necessary to obsess over the little details.

One of my friends, however, is always working on at least one new batch, and as often as not has two or three new creations fermenting away, and his devotion has reached the point where he seldom has anything else to discuss. Talk about the latest entertainment program or theatrical experience or musical number or dance, and in surprisingly little time, he will have turned the conversation back to his latest experiments, the subtle twists to the recipes he’s tried and what he hopes the results will be, or the triumphs and tribulations of his last batch.

Once, on a lazy Saturday afternoon when my wife was out of town with the young ‘uns, he showed me the process, and allowed me to help as he started another batch, a batch which, actually, should be ready any time now. As it is my first time with any involvement in the creation (however minor), I am most interested in sampling the results.

The process is surprisingly simple, and yet exceedingly complex and subtle. In the overview, nothing could sound simpler: you take raw ingredients (and there are surprisingly few), mix them together and then set them aside for quite a long time as "the magic" happens. Nothing could be simpler, right?

Well, the subtle part comes in the selecting of the ingredients, in the infinite minute variations of amounts that produce surprisingly large variations in finished product, in the length of time the raw "wort" is left to ferment, and the ambient environment while the fermentation takes place. Add a little bit more of one ingredient, take away a little of another, and raise the temperature by a few degrees and you can turn an ordinary batch into an exceptional batch... or completely ruin it. My friend takes long, detailed notes on every batch, to try to figure out what works best, always in the search of the elusive "perfect recipe".

The secret to the whole thing, really, is in the fermentation agents. What they really are is tiny little living beings. Well, not really living, it’s hard to call something so stupid, and with so little self-awareness truly ALIVE. But in the scientific sense, they are alive, in that they eat and create waste products, and we must be thankful to them for doing it, for those waste products are what turns our little concoction of raw materials into the fine culinary experience we all enjoy so.

What these little "creatures" (my friend calls them "yeasts") do, essentially, is live and produce waste wantonly, slowly polluting their own environment. It takes them a long time; by their own life clocks it takes thousands of generations. In the end the same thing always happens: they continue consuming raw ingredients and producing waste products until they’ve polluted their environment to the point that it will no longer sustain their lives, at which point that generation dies off (or perhaps is simply unable to produce another viable generation), leaving behind a finely fermented ambrosia, ready to be consumed.

And this is why the subtle changes in environment change the character of the end product so greatly: a little bit "warmer", or a little too much food, and these "yeasts" have a world of plenty, and grow too quickly, fermenting much too fast and leaving a bitter, almost un-palatable result in much too short a time. A little bit "colder" or too LITTLE food and they are apt not to be able to establish a proper culture, and to die off before doing their jobs.

Really, philosophically, I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s wrong on the grand scale of things to take advantage of these simple, stupid creatures, setting them up in a perfect environment, knowing as we do that they will (as they always do) exterminate themselves by the untold billions, but it is their way. If we did not set them up to do it for our benefit, they would be doing it anyway, decomposing the rotting carcasses of the dead, or befouling standing pools of liquids, always doing their work and polluting their environment until it will no longer sustain them. It is their way.

And anyway, can such lower-life-forms really be considered alive? Surely they are not AWARE of what they do, or they would find ways to deal with their wastes in a more harmonious fashion. Reduce, reuse, recycle, find ways to work their waste into the cycle of life, instead of simply tossing it aside and creating ever more.

No, surely they are just what we say they are, mere biological machines, processing raw fuels into waste materials because in the grand scheme of things, such a job is necessary, and then shutting down with no more feeling or emotion or discomfort than turning off a food preparation device after it has processed to our satisfaction. There can’t be any moral ambiguity, just because we employ them to do what they would do anyway in OUR service, instead of in the wild.

So, we do. And in they end, the result is always the same, ingestion, excretion, pollution and death by the countless billions, leaving us with yet another batch to sample and discuss, to consume and enjoy, whiling away an evening over a "cold one" at the pub or one of our respective houses.

I really do look forward to trying the one I helped create. It should be done any time now. The style, according to my friend, is one I have not yet tried. "Earth Dopplebock". I can’t wait.

Copyright (c) April 11, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net