The other day as I looked at my site and the blog here it I realized anyone reading it might have one very blaring question. Here I am a DJ streamer on Twitch, and you arrive at my website to see the front page having probably the look one might expect for that. Then come to read the blog and is it filled with music minutiae or insider complaints about the industry? No its filled to date with notes and observations on my brewing and talk about Youtube vods.
Ok.. valid.
Have no fear there are some music and DJ related entries in the works. Thats one of the nice things about being a livestream DJ,is the ability to mix so many interest together into a show instead of just having 1 narrow path to express everything. Being an underground DJ as opposed to a corporate one we’re not so limited on the scope of the conversation I figure.
Social media right now comes in pretty much 2 flavors the big players FB/IG/Discord etc and the less corporate but much smaller ones like Mastodon, Bluesky, Matrix and such. The big players aren’t super interested in showing content to anyone that they aren’t being payed to distribute, and the small ones are good for seeing more of what people post but they aren’t as accessible to most people by default. Thats why the website got started .. everyone has a web browser, so centralizing thoughts here makes it all accessible to anyone who might be interested and doesn’t depend on those outside systems to maybe show a post when they get bored.
At about the same time I was putting together the website I was starting my brewing empire and sharing those adventures onstream. Ok mainly having a beer with you guys while throwing down a 4 or 5 hour set. 🤣But thats a kind of sharing. 🙂 So with both starting up at roughly the same time I had something to write about in a bit more detail after talking about some of it on stream. ..and so some of my 1st posts were born.
If you haven’t come by one of streams on Twitch yet, come on by and hang out a while. Http://twitch.tv/mystixa/ Thats where the majority of all this ‘research’ gets put into practice and you can be a part of it too. The ability to play for you, chat live while I’m doing it, share a drink, and a moment between everyone thats there is a big piece of the livestream DJ magic atmosphere.
New beers ahead.
Oh yes.. At the time of writing I’m about 1/2 way done with my next batch. Another new one for me, giving a round of English Pale Ale a try for the first time. It should come out a little lower in ABV (alcohol by volume) than some of the others that I made. But hey making it 5 gallons at a time thats not really much of a worry. Hopefully its tasty! We should get to see in about a week.
Even newer I got a really experimental one coming up. But I have to grind my own grains for this one AND it doesn’t even have any hops in it. A recipe style going back to a time before they even used hops in beer. So before I get to brewing that one, I thought I should explain a bit about hops.
Hops You Say?
Beer without hops is pretty rare nowadays, especially here in the Pacific Northwest. This is one of the strongholds for a type of IPA (India Pale Ale) style beers, which has been known for adding copious amounts of hops. I do love me some IPA, especially the rare instance of ones having a flowery taste to them. They’re used to add a distinctive bitter flavor and/or some amount of aromatic character.
A quick look around puts the age of people dealing with hops back further than I thought, as I knew beer used them around the year 1500 and I thought not much before that. Apparently the 1st known beer recipe with them was actually from a monk in the year 822 though. And they were written about as far back as the Romans! Though that wasn’t about beer yet at that point. Marcus Valerius Martialis (aka Martial) wrote ‘…appetitur posito vilis oliva lupo.’ or ..’the cheap olive becomes appetizing with hops’. Depicted here apparently after being given olives without any hops. 🤣 A bit of a tangent there, but may as well drop a bit of roman trivia if I can right?
Hops are kind of strange looking flowers with a really resinous piney smell to them. Different varieties have varying amounts of bitterness and smell intensity that they impart to the beer. Somewhat like wine and coffee, where they’re grown and any plant variations greatly change their flavor and aroma character. …and theres a pile of different kinds. Beerists can bury you deep in fancy words describing their favorite hops, where its from, what beers their for, etc.
I like to keep things simple for myself though. and I’m just getting to know the ones I prefer. (So far my fave I think are Columbia hops, which are a bit flowery and not too citrusy or piney smelling). Like in hops, beers, coffee, and music I don’t care so much about learning the whole encyclopedia about these things. Rather I like to pay attention to the parts I connect with and leave the minutiae to the gatekeepers out there to worry about as I’m enjoying mine. 🍻 :p
When it comes to brewing with these things we don’t get them in the form of the fresh flowers often unless you happen to live close to where they’re grown. The really delicate tastes that people enjoy the most are fairly perishable in them. So when it comes to brewing we usually get them as pellets, freeze dried powders, or made into extracts. This is another reason I think starting out with beer brewing kits is a good place to be for a while at the start. Choices like this where theres piles of types, preparations, brands and all that can be a bit daunting without any exposure to the end products they make. At least with the kits theres been some experimentation done to narrow it down some.
Well cheers to finding out a little more on the brewing side of things yet another way the Romans found something cool to do way back when that can reach forward and effect something like my DJ stream thousands of years later.
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