Friday, September 26, 2014

How To Distill Your Own Wee Dram

These are troubling times in the Fandom. 

Starz announced this week that instead of the second half of Season 1 of Outlander beginning in January, it will start on April 7, 2015. This news went down badly with fans who were already wondering what they were going to do with themselves from the time when Episode 8 airs on September 27 until the first of the year when Episode 9 was going to arrive.
Waddya mean? We have to wait six whole MONTHS? Waaaaah! 
This from people who should be used to waiting. Diana Gabaldon, prolific as she is, says that it takes her three to four years (not months) to write one of her Big Books. Doing the math, that means that since the most recent book in the Outlander series, In My Own Heart's Blood, came out in June of this year, we won't see the next book in the series until summer of 2017 or 2018. That makes waiting until April for a new TV episode seem like no big deal.

It happens that this upset over the date change is happening at the same time that I am doing research for a post on barley - a far more interesting subject than I ever expected. The research has led me to do some reading about how barley is used in the making of barley wine, beer and whisky. And once I got past the information on malting and fermenting, the next thing I wanted to know was how whisky is distilled.

As I was watching YouTube videos, it occurred to me - if anyone needs an Outlander-related activity to keep them occupied for the next 6 months, building a still and making whisky could be just the thing.

You're going to start by making wort, a liquid drawn from the mash of malted barley which contains the sugars that will convert to alcohol in the fermenting process. Unless you are really desperate for something to do, I'm not going to send you to the malting shed with bags of wet barley grain. To keep this simple, go to your local home-brew store and buy malt extract. That will save you the steps of malting the barley, making the mash, and extracting malt from it. You simply mix the malt extract with water to make the wort. While at the home-brew store, ask about recipes and buy the yeast you will use for fermenting the wort. You will also need to buy a large glass container in which to store the wort while it ferments. When fermentation is complete, you are ready for distilling.

This article, How to Make Whisky - Step by Step, is a good overview of the entire process. Before you get invested too much in this project, you should give it a read.

The basics of still manufacture are pretty simple, as this article 3 Ways to Build a Still explains. If you are more of a visual learner, here's a video, below, that explains what to do. You can probably build a still for around $100.

There's enough to do here to keep you busy for weeks. And if your attempts are less than hoped for, you can always pop into a bottle shop on April 6 and buy a bottle of the good stuff to sip while you watch Episode 9.

Slainte mhath!


Thursday, September 18, 2014

3 Reasons To Love Latin Plant Names


Cue Tina Turner...

What's Latin got to do, got to do with it? 

What's Latin, but a sweet old fashioned language? 


What's in a name? Quite a lot, as it happens, in the world of horticulture. Consider the flap over plants in Episode 3 of Outlander. Claire correctly explains that Convallaria majalis, commonly known as lily of the valley, is often mistaken for wood garlic, Allium ursinum. However, the plant she identifies as lily of the valley is not Convallaria - a fact pointed out by many viewers - it doesn't even look similar. Because the script was so clear, specifying Convallaria, one wonders how such a mistake could have happened.

Lily of the Valley shrub - Pieris japonica 
My guess, and this is only a guess, is that the person sent to find the plant for filming the episode was simply told to find a "lily of the valley." That seems innocent enough, especially to people who don't have much experience, but if you want a specific plant, the only way to assure accuracy is to use its Latin, scientific name. Using the common name, lily of the valley, can get you into trouble because more than one plant may have that name. Possibilities in this case include: false lily of the valley (Maianthemum dilatum), which seems most likely the plant used for the show, or lily of the valley shrub (Pieris sp.

I can sympathize with the producers of the show, because of my experience as a landscape designer. Designers and architects specify plants for landscape plans using Latin names because we are very particular about form, size and color. We know precisely which plants will deliver those characteristics, and we strive to be as clear as possible with our instructions. But nearly all of us have had the experience of visiting a job site and being horrified to find that an installer has taken it upon himself to make some substitutions. If I have specified a dwarf conifer that will fit nicely into a small, urban garden, I am not happy to see that one of its relatives, a forest tree that wants to be 150 feet tall, has taken its place. 

That said, if you are not in the horticulture business, do Latin plant names really matter? If you are a gardener or have any interest in plants, I believe so. Here are three reasons:

1) Latin botanical names are names without borders. No matter what country you live in and no matter what language you speak, botanists, biologists, nursery professionals, landscape designers, architects and savvy gardeners all use the same Latin, scientific name for the same plant.

2) Using Latin names eliminates confusion. Plants have common names, but these names vary from place to place. You can't assume that the common name that you have for a plant means the same thing to other people.

Is this a mango? 
One of my hort instructors told us a story about ordering a pizza while visiting in Ohio. Looking through the list of toppings, he was surprised to see that mangoes were offered. Thinking that an orange, tropical fruit was rather an exotic choice, particularly in the midwestern US, he had to ask. Turns out, "mango" is what the locals there call green bell pepper. It's one more example of how common names can cause misunderstandings.

3) Finally, when ye have a wee bit o' the Latin, the names will tell ye more about the wee plants, ye ken?  Here's brief list of Latin species names to give you an idea.

alba - white
aurea - yellow or gold (Au being the chemical symbol for gold)
baccata - having berry-like fruit
callosum - thickened, calloused
compacta - small, compact
dendatum - toothed
fasciata - bound together
ilicifolia - having leaves like holly
indica - native to India
lacteum - milky
macrophylla - having big leaves
nana - small
nigra - black
palustris - loves marshes
pendula - pendulous, weeping
purpurea -  purple
rubra - red
spinosa - spiny or thorny
sylvatica - of the forest
tortuosum -  twisted, contorted
umbraculifera - umbrella-like
variegata - variegated, usually refers to foliage with more than one color
viridis - green
vulgaris - common

Want to know more? Have a name you want to look up? Go to the Botanical Dictionary at Dave's Garden.


Related Post:

Right Plants, Wrong Season?