posted to HBD (but not written by) by Kit Anderson (kit.anderson@acornbbs.com), November 18, 1994
There are several areas where men and women set up their equipment differently in preparing for a batch. No self respecting brewer ever admits to his peers that HIS kitchen is without a few gadgets; by this I mean technotwists on the basics. Since the days of the drafty caves, we women know better than to collect many pots and pans since we usually clean up. We also had to pack them up for that trip to the next valley of the horses(or bison,or whatever was in season). This has translated to todays' brewsters kitchen which is kept rather simple with some kind of large brewpot, that when full of hot wort, will still be liftable [unless there's an available male to bat ones' eyes at or otherwise direct] off the stove. Some of us may invest in a wort chiller but the sight of those copper coils sends chilly memories of killer IUD's through our collective mind and we usually skip the technical additives like that. A large spoon, left over from beating the kids bottoms works fine for stirring and every utensil drawer has the usual random measuring spoon, unless the kids have it in the sandbox out back.
We like it simple, guys, because we also get to clean up our messes. We seldom have the luxury of having a wife to wash up our adventures in the kitchen, so besides the one brewpot, etc, there's not much else.
One thing that brewsters always have that many brewers don't is a scale that reads in ounces. I really think that Weight Watchers should market those scales for brewing purposes because mine has weighed out many a batch of hops, corn sugar and specialty grain. Although I've gained a few pounds ...my good ol' WW scale is still accurate.
When brewsters advance to partial or all grain mashing we do add the obligatory grain grinder to our repertoire. My experience is that women generally fine tune their grinders better than men [you can quote me here] because of a simple anatomical difference... we have breasts. You heard me right on that one . You'll never catch a women fiddling with their grinder after its started or leaning over the top of it to check the feed flow. So we take more care in the initial setting up of this high quality equipment! I'm also sure that the turning of the crank has some deeper Freudian meaning, so we prefer a steady rhythm for that as well. I've even caught myself staring at the ceiling and considering repainting it once or twice while grinding 15 lbs. of grain.
Fashion has to do with another significant area of difference between boys and girls. Many brewers, when transferring the cooled wort from pot to fermenter, go slowly to catch the trub. Guys - get a life. We brewsters have a technoid trade secret to let you in on regarding your troubles here. It's also ecological and is recycling in the first degree. Instead of throwing away those torn pantyhose, just stretch the good leg over the top of your brewpot and filter out the wort from the trub. Just pour away and aerate the hell out of that gyle. You'll get better fermentations from it too! ! !
Well that's about all for this issue . I can't spill all of our secrets in one run with you hounds. Go ahead and do some male bonding after reading this installment and feel free to get out in the woods to beat on upturned mashtuns and brewpots to disseminate your agony.