Blessing of Homes

A few posts back, we mentioned the blessing that we always pray when we finish a batch of beer.  This past Sunday was the feast of the Epiphany, and one of the oldest traditions for the feast is to bless your home. Although the feast of the Epiphany is the traditional time to bless your home, you can do it at any time of the year. The blessing can be done either by a priest or by the father of the family. If possible, have the incense, holy water and chalk blessed beforehand. We found this great blessing of homes at FishEaters.com:

Priest/Father:	Peace be to this house.
All:	And to all who dwell herein.
Priest:	From the east came the Magi to Bethlehem to adore the Lord; and opening their treasures they offered precious gifts: gold for the great King, incense for the true God, and myrrh in symbol of His burial.
All:	My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. For He hath regarded the humility of His handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He that is mighty hath done great things to me, and holy is His Name. And His Mercy is from generation unto generations upon them that fear Him. He hath shewed might in His arm, He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away. He hath received Israel, His servant, being mindful of His mercy. As He spoke to our Fathers, Abraham and His seed forever.
All:	From the east came the Magi to Bethlehem to adore the Lord; and opening their treasures they offered precious gifts: gold for the great King, incense for the true God, and myrrh in symbol of His burial.
Priest:	Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and  forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead and lead us not into temptation,
All:	But deliver us from evil.
Priest:	All they from Saba shall come
All:	Bringing gold and frankincense.
Priest:	O Lord, hear my prayer.
All:	And let my cry come unto Thee.
Priest:	Let us pray. O God, who by the guidance of a star didst on this day manifest Thine only-begotten Son to the Gentiles, mercifully grant that we who know Thee by faith may also attain the vision of Thy glorious majesty. Through Christ our Lord.
All:	Amen.
Priest:	Be enlightened, be enlightened, O Jerusalem, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee-- Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary.
All:	And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light and kings in the splendor of thy rising, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee.
Priest:	Let us pray. Bless, O Lord God almighty, this home, that in it there may be health, purity, the strength of victory, humility, goodness and mercy, the fulfillment of Thy law, the thanksgiving to God the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. And may this blessing remain upon this home and upon all who dwell herein. Through Christ our Lord.
All:	Amen. After the prayers of the blessing are recited, walk through the house and bless each room by sprinkling with Epiphany water and incensing it. Take the blessed chalk and first write the initials of the three Wise Men, connected with Crosses, over the inside of your front door (on the lintel, if possible). Then write the year, breaking up the numbers and the year so that they fall on both sides of the initials. It should look like this, for ex.: 20  C+M+B  05 with the "20 "being the millennium and century, the "C" standing for the first Wise Man, Caspar, the "M" standing for Melchior, the "B" standing for Balthasar, and the "05" standing for the decade and year. It is also popularly believed that the Kings' initials also stand for "Christus mansionem benedicat" ("Christ bless this house"). A blessed 2012 to all our readers!

"She Seeks Wool and Flax, and Works With Willing Hands"

“Kristina packed her wool cards, her knitting needles, sheep shears and her swingle, a betrothal gift from Karl Oskar, who had painted red flowers on it. A great deal she left because it would take up too much ship space, things she knew she would need later. She could not take her loom or her flax brake, her spinning-wheel or her yarn winder, her spooling wheel or her flax comb. She had been accustomed to working with all these implements; they were intimate and familiar to her hands; she knew that she would miss them in the foreign land.”

I can’t help using this blog post to spread the word about some of my new favorite novels by Vilhelm Moberg. The novels depict the immigration of a group of Swedish peasants to the new land. I found the books absolutely enthralling, though also heartbreaking. The novels take place only a century ago, which is almost unbelievable when you consider the use of technology in the story compared to our technology today. As an example, consider the passage above. Domestic activities like knitting, crocheting etc. are often thought to be  difficult and troublesome. And yet not only does Kristina, the wife of main character Karl Oskar, knit and weave the family’s clothing, but she also makes the yarn with her own hands. And she longs for her tools and the labor of her hands when she must part with them to cross the ocean and start a new life.

When I read books like this I long for that simplicity, that intimacy between the hand and the tool. And yet I am so lazy and easily intimidated. Case in point:  Last Christmas, my husband’s family gave me a drop spindle and several bundles of roving to be made into yarn for knitting. I was thrilled and touched by this gift, but I will admit that I was also intimidated. Never mind that women have been spinning for centuries. 

Fortunately, the Good Lord has a way of making things more accessible to little me. A few months ago (yes, almost a year after I received the spindle and roving), while at the downtown Open Air market, my husband sent me to sample the bloody Mary mix on the other side of the market. Thank goodness he did. Not only was the bloody Mary mix delicious, but on the way, I also happened to stumble (literally, in fact) upon a booth with homespun yarn, as well as other goodies like homemade goat cheese and goatmilk soaps. I glimpsed a drop spindle behind the counter and inquired immediately. Turned out, the woman who ran the booth was starting a spinning class in three weeks! Not only was she going to instruct the students in two types of spinning, but she was also demonstrating how to wash, card and hand-dye wool with natural plant dyes. I was beyond excited and signed up the next day.  I completed the class in October and am so grateful I took it.

In the meantime, you might wonder: what does this have to do with the Forgotten Altars project? There are a few reasons. Firstly, spinning is a meditative art. I’ve noticed that some activities (making bread, gardening, brewing, and even cleaning) are noticeably conducive to prayer. They make me want to pray and put me in a posture of openness, much like what I seek to achieve during contemplative prayer. Spinning may top the list when it comes to work that inspires prayer. The monastic “ora et labora” is particularly easy to achieve while spinning. 

Second, spinning is a feminine art that connects us to our ancestors. I once took pride in the fact that I didn't do anything "domestic," including cooking, sewing, crafting or anything of the sort. To do so would be old-fashioned and backwards. I think this mentality is common. Ironically, as women gain access more and more to the things that men do, they lose touch with what were once considered to be the feminine arts. Not just arts and crafts, but true art, techne. Women used to work with their hands. We lucky housewives of today have ready-made clothes and Clorox wipes that are pre-soaked in sanitizing solution for easy cleaning. These conveniences certainly make life easier, and I won't say that I don't use them myself. But at times I actually wish that I had the pressure these women had to truly be the matron of the household. To truly clothe my own children--not just by purchasing their clothes, but by spinning the very fabric with my own hands. When I am spinning, I feel a sense of kinship with women of past ages. 

 

And, on a practical level, spinning is the perfect activity for a busy housewife with little ones. It is meditative, simple and so enjoyable.  Children can do it too—my three-year-old is halfway there! In coming weeks, I will provide a few posts with more specifics on the process. In the meantime, here is a collection of a few artworks that depict women spinning.

Labor in the City, France, 15th century (A depiction of Aristotle's polis)

St. Margaret and Olibrius; 1450

Woman With a Spindle; Antoine Watteau

And one of my personal favorites...

The Child Mary Spinning; 17th century Peruvian

Final Brewing Day

I remember a professor in Belgium telling a class about how much Belgian culture had changed during his lifetime.  "Look," he said "you cannot possibly see it, but it is the fabric... the substance that has changed.  When I was young the women, when they made bread, they would cut crosses into every loaf's crust and bless each.  Daily bread was treated like a eucharist.  Can you imagine such superstitions now?"  Actually, we probably cannot imagine such inherent piety.  Even if our devotion as Catholics extends beyond Mass once a week, confession once a month and adoration once in a blue moon, how often do we bless our children, the food that we cook or even ourselves?  I believe that this would make us embarrassed, even in the privacy of our own homes. Arguably such blessings, relics, sacaramentals etc. are embarrassing if we view them as superstitions.  But our Catholic heritage has always been saturated with such things.  It is inextricably intertwined, bound up in them.  Are we losing ourselves?  Are we embarrassed by our forefathers?  We need a renewal and the location of this renewal is the family, the household.  Here we must be proactive.

One of the Opas (Grandpas) in the family was present during a papal visit by JPII years ago.  This simple Texan became immensely excited when the Holy Father passed by, and began to bless the pontiff vigorously.  He has, of course, been teased for this ever since.  Imagine blessing the one man in the world who, more than any other, ought to be the one bestowing blessings!  Yet I am not so sure he had the wrong idea.  Certainly we must not see the Church as an outside entity that grants us special blessings.   A Catholic cultural renewal is going to come from the domestic Church, from our tables and from our beds.  We have a unique blessing to give to the rest of the Church and to the rest of the world.  As priests, prophets and kings of our own households, as icons of Christ to our families we must actively engage what Christ has given to us.

Today, Christ has given us ale: the final brewing day has arrived and it is time to bottle the beer.

Here is what you need: Capper, 50 empty beer bottles (non-screwtop), bottle  caps, racking (siphon) hose, springless bottle filler, auto siphon.

1.)  Sanitize (bottling bucket, racking tubes, bottles, bottle caps, brewing spoon)  Sanitizing the bottles can be enormously time consuming, or you can simply put them facing down in the dishwasher without any detergent.  The heat will sanitize the bottles.

2.)  Rack (siphon) the ale into the the bottling bucket.

3.) In a saucepan, dissolve 3/4 cup of corn sugar  in 2 cups of boiling water for 5 minutes

4.) Stir in the dissolved corn sugar into the ale.  This primes the beer and is what will cause the carbonation to occur within the bottles.

5.)  +Bless the Beer+ (See below)

6.)  Using the siphon hose attached to a bottle filler, fill each bottle.  In order for the ale to fill the bottle, the filler must be pressed against the bottom of the bottle.  To stop the flow of the beer, just lift filler from the bottom.  It is important to leave about 1" of space in each bottle.  However, because the filler is displacing the beer, you can fill the bottles relatively close to the top, and when you lift the filler out there will be just about an inch of space left.

7.)  After filling each, cap the bottle and place in dark, cool location.

We found the following beer blessing at the Catholic Beer Review blog:

Blessing of Beer:

V. Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.

V. Dominus vobiscum.
R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

Oremus.

Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi, et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti; ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corpus et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.

R. Amen.

Et aspergatur aqua benedicta.


English translation:

V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R. Who made heaven and earth.

V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.

Let us pray.

Bless, + O Lord, this creature beer, which thou hast deigned to produce from the fat of grain: that it may be a salutary remedy to the human race, and grant through the invocation of thy holy name; that, whoever shall drink it, may gain health in body and peace in soul. Through Christ our Lord.

R. Amen.

Sprinkle with holy water.

Brewing Day Two

"I should like a great lake of ale, for the King of the Kings. I should like the family of Heaven to be drinking it through time eternal." ~ St. Brigid.


Saint Brigid (feast day February 1) is one of the many patron saints of beer and brewers.  She is usually remembered for her important role during the early moments of Christianity in Ireland and her founding of the monastery of Kildare.  Of greater interest to me, however, is her deep respect and love of beer.  Indeed many of her miracles directly involve ale.  Once, for instance, she was able to supply eighteen churches with beer from Maundy Thursday to the end of the Easter Season with one barrel of her private stock. Another time, while visiting a leper colony, she found to her great dismay that the lepers were so wretched that they did not even have any beer.  With an abbess' great sense of economy, she used dirty bathwater as the medium for her miracle: "For when the lepers she nursed implored her for beer, and there was none to be had, she changed the water, which was used for the bath, into an excellent beer, by the sheer strength of her blessing and dealt it out to the thirsty in plenty." This is not the only time that she utilized bathwater for this very same purpose.  Brigid is said to have changed her own dirty bathwater into ale for visiting priests when she   found her supply exhausted.   

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The Christmas ale has, for all intents and purposes, finished fermenting in the primary fermentor and now it is time to transfer the ale to a carboy for the secondary fermentation process.


1.)  Sanitize your carboy carefully, as well as your racking hose.

 2.)  Fill your racking hose with water so as to begin the racking (siphoning) process.



3.)  Rack into a separate container until the water has cleared the hose.




4.)  Rack the beer into the carboy.




5.)  Add two vanilla beans, two sticks of cinnamon and one tablespoon of shaved ginger.





6.)  Put lid and airlock 
in place.




7.)  Store in dark cool area for about five days.

A Christmas Brew

It would be difficult to underestimate the the difference between the way households are run today and the way that they were run not so many generations ago (especially prior to the Twentieth Century).   Traditional households acted as whole societies, with a responsibility to invest their labor, resources and time in themselves, and to obtain a certain level of self-sufficiency.  This was not an attitude which was opposed to their nation (or earlier still, their kingdom), but was seen as a genuine responsibility and proper participation  in this larger society.  To put it differently, the family was seen as the fundamental political unit, the building block from which a healthy organic society must be built.  The revolution which has taken place in our pantries and cellars is one reflection of how much our notions have changed.  Today, families go to the grocery store to fill their pantries once a week or perhaps sometimes even more often.  Special occasions (say Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving)  mean that we go to the grocery store a day, perhaps a few days, in advance to stock up on everything that we will need for a full day of cooking.  This manner of pipeline buying and consuming, however, is an absolute anomaly from a wider historical and cultural perspective.  For one thing, we have lost any sense for the importance of food.  We easily purchase our food nearly ready made and rarely need to think of it at all.  It is always at our disposal and for most of us it is never scarce (except when we run out of snacks).  We have a fast food mentality.  Our food has no meaning.  People speak of the rampant sense of entitlement that so many people seem to suffer from in our society.  My thought: it started with food.  

Contrast this situation with traditional ways of treating food:  Pantries were a matrix of different foods being prepared at different rates.  Meat would be curing, herbs drying, cheese fermenting etc.  Strategy had to be utilized.  At a basic level, a well rounded diet needed to be assured but, beyond that, feasts had to be prepared for, traditional meals of particular seasons and times planned and of course, a different availability of various foods (the gift of Providence, out of the palm of God) structured all of these considerations.  My point is that food was meaningful.  For the Catholic family-society all food preparations were engendered by the yearly liturgy, giving food a sacred meaning.

In the past Catholics have prepared for Christmas all year long, not just during Advent.  Even in early spring, for instance, there was brewing, distilling and other preparations that anticipated the coming Christmas.  The brewing of special beers, wines and the like is a perfect example of this.  Ale would be brewed, weeks or more in advance, wines for months or some years, meads for much longer still.  Fermentation is sacred... beer, cheese, sausage, yogurt... Bread and Wine: there is something holy about these foods. There is a living transformation, a turn, a blossoming, a true metamorphosis, which is itself an icon of the Incarnation, of the Eucharist.  In other words there is something sacramental about the process of fermentation.  No wonder so many monasteries have had fermentation at the heart of their holy work.

The brewing process is intrinsically appropriate for the Advent season.  The anticipation of the ale coming into its own parallels the coming birth of the Messiah and feast of Christmas, when we will toast the birth of the newborn king.

Does it sound like I am proposing a Theology of Beer? Yes, yes I am.

+

How hard is it to brew beer?  Not much harder than making soup from scratch.  You will need to buy a basic beer making kit (including a thermometer, a primary fermenting bucket with lid, a bottling bucket, an airlock, a racking cane, 4 foot hose, springless bottle filler and a bottle capper) which you can easily find for about $70.  You will also need 50-55ish 12 ounce non-screwtop beer bottles.

Homebrewing is divided up into two or three stages (the second stage being optional), each taking place on a separate day.  Stage 1 is the brewing and primary fermentation stage. After a week or so comes optional stage 2, when the beer is transferred to a secondary fermentor.  The purpose of this stage is simply improved quality.  The beer is siphoned (racked in beer parlance) into a secondary fermentor for about 5 days to purify the beer's flavors.  You can skip this stage and move right into stage 3.  Stage 3 is the bottling day. 

Note: if you do decide to follow stage 2, you will  need to buy a carboy (plastic or glass) and a carboy plug. 

Brewing may seem intimidating but, at the end of the day, it is quite simple, without getting into the science of the art, to make extremely high quality beer on your first try.  The best homebrewing book I know of is  The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (3rd edition), by Charles Papazian.  This book is a great reference, although honestly if you just follow the directions below you will be just fine.

The following is my recipe for a Christmas Ale.  It will yield about 5 gallons, or 50 12 ounce bottles of beer, give or take.

DAY 1

I am excited to brew this ale, which is completely experimental.  I have no doubt that it will turn out as a good solid brew.  In my experience, as long as you stay within a few basic parameters, home brewing produces consistently decent beer.  What is experimental here is to what extent it properly expresses the season.  Worst case scenario, it will either be just a good basic beer or it will be a tad bit too spicy.

Ingredients

A.  Malt or Fermentables

1.)  6 LB 6OZ Light/Pale Malt Extract Syrup

2.)  12 OZ, 1 3/4 Cups Brown Sugar, Dark

3.)  8 OZ Crystal 60L

4.)  8 OZ Crystal 40L

5.)  4 OZ  Victory Malt

6.)  2 OZ Roasted Barley

7.)  1 cup molasses (optional)

Aside from the molasses and the brown sugar, you should simply go to your local brewing store and give them this list of ingredients.  They will likely give you a brown bag with all of the grains and a tub of the liquid malt.  

B.  Hops

1.5 OZ Cluster (an item for the brewing store)

C.  Yeast 

Nottingham Ale Dry Yeast (an item for the brewing store)

D.  Other 

1.)  1tsp. Cinnamon

2.)  1 tbsp. Ground ginger

3.)  1 tsp.  Irish Moss (probably most easily found at your brewing store)

4.)  2 vanilla Beans
5.)  5 gallons of water (for the sake of quality, I purchase gallon jugs of spring water)

Directions

Day 1

1.)  Sanitize.  This is a very important step that you will not want to skip.  There is nothing worse than producing 5 gallons of waste.  You can get sanitizing solution for brewers or you can make your own sanitizing solution: 1 tbsp of bleach mixed with 2.5 gallons of water.  Carefully wash all surfaces that will come into contact with your beer (thermometer, fermentor, fermentor lid, stirring spoon, cooking pot, airlock).  Rinse and then let air dry.

2.)  Heat 2.5 gallons of Spring water to between 150-165 degrees Fahrenheit.

3.)  Place grains into steeping bag, put bag of grains into brewing pot and steep for 20-30 minutes.

4.)  Remove steeping grains and discard.

5.)  Bring Wort to gentle rolling boil

6.)  Put liquid malt, molasses, brown sugar and hops into boiling wort.

7.)  Stir very carefully as the molasses and malt like to stick and burn on the bottom of the pot.

8.)  After 45 minutes from having added stir in 1 teaspoon of Irish Moss

9.)  After 55 minutes from having added the hops stir in cinnamon, ginger powder, allspice, nutmeg.  Be pretty strict about the timing on these spices.  They are volatile and will cancel out if they are boiled for over 5 minutes.

10.)  After 60  minutes from having added the hops, remove from boil.

11.)  Place Pot into ice bath in sink.

12.)  Pour wort into primary fermentor.  Try to pour it from as a high a distance from the fermentor as you can safely manage.  This aeration will help to cool the Wort down.

13.)  Add 2.5 gallons of cool water, also from a distance.

14.)  This is the trickiest stage to my mind in the brewing process: chilling the wort down to 60 degrees.  You can purchase a wort chiller and perhaps I will try to make one at some point.  For now, I place the primary fermentor in a large Tupperware and pack the space around it with ice.  Then I stir.  And stir.  And stir…  Yup, still stirring.

15.)  At some point when you might want to take a stirring break, you can hydrate your yeast.  All this means is mixing your yeast with water.  Simply follow the directions  on the back of the yeast packet.

16.)  When the Wort reaches 60 degrees, add the yeast.  I have been told it really does not matter whether or not it is stirred into the wort.

17.)  Close the fermentor.

18.)  Add airlock.  I use vodka in the airlock which keeps the fruit flies away.

19.)  Within the next 24 hours the airlock will begin to bubble excitedly, signifying an active fermentation process.  This should continue for 5-14 days.  Whenever this process ends, is when it is time for the secondary fermentation (day 2) or, if you want to skip the secondary, it is time for bottling (day 3). 

To keep the fermentor cool:  If you are keeping your fermentor in an environment which is a bit warmer than is ideal for ale (60-70 degrees), you can keep it about 10 degrees cooler by wrapping it in a wet towel.  You can keep the towel saturated by wrapping a rubber tube around the top of it with small holes punched into it, which you pump cool water through with an inexpensive indoor fountain pump.