Luke Hafdahclass="underline" “I suspect like most others, it starts with just drinking and enjoying beer! But I was intrigued by the creative process. I have a background in chemistry and biology, so I really became hooked when I began to see how much we harness basic science to brew beer and it really tapped into my enjoyment of experimentation. Brewing truly is a wonderful hybrid of creativity and science.”
Meg: “What sort of training did you need in order to start?”
Luke Hafdahclass="underline" “Like so many things in life, if you are pursuing it as a hobby, it is a very easy thing to teach yourself. The main brewing process is simple and could be likened to teaching yourself how to bake. However, if you truly want to take it seriously as a career, you really need to be trained. There are many programs across the country, some of them four-year programs. It truly is a scientific discipline that requires a firm understanding of chemistry, physics, and microbiology. For home brewing, you can get by with a cursory grasp of these principles, but to be considered a brew master, you need training to become a brewing scientist.”
Kelly: “What is the process for brewing and bottling beer?”
Luke Hafdahclass="underline" “In its most basic form, brewing involves three things: grain (typically barley), hops (for bittering and flavor), and yeast (they are the workers that make the alcohol). That’s it. You boil grains and hops to release sugars that the yeast eat for food. It’s their ‘waste’ product that is the alcohol that we want (this is called fermentation).
Meg: “In Stephen King’s story ‘Gray Matter’ the character of Richie drinks a can of beer that’s ‘gone bad.’ Although we discover in the story the origin of the problem is otherworldly, what really could cause a can or bottle of beer to go bad?”
Luke Hafdahclass="underline" “The single biggest thing that one worries about when brewing is contamination of the beer. When we brew, we are very thoughtful about the strain of yeast that we use because that is how we produce a predictable flavor (in addition to making alcohol, yeast will make other by-products that can add flavors). These yeast have cultured under controlled conditions so that when you purchase them, you know exactly what you are getting. However, yeast live everywhere: on our skin, on our countertops, literally everywhere. And these ‘wild’ yeast (as well as some bacteria!) would love nothing more than to get into the beer we are making and eat up all the sugars themselves. Thus, if you do not pay close attention to sanitizing your equipment (killing the wild organisms) when brewing, they can take over the fermentation process and make some awful flavors. Some describe the flavors like ‘wet cardboard,’ ‘metallic,’ and ‘musky.’”
Meg: “Oh yes, some of my favorites!”
Kelly: “Do you remember your first experience reading a Stephen King book or watching a movie based on one of his works? Has it had any lasting impact on you?”
Luke Hafdahclass="underline" “My first exposure to Stephen King was at the fourth-grade book fair when I bought one of his books called Eye of the Dragon, which literally is probably the only Stephen King book nobody is talking about adapting into a TV show or movie. I heard a lot about Stephen King, and even though this was probably one of the most unusual entry points into his works, I was compelled by his storytelling and I went on to read a lot of his books from there. I really love fantasy (Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, etc.) and I suspect this book had a lot do with that as it really captured my imagination and exposed me to the limitless potential of fantasy.”
Thank you to Luke Hafdahl for letting us in on his process for brewing beer (and for letting us sample some of his brews)!
Richie is described as more of a fungus than a human by a certain point in “Gray Matter.” Is it possible for fungi to grow on people? There are over 1.5 million types of fungi in the world and 300 of them can cause illness in humans. Some of these diseases include athlete’s foot, ringworm, aspergillosis, histoplasmosis, and coccidioidomycosis. We all have fungi living in our bodies, too, and they can be healthy for us. The give-and-take among bacteria, viruses, fungi, and each person’s specific biology likely influences our health. When out of balance, oral fungi can cause thrush and interactions between fungi and bacteria in the gut can aggravate the body’s autoimmune response in Crohn’s disease.3
A biome-based therapy is fecal transplantation: putting the stool of a healthy donor in a patient with Clostridium difficile colitis, a severe bacterial infection that often results as a side effect of antibiotic therapy. Patients receiving the healthy stool have a good chance of getting better.4
Richie is dividing and multiplying at the end of the story and will eventually conquer humanity. Are there examples in nature of things that divide in this way? Molds, yeasts, and mushrooms are all able to use fragmentation in order to reproduce. In the animal kingdom, sponges, coral colonies, annelids, and flatworms reproduce by this method. This is bad news if a giant fungus is ever trying to take over the world! We don’t find out the plan of attack by the end of the story and that makes it all the more terrifying.
Quitters, Inc.
More people in the United States are addicted to nicotine than to any other drug. Quitting smoking isn’t easy for most people but for Dick Morrison in the short story “Quitters, Inc.,” it becomes a necessity. Approached one day by an old acquaintance, Dick is given a business card for a place that can help people with nicotine addiction called “Quitters, Inc.” The mysterious outfit recruits its clients by word of mouth and has a purported 98 percent success rate of getting people to stop smoking. Dick isn’t given any specifics about the program but is intrigued enough to stop in one day and see what it is all about. What he discovers after he signs a contract is that if he doesn’t quit smoking, his wife and son will suffer the consequences for his actions. Someone will always be watching him and if he smokes another cigarette, he will be punished. The barbaric ramifications would begin with his wife getting electric shocks while he watched and escalate to his son being physically beaten.
Tobacco use kills close to four hundred thousand people each year and contributes to almost $200 billion in health care costs in the United States alone.5
Torture and fear are used as a motivational tool in this story, but is this an effective strategy? Studies have shown that when negative reinforcement is used with animals, it produces backward or freezing motions in them. When this type of motivational tool is used with people in a work environment, it leads to lower productivity, an unpleasant work environment, and an increase in absenteeism. Why is this so? Our brains are wired to respond to these outside stimuli. We have rewards to ensure repeated behavior and rewards to ensure that a behavior is terminated. Our most accessible memories tend to be the ones that have an extreme positive or negative reward experience attached to them.
Torture is not a new concept when motivating people. The ancient Romans and Greeks incorporated torture into their judicial systems and legal proceedings. Torture during the Middle Ages was often a public spectacle used to induce fear into the spectators. The torture of those who were presumed to be witches was common during the early modern period and it wasn’t until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that torture was legally abolished.