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Editor’s Note
Home Brewing
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ne of the great things about travel is the opportunity to try new foods. Sometimes, as in the case of Laotian curry, it leaves me wanting more. And sometimes, as in the case of Vietnamese seaweed soup, it leaves me wanting mouthwash. While I was in Tanzania, our guide, Eki, took us on a walk through his local neighborhood. We stopped at a homebased business where the owners lived upstairs and had turned their main level into a banana beer brewery. Their yard was strewn with picnic tables and their garage had been divided In Memoriam... with a make-shift wall with picnic It has been a hard year tables on each side. Eki explained for the Business Central that in the evenings the men sit in staff as we have said one section and the women sit in goodbye to several of the other. As the evening – and the the people who have generously told their beer consumption – progresses, stories in these pages. the patrons leave their sides of the Dale Victor, owner of garage and dance to raucous music Care Transportation, died late into the evening. in April at his retirement home in Nevada. We To make the beer, bananas are featured Dale on our boiled in metal cauldrons over a September 2005 cover. wood fire until it makes a mash. After He bought and sold many crushing millet and boiling it to make businesses during his a sweet, sugar mash, it is combined career and was another person who cared deeply with the banana mash and water, about helping others. Our put in a plastic bin about the size sympathy to his family, of a large home garbage can, and friends, and business allowed to cook for one day. Then associates. they sell it. They have to sell all they
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Business Central Magazine // J U LY/A U G U S T 2 0 1 7
Left to right: Editor Gail Ivers dipped her jug into the five gallon pail for a taste of fresh banana beer; Guide Eki explains how to brew banana beer: The first tank is beer ‘brewing’ in preparation for sale tomorrow; the second tank is cooling boiled banana mash; Banana beer in a five gallon pail waiting to be sold.
make each day, Eki said, “because day-old banana beer causes heartburn.” Of course I tried it, as did many of the others. None of us were particularly impressed, except Eki, who told us banana beer was his particular favorite. As we walked back to our hotel, a group of boys ran up to Eki talking excitedly. They were holding a dilapidated, flat soccer ball and repeatedly gestured to it. He told us that they were complaining to him that their ball didn’t work anymore. He called them “my soccer team,” not because he was their coach, but because he lived in their neighborhood. He promised to bring them a new ball the next day. The next day on the bus, there was Eki with a brand new soccer ball. Our bus took a short detour to the playground where Eki jumped out and tossed the ball to the waiting boys. They greeted it with whoops of joy and were already breaking it in as we drove away. I was reminded of all of this as I talked with Nick Barth and Matt Studer, Beaver Island Brewing Company (see the story on page 36). Not so much because of the beer, but because Nick and Matt are committed to using their business to help others. Generosity of spirit is a tasty brew. Until next issue,