Frugal in the Fruitlands

Do you keep hearing about Freecycle, and how easy it is to exchange goods for free? Are you confused where to start? (Also: Do you happen to be one of my parents?)

This guide will explore the origins of Freecycle, how to find a group near you, and the etiquette of exchanging items on Freecycle.

What is Freecycle?

Freecycle is a movement whose mission is “to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.” The origin of the word, is, of course, “recycle,” and the verb “Freecycle” is often used itself.

Freecycle.org acts as the hub for the Freecycle movement but - and here’s the confusing part for some people - nothing much happens on the site itself. As stated on the site’s main page, “The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,661 groups with 6,287,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns…. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free.”

So How Do I Find a Local Group?

Do start at Freecycle.org, as it is the central database for Freecycle groups. You can use the search box to search for your town by name, but I recommend “Browse Groups” as a better option. For example, if I search on “Lunenburg, Massachusetts,” I get a series of results for groups that are not very close to me (i.e., Quincy?) - this is what will happen if your town doesn’t have its own group, even if the next town over does.

If I browse groups in Massachusetts, I see all the towns that host a group listed alphabetically. This allows me look for any towns that might be near me. Here, for example, is the Fitchburg North and West CARES group, to which I belong.

Signing Up For a Group

Once you select a group, the page will redirect you to the group’s mailing list. Most mailing lists are run by Yahoo!Groups, Google Groups, or a similar service. If you don’t have a free Yahoo or Google account (or whatever provider the group is using), there should be easy steps to follow to get one. Do this first, as this is key to your interaction with your local group.

With membership in a mailing list like this, you or another member can send a message to everyone in the group just by sending an email to an address like Your_Freecycle_Group@groups.yahoo.com. In this way, no one has to know all the names and email addresses of everyone who belongs to the group.

In signing up, it is very important to follow the rules exactly. My Freecycle group, for example, has the following sign-up rules:

• You must disclose your email ID or you can’t be Approved.
• Please list your ZIP CODE in your request.
• Let us KNOW you read & will comply by our site’s rules.
• You CANNOT choose NO EMAIL in your Profile as Admin MUST be able to reach you, which is minimal.
• Please read our Rules as some are different on this site than others.
• Everything posted must be Free, Legal & Family Appropriate.
• Proper FORMAT in the Subject Line is MANDATORY for ALL Freecycle sites.

In some Freecycle groups, you may be required to submit a short paragraph that describes why you wish to join. This is to rule out people who are joining just to get free stuff to resell, for example.

Okay, I’ve Joined. Now What?

Once you’ve joined, Freecycle emails will start pouring into your inbox - okay, depending on where you’re living, they may dribble rather than pour. If you don’t start seeing emails within a few days, check your settings with the mailing list provider to make sure you have checked the option to receive emails.

The first thing you’ll want to do is acquaint yourself with the rules and etiquette of your particular group. Most often these will be emailed to you as soon as you sign up. This will specify things like what items can be offered for exchange (most Freecycle groups, for example, have a strict “no pets” policy), what the format for email offers/requests should be, how frequently you can request items, etc. Groups can be fussy about these rules, so it’s very important that you pay attention.

Once you’ve read the rules, it’s time to look at the emails you’re receiving. Most Freecycle posts are of one of three types:

• WANTED: Someone is making a request for an item that they want for free
• OFFER: Someone is offering an item for free
• TAKEN: Someone is announcing that something they posted previously has been claimed. Some groups allow the use of “PPU” (pending pick-up) to announce that an item has been claimed but has not been picked up yet, but others do not - again, check the rules of your particular group.

If you are new to this group, it is considered good etiquette to offer an item before you request anything. Some groups also cap the number of “wanted” posts you can make. Once again, refer to the rules.

Offering an Item on Freecycle

If you have an item to offer, simply send an email to the whole group (at Your_Freecycle_Group@groups.yahoo.com, or whatever the address is) with a subject line of “OFFER: [My item]“.

Within a short period of time, if anyone wants that item, they will email you privately to request it. Usually they will tell you when they can pick it up. (Usual Freecycle etiquette dictates that if you’re getting something, you pick it up; if you’re offering something, you let the other person pick it up). At this point you arrange pick up instructions with the person who wants the item, such as “I’m located [here] which is at the end of ABCD Road. I’ll leave the item on the porch for you.”

Some other issues that frequently arise with offering items:

• Multiple people request the item. Most people simply take the first person who replies; other people give priority to charities or folks in need. You can come up with your own guidelines for who gets your stuff, but make sure they’re in line with the rules of your group.
• The person who claimed the item doesn’t pick it up. I usually give the person one or two more chances to pick it up, then I offer it to the next person on the list (assuming multiple people claimed it) or relist it. Chronic no-shows should be reported to the administrator of the list.

One major don’t in offering items: don’t just say, “There’s a pile of leftovers from my garage sale on my porch at 1234 ABCD Street; whoever gets there first gets them.” This is frowned upon by many Freecycle groups, and is just plain annoying in others.

Requesting an Item That’s Been Listed

So say that someone is giving away a Nintendo 64 system with the old skool Tetris game you’ve always wanted. (The Nintendo 64 Tetris is the best Tetris, after all!) Email that person off list - i.e., reply to them at their own email address, NOT the entire list - saying simply, “I’m interested in that item and I can pick it up at such-and-such time.” Some people put in a line or two about why they want the item, but frankly, I find that comes off a bit needy.

If the offerer decides that you’re it, they’ll email you back with a confirmation, i.e. “That time works. I’ll leave it on the porch for you. I’m at 1234 ABCD Street.” Don’t be offended if you get no reply back - if the person has a lot of responses, they may not be able to individually reply to everyone who requests it. If you don’t hear back promptly, assume you didn’t get the item.

If you’re requesting an item, the burden is usually on you to pick up an item. Be sure to pick up when you say you will! If you have to miss it for some reason, send a timely update to let the person know what’s up.

Requesting an Item That’s Not Been Listed (i.e. Making a “WANTED” post)

I recommend not posting a “WANTED” post until you’ve been participating for a few weeks to a month, and have offered other items. That said, a “WANTED” post can be very effective for both parties. I have only ever requested two things - an atmosphere oil burner, and a sari - and I got the first and was able to borrow the second. In the first case, the person was very eager to get the item out of their house, as she never used it!

When making a WANTED post, simply post an email to the entire list with the subject line: “WANTED: [your item here].” As outlined above, people will begin to contact you shortly if they have the object you want, and from there, you can arrange pick-up. As always, be courteous and grateful for the item you are getting for free.

Downsides and Alternatives to Freecycle

Asking my young, urban friends why they don’t use Freecycle more, I got a common response: because of transportation. Many of them don’t own cars, and as the burden of pick-up is on the requestor, that makes it difficult to participate.

Some people also dislike the strict rules of Freecycle. It’s true that to deal with a large volume of posts, Freecycle group moderators must sometimes slap people for things that seem trivial, like using headlines that don’t use the words “wanted” or “offer.” As in any human endeavor, too, management issues and bureaucracy creep in, such that some people have left Freecycle to start their own groups with similar interests.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Freecycle - either because it’s burnt you in the past, or you simply don’t have the transportation to participate - I recommend this wikiHow article, How to Find an Alternative to Freecycle.

In Conclusion

There are basically four steps to get involved with Freecycle:

• Find a group near you.
• Follow the rules.
• Give as much as you take.
• Find appropriate alternatives, when necessary.

If I’ve left anything out, I refer you to this wikiHow article How to Freecycle for more details.

1 Comment »

Interesting in discovering some new artists, free of charge? Amazon has over 500 free mp3s available for download, including some entire albums.

Some better-known artists you’ll find free downloads of:

• Bare-Naked Ladies
• Ani diFranco
• Willie Nelson
• Jamiroquai
• Ray Lamontagne
• Ted Nugent

Personally, I downloaded Very Best of Naxos Early Music, a sampler of early ecclesiastical music (yes, even as an atheist I enjoy this… it’s so cleansing).

1 Comment »

Here in New England, we are in the coldest month of the year. This morning the temperature outside is a mere 8 degrees Fahrenheit, and snow and ice is packed thick around roads and driveways. And yet, inside my house, the heat is turned to a cool 60 degrees.

How do we keep warm without turning up the heat - especially at night? We use a heated mattress pad!

What is a Heated Mattress Pad?

A heated mattress pad looks much like a regular mattress pad and is meant to fit directly over your mattress and under your fitted sheet. The only difference is that it has conductive coils threaded through the middle of it, and there’s a plug at the head or the foot of it to connect it to a power source. There will usually be a control dial (or two) to adjust the temperature settings.

What Makes it Better than an Electric Blanket?

One thing I learned from my childhood spent wistfully browsing Boy Scout manuals (the Girl Scouts were never as much fun!) is that a heat source or insulation underneath your body is often more valuable than one above your body. With my own camping experiences, I remember placing my damp clothes underneath my sleeping bag to dry them while I slept. A heated mattress pad takes advantage of this, warming your body from below and keeping heat from dissipating into the mattress.

Is It Really a Frugal Option?

If the other option is turning your thermostat up five degrees, then undeniably so! Consider the following math:

My own heated mattress pad (a Biddeford queen size) is a 340 watt appliance when both sides are on (80 per side + 180 for the control). That’s .34 kilowatts. The national average cost of a kilowatt-hour is 12 cents (16 cents where I live!), so it costs about 4 to 5 cents an hour to run the heated mattress pad.

Assuming it takes an hour to raise the temperature of your whole house by 5 degrees, how much would that hour cost you? Here are some estimates (thanks to Mr. Electricity for the wattage estimates of heating devices):

• Electric furnace heating a 2,000 sq ft home in a cold climate: 26.5kW = $3.18 (!!!)
• Electric furnace heating a 1,000 sq ft home in a warm climate: 7.9W = 95 cents
• Electric space heater, high: 1.4kW = 17 cents
• Electric space heater, medium: 0.9 kW = 11 cents
• Electric space heater, low: 0.6 kW = 7 cents
• Gas furnace, for the blower: 0.8 kW = 9 cents

Now, obviously if you heat with gas or oil, this is much more difficult to calculate. You have to know exactly how much gas or oil it takes to raise the temperature of your house by 5 degrees, which brings in a score of difficult-to-calculate factors. But I have a hard time believing it would be cheaper than 4 cents per hour.

Even with this math, it may be hard to see the reasons why you should outlay $60-$250 on a heated mattress pad. Consider this: over any of the alternatives listed above, a heated mattress will pay for itself in the first year of usage.

How Do I Choose a Heated Mattress Pad?

Like any purchase, you need to consider durability and how well each model will meet your needs when purchasing a heated mattress pad. Some issues to consider:

• Reviews. The model I have actually has some fairly negative reviews on Amazon in terms of durability. It was given to me as a gift, and if I were buying one for myself, I would probably opt for a different brand, based on that. I have had some problems with it turning on - the dial will not light up and the pad will not warm up on occasion - but I have always been able to fix it by tapping the control dial against my bedside table. (See, hitting things really does fix them!)

• One control or two. Obviously, if there are two people sleeping in your bed, you’ll want two controls. As a caveat, most full-sized beds have only one control, so if you’re a couple that uses a full-sized bed, this is something to consider.

• Where does it connect to a power supply? Most heated mattress pads are designed to plug in at the foot of the mattress. If that’s not convenient for you, you can fit the pad the opposite direction. I don’t have a power source near the foot of my bed, so I flipped mine around. The disadvantage of this is that the plug sits right at the edge of my pillow, and if I’m sitting up in bed, it can be uncomfortable.

• Comfort. Some people are bothered by feeling the coils beneath them when they sleep. As I mentioned above, the plug can also fall in an uncomfortable spot, depending on how you position the pad. Most manufacturers do not recommend putting another mattress pad above the heated one, but I have seen several Amazon reviews suggest doing just that.

• Automatic shut-off. This is an important safety feature that I would suggest a heated mattress pad MUST have. For most it’s an 8- or 10-hour shutoff.

Okay, I’m Convinced! Where Do I Go Now?

Finally, here are some suggestions for heated mattress pads that might work for you. (In the interest of full disclosure, I do receive a percent of the profit should you decide to purchase from any of these links).

4 Comments »

Photo credit: derjonas

Jalapenos: They grow like weeds. They’re integral to nachos. They spice up chilis and soups. They even make great holiday presents!

… yeah, you weren’t expecting that last one, were you?

This year my husband and I were burdened with a surfeit of jalapenos. From 10 plants, we harvested 10-15 lbs of jalapenos. There’s only so much fresh salsa and nachos you can live on, so we decided to preserve them in some way.

One of the easiest ways to preserve jalapenos is pickling. Start today, and you could be seeing red and green - peppers, that is - under the Christmas tree.

1. Find a reliable recipe - and stick to it. Preservation of food is tricky business. Unlike other sorts of cooking, it’s a precise science, not an art. In pickling, the quantities of vinegar and pickling salt in the brine determine whether or not the food will grow nasties like botulism or listeria. For that reason, it’s good to stick with a well-tested recipe and stick to it. Here is one from the National Center for Home Food Preparation:

• Pickled Jalapeno Rings

2. Compile the “software.” The three basics of pickling are: vinegar, pickling salt, and whatever you plan to pickle (in this case, jalapenos).

Vinegar should be at least 5% acidity. You can also buy special pickling vinegar, which weighs in as a 7% solution.

Pickling or canning salt is used in place of table salt because it does not contain iodine, which may make the brine cloudy.

Jalapenos. You’ll need a fair amount of them - 3 lbs for the recipe I linked above. You can still find them at some farmer’s markets in my area.

If you are picking them yourself from your garden (in which case I assume you live somewhere warmer than New England), you want to pick the peppers when then start to “cork,” or develop brown lines, etched into the flesh, that run from top to bottom of the fruit.

Some recipes also call for pickling lime, which increases the firmness of pickled products. This is helpful but may not be necessary - check the guidelines surrounding your recipe.

3. Compile the hardware.

You will a large pot (like a lobster pot) in which to process the jarred jalapenos.

Most importantly, you will need jars. The recommended type of jar is one with a self-sealing lid that comes in two parts - a flat lid held in place by a metal band that screws to the top of the jar. You can find these in some supermarkets and most box stores like Target. My husband and I used something like these wide-mouthed platinum jars.

4. Follow the recipe. Have I stressed how important it is to follow the recipe yet? Good.

5. Gift! I’ve even put together a series of labels you can use for these pickles: in Word 2007 (154KB) or PDF (185KB) format. Just fill in your own name under “made with love by” and it’s ready to go.

1 Comment »

Where are all these stores that offer double and triple coupons and amazing customer loyalty programs that bloggers keep talking about?

Where I live, I have two choices of grocery stores: I can go to the Hannaford in Lunenburg, or I can go to the Market Basket in Fitchburg. Both have about the same prices (I’ve checked), but the Hannaford has better service, better produce, and is closer, so I choose to do my shopping there. Neither accepts double/triple coupons. Neither has a customer loyalty program.

Where I previously lived, my shopping choices were Stop & Shop and Shaw’s, which do have customer loyalty programs, but I typically found they just used these to jack up everyday prices. But given as these stores were in Watertown and Belmont respectively, this could just be a function of living in a pricey neighborhood.

Another irony: I live in the “fruitlands” of Massachusetts. I am surrounded by farms and orchards; apiaries and maple sugarers. If you drive down my street, you’ve see the maple sugar taps lining the road.

But ironically, many of these farms have realized they get the best profit by visiting farmer’s markets in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, where all the socially-conscious locavores live. So even though Dick’s Market Garden is right down the street from me, and they sell peaches at the Arlington Farmer’s Market, they don’t sell peaches at their stand.

I could take better advantage of these resources, but here I admit my own laziness. Dick’s isn’t open when I get home in the evening, so the only time I can go there is on the weekends, and my weekends are jam-packed. This weekend, I actually drove to Hannaford - past Lanni Orchards, which was open - and bought a bag of Lanni Orchard’s apples at the Hannaford. Yes, Lanni Orchards gets some of the profit; but Hannaford is taking a larger portion and delocalizing it.

Flat Hill Orchards is on my commute home, but have I ever gone there? No. Ewen’s Maple Sugar House is on the same road, but I’ve only been there once, because getting service involves ringing a really large bell and waiting for the proprietor to amble out of his house. The largest locally-owned garden center in Massachusetts is also near me, but I still drive to the Home Depot in Leominster when I need stuff.

If there’s any way my shopping habits can become more frugal AND responsible, it’s by making a greater effort to patronize local businesses, not by taking my business to three different grocery stores.

1 Comment »

Like many soft contact-wearers, I use a multi-purpose solution to care for them. In particular, I’ve tended to be brand-loyal to Opti-Free, which is what was given to me when I got my first set of lenses, and because I like their “no rub” solutions.

… yeah, yeah. Let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson.

I use coupons.com on occasion, and recently they offered a coupon for $1 off Opti-Free Replenish. I usually use the Opti-Free Express, and to be honest, I’m not clear on what the difference is between the two, except for price. Nonetheless I printed out the coupon and figured I’d try it out.

So here I was, standing in Hannaford with my coupon in hand. I had three different options:

• Opti-Free Replenish - the one I had the coupon for - 10 oz
• Opti-Free Express - the one I usually use - 12 oz
• Hannaford-brand multipurpose solution (not a “no rub” solution, but otherwise comparable) - 12 oz

To further complicate the issue, each option was available in a 2-pack, as well. So really, I had six different options at six different price points, and I can’t do math in my head very well. Based on nothing at all except that I had a coupon in my hand, I I chose the Opti-Free Replenish 2-pack.

In retrospect - with a calculator - did I make the right choice? Turns out not.

I used CVS pricing to do a comparison below, since I didn’t have the Hannaford prices on hand and they don’t do online orders. Plus, the CVS brand is a “no rub” solution, making it even more comparable. This is how the price per ounce worked out:

Opti-Free Express

• 12 oz @ $8.99: 75 cents/oz
• 24 oz @ $16.99: 71 cents/oz

Opti-Free Replenish with Coupon

• 10 oz @ $8.79 - $1: 78 cents/oz
• 20 oz @ $16.79 - $1: 79 cents/oz - my option: the most expensive!

CVS/Pharmacy brand

• 12 oz @ $6.79: 57 cents/oz
• 24 oz @ $11.99: 50 cents/oz - the winning choice

Well, I now have my two bottles of overpriced, brand name solution that I was tricked into buying by a slip of paper worth a 100th of a cent. At least I’ll know better in the future?

Next time on Coupons vs. Generics - frozen vegetables.

12 Comments »

Right now I’m wearing a cheap black cardigan with shiny buttons that I inherited from my mother. I can be seen wearing it most days, even in summer, as my hedge against overambitious air conditioning. Since I wear it most of the work day, the elbows rub against my desk constantly, and right now there’s a thin spot on the elbow which will soon become a hole. At that point I’ll have to stop wearing it to work.

If this only happened to cheap black cardigans, my story would end there. But I’ve also destroyed not-so-cheap cashmere and wool sweaters in the same way. My elbows + my desk are lethal to clothing.

In Pants Don’t Need a Mission Statement I wrote about the dangers of buying cheap, poorly made clothes. But here are two examples of when it’s better to shop by price than to shop by long-term quality:

1. Heavy duty wear and tear. The wear and tear I put on the elbows of my sweaters is above and beyond normal usage. I love Lands’ End products, but it’s not worth buying a $40 cardigan from them when a $10 cardigan from Target is going to last just as long. Short of finding a sweater made of Kevlar, in fact, I don’t think that spending more will net me a sweater that will last longer. If the wear and tear you put on an item is greater than can be accommodated by buying a higher-quality product, buying cheap will save you money in the long run.

2. Limited time use. I’m at a phase in my life where I’m changing weight a lot (unfortunately, mostly increasing). There was a point in time where I could not fit into clothes I bought six months previous. Thankfully, I had purchased those clothes on sale at Marshall’s. I’m at the point now where if I gain anymore weight, however, those $100 Lands’ End wool pants are not gonna fit, and that’s a depressing thought.

Similarly, I purchased an electric lawn mower for $20 at a garage sale. It’s not heavy duty by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s light and easy to use and will last until I manage to eradicate all traces of my lawn with permanent plantings or hardscapes. In this case the amount you spend should be in proportion to how long you can expect to use the tool.

Readers: are there any other circumstances you can think of when it’s better to buy cheap than to buy quality?

2 Comments »

This is part two of a multi-part series on homebrewing. Part one is here.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit more about the hardware and software of the brewing equation, to borrow Alton Brown’s terminology. We’ll talk about how the ingredients in your basic homebrew combine to create different flavors; we’ll explore the stages of the brewing process, and we’ll tell you why cleanliness is so important in brewing. If you wonder who this mysterious “we,” is, by the way, it includes my husband, who helped to edit this blog series.

1. Understand the ingredients. One thing I didn’t understand before Matt began brewing was the ingredients. Sure, I knew hops and barley and yeast were in there, but I didn’t understand what they did.

Barley - in the form of malt (barley that’s been dampened and allowed to sprout) - is a fermentable sugar, and it’s the first ingredient in beer. It’s what the yeast eats. It also effects the darkness/thickness/chewiness of the brew. Guinness “drinks like a meal” because it’s heavy on the malt. Typically the homebrewer buys this ingredient in one of two ready-to-brew forms: cans of malt extract syrup, or dried, powdered malt extract. It is labeled by the level of color it will add (light, amber, dark). Homebrewers often also crush some whole malted barley to add flavor. It is also possible to extract one’s own malt syrup from barley, but increases the cost and equipment significantly.

Hops are a bittering agent that also adds floral notes. They’re irrelevant to the actual chemical process of converting starches to alcohol, but they were traditionally used a preservative, and have become integral to the taste we associate with beer. For example, India Pale Ale (IPA), one of the hoppiest brews out there, is named after the type of pale, hop-fortified brews that Victorian England would send to its troops in India - the hops were used to prevent spoilage on the long journey. Some connoisseurs of homebrewing love hoppy brews, but I am not such a fan.

Different types of hops have differing bitterness, or “alpha” levels. In some brew pubs you’ll notice that beers are listed with an “IBU” number beside them. This is the bitterness of the beer as measured in “International Bittering Units.” (Lower = less bitter). Keep in mind that you’ll notice hoppiness more in a lighter (less malty) ale.

Yeast eats the sugars and poop out alcohol and CO2. Different types of yeast, over the years, have been adapted for different types of brews. The homebrewer will often be using some type of ale yeast, which is a top-fermenting yeast. Lager yeast, a bottom-fermenting yeast, can also be used, but that won’t make the necessarily make the brew a lager - lagers are made in cool (refrigerated) conditions where they can age slowly. Not all homebrewers can replicate that.

Liquid pitchable yeast, purchased in a vial from a homebrew supply, is the best bet for the beginning brewer - dry yeast can be problematic.

Don’t forget water. Alton Brown recommends using distilled water; we use our own well water for our beer, with good results so far. If you have city water, you probably want to use bottled water of some sort.

You can use other ingredients, too - fruits, spices, different types of fermentable and unfermentable sugars, water conditioners, etc - but that’s beyond the scope of this article. Once again, I’ll refer you to Charlie Papazian’s amazing book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

2. Understand the process. The first step in brewing beer is sterilizing everything - see “Keep It Clean” below. Once that less exciting bit is over, the first step is the wort (pronounced “wert”). The wort is basically a soup of all your brewing ingredients but the yeast - your canned mash, your crushed malt, your hops, and any other flavoring agents. Once it’s boiled for a while, you will add it to the fermenter - usually a large bucket with an air lock - and cool it to 90 degrees before adding your yeast.

The brew stays in primary fermentation for about a week before it’s moved to a secondary fermenter - usually a glass carboy with an airlock. Throughout these first two stages, I guarantee you’ll be watching that airlock like a protective babymama to make sure it keeps bubbling - a sign that your yeast is alive and working. It stays here another 10 days to two weeks before you move to the bottling stage.

It is also possible to do a single-stage fermentation, moving directly from wort to carboy to bottling (cut out the plastic bucket phase, as a carboy has superior airtightness).

At this stage your beer will be flat. Before you bottle it, you will need to introduce a new source of fermentable sugar to produce CO2, i.e. carbonation. If you don’t measure carefully, it will produce too much CO2, which is the leading cause of exploding beer bottles. You can reuse your own spent beer bottles for this step, but you will need to buy new caps and a hand tool to cap the bottles. Usually a beer will sit in the bottling stage for about 10-14 days, or as long as you can stand to go without tasting it.

3. Keep it clean. One of the most important, and yet most mundane aspects of brewing is dealing with the fact that you want SOME organisms to live in your brew, but not others. Yeast? Good. Other living things? Bad. Rest assured that no pathogens will grow in beer, but you can develop infestations of bacteria or competing yeast that will ruin a batch. This is why it’s important to sterilize everything that comes in contact with the beer (or at least everything that comes in contact with the beer after the boiling of the wort). Bleach solution is the best for sterlizing big items, like the the fermenters or bottles; vodka is usually recommended for small things like bottle caps.

You also need fermentation locks on your brew when it’s in primary and secondary fermentation. This allows CO2 from the fermenting sugars to escape, but a water barrier keeps air from getting in. Making sure that the fermenting containers are no larger than needed - thus reducing the amount of air in the container - also helps to keep unwanted critters under control.

All together now, I think I’ve outlined the basics of homebrewing - enough, I hope, that you’ll be able to decide if this DIY opportunity fits into your frugal lifestyle or not. In a follow-up article I’ll share some recipes for successful beers we have brewed and price them out accordingly.

5 Comments »

I want to bring your attention to this thought-provoking article on Unclutterer, Depression-era mindset and clutter. While not in the frugality niche, per se, it struck a chord with me because it made me realize how disturbing I find the glamorization of Depression-era thinking in the frugality blogosphere.

“Frugality bloggers glamorize the Great Depression! Surely you don’t mean that!” But, come on, it’s everywhere. From articles that ask us to consider if a recession might really be a good thing, to Dollar Stretcher articles that talk about cutting the bad spots off half-rotten fruit because goddammit, our grandparents only got a single orange for Christmas, to that old saw, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”… it’s clear that frugality bloggers believe that there is great wisdom in the mindset of people brought up in great poverty.

Let’s look at the other side of the equation, as Unclutterer has done. I’m sure it’s not a 1 to 1 correlation universally, but there’s a strong connection between that kind of thinking and hoarding. The down side of growing up with not a lot is that suddenly your mind switches into famine mode; everything that passes through your hands must be kept for the hard times ahead. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” Within reason, nothing. However, it is often coupled with an ingenuity that might lead such a person to refill ketchup bottles with ketchup packets from fast food restaurants or save butter wrappers to grease pans. Stuff builds up, because everything is potentially useful; in the end, this Depression-era hoarder ends up drowning in their own stuff, bereft at the thought of letting any of it go.

If you think I’m exaggerating any of this, imagine me, eight years old, spending my after-school hours and summers with my grandmother, born in 1925. She lives with my aunt in a tiny house that couldn’t even be generously called a “ranch.” It’s a single floor, cobbled together from spare lumber. There are two bedrooms and one bath off a central kitchen and living area; and a screened porch.

It’s a tiny space, and yet every spare inch is filled to capacity with: old newspapers, old TV Guides, my mother’s childhood toys, my childhood toys, clothes my grandmother bought at garage sales and never wore, clothes and other personal items my grandmother received as gifts and never used, and on and on.

Some of my unhappiest moments of that time revolved around my aunt’s attempts to clean. She did her best to keep the place manageable - she worked as a house cleaner, after all - but any time she tried to throw out, say, a stack of old and unread newspaper, my grandmother would yell and scream and cry and be totally lost. I still remember the blank look in her eyes when my aunt tried to do this.

I think the culmination of my grandmother’s hoarding behavior was that one day, I walked into her bedroom to discover that she had been saving the used urine test strips she used to manage her diabetes.

After my grandmother’s death, my mother spent months cleaning up all this crap, finding, among this, young children’s toys that my grandmother had bought as gifts to me but had never given me. My mother’s insight on this would be to point out an estate sale she once attended, where everything a deceased woman had owned - literally, everything - was thrown on the lawn to be sold. Dresser drawers had been upended, and the woman’s old ratty underwear were scattered in the breeze.

This is why I reject this kind of Depression-era thinking, even while being a frugality blogger. I think it leads down the road to hoarding; to a life remembered by crap no one else wants to clean up.

10 Comments »

In the midst of rising food and gasoline prices, you may not have noticed, but the price of beer has increased, too.

Why? It turns out there’s a worldwide hops shortage: A decade-long oversupply of hops that had forced farmers to abandon the crop is finally gone and harvests were down this year. In the United States, where one-fourth of the world’s hops are grown, acreage fell 30 percent between 1995 and 2006. Additionally, Barley and wheat prices have skyrocketed as more farmers plant corn to meet increasing demand for ethanol, while others plant feed crops to replace acres lost to corn. To add insult to injury, A fire at a warehouse in Washington’s Yakima Valley in 2006 destroyed surplus from past years’ [hop] harvests (source: Boston Globe)

While bigger American breweries are minimally affected (in part because they can negotiate for better prices), your local microbrewery or brewpub is probably struggling to keep prices down while meeting demand for beers that have more flavor than a postage stamp. Unfortunately, this means they have to pass the price on to you.

This is a perfect time, then, to cut out the middle man and brew your own beer! This article stresses that the rising cost of hops to the homebrewer is negligible, as most homebrewers stick to brewing five gallons at a time. (Hops are, however, being rationed to homebrewers).

Matt has put up two brews in the past month - a hefeweizen (wheat beer) and honey lime ale - at a cost of about $40-50 per five gallons, or about 48 bottles of beer. He has been brewing since 2005, and we’ve had some successes (a spiced Christmas ale was one of my favorites) and some failures (an attempt at a mocha stout).

I did not really appreciate beer before he started brewing - in part because I didn’t know how to pick beers that I enjoyed. Matt has done most of the work, but this has been a learning process for both of us.

In this knowledge, I pass on some tips for homebrewing to you, the aspiring (?) homebrewer. Even if you don’t intend to brew, this will teach you what you need to know to pick a beer you won’t regret spending money on. In the first part of this two-part series, I’ll address how to get started in homebrewing as well as how to assess the costs.

1. Find a good reference. Matt’s interest in homebrewing started with his hero, Alton Brown, host of Food Network’s Good Eats. The episode “Amber Waves” lays out the basic process of making your own beer. Beyond this, Charlie Papazian’s book The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is viewed in the hobby as one of the best books on homebrewing, and I can vouch for Papazian’s blend of wisdom and goofy humor.

2. Understand the costs. There is a startup cost in making beer, as there is special equipment involved - fermentation locks, carboys, hydrometers, and lots of other things you’ve probably never heard of. Here we recommend buying a kit. The brewing supply store we use, Beer & Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, sells several different levels of kits. Depending on what you want to make, one may be better than the other. Many of them come with The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, as well, which is how we got our copy.

This is where you determine whether or not brewing fits within your budget or your definition of frugality. For us, it does, simply because the quality of the beer we produce is comparable with a high-priced microbrewed product, and because we’ve made enough batches that we’ve surpassed the marginal cost of the startup materials. Also, we’re foodies, and making high-quality food and beverages is a hobby to us. Our figure of $40-50 includes more expensive ingredients, including honey and limes - you can probably make a brew for as little as $20, once you have all the equipment. Considering a case of Sam Adams costs around $20, that’s a true bargain.

As with any hobby, there are ways to keep costs down:

• The simplest way to reduce costs is to ask all your friends for their used beer bottles. Washed and sterilized, they are just as good as buying new bottles from the brewing supply store. We recommend not using hard cider or lemonade bottles with twist-off tops, as they don’t seal in CO2 in the bottling stage, leaving you with flat beer.
• You can replace a specialist brewing thermometer with a candy thermometer.
• Some people’s interests in a hobby is fleeting. Have any of your friends been part-time brewers who might be willing to part with their old equipment? Reader tip (h/t dirkcjelli): You could also probably put out a request on your local Freecycle circle to get the equipment for free, since there are bound to be plenty of people who’ve tried it, had poor luck, and given up.
• Country Wisdom and Know-How has a section on making your own homebrew equipment.
• Once you’re a little bit more experienced, you can try culturing your own yeast for a nice savings. We’re inexperienced with this process, but for an overview, see Yeast Culturing Practices for Small-Scale Brewers.

3. Try before you buy. If you’re not sure brewing is right for you, try out a do-it-yourself brewery. (Incredibrew is one near me, in Nashua, NH). These types of places allow you to pick the ingredients for your brew (or at least a recipe), but leave out the hard part of clean-up and babysitting. This will allow you to decide if the taste is worth the cost.

In part two we’ll give an overview of the ingredients and the process involved in making your own beer.

5 Comments »