I’ve been following the multiple “easy” brewing systems available online for a while now and have never found one that truly spoke to me. Devices like the Minibrew[1] seem great but price and shipping problems have always kept them out of my boozy little hands. So, rather than wait for the perfect automatic system, I decided to look at the Catalyst Fermentation System[2], a $199 carboy kit that promises to make brewing as easy as boiling some oats and hots and managing a trub.
Fermentation is a fairly simple process. At its core you create a “tea” or juice using sugar-rich ingredients and introduce yeast. The yeast eats the sugar, produces carbon dioxide and alcohol, and dies. In wine you try to drive out the CO2 and clarify the product as much as possible and with beer and other sparkling beverages you want to maintain the CO2 through the careful addition of extra sugar or gas in a keg. In my test case I ran a batch of Stone Pale Ale[3]. The kit comes complete with grain, a cheesecloth bag, and three different hops to drop in at various times in order to get the right flavor profile. It also includes a sac of dry malt – the aforementioned sugar – that you mix together and boil in a big pot (not included) and then quickly cool before your pour it into the Catalyst.
Beer-making is easy in theory it is difficult in practice. If your ingredients are poor or your sterilization is incomplete you can infect and ruin the batch. In fact many brewers won’t use a system like the Catalyst because it is made of plastic and not glass. Plastic can scratch easily,...
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Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.
Coming up we’ll hear part one of an amazing two-part interview with Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars, The New Case for Gold and The Road to Ruin. Jim shares his insights on the Fed’s supposed plan to unwind its balance sheet and what it will mean for the economy and for gold prices. He’ll discuss some potential fireworks involving the U.S. dollar as it continues losing its reserve currency status. Don’t miss a must-hear interview with Jim Rickards, coming up after this week’s market update.
Beaten down gold and silver markets showed signs of recovering late this week as prices have risen above recent lows. Mining stocks are rallying strongly, pointing to upside potential for metals in the days ahead.
As of this Friday recording, gold prices come in at $1,256 an ounce, unchanged since last Friday’s close. The silver market is also flat on the week with spot prices currently coming in at $16.74. Platinum is off very slightly at $932 an ounce. While palladium, which was outperforming again through Thursday close when it posted a new high for the year, is off 2.5% so far today and is now down 0.5% overall this week to trade at $869.
All of the precious metals are outperforming crude oil this year. Oil prices took another dip earlier this week on concerns about over-supply. The glut has persisted despite OPEC’s vows to cut production.
The longer prices persist below $50 a barrel, the more non-OPEC producers will also have to hunker down. Many shale and offshore drilling projects that came online a few years ago are simply uneconomic at today’s prices.
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