#i just. i care ghostfish.

[2willowlane]

i've been posting silly crack fanfiction on ao3 lately, and i decided to just upload this on my tumblr. it's inspired off of interstellartoaster's kalampokiphobia: fear of corn, and the mods harvey's irrational apple hatred and harvey hates apples.

fantastic works; mind you.

gender neutral reader, sfw; not really focused on romance, as it is just absurdity

tallying his profit, of which was a big fat zero, harvey sighed; pushing up his glasses. it's been a rather long week for him, considering no one wants to buy those energy tonic muscle whatever medication that he supplies. the only time that anyone has ever purchased such a redundant item from him, was whenever they misclick- accidentally bought it; and then just sold it again. the only way that he'll ever make a good buck out of his pharmaceutical care was if he just eradicated the valley's food supply... of which, did sound tempting, but harvey loves his pickles too much to give them up.

there haven't been any appointments placed recently, so he was having a hard time trying to keep up with the expenses. right now, he could so go for a bottle of fine wine... maybe it's because he's spending too much of his expenses on plane models, rather than actually trying to keep up with all of the financial records, like an actual adult should. huh, what a foreign concept. well, he's just going to go continue complaining about his money situation, until further notice.

with the door opening, he had to them correct his shrimp posture, as he then greeted you, the almost superhuman farmer, into the clinic. normally, you just like to go behind the counter and access rooms that are off-limits to regular patients, but there was something about your gumption that made you so lovable. even if you do tend to barge into private examinations, there was something that made you feel so rebellious; that harvey couldn't help but swoon over you! also, he's a pathetic beanpole of a man, so he'll probably get pummeled into the ground by your combat prowess if he ever rejects your blatant non-filtered view of what "personal space" meant.

you were about to get some items turned into the community center; as you were carrying a basket full of assorted goods (they ranged from something simple to five highly-graded melons, a still-flopping ghostfish, and poisonous mushrooms). oh well, with the poisonous mushrooms, those are harvey's choice of decoration during the autumn seasons; so, the doctor felt rather seen whenever he saw those clumped together. he grimaced at the fish, however. other than that, he was glad to see a good friend pop in now and then; he needed something to spice up his days, and he can always expect you at around 9am, or somehow always being in the places he's trying to go to... coincidence?

normally, you'd stop on buy and get him a coffee. either you've brewed it yourself, or stopped by gus', it was coffee. you wonder how many mugs harvey has, considering you also gift him a free cup alongside the sweet, sweet ground bean liquid. it really wasn't the healthiest thing to drink due to the sugar and caffeine levels, and you were pretty worried for the guy who has been through years and years of intensive schooling to know better about those dietary concerns. you assume he probably only has a cup twice a week, considering you have some type of intergalactic force keeping you from extending that quota.

you had some apples somewhere on your person, and it was probably the only thing he'd like; you'd figure. after all, they're just funky little guys. who doesn't like a good, crisp apple? even though they're supposed to be for the community center, you can always just get one later. you'd give harvey something else, but you decided that he deserved better than just countless upon countless liters of his favourite brew. you knew harvey appreciated a good foraged, natural good—especially with someone locally grown on your acres. fishing out an apple out of your pockets, you then present it to him.

"... i think i may be allergic to this."

as harvey looked like a sad shih tzu puppy, looking off to the side, your heart sank. he was allergic to apples? at first, you really wanted to make fun of him. he seemed like the type of person who'd be allergic to peanut butter, and be the kid that doesn't allow their classmates to bring in anything homemade due to those medical reasons. holding the red delicious apple in your hands, rotating it around in your palm, you decided to test that theory.

"may?" you inquiried, and with a look of horror, harvey began to shudder. yes, he's an anxious man at heart, but due to various interesting cases at the clinic, he's grown insensitive to many things. plus, he's in front of the one and only farmer(tm), and his crush. god, what an embarrassment he is. he didn't want to talk about his irrational hatred for apples; those disgusting overblown flower ovaries called "fruit" just sicken him to death, not to mention that the apples were the first to hate HIM—it wasn't his fault that his body rejects them!

"yes, yes! just- just get it away from me!"

"i don't believe you..."

and that's where you've learnt that the phrase "an apple a day keep the doctor away" was right.

[britishsass]

//rubs hands together// 40 questions time! How bouuut... Q1, Q3, Q13, aaand Q38?

Oooh, heck yeah, let's go!! Long post incoming!

Q1: Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... My usual default when I don't know what to write is what I like to call a "fear chamber" fic. The whole point of these is to see exactly what a character's worst fear is, then deconstruct it-- How they would act, how they would break out, how the other people around them respond. This is where ideas like "Circle the Drain" come from-- I have an innate need to write that for my faves.

My other usual type of fic that I default to is either a nice "It seems really sweet and cute but wait! It's actually tragic, whoops!" or "Two characters who don't interact.... I think they should interact now. :3" though I will admit I have a fondness for writing meet-cutes with my rarepair.

Q3: Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole?

There's a list of it. Here are a few for ya, including one extremely unpopular opinion.

A/B/O

Smut of any kind

Pregnancy

...Most of Enemies to Lovers, actually. (I'm more of a "Friends to Lovers" or "Friends/Lovers to Enemies who can't hurt the other directly but will do anything to take them down for the good of others" sort of person.)

Even though there's a lot of ideas I don't like, I'll still admit they can be written pretty well in the right hands. Those ones are the ones I can say that I don't actually like ever (I've not had an enemies-to-lovers ship though so...)

Q13: What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

The one piece that's stuck with me all of my life is the post I've seen about "writing a sunset." This is where I get some of my major angst prowess from. I'd like to quote from there:

"Don’t take away what someone loves. Take away their hope of seeing it again."

However, it doesn't end there. And this is the real part that sticks with me.

"Taking away an ability doesn’t stop someone. It merely gives them a reason to try something else. And though it might seem bleak and hopeless, there’s always a chance. And that chance is sometimes the saddest and most joyful part of all."

Writing a sunset is the idea of writing the most horrible thing happening to a character, such as Otto's massive breakdown that's occurring throughout Mentallis's Museum Mayhem... But then you bring back that reminder that there is a way through. There are people who care, there are things he can do, and it's not all hopeless. That's why Otto's Ordeal is there. It's showing that even at the darkest points, we can work through it together, and I really do care about that. It's things like writing a character who loves to sing becoming mute, so they learn to dance or play an instrument instead. It's good stuff.

Q38: Talk about a review that made your day.

Ooh boy. You know what time it is? It's time to talk about Ghostfish.

Ghostfish is a commenter who's only just showed up on my fics with MMM and Otto's Ordeal. The thing is, I don't know anything about this person other than that they choose to go by Ghostfish, and they're basically a god among men to me. They randomly showed up on my stories...

And they post a freaking essay. For every single chapter I write for Otto's Ordeal. They point out the lines they like, bring up foreshadowing, point out symbolism, come up with ideas for what things could mean. It feels glorious to see them every time they appear because Ghostfish reminds me that people care. They care so, so much that someone wanted to write an essay about a little fanfic.

Over four comments on my fics, Ghostfish has written a combined total of 4595 words, and they have inspired me to write so much more on that story just because of them. I could never leave comments like that-- I'm anxious, I'm really bad at picking up on symbolism and on foreshadowing (I literally get surprised by things in kids movies still. The only foreshadowing I got right was that I knew the plot twist of Detective Pikachu while I was playing the game so I went into the movie like "I better be right about that gosh darn it" so when the reveal happened I was so hyper about getting it right because I'd not done that before.) This one commenter is the most incredible one I could ever ask for because their analysis is so thorough that it makes me feel like I need to do my best to make it worth their time.

Every comment is fantastic, but Ghostfish has my heart and soul for these long ones.

[sunnymoon-sunshine]

Octolings were, the enemy, of course. The villainous kidnappers of Callie Calamari, the tyrants that stole the zapfish, the overall unpleasant dudes who kept throwing themselves in front of her just to be splatted.

That had been the basic definition of an octoling, for Sammi, illustrious Agent 4.

And things kind of changed with Orion.

It was easy to write him off as a grouch, though that could have been her own personal bias showing through. Unpleasantly snippy, horrifically uncharismatic, overall a loser nerd. He even had glasses. That was prime bully material, really.

There was something about him that reminded her of her sister, the recently returned Agent 3. It was hard to put her finger on why. They were nothing alike, and yet something there drew in her curiosity. It took a while to realize the underlying thread that felt so, so familiar between the two:

Rampant anxiety.

He also hated having the lights off. It wasn’t a funny thing, either - it was a sort of desperate panic that clawed at the nerve endings of everyone who witnessed it. She didn’t laugh. No matter how cold and callous people might think she is, there was nothing funny about it. Constant power outages, he would later explain, mumbling under his breath as if it were some sort of shame, bring about a sort of chaos that a technologically-reliant society could barely handle.

He was afraid that everything would suddenly come to an end. Reflecting back on her time underground, she couldn’t blame him for that line of thought. She made sure, whenever she left, to leave a light on somewhere. It was the least she could do.

She started to understand why her fellow agents felt a kind of guilt over what they’d done. It was a tremor, a sympathetic pull on a normally unrepentant soul.

Orion wasn’t always his name, either. She found that out after dragging him out into the square for food and sunlight, because she swore he was some kinda ghostfish or something. He had picked at his food with his fork, and mentioned it casually into the breeze.

“Then what even is your name?” She demanded, because that’s what she did best. Stomp and demand and be loud and kick ass.

And he had studied her for a long time, behind glasses that he had desperately needed for years. It was an unsettling look, very un-Orion like, she thought. Not mad, not grumpy or furious or anything. Nothing that was easy to combat, easy to deal with.

He just studied her, with plain brown eyes, neither mad nor glad nor any other emotion at all. With a shiver, Sammi suddenly felt as if he were sizing her up, without ever planning on raising a fist.

“Because I chose it. And I didn’t get to choose much before.”

“It still sounds dumb.” She muttered, without really meaning anything behind her words. It all spilled out of her mouth naturally. A frustrating stream of words and insults that felt as if they rolled off her tongue unbidden by her.

To his credit, Orion didn’t look offended. He kept that same look, that quiet, judgmental look, like he was weighing the value of her soul (or something else dramatic of the sorts). And then he spoke,

“Don’t worry, Salmonella sounds dumb too.”

“It isn’t salmonella, you- you-”

“I’ll sit here while you come up with something.”

“I’ll break your glasses, nerdy boy.” He had the utter gall - the sheer nerve - to crack a smile at that. She swore she had to do it now.

Maybe tomorrow, though. Not today.

Sammi always thought his weird habit of digging for trash was ridiculous, really. It was like an old-world raccoon, a nasty little thief with weird hands and weirder habits. If you got something and it didn’t work, just get a new one. It wasn’t a hard concept to grasp. But still he insisted, and still she sat on the counter and bugged him while he worked.

“What’s even the point? Last time you messed with it, it caught on fire.” She pointed out, as he fiddled with the inner workings of a microwave. He ignored her, engrossed in his own work, which she hated. She liked having attention, no matter who or what or how negative.

“Hey, onion boy, I’m talkin’ to you.”

That got him. He looked at her, raised an eyebrow, and sat back onto the hard floor. It looked cold and uncomfortable. He and his friends could, and probably should, do better. Why didn’t they? “Because it worked like this underground, and I liked how it worked. We took things and made them work twice as hard.”

“Sounds like a hazard.” She drawled, jabbing a finger at the mess of electronics. “Maybe if you didn’t scavenge for garbage and like, bought new stuff, it’d actually work.”

“There isn’t an endless supply of stuff, you know.”

“I’m pretty sure Mako Mart ain’t gonna run out of microwaves any time soon.”

“But they might,” He said, and she felt that squeeze of anxiety in his voice, “They might and then everyone will be fighting over what’s left and you’ll have to scavenge, so better to learn how now and scavenge and let everyone else fight over the rest.”

And something clicked into place. A trace back to what he possibly faced, maybe saw, and that was just. Kind of sad.

But still.

“I’m buying you a microwave, garbage boy.”

It was weird seeing different octolings, after that. Sunny’s nasty tentacle-swinging girlfriend had her own habits - being terrified of balloons was one she didn’t really understand (nor did Orion, once she got the idea to ask him). The former elites that hung around Callie were all weird and twitchy and really out of place, once she thought about it. Entirely out of place in a loud and colorful and always moving forward Inkopolis. They were easily outpaced by every new thing, every new fad, and a whole bunch of inklings who neither noticed nor cared.

Did she care?

It was hard to say, really. She wanted to say she didn’t care, and that it was just their problem and they could deal with it themselves.

But she did buy a new microwave with her own pocket money.

[homebrewtalk]

Getting More Body in Gluten Free Beers

So you’ve started brewing gluten-free. I commend you. For us glutards (those with intolerance and allergies to gluten), there are basically two options: 1) Make a regular beer, and then take the gluten out with WLN4000: Clarity Ferm, or 2) Brew using no gluten-carrying grains in the mash. As I’ve found, even with Stone Delicious IPA, there’s not much added benefit from option 1. I’ll still have some brain fog, indigestion, or sore joints the next day, which really takes the session-ability away from it being gluten-reduced. Furthermore, they’re not doing anything adventurous, just offering basic flavors, making you have to either travel to places like Alpine, Duckfoot, or Amplified Ales in San Diego (gluten reduced), Ghostfish in Seattle (all gluten free), Groundbreaker in Portland (all gluten free), or Glutenberg in Canada (all gluten free), basically making homebrewing the best way to get the flavors you want.

Gluten Free Beer & Mouthfeel?

Without fail, all gluten-free beer seems to always lack that mouthfeel present in regular gluten-carrying beers. Why is this? Well, since any single gluten-free grain has about ½ of the yeast nutrient as Pilsner malt, you must add a cocktail of various gluten-free grains to ensure that the yeast will even attenuate (i.e., millet tops out at about 63% whereas barley tops out at 88%). In my experience, when the sugar content is right and you’ve added yeast nutrient to your wort, there will be high attenuation because of sugar content in the grains. But because of a lack of extra indigestible material, there is a tremendous amount of body left out. Remember that only 2/3 of the carbohydrates in a typical wort are fermentable. There aren’t a lot of extra starches and proteins lying around, so most gluten-free beers taste like a light beer. This is incredibly convenient when brewing pale ales, IPAs, alt-biers, and lagers; not so much when brewing Belgians, stouts, and saisons.

But There is Hope!

The best-tasting brews that I’ve done up to this point have incorporated at least three different gluten-free grains, and all have used adjuncts to get more body. What are these grains? Millet, buckwheat, rice, sorghum, corn, and quinoa. Rice and sorghum are typically my main fermentables, and buckwheat and millet are my additional periphery grains. I do this because of cost and attenuation and to make sure I don’t create too much stuck mash. More about that later. Even more on the periphery, one of the better alternative fermentable beers I’ve had was a Japanese lager that used an all sweet potato mash. You can also use amaranth and buckwheat groats, but some might find this costly or excessive.

One additional grain that I’ve been adding more recently in 30% of the grain bill and below is spelt. This is the ancestor of modern day wheat, with a high protein content but low gluten content, and it comes malted. This really helps keep my overall grain bill financially manageable. Spelt also has a great nutty/earthy taste that people prefer in any longer-fermenting beer. It really helped with a Trappist style ale I made recently, but has good versatility. It paired incredibly well with my most recent coffee IPA. And a disclaimer here: I will still use Clarity Ferm when using spelt. There is still a gluten content, but the sessionability is much greater, and I’ve experienced no side effects up to this point. As additional help with body, flaked corn, flaked quinoa, and oats are great additions to your mash. For those of you using Brett yeasts, Brett also loves rice syrup solids, rice milk powder, and maltodextrin. It also helps any beer you make get more of that “chewiness” that people desire in their beer.

Custom Mash

Besides rice, all of these grains are smaller than their gluten carrying cousins. I’ve only been able to find sorghum in extract form, but it’s about the size of Buckwheat. Although small, these grains behave very much like oats, and stuck mash is a regular occurrence, even when your grain bill contains over 60% rice. So buy more rice hulls than you think you’ll need. Roughly 1 pound of rice hulls for every 6-7 pounds of millet/buckwheat mash. You’ll also need to Mash at a temperature that leaves most people scratching their heads: 163.4⁰F. The reason why? I’m not too sure. Even the grain malters say this came from trial and error. But other temperatures don’t allow you to get close enough to the 75% starch conversion target consistently. From personal experience, and talking with the team at Ghostfish, a single infusion mash between 152⁰F and 158⁰F has been working perfectly. I will typically mash for at least 90 minutes as well and use amylase enzyme to increase my chances of getting adequate enzymatic conversion. I also rarely do a protein rest, as you want to bring as many of the proteins in the grains as you can. Remember when I said these grains are great for pale ales, lagers, and IPAs? Gypsum is also great to add to any beer because of the yeast nutrient that it contains. Just be careful, since too much can make a beer crisper that you’d like (i.e., you can turn a Belgian Dubbel’s mouthfeel into a single).

Doesn’t Matter What it is, DRY HOP!

I don’t care what kind of beer you’re brewing with all gluten-free ingredients, you better dry hop. In my opinion, this is one of the most important parts about creating a gluten-free beer that actually has a “brewer’s signature” or “lacing” (foam that trails the beer down the glass and tells you how big of sips you’ve taken). Since there is that lack of protein in the grains, you need all the help you can get from the iso-alpha acids present in hops. In fact, I’ll typically dry hop with hops that have higher iso-alpha acid contents in my less bitter beers so that I can get good aroma and head retention without the bitterness. One of my biggest keys with dry hopping is that I’ll only do it for three days as I’m cooling the beer down. This really helps keep the grassiness away and imparts those extra aromas that give the beer added character.

Gluten-free brewing is the real wild-west of brewing. There really is no convention established here. So take it and run with it. There are so many other beers yet to be made.

Here’s a recipe for my Disco Funk Pale Ale (5.5 Gallons):

5 lbs. Pale Rice Malt 2 lbs. American Roasted Millet Malt 2 lbs. Crystal Rice Malt

Boil Additions 6.6 lbs. Sorghum Extract (½ at 30 minutes into boil, and ½ at 5 minutes) 2 lbs. Golden Beet Syrup (at 5 minutes) ½ lb. Maltodextrin (at 5 minutes) ½ lb. Rice Milk Powder (at 5 minutes)

1 oz. Palisades leaf hop @60 .25 oz. Chinook leaf hops @60 1 oz. Liberty leaf hops @60

1 oz. Palisades leaf hop @15 1.25 oz. Chinook leaf hops @15 1 oz. Liberty leaf hops @15

1 oz. Palisades leaf hop @5 1.5 oz. Chinook leaf hops @5 1 oz. Liberty leaf hops @5

1 vial Funktown Pale Ale Yeast Blend from Yeast Bay (produced by White Labs)

I let it sit for 3 weeks at 70⁰F and then dry hop with 1 oz. Comet hop pellets (no bag) 3 days before transferring to bottle and keg. Incredible citrus notes and passionfruit/pineapple. Smooth finish with great head retention. It ended up being more on the IPA side because of the Chinook hops, but great taste overall. Bottle conditioning really helps this beer. It gets to peak drinking at the four-month mark. It didn’t last in the keg, as you may assume.

by Robert Keifer Originally born and raised in San Jose, CA, I moved down to SOCAL for college at UC Irvine (Business Economics class of 2011), and decided to stick around after graduating. I’ve been gluten free since 2010, and was tired of never having any beer to drink. A mutual friend was into homebrewing, and had me come over to hang at a keg tasting, and once I mentioned Ghostfish in Seattle (GF brewery), they got the idea to help me brew a gluten-free beer. From there, I’ve been fully immersed in learning everything I can about brewing beer and brewing as many beers as I can. I currently work as the Talent Acquisition Specialist for a growing Cyber Security Consulting firm, Tevora, and I have aspirations of putting my beers on the map at the Pro-AM GABF, and bringing them to a wider audience by opening my own Brewery one day.

Getting More Body in Gluten Free Beers was originally published on HomeBrewTalk.com