“My friend Sarah says that I get to be the voice of God. I usually roll my eyes when she says it, because if I were God, I would never have chosen me of all people to speak for him.”
Such are the words of wisdom of Bethany Hamilton, a typical young American girl who is not so typical in many little ways.
Bethany is famous for losing her left arm to a shark attack off the surfing shores of Hawaii in 2003. If she had given up her budding surfing career and left it at that, she would still be an amazing human being. But what Bethany did next is what we can emulate and learn from.
The indelible faith that this young woman has in God, not to mention her incredible surfing skills with just one arm, is enough to move any mountain and solve any problem.
Bethany is our Seabiscuit during these extremely trying times.
Two of her memorable sayings are worthy to frame:
“I don't need easy. I just need possible.”
“Love is bigger than any tidal wave or fear.”
So what has Bethany Hamilton got to do with alcohol production?
Outline of This Article
The economic and financial limbs of the world are being chewed off by the financial sharks from Wall Street and their co-conspirators, the world’s Central Banksters, whose only modus operandi is bottomless GREED.
Concurrently, the world is going through a transition called “Great Depression 2” or GD2. Ground zero of GD2 is the U.S. This GD2 is going to be longer and much more severe than the first one. Why? Because all the major countries around the world are “solving” their collapses with one tool: FINANCIAL HEROIN, i.e., creating zillions of dollars, pesos, and yuans from thin air.
The only bubble left to inflate is War, as in World War 3 or WW3 which will probably engulf the entire northern hemisphere and it will include nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction on a global scale. Millions of uninformed and unprepared people are going to die needlessly due to the ensuing shortage of clean energy and organic food.
In this article, we are going to do a “Bethany Hamilton” thing and surf right through these seemingly insurmountable problems. As General George Patton would say: ”We're going to go through them like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!”
We are going to cover small scale alcohol production in four areas:
The forbidden history of alcohol,
The Big Myths against alcohol,
How to grow clean energy and organic food, and
How to use alcohol fuel for automobiles, cooking, heating, lighting, refrigeration, and electricity generation.
1. Forbidden History of Alcohol
We are told over and over again that “Those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it.” But history is written by the winners. So how do we glean lessons from history?
Well, Mark Twain said it best: “History does not repeat itself, but it rhythms.” Here are two interesting historical rhythms.
In 1918, John Rockefeller sponsored a bunch of crazies called the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement whose singular purpose in life was to stamp out alcoholic drinking. They wanted to send the “devil rum” back to hell. What they didn’t know was that they’d be working hand in glove with the Devil himself.
John Rockefeller was in the kerosine lighting and heating business. He distilled kerosine from petroleum. At night, he would flush into the rivers the volatile, explosive, toxic junk left over from his distillation business. Nobody wanted a “molotov cocktail” as their kerosine lamp in their homes.
John Rockefeller found out that he could use this toxic waste by-product to run the newly invented automobile—if the internal combustion engine was slightly modified.
Most people don’t know that Henry Ford’s Model T car originally ran on alcohol first. It was subsequently modified to run on alcohol AND gasoline. Henry Ford’s motto was, “How can we expect the farmers to be our customers if we are not theirs?” Good question. He wanted to work with farmers, not against them.
See this video for more information: The Model T
John Rockefeller’s motto and business practice were a bit different. He called the toxic by-product from his kerosine distillation business “gasoline.” And he called the farmers of America his number one enemy, because they made alcohol fuel for cars.
In 1918 he decided that he had enough of competition from those pesky farmers in the hinterland of America, so he sponsored the aforementioned crazies with $4 million USD.
What the ladies did with that money was nothing short of miraculous! They got Congress to pass a constitutional amendment in 1919 to ban the drinking of alcohol for all of its citizens and, much more importantly, to ban the production of alcohol for all of its farmers and everyone else.
The results were nothing short of spectacular. Thousands of American farmers lost work because of Prohibition and millions of dollars for families evaporated. And for John Rockefeller? No more competition from those pesky farmers.
Mission accomplished.
During the same time period, Germany was also in the alcohol business. The Germans made alcohol from potatoes. Their farmers would bring potatoes to the local community alcohol distilleries. No money exchanged hands. The distillery got free alcohol feedstock (the input material for making alcohol) and the farmers got back 1/3 of the alcohol distilled from their potatoes.
What is really interesting to note is that the farmers got back all the mash, or the solid leftovers which are full of proteins, fats, nutrients, vitamins, etc. Making alcohol only removes the sugar or starch content. These farmers used the mash to feed their cows, pigs, chickens, etc. They used the alcohol for lamps, stoves, heaters, and for running tractors.
This cooperative alcohol distillery model worked so well that it actually prolonged World War 2 as the Allies had to bomb every one of the 70,000 distilleries spread across Germany.
The first thing the Americans did after the Nuremberg Trials was to put into the new German constitution a prohibition against making alcohol fuel.
How is that for history rhythming?
2. Big Myths about Alcohol
What are the Big Myths about alcohol as a fuel?
How about the one, “Making alcohol in the U.S. causes the children in Africa to go hungry?” More specifically, that making alcohol causes the price of corn to go up and food to be expensive?
Myth Number One is utterly unscientific.
Approximately 87% of the corn grown in the U.S. is used for animal feed. Only about 1% is used for actual human consumption as in corn flakes for breakfast cereals, corn chips, etc. Another 1% is used to make whiskey. The rest of the corn grown is used for things like high-fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, and other corn-based products that are not exactly fit for human consumption.
You could make a half-convincing argument that corn used for cows that are then eaten by human beings is “human food.” So, let’s tackle this argument.
In the U.S., it takes about 10 pounds of corn to grow 1 pound of beef, because cows are not designed to digest starch. Cows are meant to graze on woody brushes. Forcing them to eat corn, i.e., starch which make up 70% of the corn kernel, is animal cruelty and causes all sorts of bloating problems and digestive diseases. Inefficient digestion equates to inefficient meat production.
Were that 10 pounds of corn be turned into alcohol first by fermentation, we would get alcohol fuel and about 3.3 pounds of mash—the leftover solids from the fermentation process, full of proteins, fats, nutrients, vitamins, etc. Feeding cows this mash actually produces 17% more meat 13% faster!
Less animal feed, more beef, and healthier cows. What a concept!
During Prohibition, the revenuers would go to the county fairs to discover who are the “moonshiners.” How? They would look for the fattest cows and fattest pigs, because those farmers were feeding their prized animals with the leftover mash they got from their illegal moonshine stills!
So, making alcohol fuel from corn can provide both fuel for humans and food for animals at the same time. It makes cows happier. And it makes more beef.
Myth Number One goes straight into the dust bin of Propaganda History 101.
For the other Myths, see the full article at www.LiquidEnergyOasis.com
3. Growing Clean Alcohol and Organic Food Locally
There are three things produced when we make alcohol from grains. They are (1) the alcohol liquid, (2) the CO2 gas, and (3) the mash or distiller’s dried grains.
To make alcohol fuel, we need at least three things:
The feedstock(s) which can be almost anything that contains sugars or starches.
A fermentation system that turns the prepared feedstock into approximately 12% alcohol or “beer.” We use enzymes first to convert the starches into simple sugars and then yeasts to convert the simple sugars into alcohol. Alcohol is literally yeast poop: yeasts eat simple sugars, and then excrete alcohol while producing CO2 gas. The yeasts then die when the alcohol concentration reaches around 12%.
A distillation system that turns the 12% “beer” into approximately 190-proof alcohol which is 95% alcohol and 5% water. This alcohol is ready for use in cars and for cooking, lighting, heating, and electricity generation.
Small scale alcohol production allows local growers to use a variety of feedstocks, suitable to the local climate and soil conditions, many of which have much higher alcohol yields than the corn used in large scale alcohol production.
Other alcohol feedstocks include sweet sorghum, fodder beets, sugar beets, Jerusalem artichokes, cattails, etc. Waste products that contain high levels of sugar or starch may be obtained from companies looking for ecological means to get rid of their organic production wastes.
The following diagram shows how we can grow organic food as we are making our clean alcohol fuel.
Vegetables and plants take in CO2 and water, and, through the process of photosynthesis, they create carbohydrates, ranging from simple sugars like glucose, to more complex carbohydrates like starches, and finally to even more complex carbohydrates like cellulose.
Alcohol production is all about fermenting a feedstock and distilling the captured sunshine energy (simple sugars, starches, or cellulose) into a liquid form. Hence making alcohol is literally making “liquid sunshine.”
During the fermentation process, the amount of CO2 gas released by the yeast is equal to the amount of alcohol that is produced (lb for lb). This CO2 gas can be piped into greenhouses growing vegetables. Studies show that lettuces grown in a CO2-enriched environment can actually grow twice as fast as their cousins breathing normal air with a lower CO2 level. And pumpkins can grow almost twice as large in a CO2-enriched environment.
The mash left over from the alcohol fermentation process is nutritious food for growing fishes in aquaponics, mushrooms, and earthworms, among many other useful products.
The following “Table of 10-Acre Fuel and Food Production” shows how a cooperative of 10 families can produce approximately 9,000 gallons of alcohol fuel per year. Using the CO2 to grow organic vegetables in greenhouses and using the mash to grow fishes, mushrooms, earthworms, potentially $500,000 of organic products can be produced annually, depending on local market conditions.
A cooperative of families using this model to grow clean energy and organic food would not only survive, but they would thrive. Let’s assume that the overhead costs total around $100,000 per year. This means that each family could net $40,000 per year. And we are talking about 25 to 35 hours of work per week per family!
That is not a bad way to survive and thrive during GD2 and WW3.
4. Using Alcohol in Cars and for Cooking, Heating, Lighting, Refrigeration & Electricity
Once alcohol is produced in a local community, opportunities open up for community members to start using alcohol stoves, alcohol heaters, alcohol lamps, alcohol refrigerators, alcohol electricity generators, etc. You can purchase some of these alcohol-fueled equipment from manufacturers and dealers that specialize in marine or recreational vehicle appliances. And, of course, alcohol can be used in all vehicles—gasoline AND diesel.
Almost every gasoline fuel-injection car can use alcohol fuel (190-proof alcohol) up to 50% in its fuel tank without ANY changes whatsoever.
For gasoline fuel-injection cars to run from 50% to 100% alcohol, you need to buy and install a plug-and-play conversion kit that costs around $300. This conversion kit is a device that extends the capability of the engine’s existing computer to deal with the extra amount of oxygen in alcohol. It takes about 20 minutes to install.
The following “Overview of Small Scale Alcohol Production” shows how a community can truly become self-sufficient. Up until now, permaculture, grow biointensive, aquaponics, and other natural farming methods that proclaim self-sufficiency all lack one key and vital component: the ability to produce clean and renewable energy locally.
With alcohol, we can achieve true energy and food self-sufficiency in our local communities.
Conclusions
Alcohol is liquid sunshine. Pure and simple.
Small scale alcohol production in growing clean renewable energy and organic food in local communities is THE transitional technology for GD2 and WW3. It is based on years and years of practice and experience by our grandparents and great grandparents. Now by utilizing permaculture and polyculture practices, we can take what our ancestors knew and practiced onto the next level.
With liquid sunshine produced locally, we can literally tell Big Oil and the other “corporations from hell” like Monsanto and BP to all go to where the sun don’t shine!
But remember, talk does not boil rice.
It’s time for us to implement this small scale alcohol production where we are. It is time for everyone who cares about the environment, clean and renewable energy, and organic food to just do it!
Let’s take a page from our beloved Bethany Hamilton and General George Patton:
”Let’s plow through all these man-made problems of greed and artificially created shortageS like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!”
Make liquid sunshine where you are, and be happy and prosperous . . .
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David Chu is an author and professional engineer who has worked throughout the U.S. for 20 years. He is a UBC graduate (B.A.Sc. in mechanical engineering) and a Canadian citizen living in Argentina. Since late 2008, he has devoted his career and engineering know-how to help people everywhere learn about and implement small scale alcohol production.
To obtain a 220-page PDF “10-Family Coop Proposal & Cost Estimate” ($25) which details the necessary equipments and tools including the car conversion kit, please use the following PayPal clickable link: https://www.paypal.com.
