Contesting Common Assumptions: Technological Development and DIY Products

Satisfaction gained from 'primitive' do-it-yourself activities (like homebrewing) challenges the idea that technical innovation always leads to increased social good.

Gathering fuel for maple syrup evaporation.
Propane would be easier; wood is more fun.

By Wes Eaton

Recently I have been considering questions of how new technologies and their related social practices come into being. By “technologies” I am referring to a whole range of technical artifacts, from small, handheld objects like sledgehammers and iPhones to larger technology systems like highways and nuclear power plants, and by “come into being” I mean how technologies are transformed from ideas into material things and social activity around those things. Recent research on technologies tells us that many common understandings of these processes are missing out on what’s really going on. For instance, it's common to hear people make the argument that technological innovation always provides societal benefits, and that technologies are getter better or more efficient all the time.

What are these common claims missing? Essentially, they are glossing over the work it takes to introduce new technologies and champion certain designs and arrangements over others. Some social researchers like to point out that “natural science” scientists are also “social” scientists, meaning that scientists such as engineers not only invent material things, like smart phones, but they need to convince others, in this case consumers, that their product, out of so many other options, is worth uptake. Their job is considered successful when consumers say, “This product, as compared with others, is the most efficient and provides social benefits.” The point then is to recognize that seeing some technologies as beneficial or more efficient than others is itself an accomplishment, the achieving of which requires the imposition of some technological designs—and human preferences—at the expense of others. In other words, there is a power struggle going on that often gets covered up with assumptions that one choice is “naturally” better than the other.

Let’s see how this works in the realm of food-related do-it-yourself (DIY) activities, such as food preserving, preparing, and beer- and wine-making. I have three points to share. First, if we look at our own DIY hobbies, we see that efficiency and “natural” design choices do not hold up. For example, in an earlier article, I discussed my hobby of making maple syrup annually each spring. Compared to larger producers, I use a smallish pan, about 2’ x 4’, and evaporate syrup outdoors over a wood fire and on top of cinder blocks. My sap team and I set out and haul around about sixty 3-gallon buckets and tap as many trees. So while there are many more trees that could be tapped, more “efficient” methods of transporting sap to the syrup pan, and more productive evaporative designs—all of which are within our present capacities—the point of this illustration is to note that certain scales of operation are more conducive to enjoyment, regardless of their efficiency. We could think about home brewing in a similar fashion, asking, how big do we want to get with this practice?

Second, when we do “scale up” and perhaps open a brewery, a bakery or a winery, we get a glimpse at the way technical artifacts—in this case food/beverage products—are transformed from a range of possibilities into claims about “this is naturally best.” A clear example of this is the “default” categories all around us that we see as “natural.” For instance, in written language, authors used and continue to use the words “men” and “man” in reference to all types of people, and white people generally grace the cover of cereal boxes and play the lead roles on television. I find this to be particularly interesting in the realm of beer. The word “beer” for instance is closely associated with cans of, say, Budweiser. Craft beer of course works to challenge these default positions, first by raising awareness of alternatives and then by challenging the construction of the definition of “beer” itself.

The point I want to emphasize is that upsetting these taken-for-granted realities is a struggle and challenge since, once instilled, these common understandings are difficult to disentangle from what we perceive to be "reality," which is itself comprised of countless default positions. This is not a trivial point, and one that I feel innovative brewers, marketers, and PR agents take to heart. Much like Plato’s “Ideal Forms,” we use default understandings—which we may see as “inherent”—to make sense out of what a thing should be. For example, when people taste a Bell’s Two Hearted Ale for the first time, if the beverage is thought of as a “beer,” the experience will most certainly be shocking. I know it was for me! Why? I learned “beer” was a fizzy yellow corny beverage that made you belch. While this is changing, I am identifying it as a hurdle for artisan producers of multiple products.

I have one final point related to efficiency arguments. Craft producers are in a unique position in that they are using “traditional,” in the sense of less-than-the-most-efficient practices and technologies, to produce their products. For instance, American Imperial Stouts and massive IPAs require excessive amounts of ingredients, ingredients that could likely be used alternatively to produce multiple batches of more typical products. Whether or not this is a “waste” is a matter of one’s perception of (a range of) resources. Ask your local brewer about this. At the same time, breweries, especially Michigan breweries, are rapidly increasing their production, which means more and more of these massive beers need to be produced. Doing so requires both the inefficiencies of traditional practices, but also the capacity to do so on increasingly large scales.

To bring this together, the point that I want to share is that technologies—and in this case I discussed food products—are not driven by efficiency or social benefits alone. Specifically, for food products, the equivalent argument is that product design choices, despite competitive markets, are not only about efficiency and quality, but instead reflect political tensions between competing visions. It is only the (temporary) winner who has people saying, for instance, “now THIS is a beer!”

Making Maple Syrup and the Growing DIY Movement

Making syrup from sap takes time and effort

By Weston Eaton

As the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement continues to grow in popularity in West Michigan, especially in the arena of homebrewing, I would like to contribute this story in the attempt to increase the visibility of another craft practice with a rich history: making maple syrup. First, let me explain the essential basics in an effort to demystify how syrup is made. Second, I want to talk about my own experiences making syrup with friends at my family’s “cabin” more closely to make some points in regards to scale of production as well as why it is we choose to engage in DIY practices.

As any nature center will tell you, the watery sap of sugar maples contains about 3 - 4 percent sugar. Sap flows through the outer cambium, just behind the bark, from roots up to branches in the spring, or more specifically, when the freezing days give way to sunny, warm afternoons but the temperature again drops below 32F at night. Last year you will recall this happened early, but this syrup making season has been ideal—a lengthy streak of warm days and cold nights. Once the nights cease to freeze, the sap is no longer suited for syrup making. Sap collecting is therefore a highly seasonal activity, completely contingent on the weather.

To collect sap, syrup makers drill small, shallow holes and snugly tap in “spiles,” small spigots on which buckets are hung or hoses attached. Trees are tapped at a slight upward angle to encourage flow and on the south-eastern portion of the trunk, only a few feet above the forest floor. Trees may be tapped more than once, depending on their size, and a single tap can produce gallons of sap a day depending on the weather conditions. Once sap is collected, it is boiled down to a concentration of 66 percent sugar. Fifty gallons of sap will boil down to about one gallon of pure maple syrup.

While the above description covers the basics, it;s all still a bit vague. I want to use my own experience to unpack some lingering questions, mainly, how many trees are tapped and gallons collected? And how is sap boiled into syrup? I use my own experience because there are no universally right answers to these questions. In other words, there is no better or worse way to make syrup. Instead, like with other DIY practices, one needs to develop a practice that suits his or her personal and collective goals, while at the same time recognizing that one’s goals are not static but instead emerge and change in conjunction with their experiences. Let me provide some illustrations.

How many trees to tap and gallons to collect? The production plans we use at our cabin are by now so worn and familiar that I rarely give it a thought. This was not the case, however, nine years ago when we first began tapping. Back then, we adjusted our plans to our resources—to the trees within proximity, the tools we had access to, the number of buckets we had, and the time we could spend. In other words, these resources set the scale of our production.

How is sap boiled into syrup? Here our story is similar: what resources were at hand? As a homebrewer, propane burners made the most sense. We fabricated a small stainless syrup pan and holding tank and these resources constrained how it was we converted sap to syrup.

Over the years, however, resources have increased as has accumulated knowledge and lived experience. Mistakes made early on (tapping oak trees, boiling over or burning batches, buckets with frozen sap) were now much less likely to happen. There were now opportunities—bigger pans, moving to wood heat, vacation days from work—that offered the possibilities of significant change, mainly growth.

And here we come to the insight that I would like to add to DIY discussions. As resources and capacities are increased, how do we balance growth with our personal and collective goals for DIY practices? The point I want to make is a simple observation: it is possible to let projects get too big, and in doing so, overshadow the spirit of DIY. In my experience this happens in two non-exclusive ways. First, it's possible to upgrade one’s syrup making operation to the point where the complexity of the practice overtakes its original enjoyability. At a certain point, boiling down syrup can become a chore, this is especially so if lots of equipment needs to be operated and maintained (i.e., reverse osmosis systems, vacuum lines, hundreds of taps). Second, one may make two, four, ten, or a hundred times as much syrup as a small producer, but how much syrup is really necessary? I’ve met folks who only make syrup once every few years at the most due to their gigantic stock pile.

On the other hand, if the production system grows, so might our goals. Perhaps folks might choose to go into business with their sugar bush in the same way that homebrewers start their own breweries. This is common theme, and one that’s highly encouraged in our entrepreneurial culture. My argument, however, is different. We do not need to be professional brewers to enjoy making beer, nor turn our uncle’s back forty into a productive and marketable sugarbush to enjoy making syrup. In fact, it might just be the opposite! The brewers I know certainly love their jobs, but their work is very different from the late nights spent over boiling kettles in their apartment kitchens. The difference, I am arguing, is a matter of scale that becomes salient when we make a conscious decision to identify the threshold where enjoyment and enchantment can morph into chores and obligations. In other words, at a certain point creativity can dip into drudgery.

In conclusion, I want to suggest that DIY practices occupy a distinct space in our lives. For most of us, we engage in DIY activities not for reasons of efficiency—like saving time and money—but for personal, family, and collective creative enrichment and enjoyment. DIY activities create a space between the more rational obligations of life where our personal and collective creative identities can flourish. DIY practices therefore emerge more from communitarian inspirations than individual success. This flummoxes the entrepreneurial culture that can only calculate in terms of the individual and rational efficiency.

Sap to syrup: why I spend time in the woods making breakfast sauce

By Wes Eaton

Late last week, when the arctic air unexpectedly gave way to temperate weather, and the snow turned wet, heavy and began to melt, I headed north with a few other woodsmen to tap the sugar maples. Although the season came on early, we were prepared. Buckets, taps (spiles), hoses, and tools had already been stashed at our woodlot, a scant hour’s drive north of Grand Rapids in Paris, MI. Wood too had been cut, split and stacked, enough hopefully to accommodate fueling the new evaporator we constructed in the fall. All we needed was a break in the weather and the breakfast sauce making could begin.

Ending dependency of foreign oil.

Maple sap, about 2-4% sugar, begins to course up the tree’s outer cambium when the weather warms above freezing during the day but dips well below that mark at night. This usually happens in late March, but this year my favorite rite of spring came early. For those of you familiar with brewing beer, making maple syrup is a similar process, except you don’t have to write a recipe, gather ingredients, sanitize, mash-in, sparge, chill, sanitize again or ferment--all you have to do is boil and bottle. This is best done with a flat, shallow pan designed to increase surface area. The idea is to add sap at the same rate water is evaporating, keeping the total depth shallow to induce an intense, vigorous boil. By doing so, the maple sugar steadily concentrates until syrup is had at about 66% sugar. Forty gallons of sap boils down to one gallon of syrup, a venture that can take a few hours or all day depending on your evaporator and pan.

The author taps a tree (note the KBS)

In years past we evaporated sap with propane, the irresponsibility of which was always highlighted by our incessant bonfire building. Intent on capturing and controlling that immense heat, I built a rectangular ‘fireplace‘ out of sixteen cement blocks on top of which rests my 20” X 30” X 6” stainless pan. Out the back a 9’ chimney sucks a draft through like a blast furnace. Having felled, split and stacked oak since November, I’m hoping to at least double my annual syrup production of three and a half gallons.

Beyond these truisms, the process of syrup making is a transforming experience akin to acts of tending a garden or cellaring homemade wine--the ever present sense of immediacy, our hourly short-term metric for understanding and mediating daily actions, gives way to the whims of nature’s seasons. The sap flows only when the sap flows. At winter’s break, the time spent in the woods, garage, or barn, tending the fire, chopping wood, hauling buckets of sap, drawing off golden syrup and laying up another bottle has its own rhythm and pace as well as obligations. One cannot simply light the fire and walk away; an evaporator needs constant tending. While this can very well be a solitary ordeal, especially when taking turns at the pan, I prefer packing our my small ‘off-the-grid’ cabin with dogs as well as people who I know appreciate the annual slow-down.

Kyle Dood, problem solver extraordinaire.

I thought about this upcoming season while trekking tree to tree along the bottom of the ridge behind the cabin with my dog and wife, taking turns putting the steel of brace & bit to maple bark, tapping in spiles next to tap marks from years past. The fog had gotten thick as the air warmed. We looked up from our duties and saw the lamps in the woods. Up the hill, the others were laying buckets where we had set taps and hose. The maples all around us, already tall, seemed taller now in the dark, the moon behind mists, tree tops beyond our scope. We were getting wet and cold, but a bourbon stout was enough to get us through. Soon there would be enough sap to fill the pan and we’d light the burner’s fire.

To get filled in on the details of everything from tapping trees to selecting equipment, I highly suggest picking up Noel Perrin’s Making Maple Syrup, a four dollar bulletin available at Siciliano’s Market.
 

Let if flow, let it flow, let it flow!

Still life with beer

Former Siciliano's employee Weston Eaton is currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology at Michigan State University. He lives with his wife and dog in Grand Rapids, MI. A version of the above post is scheduled to appear in the March edition of Recoil magazine.