Sellurian Beer

by Ronald Larsen

Hello, Uncle Harold,

I’ve found a way to make a small fortune by brewing and selling Sellurian beer, and I want to share the idea with you.

When the new galactic trading base was built on the edge of the Everglades, Sellurian crewmen started coming into the Pelican’s Elbow in the evenings to drink beer. With those huge green guts of theirs, they can drink prodigious quantities. I thought I’d be making great money. But I wasn’t, because my human traffic dried up to almost nothing, and Sellurians are vegans who don’t like human food. They’ll barely even eat our best veggies and fruits. You can well imagine their opinion of my bar food!

Sellurians are only allowed a tiny allotment of beer on their trading ships because space is reserved for richer cargos. So they drink human beer while they’re here, but continually bitch about it. I think a rough translation of their description of human beer is “Cooled-Down Cleotian Muckratt Piss.”

I tried every kind of beer I could find, but they’ll only drink the heavy high-alcohol brews and still complain.

I had a Sellurian home brewer in the bar a few months ago, plied him with free beer and pumped him for information. I learned Sellurian beer is made from grain similar to our barley, plus an herb they call Pichho. Instead of adding hops for bittering, they use Thrash and Pego plant leaves.

I talked him into bringing a sample of the herb and leaves on his next trip, then asked a friend at the University to analyze them. Turns out Thrash leaves are unique to the Sellurian star system; we don’t have an equivalent. But Pego is equivalent to Black Mangrove seeds, and I can get plenty of those in the Everglades. And Pichho is almost identical to our garlic. What do ya know: garlic beer!

I made a deal with the Sellurian brewer to bring me a supply of Thrash leaves in his personal weight allowance on his next trip. I whipped up several batches of home brew using the Thrash leaves, mangrove seeds and good old grocery-store garlic. Being unsure about garlic in beer, I made three high-alcohol batches: one with a little garlic, one with more garlic and one with killer garlic. Kind of a Sellurian Light, Sellurian Standard, and Straffe (strong) Sellurian, with really heavy-duty alcohol.

I think the beers taste terrible, but the Sellurians absolutely love all three. So now I’ve got a bunch of Sellurians selling me Thrash leaves. I make Sellurian beer with them, charge ten times what I’d get for the best human beer, and they happily pay it! How’s $75, $85 and $95 a pint sound?

Why don’t you get rid of your hamburger joint and open a bar near the Pindo Point Spaceport? Get some Sellurians to supply Thrash leaves and deal only in Sellurian beer. No food. They won’t eat it anyway. You can make way more money for less work, and I can provide the mangrove seeds you’ll need.

Here’s my starter recipe. Begin with the ingredients for a standard 5-gallon batch of high alcohol beer but eliminate the hops. Add 10 washed Thrash leaves, chopped up just as finely as you can; 6 ounces of coarsely chopped washed Black Mangrove seeds; and fresh garlic, not the processed stuff! Peel the garlic and crush the cloves. I use 1 lb, 3 lbs and 6 lbs for Sellurian Light, Sellurian Standard, and Straffe Sellurian.

Add half the Thrash leaves and half the garlic to your mash, boil for 30 minutes, then slowly add the mangrove seeds and the rest of the Thrash leaves and garlic during the last 30 minutes of boiling the wort.

Please don’t let anybody know about the secret ingredients. You needn’t worry about the Sellurians cutting you out, because none of them stay here long enough to brew and age beer. Besides, they all make such great money crewing the trading ships, they can buy anything they want.

Barely taste the beer yourself and only sell it to Sellurians, because Thrash leaves are extremely high in arsenic. Sellurian bodies tolerate it very well; human bodies, not so much.

Your Loving Nephew, Fred