- Today we're shutting off some of our vices. - Boom.
- Greg:
Greg:
Start the clock.
Boys, do what you want with my body.
With this!
Ah!
First, we need to figure out how we're getting wifi.
We stealing.
These are microbes that we cultured from our feet
- to make our off-grid beer.
Mitch: Ew!
I'm gonna take on the fast fashion industry.
Is this a joke?
Science is cool.
Cheers.
Mitch:
and it's not just our sexy good looks.
- It's climate change.
Mitch:
out of the classroom and into the country.
Greg:
Mitch:
- Aah! - Oh, my gosh.
Greg:
Mitch:
Yes! It works!
Mitch:
Mitch and Greg:
These are our last beers for a while
because we are officially shutting off our vices, like alcohol.
Or wifi! Also known as "wee-fee." I'm addicted to this stuff.
It's also linked to my other vice
which is shopping online for fast fashion.
A gay guy once told me that swim briefs were single use, and I bought three neon ones!
We wanna explore the connection of these vices to the climate crisis
and also so if we can find some off-grid alternatives to them.
Cheers.
In order to make our own off-grid beer,
I'm gonna culture our own microbes to ultimately make a unique beer.
I'm gonna take on the fast fashion industry
by sheering a sheep I can actually see out of this window,
processing it, and dying it
with natural dyes found from plants around this farm.
In the end, I'm gonna make something like this.
Our devices have no wifi signal down here,
which we need to survive and to finish this episode.
But I know that the farm which is around 200 meters away
does have internet and has a wifi signal,
so we're gonna try and steal that.
Greg:
is linked to climate change.
In fact, watching online video results
in 0.4 kg of CO2 released per hour,
adding up to 1.3 billion kgs of CO2 per year.
This is because the internet relies on data servers
that use fossil fuels for energy,
and they also need energy to be cooled,
as they get really hot.
We need to regulate tech companies
to use only renewable energy for their servers
and encourage them to build servers in colder climates
to decrease the need for cooling.
Some companies have hopped on this trend
and now build their hot, hot servers in Iceland.
The farmhouse wifi is connected to the Internet via radio waves.
old-time technology that we still use today.
Most of our devices, like cell phones, tablets, and laptops,
use omnidirectional antennas to pick up wifi signals.
This allows them to be anywhere in your home
and communicate with your internet,
but they aren't optimal for really long distances.
So I'm gonna make a cantenna
with an added parabolic dish.
I'll build a large reflective dish
that will hopeful catch more of the radio waves,
and the parabolic curvature will focus them towards a can.
The can has a copper wire inside
which acts like the antenna in your phone.
I'll be making something called a Yagi,
which is a unidirectional antenna
that was invented in 1926.
When the wifi signal from the farm reaches my antenna,
this signal will be amplified by a series of metal plates.
A reflector at the back and five directors
all concentrate those waves onto our active element
which ultimately sends an electronic signal
to the dongle and then to the laptop.
While I begin cutting out
the different sized copper plates for my Yagi,
Greg is building the frame for his parabolic dish.
Greg:
that will hold the cantenna in the center of the parabolic dish.
The dish is made of mesh and plastic
and will collect the radio waves
and send them to that little copper wire in the can.
The copper wire's electrons
will get excited by the farm's focused wifi radio waves
and create an electronic signal that travels down the cable
and into a dongle.
The dongle interprets and translates that signal
into digital data which our computer uses as wifi.
Mitch:
because copper will react effectively
with the wifi's electromagnetic waves.
The great thing about the Yagi is that it has the potential
to get a much stronger signal based on its dimensions,
which are specifically calculated
for our wifi wavelength and setup,
but its downfall is that it has to be pointed perfectly
in the right direction to work well
because its focused beam is so narrow.
I'm a little worried,
but if we get the Yagi wrong,
it just won't work at all.
I think this is one of the coolest builds that we've done.
My parabolic dish is ready.
Now I have to figure out
the perfect place to put this monster.
( gasps ) Ay!
The vice that I'm most addicted to sadly is wifi.
Who needs it more? Greg, 100%.
Hands up. You got me, Mitch.
But we both need it in our cabin
to do the work that's necessary for this show.
You sometimes forget how much internet is integrated into your life
until you don't have it.
Greg:
So those are being taken away,
which is gonna be harder than usual.
Since this is my first time brewing beer
or brewing anything really,
I've been doing a bunch of research
and realized the first thing we need is something called wort.
Now not the warts that you get on your body.
W-O-R-T.
And it's basically a mix
of boiled barley, hops, and malt extract.
But the most important ingredient we need is yeast.
Humanity's existence is profoundly intertwined with yeast.
It lives on our skin, in our lungs and guts,
and it floats in the air that we breathe.
And regulating yeast through brewing and baking
has made it a key building block
in humanity's transformation from nomadic hunters
to a domesticated agricultural society.
To break down that malt extract into ethanol
we're looking for something called brewer's yeast,
and to find it, we're gonna use our bodies and our environment.
If we find yeast samples,
we can take them and culture them.
( alarm blaring )
We're about to swab our toes, butt cracks, and skin
to hopefully have yeast on them.
- Just doing some science. - Wa-pah!
Aw, gross. What a freak.
So which do you think will actually have the best growth?
Greg: I think it's gonna be one of my skins.
I think the butt crack will show the most growth,
but it may not be what we actually want.
If we can make beer out of the butt crack, we're gonna be rich.
- It's gonna fly off the shelves. - I don't know.
( cash register dings )
Mitch:
but we also have some wort samples
like this one that we've placed around the farm.
We have this bit of cheese cloth on top so the yeast can get through,
but other insects or animals can't get in.
And the hope is that near fruit and near flowers,
near oak trees, might find some wild yeast
and be able to cultivate that and use it for our beer.
It'll take nine to ten hours,
so we'll leave the wort out overnight to capture the yeast.
- Look what I got. - Ooh. Thank you.
Mitch:
then added it directly into a wort bottle
in order to take advantage of the natural yeast on its skin.
Now we just have to wait two to three days
to see if we have enough yeast growth
to use for brewing our beer.
Greg:
first I'm going to need the wool.
So I'm here with Rachel who's gonna teach me how to shear a sheep with this!
Okay, I'm so sorry. I'm freaking out.
- I trust you absolutely. - Okay.
I trust myself as a teacher.
We are gonna be taking the fleece off of a sheep with a razor.
Rachel: They have to be sheared, because once they're done,
you'll see how much wool comes off,
and that's one year's worth.
They want this fleece off of them,
so that's what I keep thinking.
I'm like, "I'm gonna help cool down the sheep.
I'm gonna help cool down the sheep."
I think we should just get started
'cause I still have to process the wool, dye the wool,
and then, you know, knit it into a swim brief.
You're gonna become a gorgeous swim brief
that a gay guy's gonna wear on the beach.
- ( bleats ) - She just said, "I can't wait."
- Ready? - I love you.
It's like you've done this before.
- Once or twice. - Oh, my God, it's, like,
the most satisfying thing I've ever seen in my life.
- Ready? - I'm ready.
I just don't wanna cut them. I don't wanna cut them.
- So like this? - Yep.
Oh, my God.
Shearing sheep means we're working with natural fiber,
but a lot of our clothes are made with synthetic fibers like polyester,
and that polyester contributes to plastic waste.
For example, one 6 kg load of laundry
releases more than 700,000 microplastic fibers into waste water,
which means washing clothes
produces the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles
of waste per year.
All the way out with that leg again.
There! Beautiful!
My hands feel amazing. I haven't washed them because lanolin is an oil
that comes off the sheep when you're actually touching them
and shearing them, and it's good for your hands.
So I'm just basking in these sheep shearing hands.
Baby, do you feel naked and like a newborn?
Rachel: She says, "Oh, I feel wonderful."
Thank you so much. I never thought I'd do something like this.
Rachel: For the average Canadian sheep farmer,
selling that wool doesn't even pay for me to come shear the sheep.
So it's just something you have to do for the health of the sheep.
Wouldn't that be a good thing, Canadian wool? I don't know.
Yes, you could find it if you looked for it.
There are smaller producers that do have wool sheep,
and the majority of their sales would be private, directly to the buyer.
- Greg:
Greg:
we need to get it into yarn that I contextualize knitting into a swim brief.
It's really hard to have a strong opinion about responsible production
when you don't understand how things are made.
85% of textiles end up in landfills each year,
which is the equivalent of one garbage truck of clothes
being dumped in a landfill every second.
Fast fashion companies and influencer culture
are constantly trying to make us buy new things,
but if you do need to consume things,
honestly, second-hand shopping is incredible,
and you kinda carve out a little style for yourself.
We both have our antennas finished.
I am keen to try my Yagi first.
Our cabin's right there, but we need line of sight
to the farm for both of these to work,
so that's why we brought them up here.
Greg:
a type of electromagnetic radiation.
And hopefully we'll capture those waves
and they'll induce an electric current in our copper antennas,
which is hardwired to the computer.
Let's see, as I slowly lift it up towards the farm.
Go on the internet. See if it works.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
- I'm loading a video. - Okay, wow.
Greg: Oh, my gosh.
- Mitch: Okay, full HD video. - Greg: Oh, wow.
- It works! Wow. - We have full internet
from hundreds of meters away right now.
- Oh, that's crazy! - That's really cool.
It's literally a laser beam to the wifi signal!
I mean, It's not literally a laser beam.
It is an antenna.
Because I don't want to be out here holding this all the time,
I'm gonna attach this to a tree, find the perfect angle,
- and then we can leave it. - Okay, okay, now we do mine. Now we do mine.
- All right. - Greg:
my parabolic dish has a huge surface area
to catch the radio waves,
so it's a bit more forgiving when it comes to the placement.
Three, two, one.
Okay, it's starting. Give me a sec. We need five seconds.
Okay, YouTube's loading.
Oh, my God.
We got video! This is so cool.
- This is crazy. - Okay, we literally have streaming video.
We have two sources of internet now.
We can just run these wires into our cabin,
and we can actually use it inside now.
We just have to make sure that the farm
continues to pay their internet bill.
- We stealing. - True.
Are yeast sample are growing.
Now it's time to get an expert opinion.
Your wort looks great.
It's got sediment in the bottom, which looks like yeast.
There's nothing scary floating on the top.
I think you'd be good to go there.
Woohoo!
Let's talk about our Petri dishes.
Well, I don't know whose toe you swabbed,
but someone needs to wash their feet.
Your best tool is your nose.
The sorts of bacteria that you don't want are very obvious.
If it smells bad or it's turned a funny color,
that's a sign you don't want to use it.
Of all the things you caught on your plates,
the only one I think I would wanna try
is on your plum plate.
You have a nice round brownish colored colony.
That might be yeast.
Mitch:
I'm taking the yeast culture from the plum plate
and re-streaking it onto a new agar plate
so that it can grow free from any other contaminants.
Our wild yeast wort is finally ready.
Now I'm gonna choose which one I'll actually use to make beer.
And the way we're gonna choose which wort is by my nose.
( drum roll )
And the winner is the garden path.
We know that fruit often attract yeast towards them,
so that's actually interesting
that we have might have true brewer's yeast in here.
Greg:
the site of a local wool processing mill
where it is cleaned and left out to dry for 24 hours.
The dry wool is put through the picker,
a machine that separates the wool,
opening it up to prepare it to be carded.
The carder machine straightens the wool
so it can be spun into yarn.
It's put through a spinning wheel,
which changes the shape of the wool fiber
into a braid-like form.
The surface of wool fiber
has overlapping scales of protein.
These lock the fibers together in the yarn,
which is what makes wool so strong.
Finally, the wool is wrapped into a bundle called a skein,
and voilà.
It's now yarn ready to be knit into my swim brief.
Believe it or not, this is the wool that I sheared
off of that poor sheep to make swim brief.
But of course, I need to dye it.
So I am here with Jamie and Christopher of Cabin Boy Knits,
who are gonna help me dye this au natural.
Maybe a yellow or a red
depending on what literal foliage
we can get from around here.
In the first pot,
we have leaves that were picked from a lilac tree.
And it makes a fantastic color. It is yellow.
Well, that looks like something that comes out of my nether region.
We call it urine.
We used to always dye our clothes with plants.
For example, all denim was dyed with the indigo plant.
But now 99.99% of our denim
is dyed with synthetic indigo
which made of cyanide, petroleum,
and other chemicals like formaldehyde,
benzene, and aniline.
The chemical aniline is a carcinogen
that the CDC has declared very toxic.
And the industries using this dye
release 2/3 of it into our waste water, lakes, rivers,
and the other 1/3 is absorbed into our jeans.
We're walking cyanide vessels.
And in one, we've got a container of bugs.
Bugs?
We have cochineal and lac.
Dye from cochineal bugs
is still commonly used in cosmetics and food coloring,
while dye from lac insects dates back hundreds of years
to ancient India, where it used to color wool and silk.
While not ideal for vegans,
humans have been eating insects and using them for dye
for thousands of years.
I feel like I'm a witch brewing,
and I've always loved and wanted to be a witch.
- Ooh, I love that. - That's nice.
I love that rich bloody purple.
I'm so happy to make a connection
between the dyeing of clothes and some natural alternatives.
The process of dyeing our clothes uses the equivalent
of two million Olympic-sized swimming pools of water each year,
with the fashion industry being responsible for 20% of all water pollution.
Clothing companies use these chemical dyes because they're cheaper.
They get to increase profits while the true cost
is endangering our health and destroying our planet.
You've done something to this wool.
I put it in rhubarb leaves.
Greg:
is done because rhubarb acts as a mordant,
or binding agent, that will allow the dye
to adhere to the wool and not wash off.
- So should we put this in water now? - Yeah, sure.
Gonna increase the surface area to volume ratio
by dropping it into this water,
let the fibers breathe, per say, in thine wa-wa.
Oh, I'm so excited.
This is not the quickest experiment that we've chosen.
Not only is the beginning a huge amount of work,
there's a lot more to do
when it comes to even just brewing it
once we have our yeast.
The most common species of brewer's yeast
is saccharomyces cerevisiae,
which has been also been used in wine making
and baking since ancient times, and is sometimes considered
the oldest domesticated organism.
Once the yeast is inside of the wort,
it will start to break down the sugars for its own energy,
and in the process release carbon dioxide
and ethanol, otherwise known as drinking alcohol.
After the all the sugar in the wort is consumed,
the first fermentation is done, and the yeast will either
die off or go dormant
and can be filtered out if desired.
I'm here with Cam
who's gonna teach me how to brew our beer.
Well, the first thing we're gonna do,
we're gonna try to make a big pot of sugar water
that we can feed to the yeast.
We're gonna use dry malt extract and specialty malts.
We actually could've harvested these natural ingredients on the farm,
but decided to bring them in to save time.
- Ooh, we got a good boil here. - Gently place.
The brewing process would seem kind of simple.
This is actually pretty complex.
Let's see how we're doing. A lot of aroma coming out of there.
Now we're gonna pour in the extract, gonna bring this guy up to a boil.
- Wow. - Go ahead and throw the bittering hops in.
Okay.
It just smells like beer. That's so cool.
We let the brew boil for an hour before adding more hops.
Next step is add aroma hops to the beer.
Mitch:
so that it's ready for us to add the brewer's yeast.
The thing that's really sticking out to me is the smells.
I walk by breweries all the time,
and I never really understood what that smell was,
but now I actually can see
what ingredients are bringing out those aromas,
and it's making me like brewing and beer a lot more.
Here we go, daddy!
Greg has given us full creative control to run with this thing.
Boys, do what you want with my body.
So we're gonna need to take some measurements.
Don't mind my hand. Are you runner by any chance?
I do happen to run. Thanks for asking.
Oh, well, there you go.
23 1/2 inches.
Christopher: The waist?
34 3/4.
Okay, the next one is the in-seam.
How do we do that?
8 inches.
- Is this a joke? - No.
I am sweating.
Guys, buy me a drink next time.
It was wild, it was fun.
We're all on the same team, so I felt very comfortable.
Yeah, that's all I'll say about that.
Our wort has cooled down,
and we put it into these three jugs,
which is where our final fermentation's gonna take place.
Absolutely.
Mitch:
has been converted by natural enzymes into sugar.
And up here we have our cultured yeast...
...which will feed on that sugar.
But, yeah, we're gonna dump those in, and hopefully the fermentation will get going.
The byproducts will be carbon dioxide--
that's the beer's bubbles-- and alcohol.
- So this is plum. - Go right ahead.
We don't know if it's fermented too much,
but we did see some bubbles.
And on the bottom we can see a little bit of--
Right? That's the yeast there, that physical part?
Cam: A little bit of biomass down there. Yep, definitely.
Mitch:
your nose should lead you every step of the way.
If it smells bad, the wort will make bad tasting beer.
Does it smell normal?
- Yeah, smells like wort. - Okay, great.
Each yeast sample, along with turning the sugars into alcohol,
will bring different flavors to the beer.
Like a pro. This guy's an airlock.
Essentially, it's gonna let pressure out of the bottle
but not let any air get back in.
Otherwise this would maybe, like, explode?
- Yeah. Exactly. - Onto garden.
This one was actually near some raspberries as well
We thought, yeast near fruit, likelihood higher.
- No funk, which is generally what you want. - Cool, okay.
I'm excited to smell this local yeast.
There's already so much foam.
That's the first sign of an actual fermentation.
- Ooh! Okay, final pour. - Hit it.
We have all our wort with all our three samples,
plum, garden, and local yeast.
Now we wait?
Yeah, you wanna keep them kind of cold and dark.
Just keep the UV light off of them.
Start the clock.
Come on, lilacs. Give me the yellow I need for my swim brief.
I love lilac shrubs. I kind of was, like, ignorant.
I thought, "Oh, the green leaves, that's green."
But they really do create this really nice yellow.
We're gonna add a little bit of alum to it,
and it's usually 10% of the weight of the yarn.
Greg:
binding the dye to the wool
while also giving the color added vibrancy.
Yes.
Come to my nether regions.
- Do I squeeze thine yarn? - Gently.
Gently. Just plop it in?
Yes.
Oh, my God. Good luck, hons.
Oh. Oh, wow.
Oh, it's gorgeous.
Okay. Yes.
- Good job. - Into my deep violet.
Oh, you can already see it dyeing. Oh, that's so satisfying.
So we have both of our dyes in our pots.
We're gonna let them steep and brew, some might say, for 20 minutes.
The fashion industry is incredibly wasteful.
So this whole experiment for me is honestly just so exciting,
and it's also making me realize how challenging it is
just to make one teensy little garment.
The wool has now been soaking in the dye for an hour.
I can't wait to see how it looks.
Let's take a look at the lilac--
Oh, my-- it's so nice!
I can't believe green lilac made that yellow.
That's so cool. I love it, I love it.
Ooh, look at that gorgeous deep maroon.
I love it, I love it, I love it. Okay.
Thank you so much for naturally dying my swim brief.
Holy shit. It literally smells like beer.
There is some concern, especially from me,
whether or not these drinks will be safe.
After all, we've been culturing microbes.
Like, at the end of this, if we can test not only the pH of the final brew,
but also the gravity, which is the amount of sugar that's left in it,
and if those metrics are right,
we can be very confident it will be safe
even if it means it won't necessarily have the best taste,
at least we'll have a result at the end.
All the beers tested safely,
so now we can bottle them up.
Ta-da!
All right, we have our final brewed beers.
I mean, we probably could've waited a little longer
to let these brew, but we were thirsty for some brewskis.
Yeah, you know I need the beer in my belly.
And we're gonna do a little taste test now.
So we've got our garden, our plum,
and our local yeast.
- Yeast from the garden! - You ready to start?
- Yes. - Okay. Oh, do you hear that carbonation?
- Ooh. - Okay, cheers.
- That's good beer. - Wow!
It tastes like the beers you spend, like,
$11 for at, like, a fancy bar.
Next up, we will do our plum.
Oh, the fizz!
I'm gonna say it. It tastes like a plum.
Our last beer is our local yeast.
Ooh!
That tastes completely different.
Tastes completely different.
It actually tastes lighter to me.
It tastes like a light iced tea.
On the count of three, we'll point to our favorite.
- One, two, three. - Garden!
Garden, girl.
It is one of the most delicious beers I've ever had.
I'm not even kidding. There's the most flavors in it,
and it's the least dank.
- Wow. - So garden it is.
I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy that we now can drink again.
I'm so excited to actually take this practice into my real life.
I'm honestly feeling tipsy,
but you promise me I'm not slowly dying.
I cannot promise you that.
Greg: Okay, Mitch, I'm gonna unveil
my teensy-weenie wool swim briefs.
I'm ready to see it. I'm a little nervous.
Oh!
That's actually pretty cute.
Greg:
That's very impressive.
So you sheared it, you dyed it,
you processed it, all that, and now you wear it--
Lilac and bugs! Lilac leaves and bugs.
- Oh, my gosh. - Who knew?
That's incredible, Greg.
I think we should've made two, but between you and me,
I'm kind of happy I got the one of a kind.
Ah! Stop! They really love these boots.
They're very cute. Oh, Jesus. oh, my God.
Okay, see? This is kind of challenging.
Okay, okay.
Oh, Lord. Oh, God.
( shrieks )