Sparge (It Just Means Rinse)

What brewing beer taught me about neurodivergent wellbeing

I may have mentioned, once or twice, that beer is one of my special interests (specifically imperial pastry stout) and I’m lucky enough to have some lovely friends who run an excellent microbrewery (Tom's Tap and Brewhouse) where I’m occasionally allowed to play with the brew kit.

My favourite part of the brewing process is always the sparge, and not just because it is an excellent vocal stim, but because it’s all about balance. As any one who is familiar with my Neurodivergent Wellbeing model will know, balance is what I’m always aiming for.

We are the grain, it includes, not only our specific flavour of neurodivergence, but all parts of our own intersectional identities, the external contexts in which we live. Often these are things we do not get to choose and is heavily influenced by things like access to resources, whether aspects of our identities are privileged in our society and societal norms and expectations.

The bigger and more well resourced my brewery is, the more access I will have to different types of grain. I can still only use what is available to me, I might never have the grain to brew some styles, while being able to reliably put out others. There will be some styles that I can only brew on special occasions or as a collab, due to supply issues, or cost.

The water is all the things that move us up towards balance, or pull us down towards burnout. the amount of control we have over the water chemistry is often impacted by the different types of resources we have access to. If I have the time, the right knowledge and the equipment, I can analyse the water where I am and add in what I need to change it. If I have the financial resources, I can pay someone to do this for me, or I might have people around me who will support me to do it. And for some people they might already be where the existing water chemistry matches their needs (or have the resource to be able to move there).

So once we’ve mashed in our grain and water (our internal and external context that have brought us to where we are) it’s time to rest the mash. This is where many of my clients find me, they’ve spent most of their lives just pushing through believing that they just need to ‘try harder’ to get on. They’ve fallen into the blame/shame fuelled downward spiral and they often have very little momentum on the upward spiral, and aren’t sure what balance is going to look like.

They may want to go straight into making big changes, but often they need to start with rest.

This can feel really uncomfortable because, when the mash rests, it may look like nothing is happening. (Usually this is when I’m drinking coffee and if I’m lucky having a Sean Ayling breakfast.) However, we know this is when the magic starts happening and, if the conditions are right, the raw ingredients start producing something new as all those lovely sugars start getting released.

I always talk about the importance of meeting ourselves where we are. While we might feel frustration, or grief for where we have ended up, these feelings often get in the way. It is important to make space to acknowledge and process these feelings, but if we get lost in them, they can feed into the blame and shame of the downward spirals. It is important that alongside them we make space for the curiosity, kindness and compassion that fuels the upward spiral.

This is when we need to sparge.

The first time I brewed, I was mesmerised, watching the sparge arm spin round, creating spiral patterns in the top of the grain, noticing how the smallest adjustments to the inflow or outflow changed the speed of the spin, or the depth of the spirals. I loved the attention to the small details, trying to get the consistency of the mash ‘just right’ by making tiny changes.

Our job is to adjust the inflow and outflow so we can get the best wort possible out of the mash, but we need to remember that there is only so much we can do with the raw ingredients. The quality of our mash will impact where we start, if the consistency isn’t right, then we start very slowly, distributing the water evenly so that it can extract the complex sugars evenly. If we go in too heavy, or we don’t get the temperature right we can end up with a stuck mash. We have to meet the mash where it is, with the same curiosity, kindness and compassion as we meet ourselves.

It is often the slowing down that helps us get to where we want to go the most quickly. Unfortunately this can feel incredibly counter-intuitive, and can take time for us to learn to trust. It is about taking the time to learn what works for you (with your grain stores, water chemistry and brew kit) and how to get the most out of it rather than comparing yourself to someone with a very different kit, knowledge and resources.

Balance looks different to all of us, but once we find it, once we’ve learnt to adjust what is in our control, maybe leave out the things that don’t work for us, we start to build something sustainable. Hopefully, we have started collecting lots of useful data, which we can use to help us navigate new challenges, just like we can look back on old brew sheets and remember what worked before.

We don’t just do this once, the two spirals are in a dynamic relationship moving us up and down all the time, but just like the sparge, sometimes it is the smallest adjustment that brings us back into balance.