Where has the time gone?

I've been very remiss in posting about our kitchen adventures the last year.  Time to fix that.

The last year has seen us taking up pickling --- pickled beets, pickled eggs, spicy pickled cucumber --- so easy, not sure why it took us so long to play around with that.

We also cured our own bacon, next time we'll be smoking it on the Big Green Egg to finish it off.  Lots of smoked meat since we got the BGE including some killer beef brisket.

I finally found the elusive fresh Yuzu I've been looking for and turned that into Yuzu Ice Cream, Yuzu Sugar, Yuzo Olive Oil, Yuzu Salt, and a freezer supply of Yuzu Zest.

And then there were the cocktails.  Thanks to the masterful teaching of Andrew Willett, I have learned an incredible amount about Pre-Prohibition cocktail making and the history of the bartending craft (and why the art went horribly off the rails thanks to prohibition).  Lee and I are amassing quite the bar collection and making everything from classics (Old Fashioned Rye Cocktail, Martini Cocktail, Manhattan, Whiskey Sour) to classed up versions of modern drinks like the Long Island Iced Tea and the Mojito.  And I believe a bottle of real Orjeat Syrup is about to make its way over to the US for some Mai Tais (the real thing is made with the elusive bitter almond which is illegal to be sold in much of the world and makes it hard to fabricate the real liquor).

Pie making, beer making, montreal bagels, cheese.....all the usuals too.  It's been a busy year.  And this is just our spare time hobbies ! ;)

The last week or so

March 14, 2012

Been remiss in updates the last week with work getting in the way of hobbies.  That said, we have had fun playing with dough and making soft pretzels (big hit in the house, they didn't last long) and Montreal Bagels. 

We also took our first crack at a Belgian yeast Imperial Stout, inspired by this beauty:

Lee's going for flavors of banana and chocolate with our brew.

Today, we have a light work day and hence a few fun projects planned:

- batch 2 of Montreal bagels
- batch 2 of feta cheese
- homemade meatballs (our son just saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and wants to know how to make them), homemade tomato sauce, and homemade mozzerella -- all of which our son will help us make including picking basil from the garden.

ChIPA v2

Our first batch of limited run ChIPA (we split a batch of dark IPA and did about 15 bottles of this as a test run) was a big success so we decided to have another go at it.  This time as a full batch and with an all grain Cascadian dark IPA brew.

After fermentation, just prior to bottling, we did a masala chai steep as follows:

Approx 5 cups of boiling water
3 sticks of cinammon
tsp ground cinammon
24 cardamon pods (crushed with a chef knife)
24 cloves (soft heads crushed with your finger nail)
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

We let that steep for about 30 minutes, stirring periodically, and then added this (alongside the priming sugar) before bottling.

Time will tell how successful we were...........

The last week or so

Quick update on the last week:

- 3rd batch of farmhouse cheddar made, waxed, and presently aging.  Had great luck on getting a clean break in the curd this time.  Used Horizon Whole Milk (pasteurized, homogenized, gallon) and also used calcium chloride for the first time to restore some of what gets damaged in the pasteurization process.

- Had our son's friends over and taught them how to make hummos, tzaziki, and homemade pita bread. 

- Soaked the single origin cacao nibs I found in some vodka to kill any nasty bugs and start pulling the chocolate flavor out of them, and threw the whole lot into the 5 gallons of Russian imperial stout we have fermenting

- Found some other cacao nibs, soaked those in vodka, and added to my micro batch of high ABV RIS - was at 10% when I added them, the last batch hit 12% but I reduced the grain bill so that it wouldn't end up as sweet. Will probably bottle in a week or so.

- Our 3rd attempt at mead seems to have finished fermenting, which is strange since the first 2 attempts are still gong strong.

- Split the ginger beer plant a few days ago and instead of making a batch of ginger beer out of it we've kept the concentrate to use in some Asian dishes we're making soon.

- Bulked up the garden a bit - as well as the herbs we had growing we now have a bunch of tomato plants, some squash, strawberries and some new herbs. Fingers crossed. We've never had much luck with fruit and veg.

- Successful experiments with broiling instead of baking our pizzas.  Found this tip in Bon Appetite this month and it works really nicely.  Heat your pizza stone in the middle (instead of the bottom) of the oven for upwards of an hour at the highest temperature you can get your oven.  Then when you are ready to cook your pizza, turn off the oven and turn the broiler on instead.  The pizza will cook pretty quickly --- half the time from baking at a high temp. from our experience so far.  It gets a beautiful char and crisp crust.

Cutting into the farmhouse cheddar

Batch 2 of the farmhouse cheddar was cut open today while entertaining some friends. We got it right this time ---- very tasty, decent amount of depth for a cheese that is only supposed to age for a month. Quite moist---apparently farmhouse cheddar 'can' be quite dry, so this was a very happy surprise.

Higher alcohol ginger beer

A few weeks ago I decided to try and get a higher alcohol ginger beer out of the ginger beer plant we have here. Managed to get it to just under 3%, which left a nice amount of residual sweetness - probably would have gone higher but I'm getting a bit bored of seeing it sitting there. Bottled it this morning, decided to leave it pretty flat and use it as a mixer. yumyum.

Far too much stuff fermenting in this house

Last week we bottled the first attempt at the 666 imperial stout - ended up at at just under 12%, decided to roll the dice and bottle it before it finished fermenting, so we'll see if I get some real carbonation (vs the alcohol level killing off the yeast), or exploding bottles.

The bottles are hidden inside a heavy plastic container just incase.

The 5 gallons of 8% or so RIA have finished fermenting, and I've picked up some great single origin cacao nibs to throw in a few days before we bottle. Going to look into whether I can throw nibs inside the bottle, or if they make the beer too bitter over time.

We brewed a cascadian dark earlier in the week - last year we did a test run with an extract brew cascadian dark and bottled 2 gallons of it with a chai mix, our "chai-p-a", so now it's time to do an all grain and step up all the chai additions to do a full 5 gallons.

Finally we did a second version of our 666 imperial stout, upping the chocolate and caramel flavors. I also lowered the OG to try and dry it out more (first version ended at a very sweet 1.040):


666 imperial stout #2

to make 2 gallons:

4.5lb 2 row pale malt
1.5.5lb roasted barley
0.5lb special B
0.5lb German chocolate malt
0.5lb crystal 80L

sparge at 152 for 60 mins

1.5oz challenger 60 mins
0.75oz goldings 30 mins

using US05