They did have some cool toys there at Captain Lawrence.. their bottling line machine was especially nice, for instance. Here's Commandos Jody, Timmay and Geoff, all greedily eyeball it.
They also had a thing I've never seen in any other brewery before, which is a whirlpool tank. I've heard of combo boil kettles/whirlpools, but this was the first stand-alone whirlpool I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of this thing, but then again, it's just a big steel tank. Not much to look at, but still, neat stuff.
This is me, hugging a two year old batch of an as yet unreleased Sour Gold beer these guys have been storing in this huge barrel. I am so jealous.
We also went to this tiny little brewpub in Peekskill, called the Peekskill Brewpub. Shocking, eh? Funny place. It had Westchester, NY pricing on the food and beer, but the beers were all solid, and they had an impressive lineup of guest beers too. I have one of theirs, the Peekskill Steam Beer (I forget the actual name of what they called it) but that's what it was, and I had a Green Flash Double Chocolate stout, too. Also delicious.
In other news, yesterday, my dad forked over a 5 inch long, 1 inch diameter chunk of horseradish he got from a friend of his from somewhere. I should have taken a picture of it, but I failed. It's kinda ugly. I was too excited to get working on it that I forgot to snap a pic. In any case, I went right in and peeled the outside layer off with the vegetable peeler, and then chopped it up with a knife into little finger sized pieces, which I then threw into the handi-chopper. From there, it was but a 20 second blast in the chopper until I pulled the lid off to find finely grated up pieces of horseradish. Nice! A little snip here from the Wiki to clarify this next point:
"The intact horseradish root has hardly any aroma. When cut or grated, however, enzymes from the damaged plant cells break down sinigrin (a glucosinolate) to produce allyl isothiocyanate (mustard oil), which irritates the sinuses and eyes. Once grated, if not used immediately or mixed in vinegar, the root darkens and loses its pungency and becomes unpleasantly bitter when exposed to air and heat."
With that, I knew I had to wait a few seconds before I doused it with vinegar to counteract the nuclear process of the horseradish heating up from exposure.. so, I took this moment of relaxation time to lean in and give the mixture a little sniff.
That was a mistake.
The resulting agony was almost indescribable, and I would not recommend doing that. Ever. Coming from a person who loves horseradish, drinks hot sause, and laughs at spicy foods, I assure you, this was a rather painful experience. When I recovered and could see fairly well a bit later, I tossed some vinegar into this mix to bring the evil to a stop, and added a pinch of salt as well. A taste of it revealed a really nice overall flavor and level of heat. I can't believe how easy that was! First try, perfection. This is what I ended up with:
It gave me a half of an 8oz jar of the stuff I had literally just ran out of the day before that I got at the store. So, I just refilled the jar and I'm back in business for a couple weeks. I'm really looking forward to my fall harvest of my plant, now.
Speaking of my plant, I went out there last night around 2230 hours and checked for slugs. I've heard of this hand picking technique before, but never tried it.. didn't think it was gonna be all that productive, really.. and I have thus far failed to put out the tray of beer like I did last year that *did* work pretty good. I actually ended up catching and banishing *12* slugs to the Jar Of Death. I was quite happy with my death toll, and slept well last night knowing there's be that much more leaf material still on my plants in the morning. I will probably hunt again tonight, it gave so much satisfaction. ;-)
Also in the Hot Stuff news reel.. I did a fun thing with some Jalapeno's I picked the other day. I took like, 5 good, big green ones, and sliced them up into rings, like you'd get int he store. I threw 'em into a tupperware bucket and covered 'em with vinegar and left 'em in the fridge for a couple days. The venegar sucked the heat out of the seeds and infused everything in there with heat.. and now the rings themselves are damned hot. Delicious, and damned hot.
..that's them, right there. I just ate one, in fact, cause they smell so good.. and now I'm on fire. So, for dinner tonight, I'll have a turkey sandwich with some homemade horseradish on one side and some of these pepper rings on the other. And maybe I'll live to tell the tale..
Carry on..
No comments:
Post a Comment