Yo.
Some good news! The chickens are still laying very well. I've heard through various sources that this isn't unusual after all for first year chickens.. things might change next winter, including molt and requiring that supplemental light source after all. But in the meantime, this is still going on:
There were two more yesterday when that was taken, as well.. but just beautiful eggs they are. I've been eating them fried lately, and just amazed at the texture of the whites now.. really fantastic stuff.
I bought a few lbs of whole wheat berries at this organic food place in Litchfield a couple days ago. This is what I got:
I plan to grind them in my Corona mill and incorporate them into a bread recipe.. I wanna get some whole wheat in there for some texture, flavor, nutrients.. but I'm not sure if my mill is gonna be suitable for doing ore than 5-10% of wheat.. It doesn't really grind a nice flour, cause it's kind of a rude mill, but a few percent of wheat in the mix mix make things sorta interesting. I'll give it a whirl and report back.
In beer news, I racked the very slow fermenting Red beer I did with Timmay into a keg. I had a small sample of it in a glass just before I capped it up, warm and flat, and it had a really curious, interesting flavor. I have good feelings about this one coming out quite well. While I was down there, I whipped out a thief and took a quick snag of a few oz's of the Hanssens "All-Purpose" sour ale (now fortified with Kombucha bacteria!) and put that into a glass. I'm thinking the Hanssens should be renamed, cause that bottle of dregs did *nothing* for over a month. It wasn't until I put the kombucha culture in there did anything happen, and boy, did it happen. Dig this ugliness:
The pic is poor, cause there's so much condensation inside the neck of the carboy, but you can see the amount of pellicle *ugly* going on in there. It's only been two months.. but I got nervous and wanted to see if I was growing a disaster or something promising. End result, from my small tasting got me some notes on the project as it is right now.. this is what I wrote:
C: cloudy gold color
A: slight smoke? Brett smell.. Funky up the wazoo.. old fruits or some sort, apples turing sour...
F: Bret! No sour. F'ing Awesome brett, in fact. WTF? Wheaty.. funkyness. complex flavor, hard to pin down. awesome. Let's let it go a bit...
So. If you can picture *that* in a beer.. ;) I was very surprised at the *lack* of acetic or any sour notes in here at all. The kombucha is nothing if not sour. I mean, very vinegar sour. This beer is not. It's meaty, complex, Brett tasty good. If I kegged this right now, you'd love it if you like Brett beers. That wasn't what I was going for, however, so I'm going to let it ride for another month and re evaluate the situation. but, man.. is that thing ugly.
