Successful sourdough boule, Ploughman's lunch..

Well, here's a long overdue post.. and about nothing other than food. I haven't had much stuff to say since Christmas came to town. But, I've been fighting mightily with my sourdough cultures, and have finally found success. My starter can now easily double, if not nearly triple,  in 9 hours or less. It was an uphill battle, but I finally beat it. Or, rather, came to terms with it.. I'm not sure I've completely won.

..that's a pic of what I consider to be my first sourdough loaf success. It's not perfect. Far from it. the sour is not really there, the crumb is not dense, but not open, either. It's not really tall, but neither is it a discuss like the last one either. It's perfectly edible, but I *did* forget to install the salt. I still wonder what the difference would have been had I put that in there.. I also failed to get a good slash formed on top, so it never really opened up.. but that's fairly minor compared to forgetting to put in a standard component part, I figure.

What that said, this is what I had for lunch:

That is *my* cheese, *my* beer, *my* bread and .. err.. well, Jody's sausage.  But hey, other than a little foreign sausage, that meal was not just prepared, but entirely formed/created/fermented/crafted by my hand. It was a neat though as I stuffed myself on these bits for lunch today.. And I'll say, the stars of the show were the sausage and the cheese. I haven't had this cheese in months, since it was new.. and man, what a difference a bit of age can make on a cheddar cheese. Awesome! The sausage was just plain awesome all by itself. The beer wasn't awesome, but it seemed to pair well with the spicy meat and cheese parts.. so, overall, the meal was really good. And now that I've finished my lunch, and the beer glass is empty, I may just go crack open that new bottle of Kombucha I put in the fridge last night for a taste test.. which, incidentally, I also made myself.

A real, honest to goodness black & tan?

Check this out:

Holy cow! That's the first one of those I've been able to pull off, like, ever. The flavor was right, too, getting all the Rye Stout first before slowly blending into the ESB underneath. Cool. I wil probably never do this again.. I'm not a big Black & Tan drinker.. I guess I was just bored at the time. :)

Last week, I went down to Timmay's house for the big Dopple Bock Off he was having. It was  fairly private party, with just me and him attending. :) We had a few Dopplebocks, a Thomas Hooker model from his keg, a Fort Collins variety, and the AndyGator, which, as it turned out, was actually a hybrid Dopple MaiBock.. so, it was pale, not dark. Still, we held no grudge and drank it anyway.  The T.H. beer was the clear winner.. far and above, in my book. I enjoyed the Fort Collins, but it didn't have the huge plum and wicked big caramel flavor the T.H. bock did, and that's what I really enjoyed about it. The AndyGator was good as well, but you can't really compare these other two beers to this one.. just radically different styles.

I'm glad Thomas Hooker's beer won this comparo, as it's good to have a local brewery really shine.. it's good to have a great local brewery. I root for T.H. to continue to rock on..

Here's a pic of the AndyGator and Fort Collins labels..

Here's me and the Timmay enjoying the MaiBock and some cheese, and..

Speaking of cheese, here's a bit of the cheeses we had:

That's my Jalapeno cheddar there in the back left, some kind of spreadable soft blue cheese on the left front, and a smoked Gouda there in the front on the right. The Cheddar was sorta mild.. needs more time in the wax to really develop more. The smoked Gouda was nice.. the Blue wasn't bad, but  I like my Blue's firmer and a little tangier and funkier. This was a good entry Blue, though.. hit up the Timmay for further details on who makes that and where to get it.

In chicken news, today I got another three eggs from the girls. That's the second day in a row for three eggs..  think the other Red just started laying. The second Barred Rock still looks really small and pale, and there's another Red straggler, of course.. but hey, three a day is good for me. Show's they're healthy and in good spirits.

The final result on the Monterry..

So, I cracked open the Monterrey Jack last night, with the assistance of Don. We actually split it in half, then split one of those pieces in half again.. the remaining 3/4's was re-waxed and put back in the fridge for sampling with a bit more ageing on it. In any case, here's a couple pics:

As you can see here (below), the one quarter that we dug into is a sizable chunk. It's about 0.5 lbs worth right there, and there's still quite a bit left of this first 1/4 for anyone interested in coming up for a try.

 

Some little scrub that came into the kitchen when she heard there was cheese around.. and I quote "Daddy's cheese is good!"

 

Here's another scrub that was in the kitchen, too.. Don! Look at him pimping that SinCity pint glass, too! 

 

And here's a final view of the project after the slicing, dicing and re-waxing of the other pieces. Those are back in the fridge as I type.. and we'll try them out in another few weeks. Like I said, gimme a shout if you wanna try it.

 

The end result of all this being, good cheese! For a mildly aged Jack, it's got a nice creamy flavor, and a slight tang from the acidity to it. It's VERY edible.. I'm quite happy with the way it came out. I'm really excited now to try the Jalapeno cheese now, since I know I did that one better than this first one.

In other news, Don also showed up with hands full.. of beer! That funky Blonde beer I reviewed a while back with the apparent Brett infection? Got a few more of those in the fridge now.. we'll see how they've fared with a bit more time on them. Looking forward to that this afternoon, tell you what.

Bandaged the Derby..

Just finished bandaging the Derby cheese, like I mentioned in the last post. It was a bit more involved and grosser than I had imagined.. sorta messy. But, it went well, and that wheel is resting easy in the beer frige along with the other two wheels. Here's a rather unexciting shot of it, all wrapped up and covered in grease, although you can't actually see the grease..

I'll have to wait a month and a half or two to open this one up, as it's raw milk.. supposed to age for two months to sell 'em legally and they think that's the required time for the acids in the cheese to nuke the harmful bacteria inside, were there any actually in there. I could open it up earlier of course, cause, well, it's *mine*.. but flavor development would be hurt, I assume. We'll see.

Fortunately, the time required to age my first cheese has passed, and this weekend may mark the opening of the first 2 lb wheel of Monterrey Jack tat I made seemingly years ago. She's gonna be sliced and quartered, with the sections not being eaten resealed up and put back to do some aging tests on. The Jalapeno can be cracked open next week, too.. good times ahead!

Still no eggs from the chickens.. it'll be 20 weeks this Thursday.. two days from now. Two seem to be ready to lay any second now, they're very big and the combs and wattles on them are fully developed and bright red. But, alas.. no breakfast yet. :) We're thinking of making a temporary wire pen enclosure around the garden to have the chicks eat the last of the vegetable stuff gone to waste, and to till and fertilize the area as well. We'll see about that in a bit..

This beer:

..as you can see by my thumbs up, was *awesome*. Sour, highly recommended. Bring a friend to help. Thanks Timmay and Abby!

That's all for now, kids.. tune in next time. And keep clicking my Google Ad! Ya jerks..

GABF..

Great American Beer Fest.. ah, yes. Just a couple more days to go and we're there.. craft beer Valhalla!

Just put the nest box in the chicken coop yesterday. Noticed the girls were digging weird dugouts in the bedding the past couple days, so I put the box I made in there for them, just in case. I also am hopeful the chicks will survive the few days I'll be gone.. the wife doesn't seem really interested in their care taking during that time, it seems. A beer a day to whoever wants the feeding and watering job for Thurs-Sun this week! Payment at the door on completion of the job.

The IPA I made with Frank seems to have run it's course.. I'll probably dry hop it when I return from my trip.. or just before my trip, and keg it on return. Really cleared up in the fermenter.. looks nice.

Also, I flipped the cheeses in the fridge, too. Looks like the end of the month and I can open up the Jack cheese, and the Jalapeno can be pried open another week after that. I guess when I return from the trip, we might look into that. Pics and discussion to follow, of course. Still plotting my first raw milk cheese. Probably gonna be a peppercorn variety, I think.

Rustling Wind Creamery tour...

..it took all of about 12 minutes, but me and Sa went on a motorcycle ride over to Falls Village and hit up Rustling Wind Creamery for the tour and a block of cheese. We ended up talking for a while with the woman who owns and runs the place, who also happens to be the head cheese maker. It's kind of a one woman show, I think. Here's what we found in the fridge that followed us home:

I just cut off a very small piece to try while watching Gary Vey-ner-chuck on Wine Library TV's artisan cheese segment. Consider me blown away. I've never had raw cows milk cheese before, but this is the duke! This cheese so TOTALLY captures the real, well.. for lack of a better word, rawness of the milk this animal made. It's *so* pungent, and huge in taste. It takes but a 1/2 centimeter square cube to really get a big punch in the face flavor that lasts well over 5 minutes. This is really an eye opener for someone just stepping foot in the cheese making area. Very exciting!

In somewhat related news, I just found a place yesterday (a dairy, of course..) that sells raw cows milk, Holsteins in fact, to the public in a timely fashion and at a decent price. And weirdly, it's open 24hrs a day.. cause it's 'honor system' style stuff, I can swing by after my evening shift of work and bring a couple gallons home for cheese making on the weekend.. sweet! The pieces are falling into place, I can see it now.

In brewing news, I just scored a fitting from McMaster Carr last night that's gonna enable me to yet again fine tune the brewery to bring it to the next level. This is evolutionary, but it's going to really make for an ease of use model that will be hard to top. Brew partners, stand by.. you're gonna love this thing!

Don's *other* beer... and some cheddar.

So.. here's Don's other beer, which also happens to be one of my old beers as well.. the Chocolate Rambler! Here's a couple action photos I took seconds after I opened a bomber that Don handed over for review the other day...

Here's the area where I opened it..

As you can see, there was a bit of a mess as the very-excited-to-see-me beer gushed forth and tried to jump in my lap.

Here's another shot of the trail-of-destruction as we ran to the sink:

 

..and shortly after that trip, we ended up here:

 

..in the sink. The entire bottle pretty much blew out of the container and I was only able to catch what you see there in the 22oz Bodum glass, which.. well.. isn't even quite half full. 

So.. what'd I think? Well, it was a gusher! No suprise there.. the real suprise was this: It tasted fine!

I taste massive chocolate flavor here.  I *see* the gusher and just *know* it should be infected.. I mean, what else would cause such uncouth behavior? But I get no Brett flavor. No weird sourness. Nothing. Just a really nice, mellow chocolate taste, and low carbonation.. I think the majority of it (the carbonation, not just the beer itself.. ) went down the sink when it exploded. The chocolate is probably more pronounced than my old brew, I would guess because the majority of the carbonation isn't there to layer the beer any more, and the chocolate really gets to storm to the front. Aroma is nondescript.. hard to place. Flavor is so prominent, though. Weird! Quite a good brew... just wish it didn't blow out like that so I could have consumed some more..

In other news, I waxed the Jalapeno cheddar yesterday. This one went much smoother than the last. A few tricks I learned and things were sweet. I put the wheel in the fridge for a couple hours prior to waxing cause it' supposed to make the wax adhere quicker. Which, I think it did. Worked like a charm. I used tinfoil for a protective layer around the stove and counter top and since that stuff won't catch fire like the paper towel I used last time, I was able to put that right up to the edge of the pot on the stove without fear of disaster. Here's a finished shot of the thing:

The label is a little funky with wax, but otherwise, it's good. I'll be able to tune back in to this in two months minimum, it says. One month, twenty nine days to go..

That's all. Now go click my Google Ad, you skinflint!

And there it is.. Cheddar!

Just a quick post today with an update and pic from the Jalapeno cheddar. Just out of the press and onto the drying rack, there she is:

What a masterpiece! Well, we'll see.. in a few months. See, the downside of cheese.. ah, you get my point.

Click my Google ads, you skinflints!

The big Jalapeno Cheddar post..

Stand back and prepare yourself.. a pictorial view of the Jalapeno Cheddar that I pieced together yesterday afternoon and well into the evening.

Jalapenos there on the left side, just behind the pot of milk.. followed by mad scientist gear, milling of curds, packing of the mold and repacking of the mold over and over. A press of 15lbs, then 30lbs, then 45 and finally 50lbs (the photo with the bottle on the top..) and that's where she sits until 24 hours has passed, which will be when I get home tonight at midnight. More pics to follow..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll finish this up with some pics of the air drying time and the final waxing in a few days. This is the new, little press BTW.. seems to have worked well, but the same amount of time is used in making one lb or two.. so I'm not sure I'm going to do all of this again for just one lb of cheese unless it's hard to obtain or very expensive milk. But, I've got the gear and I know it works now.. project is definitely a fun time! Cheese is great fun and the product is, hopefully, as good as the process was to follow..

Cheese flipping and a beer review.. sorta.

 So I got my hands on this beer sort of by default, because Jeremiah (hi!) failed to kindly refused to take it home, and insisted I keep it. Havlicek Pils, it was named... and it wasn't too bad. A lot sweeter in flavor than most Pilsner's I've had in the past, it also wasn't as carbonated, giving it a really full, soft flavor. A different approach to Pils style than I'm used to. It had only a taste of that "corn" that you usually get from these, but not the mean corn from the macro beer types. I think, although I'm not sure, it may have had just a hint of skunk to this, but it wasn't objectionable. If that makes any sense. :) No real hops here, probably a bit on the old side for that to remain.. but not bad.

And then there's this picture of my cheese. You'll remember this beauty from last week when we stuffed 'er in the beer fridge, but I failed to get a picture of this wheel in her new home. So, here it is, the cheese wheel resting place. Check it!

It just kind of sits there on that block of wood and I'll be flipping it once a week until I decide to cut it open and dive in. It's till hangin' at 48 degrees in there and the humidity, which I suppose I should measure, you'd think would be relatively high, surrounded by all those kegs of liquid and nothing to absorb and of the humidity that is produced/trapped in there. 

And this:

 

..is a picture of a small sample of beer that I made with the cultured remains from the bottle of Allagash White. It fed off the tiny bit of wort from the smoked beer I did with Jody a while back... and has a huge acidic bite, followed by a tangy green apple flavor (high, uncontrolled fermentation temps), and then a hit of smoke flavor in the finish. Wacky! But, it can be done with this yeast.. perhaps in the future some time.

That's it!

Tiny cheese press..

Just a quick blurb to document the build on my new, tiny cheese press. This one is for making small, 1 pound wheels. It's a 4.5" inside diameter unit, as compared to my 6" diameter piece I used for the first wheel. Check it:

 

There's another follower (wooden thingy on the right side, in this pic..) that goes with this too.. that's gonna be used to stabilize the "piston" inside the PVC pipe press to keep the cheese from getting lopsided. I hope to test this beauty out this weekend by making a block of Jalapeno Cheddar.. we'll see how that works out.  I'll get a better pic of the complete piston unit when I get it totally built.

That's it!

Cheese waxing party..

OK, so it was a solo party, but... still, the job is done. Man, is it messy! Here's my dedicated cheese wax pot on the left and my (thankfully) paper towel covered kitchen counter and cutting board. This could have been ugly!















And here is half the wheel of cheese waxed on the bottom and side in this pic, on the first coat of wax..















And here's a shot of the finished item. I wasn't sure how the pros tagged and kept their stuff organized, so I waxed the whole wheel, twice, and then made this card up and waxed the edges of it into the wax on the cheese, hopefully, making it somewhat stuck there so I don't get stuff mixed up should I get more than one wheel in the fridge at a time.

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This wheel is now resting comfortably in my spare fridge downstairs (the keg fridge..), which is about two degrees colder than optimal.. and I'm not sure what the humidity level is in there, but it's better than hanging out on the counter top unregulated, I guess. The surface of this thing is not smooth.. very irregular, like a bad paint job (the wax, I mean..) I wonder how you get this job done to make it look nice.. I'll have to look into that aspect before next time..

First cheese making experiment..

Wish I had more pics of this, but the Boss had the camera on the day I whipped this one off.. so the only pic I have is the finished, new cheese, right out of the cheese press mold. I started out to make a Monterrey Jack style cheese, with two gallons of milk (Pasturised, non Homeginized Organic style stuff). Not the raw cow or goat milk I aspire to, but I'm just starting out, right? Well, I followed the recipes in my Ricki Carrol Home Cheese making book step by step and used the stuff I got from Thecheesemaker.com to build it up and I'll be darned, the whole thing worked out just fine! Only 'problem' I had was the pressing part, where my one wobbly follower design make a 1/4" taller cheese on one side than the other. It's hardly noticable, unless you measure it or really stare at it awhile while spinning it, but it bothers me. I already have a solution in mind and I'll be doing that build up and documenting it soon enough on here.. stand by! Anyway, here she is, in all her fresh cheesey glory!

 

Simply awesome!

The book didn't say, but I notice a few airgaps along the edge of this wheel and wonder if I was supposed to break up the curds into smaller pieces before I packed 'em in the press. I might look into that a bit more before I do the next one. I still have to flip this wheel a couple times a day till it's dry, then wax it with the cheese wax I have to go pick up today.. then the aging part comes in. I hope to do another one next week so I  can get a stash of cheeses going here. I'll say, a two lb wheel of cheese is a mighty big chunk to look at.. It's 6" across and like, 2" on one side of the wheel and 2-1/4" on the opposite (told you it was lopsided.. I just measured it!). It's definately substantial! Unfortunately, it's got an even longer wait til than beer does.. whereas I can have a beer from brew day to pint glass in 20 days +/-, this cheese is a *minimum* of 30 days.. and they reccomend up to 120 days if you can handle that. That's why I need to make another really quick, so I can see the difference between an aged and a younger one, side by side.. see what I like better.

While whittling it down to a nice shape, I tasted the bits I shaved off the outside of the wheel.. it's a bit tangy in taste, like yogurt, but not terribly complex at this stage. The whole aging part is where the magic happens and why old, properly aged cheese bring in the big money. We'll see what the basement in Barkhamsted can do for that..

In other news, I'm back to messing around with my old standard roasting machinery, the heat gun. Having some quality control issues with the flavors of my latest batches coming out sort of baked and lifeless from the Behmor.. stand by for some clarification on that when I get some more roasts done. 

That's all for now.. go click my Google money link! I need the cash! ;)

The great Cheese Press build..

And so it begins..

 

 Me and Pete W. started fabricating the fantastic cheese press I'll be using shortly.. What you see here is just a standard 6" diameter piece of PVC pipe and a wooden 'follower' for the press, cut out with my 6" hole saw from a block of White Oak. More stuff to get assembled to this, eventually, but this is the raw basics. Pete got an identical copy too, which he heroically cut out, free hand, with a table saw (the cut on the PVC pipe, not the follower..). This was truly insanity, as I thought at any moment we'd be making a trip to the hospital for a lost arm or broken nose when this thing kicked back from the saw. 

Fortunately, everything turned out OK, and this is the beginning. Still waiting for the stuff I ordered in the mail to arrive, and I've gotta make a trip out to Hartford for a block of cheese wax I forgot to order from the mail order place... but I've been studying a few videos and websites lately and it doesn't look too hard after all. The aging part will be somewhat weird, as I need high humidity and low temps.. (80% humidity and 55-ish degrees for temps..) and I don't have a spare fridge in which to make this happen. We'll figure that out later...