The bagel recipe post..

Here's a new pic, just taken, of one of the R.I. Reds new tail feathers. I see the downy feathers constantly shedding (they grown up so fast! ), but you don't really see the new ones come in most of the time, cause they just kind of pop in behind the ones that are already there. These tail feathers just sort of sprouted up overnight, so they were easy to see. You might have to squint to see 'em, but they're there. Check it!



















So here's my current iteration of the best bagel recipe in the world. It's good stuff.

Mike's Super-Fantastic Mega-Bagels

Ingredients

* 2 cups warm water (472 grams), about 110 degrees F
* 2 packets active dry yeast (or 14 grams total)
* 3 tablespoons granulated sugar (42 grams), plus 1 tablespoon(14 grams)
* 5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour (~130 grams per cup = 650-780 grams total)
* 2 teaspoons salt (12 grams)
* 2 teaspoons vegetable oil (just wing it, here..)

Optional, yet mandatory, Toppings:

* 1/2 cup lightly toasted chopped onions (2 teaspoons each)
* 2 tablespoons poppy seeds (about 1/2 teaspoon each)
* 2 tablespoons sesame seeds (about 1/2 teaspoon each)
* 1 tablespoon kosher salt (about 1/4 teaspoon each)

Directions:

Combine the water, yeast, and 3 tablespoons (42 grams) of the sugar in the bowl of an upright mixer fitted with a dough hook. Stir and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Gradually add 4 cups (520 grams) of the flour and the salt, and mix until the mixture comes together.

Add 1 to 1 1/2 cups )130 to 195 grams) additional flour 1/2 cup at a time to make a stiff dough, either stirring with the wooden spoon or working with your hands. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and no longer sticky, about 5 minutes, adding just as much flour as needed. (Dough should be heavier and stiffer than regular yeast bread dough.)

Grease a large bowl with 1 teaspoon of the oil. Place the dough in the bowl, turning to coat. Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free spot until almost doubled, about 1 hour.

Remove from the bowl and punch down the dough. Divide into 8 equal pieces, about 4 to 5 ounces each, measuring about 4 inches across. Roll each piece into a 4 to 6-inch log. Join the ends and place fingers through the hole and roll the ends together. Repeat with the remaining dough. Place on a lightly greased surface, cover with a clean cloth, and let rest until risen but not doubled in a draft-free spot, 20 to 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Grease a baking sheet with the remaining teaspoon of oil.

In a large, heavy pot, bring 12 cups of water and the remaining tablespoon of sugar to a boil. A couple at a time, add the bagels to the water and boil, turning, for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Flip bagels onto the prepared sheet pan. Add whatever toppings you have there at this time. The stuff should stick to the bagels now, cause they're sorta sticky from being boiled. Then, bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until they look fantastic.

Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.

And what you've all been waiting for...

..it's chickens! They finally arrived! It's Sunday morning now while I'm typing this, but I picked 'em up (with the girls in tow) from the shop at just after noon time on Friday. Just getting around to posting about 'em here now, although I did Facebook a bit about 'em when I first got 'em. A Blog post is a bit more involved, you see. Had to spend some quality time to figure out all these fancy words I'm tying right now.

So here's the little scrubs (all five of 'em..) hanging out around the feeder. It took me about an hour to get the temp adjusted just right in the box for them.. I mean, I had the temp set just right to what I thought was going to be ideal (95 degrees is the published norm for first weeker's..), but when I got them in there, the Barred Rock's were clearly irritated by the high temps and were starting to pant a bit. The others seemed a bit sluggish, but weren't panting, so I jacked the heat lamp up about 4 inches and everything changed for the better really quick. Now, they're happy as pie and doing quite well. It looks like they seem happiest with about a 90-93 degree temp spread as measured at the bottom of the box.















Here's a closeup shot of a few of the buggers. The Black one is one of the Barred Rock's, and I can't tell from this pic which of the three orange colored beauties is the sole Golden Comet.. You sorta need to see their faces in order to tell the Comet apart from the two Rhodey's... The Comet is a bit fluffier and maybe a smidgen larger than the Reds... but we're talking about a gram or two larger. Hardly noticeable. Plus, the Comet doesn't have the same somewhat darker orange stripe of fluff down the back of the head as the Reds do.















In non-chicken related news, I came home to try and pull a pint of the Pale Ale I made with Jody a while back, only to find FOAM about an inch into the process as the keg breathed it's last. . Ah well.. It's since been replaced by a new keg of Max's Pale Ale (of Max's oyster bar, etc, fame..) which is a beer brewed by Thomas Hooker Beer in Bloomfield, CT. It's a fairly red colored beer and prominently caramel in flavor.. I think I'd style it more as a Red or Amber beer, but they're calling it a Pale Ale. Who am I to argue?















Well, looks like I'm off to the park with the family, so while I'm doing that, you cheapskates can start clicking the Google Ad to your right there, and bring in the $$$'s for me. Get to it!

More of the same. Nothing!

So here we are the following week, but still no chicks. Got some pics to post, though...

Here' a new shot of the chicken stairs to get into the box. Wanted to put up a place for them to be able to land before trying to squeeze through the door opening.



















And here's a bad shot of the insulation pieces I screwed into the wall and the new lightbulb socket that I mounted and wired into the ceiling. I'm not sure if this is going to e a light source more than a heating suppl or what. Guess I'll just have to wait till it gets a it cooler and take some measurements of the temps inside the house to see what is needed in there. But right now, I'm thinking it's for the light to get year round eggs. The timer to switch the thing on and off is also here, but goes on the outside of the box and isn't shown here.















And lastly, a quick pic of the "One Bean Bitter" that me and Jody put together the other week. This is just me racking the beer into a keg, off the dry hops. This is easily the clearest beer I've ever seen in primary. It started out at 1.041 and finished at 1.014 F.G. for a whopping 3.5% abv. Right on schedule. Should be a good one!

Where's my chicks!

So, Wednesday has come and gone, and still no call from the feed place for my birds. Sad, but whatever. They said the middle of May for arrival, and it's not quite the middle yet, so I guess I have to cut 'em some slack.

There's a great article on homebrewing in the May 13th, 2009 edition of the Republican American. And that's your link to it.. Wait a sec.. who's that guy in the picture? He looks frighteningly familiar, and damn fine! And I'm not talking about just the author, why, it's ME! I'm in the newspaper. Huh! In an interesting turn of events, the Rep-Am distributes a free edition f this newspaper up here to non-subscribers once or twice a year.. and what day did they pick to hurl that edition out onto my driveway? The day I'm in it! I'm sure Will Siss had to pull some strings to get *that* in effect. In other free newspaper events, the very front cover of this paper has an article about raising baby chickens. SHOCKING! I am, seemingly, at the forefront of every notable thing that ever goes on in the world.

In more coop news, here's the roll of vinyl flooring a friend fror work brought me. Unrolling and tracing out a pattern here:















And here's the installed floor. I'm not sure I'm going to do any more than just lay it down and leave it there. It seems to stay in place just fine, really. I might wanna take it out and replace it some day, right? Why staple it in if I don't need to, I figure.















I'm also ghetto insulating this thing, a bit, with some mega scraps I have leftover from a previous job I did... not enough to do the whole thing, but enough to make it more comfortable that it would be otherwise. That's not finished yet, so pics to follow...

We got a due date!

Hey all.. no pics for this report, cause I still ain't got nothing to show for it, but I did get a due date for the chickens. I'm told it's gonna be this Wednesday! I called Friday evening and spoke there to someone who I just wanted to ask "What hatchery are these birds coming from, so I can inquire with those guys as to what, if any, vaccinations these guys are getting at birth?" So, there was a momentary pause and then the voice tells me "Wednesday". I'm like, "sorry, what?" and they go on to tell me they're due in Wednesday some time, but the only person who knows what hatchery they're coming from isn't due in till Monday morning, so I'd have to call back. So, I got an answer to a question I didn't ask, but it was a good answer I suppose! So, we're gearing up for Wednesday now. I hope it's morning some time, cause I won't be able to pick 'em up if it's the afternoon at all. I'll be workin' still.

Ok, well that's it for today. Now, go click the link on the right, Frank!

P.S. How come Adrienne, Pete and Don don't have pics for their Google accounts? It looks so *poor*! ;-)

Chaos is.. over? A few beers otherwise...

This is me and Tim P. s a while back.. can't remember exactly when. Invited down for a pint or two of brew, and did up a couple commercial treat a while I was there. Tim is a collector of beers, it seems.. has a closet full of gold, and breaks one out occasionally for a special guest. That would be *me*. In this case, it looks like Sam Adams Longshot winner Mike McDole's IPA was on the list, which was a clone of Pliny the Elder, as I understand it. Amazingly hoppy, this beer was like spooning a mouthful of hop pellets into your face and chewing on them. It was a veritable MEAL of hops. Just sick! Next on the list was Sam's Imperial Pilsner.. which wasn't quite the hop bomb I remember it being the last time around.. but still pretty potent. I remember being nearly killed by the hops in this beer the first year I tried it.. so maybe they scaled it back a bit to keep everyone else alive who wasn't quite used to a thing like this? Hmm.. Last on the list, another hop monster, the Sierra Nevada "Torpedo". Also, not quite as powerful as the Longshot winner, but damned close. This is a really sweet brew. Props to Tim for the introduction. Too many of these will really kill a fellows taste buds though.. and they're pretty high alc. too. Careful kids! :)















Oh no! The Chaos Pale ale I brewed with Pete a while back, when I totally forgot I had no yeast and had to fall back on, and used the wild yeast cultured form a bottle of Oro de Calabaza is killed! Here's it's dog tag for proof.















This beer will be missed. A little strange tasting out of the chute, it really mellowed out into a beauty in it's end days.

Fortunately, this keg was replaced by the Oro de Maggie, my tribute beer to my sadly deceased dog, Maggs... A review will be forthcoming, upon it's carbonation. I just tossed it in the fridge today, so stand by for that one.

And finally, here we have the first shoots of my 2009 hop crop coming up. Hacked down last year to make way for the new deck, this year should produce something. They're in the ground, making their way towards the deck rails where I hope to shoot 'em straight up a trellis of some sort.. both to get 'em up in the air, and to shade the unshaded portion of the deck. We'll see what happens. Stand by for more pics as the year goes on...



















Now, go click my money ads, you cheapskates. I know you haven't been lately!

Bagels.. and some coop updates. But no chicks!

So, like so many other things in my life I get involved in for the most minuscule of reasons, I took up baking today. What?!? How, you ask? Well, I like the bagels at Stop and Shop. I like Dunkin' Doughnuts bagels too. But the darn things only last for about 2-3 days before they turn to solid rock, so you really can't buy a good supply of them, and I just *need* a bagel for a bagel, egg and cheese sandwich in the morning. I live for those things. So, I get to thinking.. "what's it take to make a bagel?" and then it's all downhill from there. From someone who thinks it's a challenge to get more than one food group on a plate at the same time for a meal, this is really an undertaking.

As it turns out, they're not that difficult to make, really. And hell, it involves yeast, so I'm halfway through the battle.. my beer making skillz make yeast ranching a breeze for me! A bit of flour, some salt, yeast, water, mixing and.. wait, boiling? Damn, that works for beer making too. See? Bagels are a natural progression for a home brewer after all. Then, a short trip to the oven to seal the deal and you're done. I even poppy seeded, Kosher salted, and sesame seed the things to give 'em that "everything bagel" sort of theme. I should have taken some pics, but I failed. Next time! These didn't turn out perfect, so they're really not pic worthy, but the next ones, after a short tweak to the recipe, I think might be. Then, I'll post more on the process. Can't wait till morning to try these babies out!

In other news, this is a pic of the chicken coop door thingy for the chicken ingress and egress to the outside of the cage world.















This one is a pic of the caged in portion framework that's getting framed out now.. we're getting really close now. Got one of my boyz hooking me up with some vinyl flooring for the coop floor and then we'll bolt on the roof. Still no chickens, though. I was hoping this week, but it looks like it might be next week now.. rats.