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..

Double brew session..

Did up a double brew session yesterday with Pete and Rob. Me and Pete kicked off the morning at 0800 hours brewing an ESB style English beer. Rob came over a few hours later and, while me and Pete were running off the first beer into the boil kettle, Rob and I were milling grains for an American Pale Ale style thing. Things went relatively smoothly.. a little confusion on my part with hopping schedules and such, so good thing I had good backup and brew partners to monitor that stuff while I was a bit flustered.. but everything came out well. Here's a couple shots of the machine in progress with Pete in one of 'em:

And here's one of the finished product. Check it and be so jealous:

The chickens are fat, the cheese is drying and I'll be waxing it very soon for proper storage, and the kids are fairly well. Times are good!

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...

Chickens in the underbrush..

Hello!



Just a quick pic or two of the ladies diggin' in their new favorite spot in the bushes between my yard and the next door neighbors. Eatin' bugs, worms, ticks and whatever. They make me so proud! :-)



And finally, a group shot.. of most of them, anyway...



13 weeks old yesterday, they were. Started with 5, still have 5. No health issues, and smooth sailing so far with chickens. I can still whole heartedly recommend them to anyone and everyone. They give lots of laughs with the weird things they do out in the yard and take almost no time or energy to maintain. I also cleaned out their coop for the first time yesterday. There was virtually no smell whatsoever, but I cleaned it out anyway. they went just under two months with the first round of wood chips. It's all in the compost now.. we'll see how that goes.

Cheese and a smoked beer...

Greeting, kids.

Here's a pic of my ENTIRE hop harvest for 2009. All 13 (ick!) cones from my Cascades plant, thrown into the whirlpool of the American Wheat Apple wood Smoked Fresh Hop Ale. 1.060 gravity, so no slouch in the abv department. Me and Jody switched it up and went FLY sparging this time, just for kicks, and the brew house efficiency went through the roof, apparently. Hmm.


And here's a shot of the beer yesterday, with the very first wisps of foam getting chucked out the top of the fermenter. Smells like smoke! Hmm...


In other news, the chickens have had their 13th week birthday today (Yaay! Still have five of 'em!) and are all doing just great.

Kid's back!

Greetings!

Check this gnarly 'stash I sported for about 1/2 an hour while on vacation! SWEET!


Good news is, my cell phone came back to life towards the end of the trip... About 4 days later, after the swim, the phone started working and a couple days after that the front screen display started working again. Only thing not working right now is the camera function. Ah well...

The chickens are also back in their proper place, having had a good time down at Franks for the week. They're bigger now! 12 weeks strong, just a few more to go before, hopefully, egg time!

Here's a shot from the far back of the Tun Tavern and Brewpub, in Atlantic City, NJ. What you're looking at is the view across the entire room to the *elevated* serving and conditioning tanks. The actual brewery is located on the floor level, but after the brewing process, the beer is pumped UP to the next level to this temperature controlled and totally glass enclosed box where all the brite tanks are kept. You can see on the right side of this pic, just barely, next to the stairs, that there's a big, fat, gray colored hose about 8" in diameter.. that's where the beer comes down, right out of the brite tanks to the tap heads at the bar when you pull the handle. Oh, snap! This is easily the coolest, most weirdly setup brewery I've ever seen. The best part? The beer! I've only been here twice, but both times the food was excellent and the beer was fantastic. Totally recommended for anyone in Atlantic City to stop in there and have a drink.. you won't be disappointed. Right in the middle of town, too.