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..

A bear.. eating berries in the front yard.

So, Barbie the dog was barking and growling this morning. A quick look outside and this little guy (Black bear) was spotted across the street eating berries from a low hanging bush. He was tagged, I think you can see, by a yellow DEP tag in his right ear.

Here it is hanging out in the bushes. It ate a lot of berries, which are located just to the left of the bear in this picture...

Here, it's just dropped a poop on the lawn right there and has turned around to check out it's handiwork..

..and here it goes, up the driveway.

Eventually, it moved across three more neighbors lawns and wet up the hill to the west. See ya!

In cheese news, this here is a pic of the slabs of an English Derby style cheese I made yesterday, as they're draining on the board. The idea was that I cut them into slabs like this, turning them every 15 minutes and keeping them covered with a warm towel for about an hour. Later on, I broke them up into small pieces and packed them into the 2lb mold and they're in the press as I type this. It'll get unpacked tonight when I get home from work and dry for a couple days before I do the wrapping for aging time.

Derby cheese is supposed to have a hint of tangy, sharp flavor, sorta like Cheddar, without the drawn out process of the Cheddaring process itself. It should be more flavorful than my Jack cheese, and would have been similar to my Cheddar.. except that one should be plenty flavorful stuffed full of Jalapeno's as it currently is..

I was originally planning to stick with the American styles for a while and go around the bend with each of those for a while, but the call of the English cheese was to great, and I wanted to try out this old-fangled funky "bandaging" and oiling method that is traditionally English. It's similar to waxing, in that it's a protective coating for the cheese, but doesn't use wax. It's just muslin cloth and oil or lard slathered around the outside of that. It will supposedly mold up quite a bit, but won't get under the muslin to get into the cheese. Funky, I know.. should be disgusting and cool to see it happen.

Pretzels. No, really?

And yep, I'm makin' some pretzels now. Great American Beer Fest (GABF) and a side trip to The Cheeky Monk, a Belgian Beer bar in town, got me all screwed up on big, soft, chewy pretzels and good mustard. And cheese, too.. but it's already too late for me and cheese. We knew that. More on GABF and that adventure when I have some more time and some of the digital pics get sent my way from my compatriots for the trip.

So, with that said, I'm doing this recipe I stole from Alton Brown:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 package active dry yeast, or 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry stuff..
  
• 22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups
• 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
• Vegetable oil, for pan
• 10 cups water
• 2/3 cup baking soda
• 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water

Directions

Combine the water, sugar and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to foam. Add the flour and butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until well combined. Change to medium speed and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl, clean the bowl and then oil it well with vegetable oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and let sit in a warm place for approximately 50 to 55 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line 2 half-sheet pans with parchment paper and lightly brush with the vegetable oil. Set aside.

Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in an 8-quart saucepan or roasting pan.

In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the parchment-lined half sheet pan.

Place the pretzels into the boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula. Return to the half sheet pan, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 12 to 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

And here's what I came up with:

First the quick boil..

Then onto the baking rack on parchment paper. Very helpful stuff for pretzels.. not so much for bagels.

Then out of the oven after 11 minutes, and...

..finally, onto a plate and into my belly!

Some cheap mustard was the best I had at the time, but the stout was fine.

I'll be baking some more up tomorrow, as I make my new raw milk cheese wheel, and I'll be adding some more Kosher salt and trying to remember to put the egg wash on before the salt topping. I'll also be trying to make the strands longer before tying them up as well. They're a bit fat as they turned out. Really delicious, though!

GABF week..

Just a quick note from the field... in Denver, CO in the hotel room posting to say I'm in town for the Great American Beer Fest.. Good time yesterday, and today is the last session for us. Should have some stories to tell and pics to post when I get back. Some really fabulous coffee was obtained while in town here as well.

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!

Double yolker! What the.. !

So, currently raising chickens, of course I've heard of these things.. the double-youlk egg. But to this day, I've only ever bought non-store, backyard flock eggs twice. The second time I bought 'em was 12 minutes ago on my way back home from the Dr's appointment I had. The backyard flock I bought these from (for just $2.00 none-the-less!) is a relativly large one of 30-ish chickens. I got the tour of the place pretty quick by a 10 year old boy who translated his Hungarian speaking grandmothers words for me quite well.. enough to gather that they've only had these chickens since this spring, and that they have had no chicken casualties all year. Nice! I noticed their sign for eggs pop up late last week and this is the first time I've stopped in.. glad I did. Nice folks.

Anyway, to bring this back around, a picture, worth a thousand words:

 

Color me surprised! Yeah, I've heard of 'em, but never before seen one.. but there it was, in my fry pan. This was just a medium sized egg too, not especially large. It tasted like heaven! I slapped it on a bagel made just yesterday in my kitchen, and covered it with a piece of cheese which was, unfortunately, not made in my kitchen. Give me some time on that front and we'll get that taken care of. 

In other chicken news, here's a pic of the girls enjoying a bowl of pasta this morning.. couldn't quite finish it last night, and figured they'd enjoy it..

Other than that, the IPA I made with Frank yesterday is bubbling away happily in the fermenter downstairs.. should have that on tape in a few weeks if all goes well.