Keg down! No post in a while...

Been in training for the past week, so haven't really been home much and able to access the computer to do any blogging.. I should mention though, that this tragedy occurred:

Oh no! The IPA is killed! Drats.. I've got no pale ales downstairs, not counting the Oro de Maggie sour. The Kombucha beer, the not so aptly named Hanssens "All-Purpose" sour ale, is still kicking it too.. the pellicle on this thing now is huge and ugly as sin! It's developing some brett. character that I can definitely detect, and hopefully a bit of sour too. I'll be checking it out again at the three month mark, I think, to see how it's progressing.

Other than that.. I ain't got much. Supposed to be heading down to Will's place this coming Saturday for a saison tasting for an upcoming article. I can dig it.

Pizza and Hot sauce..

Made my first pizza from scratch.. well, three pizza's from scratch, including the dough. Two came out edible, one got into he garbage when it ticked me off and got stuck to the peel. But the dough was made 68% hydration with 1/8th cup of olive oil from a Reinhart recipe I found online. It was *really* easy to shape the dough. Probably too easy, really. It was very stretchy. The mozzarella could have been easier to slice, I guess.. our slicer/dicer for cheese kinda stinks, but here's a before and after

Before:

After:

It was fun and tasty. I'll definitely do this again. I've heard grilling them is also a trip, so I'll be looking into that as well. In other news, here's another thing:

A gallon of Franks Original killed, just under three months time. Delicious!

That's all.. carry on.

Hanssen's Kombucha beer, chicken eggs, whole wheat berries..

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. 

Challenger Special and some sourdough bagels..

Forgot to post this a few back, but...

Killed it! The Challenger Special, brewed up by Rob and me way back at the end of August.. hopped only with Challenger hops, as you might have guessed. Really tasty stuff.. but no longer.

In other news, the Red beer I did with Timmay is pretty much ready to keg. I'll get around to that soon, so there'll be something new and fun to try. The Dunkel I did with Pete, on the other hand, is flowing fine right now. Good times right there..

Here's a shot of some sourdough bagels I did up last night, from The La Brea Bakery book..

Should have made the rings they're formed from a *little* bigger, as these look more like fat dinner rolls than bagels.. but whatever, they taste really good. The consistency is spot on, though, the first time I think I can say that for my bagels. In the pat, my straight dough bagels have been more fluffy and soft than a bagel should be, but these guys are dense and chewy, bagel proper. I'm wondering if it was the vital wheat gluten, or the slow rise in the fridge that did that? Either way, I might be eating another one this afternoon.. it was that good.

Chickens are still dong very well. The Barred Rocks seem less susceptible to frostbite and cold in general than the Reds.. and I think I'd recommend those to new chicken owners, if I was asked. Plus, they're cute as all get out! And they lay eggs pretty darned well..

'Tis all...

I win! And, a brewery trip... thus, I win again!

And my win was with sourdough. Finally! A sigh of relief was heard throughout the house.. the pressure is off and I know I can do this thing now. Check it:

And the inside:

..yeah, that was a good day. Don't get me wrong, this loaf ain't perfect. If you look close, you'll see a less than totally cooked section on the center of the very bottom, about the size of a walnut. My slashing technique is also less than perfect.. but man, it tasted good! And since my Dad s comin' over tonight for dinner, I'm making up another one right now.. as I speak, it's in it's first ferment downstairs in the warm room. I'm also doing another try at a sourdough bread tin loaf.. It's the same dough, but I'll run this one through the oven in the pyrex loaf pan so the kids can use it for sandwiches and toast. I've had good luck and great taste from the preferment dough bread that I've been doing lately.. but it all comes back to loaf longevity. We don't seem to be able to go through a whole loaf here in three days or less, so the bread, minus any preservatives, doesn't seem to stay soft much more than that. So, the sourdough bread, with it's ability to supposedly stay good for up to 5 days is the solution I've come to. There's also the thing with the "wild" yeast and weird bacteria that draws me to sourdough, but that's just a quirk of mine.. just gotta be different.

Here's me with a Thomas Hooker Nor'Easter beer, provided by Timmay during a recent brew session here. We brewed up an American Amber style, aka Red beer. This things gave me big problems during the initial ferment. Almost no signs of activity at all for the better part of two days. Timmay, on the other hand, says he's rarely seen a ferment as active as this beer while fermented at his place. I was at 63 degrees here in the dining room.. so that's probably not the answer, and I may never know what it is. It mysteriously started up slowly on the third day and was chugging along well soon thereafter. It's still *mildly* going now, in fact.. a few bubbles per minute. I'm sorta curious to see what the hydrometer says in a couple of days when I keg this thing. This beer should be interesting, as it's half Munich, half two row pale, and just a hint of some dark colored malts for color and flavor.. we'll see.

Me and the family went to NYC yesterday to hit up the Ballet and the NY Museum of Natural History.. well, half went to the ballet and the other half (me and Cessy) went to see the dinosaurs. Big building! I was beat.

Afterwards, though, we all went a few blocks down to Heartland Brewery, the Burger side. There, I had a *fantastic* buffalo style burger and started out with a Belgian Red Rooster beer. It appeared to be unfiltered, Red-ish in color, and had a pretty big alcoholic note in the aroma. The flavor gave up what tasted like Jaegermeister/black liquorish mixed with a curious Belgian yeast derived flavor.. this was fantastic for the first 1/3 of the beer.. but started to wear me down by the next third, and it was actually a struggle to finish this 5.5% curiosity. After that one, I switched it up to their Black Lager, which clocked in at 6.5% abv, but hid it well. The 'black' was actually a really deep, crystal clear Mahogany color. the aroma.. I've smelled this before somewhere, but couldn't place it. The wife thought it was unique as well, but also couldn't place it.. it's faint, whatever it is. The flavor, however, was outstanding. a very mild roast note, and a hint of the same flavor as the Red Rooster, but definitely cleaner than the Red beer, as expected. Very drinkable, unlike the first brew.. As a side note, I didn't have more than two small sips of it, but The Boss had the Wheat beer here, and it got good review from her, but nothing out of the ordinary. I thought it was a solid beer, but it didn't just out at me.. but like I said, just two sips is all I had to go on. Sorry, no pics.. no camera this time.

Where did I leave off?

Seems like forever since I've typed here. And, I'm hungry.  Just so you know..

I'm not sure I have any pictures for this one.. just wanted to note that I brewed yesterday with Timmay, makin' up what is going to be a fine batch of an American Amber (Red) beer. 50/50 Munich and Pale Ale malt, and a touch of Carafa I in there for color. Used Northern Brewer and Willamette for hops. It's gonna be a mid size brew at 6.5-ish %abv.. and should be fairly tasty. I'm fermenting this one in the dining room where it's fairly cold right now.. 63-ish, to try and keep down the Apple esters that I've been battling with the high temp ferments that my basements 73 degree temps brought to my latest beers.

On the Kombucha front, I've been drinking these fairly regularly now, and I'm on my fourth batch now..  The last one, the one fermenting now, uses 75% of the sugar the other ones did, as, in discussing this with my sister-in-law, we thought this stuff tasted pretty darned sweet... sweeter than the other ones we've both had in the past, from commercial places. So, I figured I'd just knock down the original sugar amount and see what happened. Well, what happened is it got *really* pungent down there, near the fermenting bench! The acetic aroma of this newest batch is easily way more powerful than any of the past efforts And, it smells fantastic, to boot!

Speaking of sour.. my batch of Hanssens "All-Purpose" sour ale has been less than amazing. It's just not souring from my infusion of the Hanssens dregs. I suspect those bugs perhaps weren't viable? So, doing what I've wanted to do since creating this above-mentioned Kombucha creature, I ripped off a chunk (or two.. nothing like excess!)  of the culture and threw it in the Hanssen's carboy. Where last week there was no pellicle or souring activity at all, this week there is plenty. There is now a mad, fat, angry looking *thing* growing on the surface of this beer. And I love it. Whether it tastes any good or not is another story for a different day.

Spent the New Years Eve with Will and Michelle.. drank a bunch of Saranac beers, like the Black Lager, IPA, Pale Ale, Belgian thingy.. had Stone's Leviathan, Affligem's Noel, and rang in the new year with Delerium Tremen's! Good times!

Chickens are all still producing well and don't seem to mind the cold at all.. except, they do have nabbed a touch of frostbite on their combs, for two out of three of the Red chicks.. the Barred Rocks are all excellent, however.  I've read where you can either cut off, disinfect and bandage up the combs that are affected, or.. well.. leave 'em alone. They seem to heal themselves up just fine, according to my resources, and they just carry on. Seems weird.. but, I'm no surgeon. Sad about that..

Also sad is my ability with sourdough. Still failing. Got a nice, viable sourdough culture from some friends in Maine, though, and I'll be trying that stuff out today. Working on it now, in fact.. also doing something with a tinned bread called the "prefermented straight dough" method, which uses commercial yeast, that you let ferment out to completion for like, 5 hours.. and then mix that in with some more flour and water and it supposedly develops these "complex organic acids", similar to sourdough, just without the sour part. Supposed to be a much more complex, better tasting bread. We'll see. It's easy enough to do, at least..

Ok, like I said, I'm hungry.. catch you later.

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.