I finished this morning’s (ok “MID-morning’s” for most of you) chores and then started to laugh at what I saw on my counter. All lined up and tidy. A silent paean to slow, real food the slow, old-fashioned way. 1) Dry beans soaking with a touch of vinegar for tonight’s frijoles cocidos; 2) buttermilk culturing; […]
Part 1 here. The apple scrap vinegar we started a week or two ago seems to be progressing just fine. (After all these disasters we had, I am honestly surprised and relieved!) It’s fizzing a little and perfuming its cabinet with pleasant appley-vinegary smells. This is what it looked like to begin with and then […]
By the way, nothing went to waste in this latest apple canning enterprise. We use a lot of vinegar around here, in homemade cleaning products and the like. I had just read about making apple scrap vinegar on a beloved blog I read, and a little Googling provided more (and widely varied) information. I figured […]
I finally finished the labels for my latest batch of cider. It’s about time, too – those cases of bottles have been sitting in the middle (literally) of my kitchen for just about a month now. For some reason I just wasn’t inspired this time. I’ll usually have an idea for a name and label […]
 That’s right. Apple cider. With J’s help, this year my cider-making endeavors took only one day – from about 11 to 11, roughly. I have never been so sick of slicing and smashing apples… or at least not since last year, anyway. My industrial-strength Kitchenaid got hot on top, it was working so hard. Still, […]
So I’ve figured out what the problem with the mead is. At least I’m pretty darn sure I’ve figured it out. Thanks to a conversation with my much-experienced-in-all-things-brewly friend Anton, we narrowed it down to two possibilities: 1) the osmotic pressure was just too much for the yeast (the solution was too strong) or 2) […]
My mead has been in the making since October, and it’s still not done! A Goblet of Mead, Makovsky Thinking for sure it’d be nearly ready for bottling after six months fermentation, I racked it to secondary tonight (siphoned it off the dead-yeast sediment at the bottom into another container) and ended up a bit […]
I only just bottled my second batch of cider. I’d pressed it in October, but I was waiting for it to clarify before bottling this time. Heh – no such luck, even though I left it for three months instead of 3 weeks. I got worried about it sitting there for so long and decided […]
I bottled my latest batch of beer last night. Four gallons gave me about 36 bottles. I really wanted to try my hand at a chocolate beer, but stouts are generally too dry for my taste, so I decided to go with a porter. And – you know me – I can’t leave anything simple, […]
Check out the label I made for my first beer batch, a pumpkin ale spiced with ginger and like spices (I really think I have as much fun making the label as I do thinking up new things to brew!). Though I roasted three pumpkins total – two were boiled in the wort for an […]