Rummaging through my refrigerator this morning trying to find something interesting to go with my bread my eyes fell on the crayon cheese I made back in early May. It had been sitting in the back of the fridge and out of site ever since, the idea being that good cheese needs to age, a month at a minimum. Actually, make that two months and beyond, one month was merely the estimate how long it would take for the cheese to be any good at all.
Well, there it was, pink as on its first day, and definitely at least a month old. Of course I was curious how it had turned out beneath that pink paraffin shell. And not only that, I have actually designs on making another one. But only if this experiment was any good at all. Making cheese had proven time consuming after all, and before doing it again I would want some reassurance it would not be an effort wasted. So I decided it was time to put that cheese to the test.
Just cutting that cheese left me under the impression the cheese was very dry and not creamy at all. No big surprise here considering that I had made that cheese from half fat milk. Normal cheese is not only made from full fat milk, it often also has extra cream added. Also, the interior of the cheese was still as white as on the day that I had waxed it, not yellowish as I would have expected it. Most other hard cheeses are yellow mine was not. Why not? I do not know.
The next step after cutting a wedge off of my cheese was to peal the wax from it. I quickly noticed that using colored paraffin for cheese wax was less than an optimal solution. It is a solution as it did keep my cheese from spoiling. No nasties were growing on it and that was good. It did not smell rooten or spoiled and that was even better. But the paraffin shell was difficult to peel off. The main problem with it was that it was very brittle, breaking easily into tiny pieces as I tried to pull it off. It took quite a while to get most of the paraffin off the cheese, and many of the tiny pieces never came off at all and wound up as part of my meal instead.
And then, the cheese itself. It does have a little aroma but definitely not very much. Similar for the taste: It has taste but it is not strong at all. A little bit like a very mild cheddar. It goes well with my bread but then, any commercial cheese goes well with bred, too. So while my cheese is not bad I would definitely prefer it to be more assertive: With a stringer aroma, and definitely with a stronger taste.
I am hoping that both aroma and taste are a function of aging. Meaning that given more time ripening in the back of the fridge there will be more aroma and more taste. As to why my cheese remained white instead of turning more toward yellow I don't know. Neither do I care much: If I can get the aroma and the flavor right I won't care much what the color is, and after all, white is still a lot better than a lot of other colors I can think of. So I will assume the missing piece is extra aging. And I am even going to put it to a test, by making another, and then waiting longer before I eat it.
But before trying again I need some real cheese wax. While that crayon in the paraffin that I used was non toxic I still did not like it too much in my cheese. Finding real cheese wax may turn out to be somewhat of a challenge but it will definitely be worth it. At least that much I am sure about.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Out of the comfort zone
It's not good if everything is well.
For the last six wees or so I have been perfecting my art in brewing, bread baking, and basic cheese making. And while I am still far from perfect in any of those the result have become passable, well, actually quite good. I would no longer consider buying any bread from the supermarket. My beer is the best to be had for less than seven bucks the six pack (by my totally unbiased opinion at least), and between buttermilk, yogurt, and quark there is little need to buy anything from the store - apart from flour and milk, that is.
Apart from being tastier and cheaper making my own food also proves to be a lot of fun, even now that the big experiments are over, and I pretty much know what will work and what won't. It is so much fun actually, I continue to do a lot of it all: brew a lot of beer, bake a lot of bread, make a lot of milk stuff. And this is where suddenly the problems arise:
While I do spread around some of my bounty occasionally, most of the stuff gets consumed right here - and by me. As a result I have been gaining weight, to the tune of six pounds over the last six weeks! That's right, during the time of the year when the last of the winter pounds usually come off, I managed to gain. During the time of the year when I am usually at my leanest I am now at my heaviest. NO GOOD!
And no, it is not only on the scale. While I usually run a lot I have not felt much like running lately. This usually is a sure indicator of extra pounds making the running less comfortable. When I do run then the former energy just isn't there; I run both shorter and slower than I used to. It is obvious: A the good food is making me fat and lazy. Again, NO GOOD!
I finally decided to do something and to fight back. No, not by eating less or (gulp!) drinking less, but by running more. And just how would I suddenly get motivated if I was not before? Well, by joining a group of other runners, of course. So from now on, I will be running in addition to baking and brewing, at the least every Tuesday and Saturday, and quite possibly more often. In addition, I should have an easy time offloading some of my stuff on these folks, leaving less around for me to eat.
Sounds like a three way win situation for me: I run more, eat less, and the other runners will get something out of it too! So let's see how that is going to turn out ---
For the last six wees or so I have been perfecting my art in brewing, bread baking, and basic cheese making. And while I am still far from perfect in any of those the result have become passable, well, actually quite good. I would no longer consider buying any bread from the supermarket. My beer is the best to be had for less than seven bucks the six pack (by my totally unbiased opinion at least), and between buttermilk, yogurt, and quark there is little need to buy anything from the store - apart from flour and milk, that is.
Apart from being tastier and cheaper making my own food also proves to be a lot of fun, even now that the big experiments are over, and I pretty much know what will work and what won't. It is so much fun actually, I continue to do a lot of it all: brew a lot of beer, bake a lot of bread, make a lot of milk stuff. And this is where suddenly the problems arise:
While I do spread around some of my bounty occasionally, most of the stuff gets consumed right here - and by me. As a result I have been gaining weight, to the tune of six pounds over the last six weeks! That's right, during the time of the year when the last of the winter pounds usually come off, I managed to gain. During the time of the year when I am usually at my leanest I am now at my heaviest. NO GOOD!
And no, it is not only on the scale. While I usually run a lot I have not felt much like running lately. This usually is a sure indicator of extra pounds making the running less comfortable. When I do run then the former energy just isn't there; I run both shorter and slower than I used to. It is obvious: A the good food is making me fat and lazy. Again, NO GOOD!
I finally decided to do something and to fight back. No, not by eating less or (gulp!) drinking less, but by running more. And just how would I suddenly get motivated if I was not before? Well, by joining a group of other runners, of course. So from now on, I will be running in addition to baking and brewing, at the least every Tuesday and Saturday, and quite possibly more often. In addition, I should have an easy time offloading some of my stuff on these folks, leaving less around for me to eat.
Sounds like a three way win situation for me: I run more, eat less, and the other runners will get something out of it too! So let's see how that is going to turn out ---
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Prohibition Ale (I)
Almost from the beginning of my brewing endeavors I have been wondering what people did during the prohibition years in the first part of the last century. After all, it is well known that a lot of illicit at home alcohol production did take place. At the same time, if prohibition was to come upon us ever again I would expect the home brew supply stores to get swept away along with the breweries. So then, what did people do, or even more interestingly, what could they do now to get their fix?
For starters, beer needs malt, hops, yeast, and water. Water will always be available, there is just no way to outlaw that. Yeast? You can get yeast from all sorts of places. Even better, you should be able to keep it. Meaning you keep some of the sludge that collects at the bottom of the carboy as the wort clears and you should be ready to go. Hops? No idea. Allegedly, it is growing wild near old rail tracks, seeded by hops blown off from delivery train in times past. I have to check on that. Some day.
The biggest obstacle seems to get hold of malt. And no, germinating, drying, and roasting you own barley seed is not an option, at least not for the ones of us that don't have their own farm. No it has to be something more inconspicuous, something that's already available as something else. Plain sugar? Would work as far as the alcohol is concerned but the final product certainly would not be beer. Rather, it would be the stuff moonshine is made from, hardly drinkable without distillation.
So - what then? Maybe - bread? It's mostly wheat hence similar enough to barley, it least on the outside. And maybe I could cook the bread first, to possibly mirror some of the effects of roasting, and at the same time release the starches and sugars out of the bread much like the cooking of roasted barley does? At the least, it did not sound totally outlandish. Was it actually feasible, and would it produce something even remotely recognizable as beer? Well, there is one sure way to find out ---
So from my last trip to the grocery store I returned with the following items: Three loaves of the cheapest bread I could find. I sure was not sacrificing my own bread for that type of experiment. And after all, even though that cheap store stuff is barely edible it may just prove useful for something at last. In addition: Four pounds of table sugar. I wasn't going to use it all but surely it would be OK to supplement my brew a little bit, or actually a little more because during times of prohibition, you can't put the standards too high.
Back home I first roasted the bread some in the oven, then threw it all into my brew pot, added two gallons of water, 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, then brought the mixture to a boil. That's when I remembered I needed some to simulate hops for bitterness, and after some quick hesitation went outside and cut some twigs from the next juniper tree. Juniper berries have bitterness to them and so do young pine needles. Just to make sure I ripped off and chewed a little piece: It was bitter alright and so for now, I had my hops.
I brought my mixture to a boil and when I returned to my kettle some twenty minutes later I discovered the first problem with my theory: The bread has acted much like oatmeal- so instead the water absorbing the goodness out of the bread the bread had absorbed all the water and left me with something reminiscent of a giant bucket of wallpaper glue. No good! I spent the next 1 1/2 hours to squeeze and rinse as much liquid out of that slime as I could to salvage my operation, and another 1/2 hour after that the clean my kitchen that I had totally messed up in the process. Regardless if how things would go from here, I already had figured it was not the way to go.
Having put in that much effort already I decided to press on, learn at least from what remained to be learned from that experiment. From all the squeezing and rinsing I had gotten some two gallons of thick, sweet,milky liquid which I duly transferred into my carboy. I added another gallon of fresh water to make it a total of three gallons, which was the amount I had decided beforehand to commit myself to. For yeast? Well, I had anticipated this experiment and kept the sludge from my last batch of real beer. I used about a cup of that.
The concoction started to get alive after about four hours and has been active for the last almost two days. Normal beer produces a regular bubbling, about one "blrrp" in regular intervals every ten seconds when most active, or every minute when fermentation is almost done. This mixture makes "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp", almost blowing the water out of my air lock. Sometimes it will hesitiate, or just make a "blrrp", only to follow this up with yet another "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp". Very strange.
The "wort" itself is also somewhat "unusual". It never lost its milkiness so the liquid appears a yellowish white. There is noticeable sludge buildup at the bottom of the carboy, at this point probably more from settling bread particles than from spent yeast. There is foam floating on top, white mostly but also with some green to it- I figure that would be the juniper.
Definitely fascinating, almost like with a mind of its own. Kind of scary looking, too. And of course, I am just watching right now, waiting for fermentation to come to a conclusion. After that? Second fermentation? Bottling? I think I would at least want to sample some of it before committing myself to any extra work. Or better still, find someone else to sample it for me just in case it makes people go blind. Thinking of it, I believe I know just the perfect candidate for that ---
For starters, beer needs malt, hops, yeast, and water. Water will always be available, there is just no way to outlaw that. Yeast? You can get yeast from all sorts of places. Even better, you should be able to keep it. Meaning you keep some of the sludge that collects at the bottom of the carboy as the wort clears and you should be ready to go. Hops? No idea. Allegedly, it is growing wild near old rail tracks, seeded by hops blown off from delivery train in times past. I have to check on that. Some day.
The biggest obstacle seems to get hold of malt. And no, germinating, drying, and roasting you own barley seed is not an option, at least not for the ones of us that don't have their own farm. No it has to be something more inconspicuous, something that's already available as something else. Plain sugar? Would work as far as the alcohol is concerned but the final product certainly would not be beer. Rather, it would be the stuff moonshine is made from, hardly drinkable without distillation.
So - what then? Maybe - bread? It's mostly wheat hence similar enough to barley, it least on the outside. And maybe I could cook the bread first, to possibly mirror some of the effects of roasting, and at the same time release the starches and sugars out of the bread much like the cooking of roasted barley does? At the least, it did not sound totally outlandish. Was it actually feasible, and would it produce something even remotely recognizable as beer? Well, there is one sure way to find out ---
So from my last trip to the grocery store I returned with the following items: Three loaves of the cheapest bread I could find. I sure was not sacrificing my own bread for that type of experiment. And after all, even though that cheap store stuff is barely edible it may just prove useful for something at last. In addition: Four pounds of table sugar. I wasn't going to use it all but surely it would be OK to supplement my brew a little bit, or actually a little more because during times of prohibition, you can't put the standards too high.
Back home I first roasted the bread some in the oven, then threw it all into my brew pot, added two gallons of water, 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, then brought the mixture to a boil. That's when I remembered I needed some to simulate hops for bitterness, and after some quick hesitation went outside and cut some twigs from the next juniper tree. Juniper berries have bitterness to them and so do young pine needles. Just to make sure I ripped off and chewed a little piece: It was bitter alright and so for now, I had my hops.
I brought my mixture to a boil and when I returned to my kettle some twenty minutes later I discovered the first problem with my theory: The bread has acted much like oatmeal- so instead the water absorbing the goodness out of the bread the bread had absorbed all the water and left me with something reminiscent of a giant bucket of wallpaper glue. No good! I spent the next 1 1/2 hours to squeeze and rinse as much liquid out of that slime as I could to salvage my operation, and another 1/2 hour after that the clean my kitchen that I had totally messed up in the process. Regardless if how things would go from here, I already had figured it was not the way to go.
Having put in that much effort already I decided to press on, learn at least from what remained to be learned from that experiment. From all the squeezing and rinsing I had gotten some two gallons of thick, sweet,milky liquid which I duly transferred into my carboy. I added another gallon of fresh water to make it a total of three gallons, which was the amount I had decided beforehand to commit myself to. For yeast? Well, I had anticipated this experiment and kept the sludge from my last batch of real beer. I used about a cup of that.
The concoction started to get alive after about four hours and has been active for the last almost two days. Normal beer produces a regular bubbling, about one "blrrp" in regular intervals every ten seconds when most active, or every minute when fermentation is almost done. This mixture makes "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp", almost blowing the water out of my air lock. Sometimes it will hesitiate, or just make a "blrrp", only to follow this up with yet another "blrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp". Very strange.
The "wort" itself is also somewhat "unusual". It never lost its milkiness so the liquid appears a yellowish white. There is noticeable sludge buildup at the bottom of the carboy, at this point probably more from settling bread particles than from spent yeast. There is foam floating on top, white mostly but also with some green to it- I figure that would be the juniper.
Definitely fascinating, almost like with a mind of its own. Kind of scary looking, too. And of course, I am just watching right now, waiting for fermentation to come to a conclusion. After that? Second fermentation? Bottling? I think I would at least want to sample some of it before committing myself to any extra work. Or better still, find someone else to sample it for me just in case it makes people go blind. Thinking of it, I believe I know just the perfect candidate for that ---
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