Harvest Time 2014, Part 1

We were very late to pick our apples this year, and so haven't got nearly as much to show for our efforts as we have in years past, but we can chalk up at least one small victory - homemade hard cider.

Nothing warms a homebrew nerd's heart quite like the steady bloop-blooping of the airlock on a carboy of fresh-juiced cider. Some of this is destined to become apple cider vinegar, but at least a few pints will be enjoyed in it's hard form.

I also just harvested some of my breadseed poppies for use in baked goods and as an added exfoliant to our homemade goats milk soaps. This year I grew Elka White Seeded Poppies from Adaptive Seeds in Sweet Home, Oregon. Provided that I'd managed my garden better and not left it to it's own devices this Spring & Summer, I have no doubt that I'd have had a much bigger harvest. Even still, homegrown poppy seeds in any amount is pretty rad in my book.

I still have a lot of a lot of other things to harvest and sock away by one means or another. I've been a lactofermenting fiend this Summer! I already have sour pickles, dilly beans, sauerkraut and fermented ginger carrots done and in the fridge, but the cukes keep rolling in and the 'maters and tomatillos... I've yet to deal with those at all so far.

Harvest Time parts 2, 3, 705, etc., will follow in due course. We're raising half a dozen Muscovy ducks for the freezer this year, with a tentative harvest date of October 1st. Apparently slaughtering ducks is a whole different ballgame from harvesting chickens and turkeys, so I have a lot of research and prep to do before ducky d-day. We also may be harvesting one of this past Spring's wethers for the freezer. It depends, in part on whether or not they sell when the doelings move on.

There is certainly no shortage of things to do in the coming weeks and months, and having been otherwise occupied during the Spring and Summer, I look forward to doing (most of) them.

It's good to be back! :)

How to: Homemade Vinegar

Making homemade apple cider vinegar is as easy as…well, pie. Sure, it takes a little longer, but it also lasts a lot longer than that pie would have anyhow, and it doesn’t go to your hips. ;)


A jug if apple wine vinegar in process. The only difference between this and apple cider vinegar is the yeast that I used to initially ferment the apple juice into alcohol.

Although this process is easy-peasy, there is a term that you’ll see here that you might not be familiar with - “the mother” (or scoby, mushroom). This refers to the jellyfish-looking blob that resides in a “live” vinegar. It is in fact a cluster of cellulose and acetobacter bacteria, which love to eat the alcohol in your hard cider, and in return, produce acetic acid which gives vinegar its signature tang. The mother is your friend, and if you give her what she needs, you can keep a mother culture going indefinitely.
The quick and easy method for making your own Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV)-

You will need-
1 clean quart jar
3 cups hard apple cider
1 bottle of store-bought organic ACV with the “mother” (Bragg is the brand I use)
1 rubber band
8x8 piece of cheesecloth or muslin (folded in half and half again to be 4x4)
Patience

Clean and rinse your quart jar very thoroughly. Remember we’re setting up an environment for bacterial organisms to thrive in, but only the ones we want, so be sure to wash any lurking bad guys out of there first.

Pour your hard cider into the jar. Next, add ½ cup of the store bought ACV, including as much of the mother as possible.

Place your cheesecloth across the top of the jar and rubber band it into place, then store it in a dark, warm place. (Mine is in the back of the cupboard above my stove.)
Forget about it for at least 6 weeks.

I fish mine out of the cupboard and start “sniff” testing it after 6-8 weeks. The longer you let it go, the better, so long as your vinegar-in-progress doesn’t show any signs of being invaded by contaminants. If, upon checking in, you see no signs of the mother, re-inoculate your cider with still more of the store bought ACV and give it some more time. Usually, once the mother is well established, it is pretty easy to keep “her” happy with fresh infusions of alcohol. (On this method of placating mom, the mother and I are in hearty agreement.)

A taste test will let you know without a doubt whether or not your vinegar is done. For the seriously scientific, you can also purchase an acid testing kit (sold at wine & homebrew stores) to verify acidity. Most commercial food vinegars are diluted to about 5% acidity. My vinegar was closer to 6% and while still being totally safe to use, oh, what an eye-watering difference that 1% makes!

When your vinegar is done to your liking, strain the finished product (no more that ¾ of the jar’s worth) into yet another clean jar or bottle with a firm sealing lid. This is your finished product. Now, go back to your mother jar, and fill ‘er up again with your alcoholic spirit of choice, put the cheesecloth covering on and send her back to her dark and cozy hiding place for another couple of months. The rate of conversion from alcohol to vinegar is directly proportionate to the surface area of the mother, so age your cider-come-vinegar in the largest diameter vessel you can reasonably manage for a faster turnaround time.



A view of the mother in my rhubarb wine vinegar.

The taste of your homemade vinegar depends a lot on the taste and quality of the cider/wine/beer that you start with, so if you want to guarantee a great vinegar, splurge a little on a bottle of your favorite cider or wine. Or, if waste not, want not is more your speed, use the collected dregs from various bottles of wine or cider and give them a go with the mother. Why not?

We make our own wine, cider & beer here on our little farm, so we always have a ready supply for my vinegar experiments. I have made ACV and rhubarb wine vinegar with our homemade wine & cider. I’m looking forward to “vinegarizing” some dandelion and rosehip wines soon, and want also give malt vinegar a try with my husband’s home brewed stout, if I can ever manage to sneak a little away.

Additional tips –

*Use a glass or lead-free ceramic vessel for aging and storing your vinegar. Plastics can etch and harbor bacteria or leach funky flavors into your vinegar.

*I use a plastic screw-top lid on my finished vinegar, so as not to have corroded metal-flavored vinegar.

*A clean, folded kitchen towel or paper towel can be used in place of the muslin/cheesecloth, as long as air is able to pass back and forth through the cloth while your vinegar is converting. Mother needs to breathe!

Booze News, Winter 2011

As with many things, the passing of time since my last wine/beer post had escaped my notice, until today. I'd like to catch everybody up on what's brewing in the Hollow, so here is the rundown of what we've got working right now -

*2 Gallons of Rhubarb Wine (everyone's favorite) started on 10/31/10 -


Egads! The flash really highlights the lees. Time to rack these puppies!

*1 Gallon of Rose Hip Wine, started 2/13/10 -


I think we'll do one more racking, then bottle this, as it it nearing it's first birthday. ;)

*3 Gallons of Fuji Apple cider, started on 11/21/10 -


We had to juice something like 70 pounds of apples to get 3 gallons of juice. I'm not even kidding. We're calling this batch "my" batch, because I asserted dominion over it when I decided to use organic maple syrup for the sugar instead of regular ol' sugar. We've had small samples now and again, and I feel like this is turning out to be our best batch of cider so far.

*1 Gallon of Spiced Gala Apple cider, started on 11/21/10 -



This too was part of apple-a-thon twenty-ten. 20-25lbs of apples were required to make this gallon of cider. The apples were grown by my husband's friend, and were so beautiful that it was almost a shame to juice them! Bill added a few tablespoons of Trader Joe's mulling spices to this batch, just to try it. We haven't tasted this one yet, but it smells good!

*5 Gallons of Pilsner, dubbed "The Billsner", started on 10/30/10
No pictures for you! Actually, this has already been bottled and is now carbonating, so there's really not much to see.

*5 Gallons of "Bill's Best Bitter" (beer), started on 11/27/10 -
Again, no pictures. You didn't really expect beer to just hang around here, waiting for it's picture to be taken, did you? Actually Bill has bottled this Bitter and very generously gifted much of it to his friends and set the rest of it aside to finish carbonating.

The dandelion wine has been "sampled" here and there, and is probably our best wine yet in terms of body, flavor, the whole nine yards. Our grape wine is getting better with age too. It's not yet anything to write home about, but it's definitely a drinkable rosé for the unfussy palate.

For those of you interested in the recipes used to make these wines and beers - I intend to post them. I only hesitate because it takes a good year (sometimes more) from the time I start one of these batches until I can taste them properly and report on their quality. I don't want to pass on a bum recipe, and I'm always tweaking, so when I finally write the recipe up here, I'll include all of my hacks and suggestions and an honest review of whether or not any given brew is worth the trouble.

In the mean time, we'll continue juicing, brewing and bottling like fiends. Tipsy, cheerful fiends. Sláinte!

It's the Water - Keepin' it Real, Oly-style

Even if you've never been to, never heard of my home town of Olympia, odds are you've still heard of our beer.



Olympia Beer has always been considered a working-man's type of beer. A simple, refreshing lager, who's biggest selling point, as well as it's slogan was "the water". The brewery was located right next to the Deschutes river, and essentially right on top of one of our city's many artesian springs, thus providing multiple sources of naturally ultra-pure water for brewing. Leopold Schmidt, the founder of the Olympia brewery, recognized that starting with pure, crystal-clear artesian water was the key to making a superior beer. Around here, it seems that people agreed. Olympia beer was once carried by nearly every tavern and pub in the Pacific Northwest and was the preferred beer for my Grandpa's generation. Alas, long story short, the Schmidt family sold the brewery, which eventually ended up being owned by Miller (who was at that time partly owned by the evil Philip Morris Company), who rather quickly after purchasing the plant, decided that it wasn't profitable enough and summarily shuttered the brewery for good, choosing instead to brew Olympia beer out of it's Irwindale, California plant.

If you're still with me after this seemingly random crash course in the ups and downs of our local beer, hang in there, I'm getting to my point. ;)

The basis, the inspiration and the slogan for Olympia beer has always been "It's the Water", and once upon a time it was. Now the artesian wells that used to supply and endless flow of naturally perfect water sit unused, their precious water re-routed to storm drains and sewage pipes, an utter waste. Meanwhile, Miller is making our city's beer with God knows what kind of municipal, probably chlorinated, fluoridated water that they simply filter the bejeezus out of. It's not the same.

And so after paragraphs of rambling and bitching, I finally arrive at my point. I will not go gently into that good night. I am an Olympia girl, born and raised and a tree-hugging granola to boot. There still exist just a handful of the once abundant artesian spring wells around town, the best known of which is in a downtown parking lot, of all places, flowing quite unglamourously out of crooked pipe, burbling 24/7 for anyone who wants a cool drink. And many do! People bring empty milk jugs and giant Culligan water bottles down to the Diamond Lot to fill with the one-of-a-kind water. Local restaurants boast about serving the artesian water. It's reputation is such that it is a selling point for them.

So, when Bill and I held our mini brew-fest this past weekend, it was a no-brainer that we would use the artesian water as the basis for our wine and beer. It may not be fancy, but the difference in taste - especially when compared with our well water - is obvious. The result is a better, purer-tasting brew, with the fringe benefit of stickin' it to the man. Awww yeahhh....

And so it is with my stubborn, hippy chick, fight-the-power attitude that a new, finnicky generation of home brewers like us insist on sticking by the old ways for the sake of (barring any brewing mishaps) a superior brew. I think you'll agree that not only is it the water that makes all the difference, but the passion for the craft.

If you ever find yourself in our soggy little neck of the woods, stop by and have a pint of Bill's Pilsner (tentatively named "The Billsner") or a glass of my rhubarb wine and tell me if you can taste the difference. ;)

Appliciousness

My apples are ripe! My apples are ripe! At least as far as I can tell, they are.

Besides hardness, how does one determine the ripeness of an apple? I figure that since they are essentially leaping off of one of my trees, that at least that tree must be ready to go. And so I picked a few today, 5 pounds worth, which didn't even make a dent in that side of that tree. I'm excited for this harvest. This quantity of apples is a wonderful gift for many reasons. They will become applesauce, fruit leather, snacks for the bunnies, and more. But I have to admit that the one apple incarnation that stands head and shoulders above the rest is Bill's hard cider. Some have described Bill's cider as strong. Some have gone so far as to call it hallucinogenic. It packs a punch.

So as soon as we acquire either a steam juicer or a fruit press, we'll have ourselves a little harvest-fest and crank through some apples. And a few months after that - hopefully by Christmas - we'll be knocking back some Boggy Hollow cider. :)

I've got a bucket, got a bucket full of sunshine

Fresh off of jam-a-thon '10, I find myself with still more apricots to use up. Cakes? Fruit roll ups? Pies? Nahhh... How 'bout a little something for the grown ups instead? I'm making apricot schnapps. :)

Homemade Apricot Schnapps:

- 3 lbs cleaned, pitted apricots
- 1 cup sugar (adjust more or less to your liking)
- 1.75 liters vodka (Cheap is fine, the sugar will smooth out the rough edges.)
- 6 apricot pits (kernels) - OPTIONAL*
- Fermentation vessel w/ a lid (a food grade plastic bucket, large glass jar or stoneware crock)

Clean, pit and slice or dice your apricots. Throw them into your clean jar or bucket.



Sprinkle sugar over the apricots and let them rest for 20 minutes or so to release their juices.



Pour vodka over the top of it all.




Add pits, if using. Stir well. Cover and allow to steep in a dark place for at least 3 months. Strain through a cheesecloth or coffee filter and bottle.

*Apricot pits, or kernels as they are more often known, are a key ingredient in making Amaretto liqueur and amaretti cookies and have a wonderful almond flavor. However, they also contain trace amounts of cyanide, so use sparingly and at your own risk. ;)

I documented the whole process of making the schnapps, then, like an idiot, forgot to download the photos before my husband took our camera with him on a week-long fishing trip. D'oh! So I'll eventually update this post with pictures, but for now you'll just have to take my words for it on how lovely this brew looks. As for the smell - at the moment, I can only smell the nose-searing vodka. But, as the cots steep and break down, we should have some golden loveliness, ready to drink by the holidays.

Update - 9/8/10 - Now with pictures! :)

Sunshine Wine

The dandelion wine is in progress, at last, at last! Bill and I moved it from the primary into a 3-gallon carboy last night. I normally taste the wine at this stage, but since I'm in the middle of the head cold from hell and can't smell or taste anything, I didn't bother. Bill, on the other hand, did, and said that it tastes similar to the rose hip wine - light, floral, sweet and a bit fruity. It is still fermenting like crazy, so the sweetness should lessen substantially over the next few weeks. Hopefully my cold will do the same so that I can finally taste this much-anticipated brew.


The "must" on day 5, just before racking.


And into the jug it goes. :)

Once I've sorted this wine out and can vouch for the recipe, I'll write it up here for anyone who might be interested in giving it a go. By the way - if you think you'll be making this wine, get your flowers now while the getting is good. You can always freeze (or probably even dehydrate) the petals for later use. The next wine up for us will be either be rhubarb or hawthorn blossom, depending on which of the two I can lay my hands on sufficient quantities of first.

By the way - does anyone know of a way to send wine through the mail? I'd love to offer some in a giveaway one of these days.

Hippy Wine

After much dawdling, I finally got around to starting my first gallon of rose hip wine today. I've actually had these rose hips in the freezer for a while, being that I was 4 ounces shy of the amount required for the recipe that I wanted to use. Not able to ever lay my hands on more, I decided to make up the 4 ounce difference with the rose hip's botanical cousin, an apple.



I sliced, crushed, sugared and added water to these lovely hips (and half a yellow delicious apple) and set them to steep in the primary fermenter for 24 hours. Tomorrow I'll pitch the yeast and in a few days we'll see what we see. If this batch works out, I'll post the recipe here along with my fudges and observations.

On a related note, the hubby is starting another batch of beer today as well - a Czech/German Pilsner, he tells me, as if I'd have any idea at all what that meant. I figure that between our parallel booze brewing efforts, we will have a few lovely intoxicants to imbibe in the months and years to come.

Welcome Home (Yeastitarium)

Just back from our all too brief, and nearly fruitless expedition to the coast to dig clams, the hubby and I find ourselves scrambling to catch up on all of those little projects and chores which have fallen by the wayside during the holidays. Always first on Billy's list, his beer.

Here we have a montage of Bill's brewing efforts to date, minus the ill-fated brown ale.

L to R - 5 gallons "Amber Honey Lager", 1 gallon "Imperial Stout", 1 gallon "Blueberry Honey Ale"

Bill is bottling all 5 gallons of the Amber Honey Lager tonight. Good thing we've been saving our beer bottles and mooching would-be recycled glass vessels from our friends too, because this batch will yield approximately 4 cases of beer, aka 48 bottles of bubbly happiness.

Besides the beerfest, we've also got a few wines still going. The 5 gallons of grape wine (we're not sure of the variety, but are assuming it's something in the vein of "Concord") made from our own homegrown grapes, is about 3 months old now. Taste-wise, it is still in the "hooch" phase, as in, technically alcoholic, but not exactly pleasant to drink. From what I've read about concord grape wine, it takes at least a year to be decent, and is actually quite respectable by two years old. We'll see...

We've also got one gallon of blackberry wine working and whoa nelly is that stuff strong! Like strip the paint off your walls strong. I'm not sure if that one is going to ever be potable or if it's headed toward vinegar or maybe cooking wine.

We bottled the rhubarb and cherry wines a few months back and have been drinking them and sharing them with friends. They are pretty darn good, in my biased and inexpert opinion, especially the rhubarb, which is essentially a dessert wine. We'll be sure to make more of that next year, since we have a HUGE rhubarb plant that provides us with more fruit than we've ever known what to do with.

Besides all of the alcohol, we have the ever-present Amish bread starter on the counter, fermenting away. I popped the lid off this afternoon to give it a stir and accidentally inhaled a bit of the escaping gasses. My head swam! And I feed this stuff to my kids?

The end result of this ferment-a-thon (besides the smell of hops, malt & yeast snaking their way through the main floor of our house) is tasty organic wines & beers that cost just pennies per serving and come in wild and crazy flavors that you probably couldn't find anywhere else. We have really enjoyed this home brewing experiment and look forward to spring and summer, and turning all of the fruits & flowers that we can lay our hands on into still more tasty beverages. We're thinking of attempting to add mead or melomel to our repertoire next. YUM.