Failure

As mentioned in the B&B post, I was recently at the Pasadena farmer's market. In addition to those Kirby cucumbers I picked up I also got some beets to pickle. I picked a recipe with clove and allspice as the main spices along with brown sugar and regular sugar dissolved in cider vinegar and water. Everything was going well and after 30 minutes in a boiling water bath I pulled the 2 pint jars I made. However, I noticed that the water was tinted red. This was not good. It meant that either that jars cracked or the lids were not on tight enough and leaked. Either way I couldn't use these since the vinegar could have gotten out or been diluted. BUT, now I know how tight I have to make the lids before processing. I'll try the beets again soon!

Bread & Butter Pickles Four Ways

It's about time that this blog had some bona fide pickles on it and here they are: bread & butter pickles. We went to the Pasadena farmer's market on Saturday since it was a beautiful day out. Since I hadn't seen an pickling cucumbers at the grocery store recently I decided to have a look at the market this Saturday. One of the stalls had a great selection of produce including some strawberries that were subsequently made into jam. They also had Kirby cucumbers and I picked up 3 lbs. Side note: do not bring your stroller with your child that is clearly to old for it to the marker...you block the entire pathway. Anyway, I pulled the base for this recipe from the "Joy of Pickling" and then added a few twists of my own. I decided that I'd make four different types of bread & butter pickles: regular, red pepper flake spiced, chile de arbol (left whole), and sriracha (or, rooster sauce).

Basic ingredients:

-Kirby cucumbers

-Mustard seeds

-Celery seeds

-Tumeric

-Either: red pepper flakes, chile de arbol (whole), or sriracha

-Sugar

-Salt

-Cider vinegar

I began by slicing the cucumbers into relatively chunky slices, tossed them with salt, and let them sit for ~4 hours with ice on top.

While the canner heated up, I brought the vinegar, water, sugar, and tumeric to a boil and poured it over the cucumbers packed into pint size mason jars. These were then processed for 30 minutes at 180-185 degrees, which is a low temperature pasteurization method (point of that is too keep the cucumber slices crisp, which is harder to do when they are processed at a boil). The cans sealed correctly since the tops no longer pop back up when pushed down These will sit for a month before eating so that they develop the correct flavoring.

Rich Red Ale Part IV: Bottled

Well, the beer was finally done fermenting in the primary and secondary fermenters so it was time to bottle it. Before bottling I mixed in priming sugar, which is simply to give the surviving yeast a boost to carbonate the beer once it is sealed in bottle. It still looks and smells like beer so let's hope it turns out well in the 4 weeks remaining!

Also, picked up some Kirby cucumbers and beets at the Pasadena farmer's market today so look for future posts on Bread and Butter pickles and pickled beets!

Preserved Meyer Lemons Two Ways

I first heard about preserved lemons from my brother, Ben, who was raving about how easy it was to make them and how delicious they were in salads. Well, I ignored that for awhile (who knows why) until I started to see Meyer lemons at the market and then I could resist no longer.

Essentially, preserved lemons are made by marinating lemons in their own juice and adding salt then letting them sit for about a month. Afterwards you may use the rind in various dishes. Here, I've done them two ways: preserved in a herb salt water brine and also with only salt and lemon juice. The one preserved in a salt brine also had a cinnamon stick, star anise, cloves, peppercorns, and a bay leaf added. I made two jars preserved with only the salt and lemon juice adding a bay leaf and cinnamon stick to one of them. Now to wait 4 weeks until they are ready...

Rich Red Ale Part III: Transferring the beer

Well, week one of the fermentation process is already done so it was time to transfer the beer to the secondary fermenter. This will allow the beer to be clearer when bottling and filter out the dead yeast cells allowing live ones to continue fermenting. Upon opening the lid I was pleasantly greeted by a strong beer aroma and noticeable foam, which can mean only one thing. It's working! However, there were some specks on the surface that could have been left over wort or yeast...or contamination. I have to ask a few homebrewing experts to find out, but I think it's fine.

Rich Red Ale Part II: Brew Day

After getting all the ingredients together and finding 3 hours to devote to paying attention to a pot...I decided to brew! While I'm not going to go into all the chemistry and biology that is occurring step by step (unless you want to drop a question into the comments about it) I will summarize the process.

First I began by steeping the specialty grains I mentioned in the previous post in water held around 160 degrees. While you can extract sugars from these, this time I only wanted to get their flavor out.

After steeping the grains (much like tea) I brought the mixture up to a boil and threw in the light malt extract (for the yeast to feed on later) and let it dissolve. After doing this I put in the first hop bag (called the bittering hops). Let that boil for 50 minutes. Put in the second hop bag (called the flavor hops) and let that boil for 10 minutes. Then I took the pot off the heat and added the third hop bag (called the aroma hops).

After adding the hops the pot was put in the sink, surrounded by cold water, to cool down the wort to 70-80 degrees so that when I pitched (fancy brew talk for adding) the yeast they all wouldn't die. Once the wort had reached around 70-80 degrees I poured it into my primary fermenter and added the wet Scottish yeast and sealed it!

This will ferment in the primary fermenter for 1 week and then will be transfered to the secondary fermenter. This allows me to clear the dead yeast from the primary fermentation giving me a clearer beer. Hopefully I sanitized everything correctly and I won't get any wild yeast growing in my beer!

Oh, yeah, making beer in a small apartment kitchen can get a bit cramped and tricky...

Rich Red Ale Part I

Brewing your own beer is one of those things that is often though to be confusing and hard, but in reality is extremely simple and rewarding. All it takes is a little patience and a small investment. There isn't a much more rewarding thing than cracking out a beer that you brewed and taking a sip and finding out that not only did it work, but it actually tasted good! Of course, there is the flipside where you open up either your fermentor or bottle after 2-6 weeks only to find out it is contaminated and ruined. But that shouldn't happen if you take a few precautions!

I've brewed one beer before this one that was an extract beer, which is the simplest you can make. This recipe, the Rich Red Ale, will build upon that by steeping various grains to add more flavor. Malt? Grain? What is he talking about?

Malt: Without getting to much into it malting grain allowing you to get a combination of enzymes and starch from grains that, when heated, will activate the enzymes turning the starch into fermentable sugars for the yeast to live on. A lot of recipes called for malt extract (including this one) which is the sugars already converted from starch by the enzymes.

Grain: Malt comes from grain, but if you add grain (without malting it) directly to your brew then you're providing the yeast with unfermentable sugars that will simply add flavor to your beer rather than be converted into alcohol like the malt extract discussed above.

Hops: Hops are basically flowers. They provide the beer with a ton of different flavors depending on the types and how much you use, along with preserving the beer. They contain two different types of acids that act as antibiotics to keep out bacteria (and preserve the yeast) along with adding bitterness and a variety of flavors. These are typically added during the boiling process of brewing (what one is making here is called "wort"). If hops are added after the wort is taken off heat or while the beer is actually fermenting then they are called aroma hops and are typically just adding oils for flavor.

Yeast: These are what makes wort into beer. They take the fermentable sugars and metabolize them into Co2 and alcohol. What type of yeast you use will change the flavor profile of your beer. You can use dry yeast or wet yeast. I think most brewers prefer wet yeast since it gives you more versatility.

Water: Relatively obvious, but what you add all of the above to is water. Simple enough.

The ingredients for my Rich Red Ale includes:

-Light dry malt extract

-Belgian Weyermann Melanoidin malt, Belgian Caravienne, and British Crystal Malt (these are the grains mentioned above....not extract so they won't be fermented and will impart flavor)

-Cascade hops

-Kent Golding hops

-Priming Sugar

-Wyeast Scottish Yeast (wet yeast)

I'll make another post about the process of actually turning this into beer later on!

For more information and and the actually recipes I'm using click here.

Mixed Pickling Spice

Some pickling recipes will call for the addition of mixed pickling spice along with the other spices. While grocery stores and even specialty spice shops sell pre-made blends, I think it is better to make it yourself so that you can customize it and use really, really fresh spices. My mix consisted of:

4" broken cinnamon stick, 6 Turkish bay leaves torn, 6 dried chile de arbol torn, 1/4 tablespoon sichuan peppercorns and 3/4 tablespoon tellicherry peppercorns, 1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds, 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, 2 teaspoons allspice berries, 1 teaspoon whole cloves, 2 teaspoons coriander seeds, 1/2 teaspoon blade mace, 1/2 teaspoon cassia buds, and 1 tablespoon dill seeds.

One can add spices to this general mix as you please when actually canning the pickles or you could use only the mix pickling spice. Either one...depends on your tastes (and what you have around the pantry, of course)!

Mixed Quick Pickle

Yesterday I did a really small batch of quick pickled Persian cucumbers and they were so good I thought (and Jessica thought), why not make more? Today at Whole Foods there were these wonderful Rainbow carrots that I decided to get.

I also picked up some pickling cucumbers and fennel since I've never quick pickled fennel before. Looks good...hopefully it'll taste good!

*Update: Tastes great! Fennel did really well and didn't spread its flavor to everything else, which was good. The Rainbow carrots did dye the liquid pink though...

Quick Pickled Cucumber

Sometimes you just can't wait the few days or weeks that it takes for a cucumber to "mature" in flavor or ferment itself into deliciousness. That is why quick pickles are so great and simple to make! This recipe was adapted from the "Momofuku" cookbook's vinegar pickles.

Ingredients:

1 cup water

1/2 cup rice wine vinegar (plus or minus a tablespoon or two to taste)

4 tablespoons of sugar (more if you like it sweeter)

2 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

Vegetable of choice (I did it with a Persian cucumber we had in the fridge)

I like to heat all the ingredients minus the vegetable(s) on the stove until the salt and sugar dissolve, but today I just added hot water from a kettle to all the other ingredients (Momofuku calls for hot tap water, but I like my method better). Then you just pour over the vegetable(s). These were eaten right away, but they get even better in the fridge after each day and keep for about a week. You could use cucumbers, cauliflower, beets, carrots, daikon, fennel, ect. Momofuku even suggests cherries or watermelon/cantaloupe/watermelon rind!