On the quest for hard cider...

I ran across a few postings and videos about making hard cider at home. It ranged anywhere from letting your apple juice ferment on its own to full on homebrewing. Although I do enjoy homebrewing beer I wasn't too keen on launching a full scale operation for hard cider. To be honest, I don't think I've even tried REAL hard cider from a brewery. So naturally the easiest recipes were appealing to me. These simply involved taking some sort of apple juice (with no preservatives), adding yeast, and letting it ferment for a week or two depending on the desired alcohol content. A week of fermentation will probably net ~3% alcohol. This is very similar to my ginger beer and fermented pomegranate juice I posted on, but with a longer fermentation time to add alcohol.

Now that I decided upon this simple plan I had to procure the ingredients. The Pasadena farmer's market has a vendor that sells non-pasteurized juices, which includes apple juice. The real fresh stuff. Yummy, and I don't even like apple juice all that much! Now that I had found my juice I needed to get my yeast. I had a couple of options. Like my ginger beer I probably could have used store bought active dry yeast, but I wanted to use something a little more high class. My next option was to make an apple bug by adding an organic apple peal to apple juice and a little sugar then letting the natural yeast on the peel multiply. I'd have let the yeast to take over until it got to the point that I could see bubbles rising and I really didn't feel like waiting. Finally, I could use brewers yeast that is specially made for cider. Me being me this of course sounded like the best bet and I could find it at the local brew shop.

The recipe I found called for using the apple bug so I had to figure out how much of my brewers yeast to add since it's much more concentrated. Ironically, this is almost EXACTLY what I have to do in lab often except I don't have an sophisticated tools to help me out so I had to guesstimate how much to add. I somehow came up with a tablespoon. Looking back on it this was probably a huge mistake. And by probably I mean definitely. Microorganism cultures get denser the more organism you have in it. This is often how we calculate growth phases and how much of a culture to add to something else via optical density readings. The brewers yeast was so dense that you can't see threw it at all. That's A LOT of yeast. But, I was afraid I wouldn't get any fermentation if I didn't add enough, which is silly because even if I added the tiniest amount I'd get fermentation it would just take forever. So I ended up adding ~1.5 tablespoons total to the 1 gallon of apple juice.

50 billion yeast cells should have been a hint...

While at the brew shop I also picked up a neat 1 gallon glass jug and an airlock to fit them so I could have something to ferment my cider in. I left it out to ferment for a week and then bottled it in some 8 oz. plastic water bottles. These were left out until I could not longer push the bottle in (i.e. "charged" with gas) and subsequently went into the fridge for 24 hours. The point of charging the bottles is so that you have a more carbonated drink. The whole week it's been fermenting the airlock has let gas escape so it doesn't build up and inhibit fermentation/blow up your fermentor.

I was really excited to taste this. I really didn't know what I expected since I had never had hard cider before, but, like a lot of things, I think I liked the idea of it. Immediately after opening it I could tell something was off. What did it taste like? Well, probably the best description I could give is bad, yeasty apple flavored champagne. It over fermented. That 1.5 tablespoons of yeast I added was too much.

After this botched hard cider experiment I realized what I actually wanted was fizzy apple juice so I set out to try and attempt that before I tackled hard cider again. The difference here is that I'd ferment in plastic bottles just enough to charge them and then stick them in the fridge instead of leaving it out for a week. This is what I did with my ginger beer and that worked out great. It yields a fizzy product from the short 1-3 day fermentation time with a negligible amount of alcohol. I also decided to try the apple bug route since it seemed harder to mess up and more natural. I bought apple juice from the store (didn't want to experiment on the good stuff) and added 1/2 teaspoon of my apple bug to the 1/2 gallon of apple juice and let it ferment until the bottle was charged, which took ~3 days. It turned out great! Very fizzy. It didn't taste amazing but that's because the quality of the juice wasn't great to begin with so I'll have to try it again with the fresh stuff.

Apple Bug Makings

Now that I have an apple bug and know how much to add maybe another shot at hard cider is in the near future.

Brined Olives

Ever since last year when I learned that curing your own olives is very easy I've wanted to get my hands on some fresh ones. Unfortunately, the olive season is mid-October and can last anywhere from one week to three months depending on the weather so I couldn't get any online in time. However, I was on the look out for them this year at the Farmers Market or, if I couldn't find them there, online. Luckily I found some small-medium green olives (no idea what kind) in Pasadena and bought ~2 pounds. One other good thing about olives are they are cheap! Only $1.50 a pound at the marker or I think 10 pounds online is around $15.

Why cure the olives and not just eat them fresh? Have you ever tried a fresh olive? I certainly haven't (though I was almost tempted when making these...)! I've been warned that they are quite bitter and disgusting thanks to some phenols (an acid) and a carbohydrate called oleuropein. Although there are different methods of curing they share the common goal of removing this molecule from the olive to make it palatable. There are a few ways of curing including a progressive water soak where the olives are opened up somehow either by smashing or a small knife slit. This length of curing only takes about a month, which is fast for olive curing. Or, you could try chemically removing the bitterness with food grade lye. This method only takes a week.

Oh, ok. Cool! Wait...there must be a downside to this method if its so short and not used often at home. Not really...lye is just SODIUM HYDROXIDE, a highly corrosive substance capable of causing chemical burns and corroding GLASS! I don't care if it's food grade, used in small enough concentration, and is USDA safe. I'm not messing around with it.

Now, the third way is to brine the olives in a water, salt, and vinegar solution allowing them to ferment. This method is beyond easy. You simply take the olives, wash, pick out ones with obvious blemishes, add brine, and let sit. It simply involves checking on them once in awhile to make sure the brine isn't gross or murky and, if so, just replace it. Again, if it's so easy what's the downside?

It takes anywhere from 4-8 months.

Hmmm.

Well, I don't want to break my olives open...so water curing is out. I don't necessarily want a chemical burn in my esophagus...so lye curing it out. And brining is by far the easiest. Well, brining it is! I followed a recipe from the "Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook" blog that involves brining the olives in a solution of 1/4 kosher salt to 4 cups water, plus 1/2 vinegar (I used white wine vinegar). Around the new year I can begin adding spices like chiles, garlic, bay lay, ect. If you add the spices too early in the process they become over powering.

Hopefully, come June, they will be cured and not bitter. If so, 10 lbs of olives curing in a giant vat next year here I come! If not, well, at least it was really easy and cheap. 

Napa Cabbage Kimchi

I found out while looking for kimchi recipes that everyone has their own variation. Some have sugar. Others call adding sugar a sin. Some ferment for a few days outside the fridge, others buried in the ground for months, others begin in the fridge. Soon I was overwhelmed by the variations in recipes I had been finding and decided to settle with the Momofuku cookbook's version since it was one of the most simple and I've actually tried the end result.

Kimchi is a fermented pickle so the flavor of the end product will vary on how long it is left to ferment. Some recipes call for leaving it at room temperature for 3-7 days then sticking it in the fridge. I even found a refrigerator specifically for making kimchi! Momofuku's recipe calls for starting the fermentation in the fridge, which seemed a bit odd to me since it seems to cold inside to really get a good ferment going, but whatever. I'll take their word for it.

The basic ingredients are cabbage, carrots, green onion, sugar, garlic, ginger, kochukaru (Korean chile powder), fish sauce, and soy sauce. Everything besides the cabbage, carrot, and green onions is pureed and then added to the vegetables and put in the fridge. The book says it's best after 2 weeks of fermentation so that is when I tried it. Two things. First, there was WAY to much brine...I could probably half or fourth the recipe next time. Second, I didn't think the kimchi actually tasted all that great. It was OK, but didn't taste ferment-ey enough for me (and I like fresher rather than funkier kimchi)!

But, both of these problems turned out to be good. I used the kimchi for a kimchi fried rice so the extra brine turned out to be great flavoring and the kimchi worked really well. I think I'd opt for a new recipe next time I do this, but it wasn't terrible for a first try. Or, I'd try leaving it out on the counter for 2-3 days before sticking it in the fridge to find out if the flavor is enhanced at all.

Demi-glace

If the longer something takes to make the better it is then demi-glace is possibly one of the best gastronomic delights. It is a rich, concentrated sauce made from a basic veal stock, which is simmered at the rate of a few bubbles per second for 12-48 hours. This reduced stock is then simmered down even further to about two cups of liquid. I reduced it to one cup since, apparently, I need practice at eyeballing measurements. Oops.

Most people are afraid at the time that this takes to make, but in reality it's really easy and involved minimal effort  such as skimming every so often. I think the worst part was that it filled my entire apartment with veal stock aroma for two days, which if I had a house would be fantastic, but if you're trying to sleep it starts permeating into your dreams. Seriously.

It starts with 10 lbs. of veal bones, carrot, onions, leeks, and a bouquet garni. The bones are roasted until lightly browned at which point the vegetables are then added until the bones are a deep brown. The bouquet garni is made out of parsley stems, fresh thyme, and dried bay leaf all wrapped in the green parts of the leeks (a trick taught at La Ferrandi in Paris). Once the bones and vegetables are ready, and the roasted pan deglazed with water, everything is added to a giant pot and covered with ~8 quarts of water, boiled, and barely simmered for the 12-48 hours. I poured the finished, reduced product into ice cube trays, froze them down, and then individually wrapped them so I could easily through toss them into a pan sauce or soup.












The handy part of making the demi glace is that the bones, along with new vegetables and bouquet garni, can be used for remouillage (meaning re-wetting in French). Essentially, you make a new stock from the used bones yielding a lighter stock than you would if you were using fresh bones. So, out of 10 lbs. of veal bones I got one cup (12 ice cubes) of veal demi-glace and five quarts of light veal stock. Not bad for $30 worth of ingredients. All of this should last 6 months in the freezer, which when you think about it, is not bad for two to three days worth of minimal work!

(This was what my kitchen looked like all night!)

Culture Club 101 Class: Part II

My last post on the Culture Club 101 class was me rambling and trying to lay these various processes out to better understand them. With that in mind I'll focus this one more on the class itself, what we learned, and why you would do it!

Culture Club 101 is a local Pasadena business that has a co-op and a stall at the Farmer's Market. I often pick up my vegetables for this blog at the farmers market they attend and have past by their booth each time usually muttering under my breath something about stupid hippies and their cultured sodas and kombuchas. It wasn't until Jessica visited me recently that I actual stopped at their stall to try and sample some of their products. Jessica, like my brother, is becoming more and more into kombucha while she leaves me behind arguing that it tastes like vinegar. So, being that Culture Club offers kombucha she wanted to stop and try it. We got to try their kombucha and their only cultured soda left, which happened to be apple cider.

Oh man, good kombucha is actually very good.

Slightly vinegary, but not overpowering. However, it has nothing on cultured sodas, which uses a similar process (fermentation), but are just not left as long. The sodas are insanely refreshing, fizzy, and have no sugar since the fruit juice has plenty in it to feed the microogranisms and still taste good! After tasting these I noticed that they offered classes in culturing fruits, sauerkraut, buttermilk, creme fraiche, sourdough, kombucha, and many more that were all focused around fermented goods.

The point of all this fermentation is to a) make the product naturally, b) preserve it, c) add a unique taste, and d) add healthy vitamins/probiotics. I basically think it's a cool process (nerdy) and has a delicious unique taste that I haven't found elsewhere so I decided to take their class on fermented fruits and fruit juices.

We got to make three things including cultured raspberries, spicy preserved mango salsa, and cultured fruit juice sodas.

Cultured raspberries? Uh, what? Sounds weird, but you have to trust me that they are delicious and the same goes for mangoes. It ends up being a bit tangy with a slight effervescence that you can increase or decrease depending on how long you let the fruit ferment for. It's simply 4 cups raspberries, 1/4 cup sugar (for the bacteria and yeast along with flavor), 1/4 cup milk whey (starter culture). This is all mashed together and then put in jars and sprinkled with some lemon juice. As I mentioned in my last post it's important to use organic raspberries since pesticides could inhibit the growth. This is left to sit out for 1-2 days until it's done, which is easy to tell if you use a pop-top lid because you won't be able to depress the lid anymore due to all the carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process. These raspberries and mangoes are fantastic over creme fraiche!















Same process basically goes for the spicy mango salsa except that you don't need any sugar since sugary salsa is, well, gross. There is enough in the fruit to keep everyone happy during fermentation. I haven't tried this one yet so we will see how it goes.


Now, the REAL reason I took the class. The culture fruit sodas. Mmm, so refreshing and fresh fruit juice is always a good thing. These were super simple it turns out and are just a gallon of organic fruit juice with two cups of culture starter whether it be milk whey, a bug, or kombucha. These are also left out to ferment for 1-2 days. Certain fruits will work better than others and just takes some experimentation. We made a pomegranate juice with the milk whey as the starter culture.

All of these sound kinda weird at first (like I said I scoffed at their booth many time), but you really just have to try it to be convinced.

Plus these all have potential benefits! I have to be a bit nerdy, but I'm not going to go in depth here. Both the fruit and the fermentation of the fruit have health benefits. Many fruits have natural antioxidants that protect against oxidative damage, which may occur naturally during aging or is induced by an unhealthy life style (ex. alcoholism). Oxidative damage can lead to protein and DNA damage along with lipid oxidation all of which have harmful effects on cells. Fermentation produces byproducts, such as certain vitamins, which are beneficial to us. The actual bacteria may be beneficial as well in terms of influencing our natural gut flora (i.e. fighting off bad bacteria, ect.).

(This is a picture of your gut epithelial; http://greaterimmunity.com/Files/probiotics.html)

I thought this image summed up nicely and simply why probiotic bacteria may be beneficial. 

Side note: my picture of all the goods we made is hardly fantastic in terms of composition or lighting, but I did need some external lighting as my kitchen bulbs are this weird, dim yellow that you can partially see in the final photo. I do try somewhat to compose and light my pictures (I got lazy like here) and I thought my lighting "set up" was particular funny for this particular photo.

Culture Club 101 Class: Part I

I decided to take this class because I think the hardest thing for me about baking and the realms of fermentation, pickling, and canning is that it's very difficult to come up with my own recipe (canning excluded for safety reasons) and, frankly, their natural sodas are amazing. I feel like I'm reasonably good at creating recipes for savory cooking since, for one, it's much less precise, and two, I've been cooking for longer than I've been trying home ferments. But with the previously mentioned processes it either needs to be precise or there is some background knowledge needed. My trouble with fermented goods that use yeast or bacteria is where do I get those mircoogranisms? How much do I add of the seed culture? How long do I leave it out? None of these questions have clear answers I've learned, but I'm going to attempt to address these questions with what I've learned so far from research and from what I learned in my Culture Club 101 class on fermented fruit and fruit juices.

Natural microogranisms or brewers yeast?

Well, that depends on what you want your finished product to taste like and texture to be. For beer, you're going to be using brewers yeast from well established strains that produce the specific type of style of beer you're shooting for. But, when you deviate from beer and start moving toward cultured sodas, hard ciders, cultured fruits, and other things like this that don't have well established recipes it's to be more of a guessing game and less precise.

You can actually use brewers yeast if you so choose, but natural bacteria are famed for their healthy products of fermentation while the natural yeast will give you carbonation. The bacteria present on the fruit or seeded  from a culture (more on this later) will have probiotics and plenty of healthy vitamins that were not present before since these are products of bacterial fermentation while the yeast are contributing mostly carbon dioxide and a little ethanol. By using brewers yeast you're overwhelming any bacteria that were present and therefore you won't get the healthy byproducts that bacterial fermentation provides.

What does all of this mean? If you want a probiotic/healthy/vitamin rich product the natural microogranism root is the way to go. You'll get a product that is slightly fizzy (the yeast), but also rich in nutrients (the bacteria). If you want a more fizzy beverage with the possibility of heavy alcohol  (or don't want to culture natural microogranisms) you can use brewers yeast. If you let either culture go long enough you'll get something alcoholic, but with brewers yeast the product will be alcoholic enough to get a nice buzz off of it!

Where do I get natural microogranisms from?


First, you could make a "bug". The process basically involves taking fruit or vegetable and chopping it up then covering it with either its own juice or water with sugar added. An example is a ginger bug, which is chopped ginger, water, and sugar left to ferment for a week to culture the natural yeast and bacteria present on the ginger root. The added sugar is simply food for them. Another example is an apple bug, which could be used for a cultured apple cider soda or hard apple cider. An apple bug is simply apple peel covered in apple juice and left to ferment for a week. The natural yeast and bacteria on the apple peel will feed off the sugars in the apple juice. Once these are sufficiently fermented you can add some of the bug to juice you wish to ferment and let them ferment away! One important note is that the ginger or apple must be organic since pesticides will inhibit microbial growth and the juice must have no added chemicals as it will also inhibit growth.

Second, you could use milk whey. This can be obtained from filtering kefir, yogurt, or letting raw milk sit out for a few days until it separates and then straining the liquid out. The liquid (whey) has plenty of friendly bacteria and some yeast, which is sufficient for using as a seed.

Third, kumbucha could be used. Kumbucha is a fermented drink and thus has a ton of microorganisms ready to ferment whatever you add it to. However, kumbucha often has a more sour or vinegary taste from the lactic acid bacteria so this will affect the flavor of whatever you are fermenting.

How much of the seed (natural or brewers yeast) do I add?


I've found this to be a hard question to answer. It basically takes experimentation and some common sense. I wouldn't pitch an entire packet of brewers yeast into a gallon of apple juice since the package says it contains 50 billion cells...that's a bit much. Adding too much seed will basically result in rapid fermentation and exploded bottles and lids if you don't watch it carefully. You also risk your product tasting too much like the seed (either too yeasty or kumbucha-ey, ect.). Adding too little isn't bad since the bacteria and yeast will still replicated, but it will take long to get a fermented product. This part takes a bit of practice.

How long do I leave it out/let it ferment?


Well, this depends on the end product you want. Let's take apple juice for example. If we seed it with one of the above cultures and leave it out for 24-48 hours it will be nicely carbonated and have virtually alcohol. But, what if we were to leave it for a week? It'd get nicely alcoholic...probably ~2% depending on how much yeast is present. Two weeks? You're approaching hard cider territory. Three weeks? You'll end up with a hard cider that is 7-8% ABV.

All of what I've learned from reading and this class is that fermenting is a lot of experimentation and finding out what you want in your final product to taste like (i.e. heavy or light carbonation, alcohol or no alcohol, flavored partially by the seed or not).

Since I've now begun to grasp the theory behind all of this I think it's time for some experimentation. I'm going to use apple cider as my base and try various seeds such as an apple bug, milk whey, and brewers yeast. I'm also then going to leave each out for either 24-48 hours. I'm also going to leave a separate one out for three weeks to make hard cider, but I'm only going to do this with brewers yeast because it'll be more efficient and I don't care about the health benefits of the bacteria from milk whey and the apple bug because the alcohol basically cancels that out.

Part II coming soon...it'll be about the class and have recipes.

Ancho Chile Blackberry Syrup

If you know me you'll know my affinity for Mexican food.

Er, OK, more like obsession.

Being in LA I consider myself blessed  with the multitude of taco trucks to choose from and, usually, a salsa bar to indulge upon. I think my love for this street food partially stems from these variety of salsas and condiments. I love salsas partially because of the heat that they can pack. For as long as I can remember my dad has called me "asbestos mouth" (as well as numerous other, um, charming names), which had to do with  dumping cayenne powder all over my pasta. I really don't know where this was going except for the fact that it leads me to the fact that I like spicy food. And what this means, getting back to my first point, is that I love the unending number of chiles that Mexican food has to offer not only because of their heat, but also because of their flavor.

Initially, this recipe was published in Gourmet and called for dried pasillas as the chile of choice. The rest of the recipe is pretty simple: lemon juice, dark brown sugar (I used light), cane sugar, water, and blackberries. Being that I didn't see feel like braving the LA traffic (and because I'm lazy) I decided not to go to Grand Central Market for their wonderful chile selection, but instead I picked up some dried ancho chiles from Whole Foods. Upon opening the bag I realized I forgot how raisin like these chiles got when dried. Woops. Oh well, it's all I had so I moved forward. Basically, you make a syrup by boiling the lemon juice, water, and sugars together and infuse it with the chiles (aka throw them in...seeds and all) then stir in a blackberry puree when the syrup has cooled. As you can see from the picture three measly chiles yielded A LOT of seeds (insert flash backs to deseeding chiles at Thanksgiving for a mole). From my earlier rambling you'll remember that I love spicy food so needless to say I was excited at this site...the possibility of a spicy yet sweet syrup!

After the syrup had cooled and I added the blackberry puree it was time to try it. Hmm. Apparently the anchos were more raisin-ey than I expected because it was all I could taste. AND NO HEAT. So much for appreciating the variety of flavors that chiles have to offer. There was a little blackberry taste there, but not much.

Great...I essentially made raisin syrup and could have left out two decently expensive ingredients.

Since I now had about a cup and a half of the stuff I thought I might as well use it. I though that some drinks were a good application and a made a ancho chile blackberry rye cocktail with a little muddled mint. Hm...not bad actually. Although it still tasted raisin-ey (ugh) the heat was beginning to linger on my tongue halfway through. Interesting. I also made a ancho chile blackberry soda with just the syrup and some club soda, which actually tastes pretty good if you ignore what I was actually trying to achieve.

I suppose next time I'll try using guajillo or the called for pasilla to get rid of the raisin flavor. If those fail to achieve a good heat level I might just throw in a habenero for good measure. Also, I think the flavor of blueberries might not be overpowered as easily as the blackberry was. But before all of that I need to get rid of a bunch of ancho chile blackberry syrup. Maybe a good sauce or rub for venison? Throw some grilled strawberries on the plate as well....hmmm.