cdh

Glad you brought this topic to the fore. I've got a bunch of olives on their way to me, and needed to figure out how to deal with them in the tastiest manner...

I just got another batch of the Brett-fermented Berliner Weiss into the fermenter last night... I tweaked the recipe a little bit in the direction of a Leipziger Gose type beer by adding a little coriander and some Golden Naked Oats to the grain bill, and by blending an ounce or so of german weizen yeast (3068) slurry into the 2-quart Brett starter. I intend to see how this beer works with a pinch of salt in the glass.

I've always guessed that duck fat would make a fine pie crust, or biscuits... but I've never kept enough around to do the experiments. Has anybody??

Just spotted your question- I did pitch just the Roeselare into primary, though I ramped it up in a half-gallon starter and got it good and ready to go. I do rack after about a month, so it doesn't get the same funk nutrients as a lambic would. I secondary in a plastic bucket for a few months, then add fruit or oak or other tastiness and let it sit for another couple of months. DO NOT count on a Roeselare beer being good until at least 8 or 9 months in. Then they get REALLY REALLY good.

Indeed... Campari and the other bitters of the world are so... cinematic. They're like classic Italian cinema... they're good... if they're to your taste and you're in the mood for them. They're out of the ordinary, they're somewhat serious, they're complex... and the average American would run away from them muttering about crazy foreigners.

Oooh... good reference there, TVC. I like the looks of that book quite a bit. My bar library is concise: Baker's Gentleman's Companion, Schumann's Tropical Bar, Dr. Cocktail's book, and Harrington's Cocktail... a good base of knowledge to build experiments upon.

Glad you found the Apte... there is more, however. Keep a lookout for his illustrated stuff about the chair leg technique... it sounds fascinating, but I don't use glass carboys so it's not applicable to me. I'm wondering about running a dowel through the pressure release valve fitting on the lid of a corny keg... but I'm guessing that since that will have much less surface area than a chair leg, it won't be as effective. So far, I've had good luck with the PET bottles and oak chips.

I doubt you want the 5G oak barrel. The important part of the Apte research is that getting the right rate of oxygenation is helpful in turning out good sour beers. The oxygen permeability of wood is way too high to use an all wood vessel for a quantity as small as homebrewers make. Apte suggests using a toasted oak chair leg as a stopper in a glass carboy to get a reasonable rate of oxygenation. That's why you'd not want to do the secondary in a corny keg... too airtight. I find that the rate of O2 permability of my particular fermenting buckets does a fine job at getting a sour beer off on the right foot. Last time I secondaried in the 6L blue PET bottles that come with a Tap-A-Draft system.

I've got a gallon or so of 2005 vintage Flemish red, and may blend some of that into this batch. I've only used oak chips so far, and am under the impression that it makes no sense whatsoever to try using full oak containment vessels for batches of this size. Google for Raj Apte's musings on Flemish Red brewing... it's on the parc.xerox.com servers but I can't recall the exact address. The Wyeast Roeselare blend really does produce great results, given enough time. The first 9 months are really not palateable, but after that (at least for beers kept in plastic with its O2 permeability) it gets really good. My first batch with the Roeselare was morebeer.com's Fire in the Hole grain bill with radically restrained hopping. It rocks.

Sounds like you're back in the saddle! I'm thinking of doing some brewing today... i've got a starter of the Roeselare yeast going now, and I think I might make a batch of Flanders Red. I'll need to sit down and do some figuring, but I'm thinking something like: 5 lbs of Marris Otter 3 lbs of Munich 1 lb of Caramunich .5 lb of Aromatic .5 lb of Special B .5 lb of flaked rye .5 lb torrified wheat Bittered with something like an ounce of US Goldings or Styrian Goldings. Made some changes when I actually brewed it: 5 lb Marris Otter 3 lb Munich 1 lb Caramunich .5 lb torrified wheat .25 lb Aromatic .25 lb Special B .25 lb Golden Naked Oats 1oz Styrian Goldings

Of course food is food and not artwork... eating it should be the primary concern. But I don't think most food blogging, illustrated or not, has its priorities so out of kilter that people are seeking the experience of blogging the food rather than eating it. The blogging is just a convenient way to share/brag about it (depending upon tone and content, which can be perceived differently by different viewers). Of course, bragging is likely to annoy some people, and rightly so... But telling the world to shut up and eat it isn't going to get very far.

You're just full of good news today: tasty aged beer, lots of leftover hops, and somebody to drink your beer with! Keep us informed about what you're making.

Kegs are a great way to store beer for long periods of time. They're airtight, so no oxidation happens. They're easy to clean, so you're unlikely to get an infection. As beers age, the hop bitterness mellows out, so if you're a hophead, old beer is not up your alley. Otherwise, letting beer get old in a keg seems like a totally reasonable thing to do.

Practice practice practice... or you could get yourself a mandoline, which does the job effortlessly, though with increased risk to your fingertip integrity. I find for tasks that benefit from absolute uniformity, like making long thin slices of squash or eggplant for rolling things up in, the mandoline is just essential, since I can't freehand cut something that large evenly enough.

What sort of additional flavor did you get? Is it solventy? Medicinal? Band-Aids? Spicy? Fruity? I'm sort of surprised, since it was a wit... Wit yeasts are quite good at warm temps. As a matter of fact, I just did a batch of the 4-grain saison and used a blend of wit yeast and saison yeast, and let it ferment outside during a heat wave when the daytime temps were in the mid 90s. I'm not detecting any funny yeast-based flavors from that... though I may be unlucky enough to have gotten a vinegar infection in it, as some beasty came by in the night and ripped the airlock off of the bucket and broke it into pieces... leaving the little hole in the top of the bucket open to the air... which means that fruitflies may have gotten to it... and fruit flies carry acetobacter. That should be under control, at least... acetobacter needs access to oxygen to turn alcohol into vinegar, and within half a day of the airlock going missing I moved the beer into a keg and purged out all of the air, so even if acetobacter is there it can't do anything.

Wow, tim! That pot does appear ideal for brewing! Thanks for a great pointer.

Did you use some honey malt? Your extra flavor might be from that. A little goes a long way.

10 years ago, the Magnolia Cafe on Lake Austin Blvd was a good spot for late night eats.

Yup... click here.

If that's the recipe, then the "bug" is the starter. Either use it, or stick it in the fridge.

What is it that you want out of this thing? Are you attempting to culture a ginger beer plant? Is the idea to get a bunch of microbes that like to ferment ginger sugar water, and then throw that lot of bugs into a big bunch of ginger sugar water? Fermentations only last so long, and 2T of sugar won't keep one going for a very long time. Have you built up a good bunch of goo on the bottom of your jar? If so, that goo is your starter culture that should ferment a few gallons of ginger sugar water and leave a nice lactic acid sourness.

So having heard about and remembering eG member Pennbrew's new beer-making venture, I happened to be on my way between hither and yon, and mid-journey I found myself facing signs pointing to Berwick, PA... so I ventured off the Interstate and wended my way into that northeast PA town. A quick text-message query to cell-phone-Google found me the address, and I popped in for a quick beer break. The building is a big old factory... an old commercial bakery that had a steel fabricating tenant in some of its space. It's just off the main drag in a few-stoplight town, but not readily visible from the street. I got there just in time to get one of the last few glasses of the hefe-weizen, which was predictably depleted on a 90+F day. A great representation of the style, this beer was welcome on a hot afternoon. The place was small, the crowd quick to come and go. Guy Hagner (Pennbrew), the brewer and publican was affable. After polishing off the wheat beer, I decided to try the opposite end of the spectrum and went for a stout, which was also a tasty beer. I'd recommend this spot as a waypoint for any eG members making their way around the intersection of I80 and I476.

Just noticed I'd not commented on this... Papazian is a fantastic starter book for getting into the right mindset... but his brewing techniques are a bit idiosyncratic... he famously only uses one yeast, which he's kept going for many many generations (and which Wyeast released as a special release yeast over the winter). You must remember that he got this whole homebrewing thing off the ground in the 70s, so his thinking and his technology are a bit old skool. Nobody that I've found besides me has published anything recommending using a grain bag and a cooler for all grain brewing. I don't know why. Folks seem to like the sense of accomplishment that follows building a straining apparatus out of other things and attaching them to a cooler. Maybe they're more efficient... I've admitted I've not taken a hydrometer reading in years, and have no clue what my efficiency is other than 'good enough for me'. I like the bags for precisely the same reason you mention-- they're easy. They make clean-up a breeze. They're cheap. And they work.

Think a round cooler and an aquarium thermostat. You're looking to keep the milk and bugs at about the temperature of a tropical aquarium... and a cooler will keep the power draw to do so low. I doubt you'll find a commercial one-purpose device that will cost less than those two devices together.