Ice Cider

It's been way too long since my last brewday (July 31st).  I still have plenty of beer but I miss brewing.  I'm still not quite ready to brew but I have my chest freezer and fermenters so I'm definitely ready for something a bit simpler like a cider.  So that's what I'm doing.

To add a layer of complexity to the project I have decided to make it an Ice Cider.

An Ice Cider is essentially an Ice Wine with Apples.  An Ice Wine is a dessert wine that comes in with a FG of about 20 degrees plato (that's 20% sugar content).  This is quite a bit sweeter than even a port wine.  They get this sweetness by letting the fruit freeze on the plant prior to pressing.  The pressing extracts a small amount of super concentrated juice and leaves behind most of the water.  The juice then undergoes a very cold and very slow fermentation which allows the progress to be tracked and controlled.  Once the desired amount of sugar has been converted to alcohol the fermentation is halted by cold crashing - not by adding wine spirits like with Port.  This produces a wine with fairly standard levels of alcohol (~10-14%).

Ice Cider can be produced similarly by pressing frozen apples but an easier (but still sanctioned) method is to extract the juice normally and then freeze concentrate.  This is the method I'll be using.  I found this article from Wine Maker Magazine to be very helpful:  Making Ice Cider.

Per the process outlined in this article I will freeze the juice into a solid block and then allow it to slowly thaw.  The sugary solution is supposed to thaw and drain out more quickly than the water so you can collect that first and then judge when the liquid no longer contains enough sugar - sort of like sparging the mash when making a beer.  You want to end up with concentrate that is 30-40% sugar at the end of this process.

I will be using Cider from Weaver's Orchard as I did last year with my first attempt at Cider.  Last year I measured the starting gravity as 1.044 which is about 11 degrees plato.  In order to concentrate this to 30-40 degrees plato we'll have to get rid of about 75% of the water in the juice.  So, for every gal you start with you get 1 quart of product.  Based on this I decided to start with 10 gal of cider as anything less than 2.5 gal seems like too little to make the effort worth while.  Anything more would provide some challenges given the capacity of my chest freezer.

I am going to try two methods for freezing/concentrating the juice.  I will freeze 6 gal in a bottling bucket and use the faucet to drain off the sugar which seems like it should be pretty simple.  For the other 4 gal I will freeze the liquid in their original jugs.  I'll split off a bit off each into a fifth carton to avoid breakage through expansion.  I'll then drain off the juice by setting them upside down over some container.  I like the idea of using the jugs as I'll have a better view of how much juice vs is ice is left in the mixture.  I'd expect freezing the bottling bucket could take a while, and determining that it's frozen will be difficult - I'll give it at least a week to be safe.  I'll raise the temperature in the chest freezer to just above freezing to slowly extract the concentrate.  Hopefully this will allow me to stop the thaw at the right time without having to pay too much attention.  I'll use my refractometer to check the progress so I wont have to waste too much juice at this stage.  I expect this thawing could take a couple more weeks.

I am going to use a wine yeast that ferments cold and slow and that can be halted readily using Campden Tablets.  I am thinking WLP727 Steinberg Wine Yeast may be my best bet based on these descriptions:

Steinberg yeast is used for producing classical, cold fermented Riesling wines, and it is used extensively for Gewurztraminer production. When used at low fermentation temperatures, Steinberg produces a delicate, complex bouquet of fruit odors in young white wines. This yeast is very cold tolerant, and it often continues fermenting at temperatures below 40 degrees. However, this yeast is very sensitive to sulfur dioxide, and Steinberg fermentations can be retarded significantly if more than 50 milligrams per liter of sulfur dioxide are added at the crusher. Sometimes, winemakers can deliberately stop low temperature Steinberg fermentations just by adding a large dose of sulfur dioxide to the tank. This yeast is only available in 500 gram packages and in bulk. (Source)

Steinberg : A strain developed in Germany. Like Pasteur white, Steinberg is used for white wine fermentation because it yields a lengthy fermentation process. It even tolerates the cold better than Pasteur white. Johannesburg Riesling, Gewurztraminer Chenin Blanc and Muscat all use this strain. It gives off a tropical fruit aroma and is best used in stainless steel fermenting.  (Source)

I'll add some yeast nutrient when I pitch and plan on fermenting at 55 F in my temperature controlled chest freezer.  I may also add some pectic enzyme at the start of the fermentation to help it clear.

Fermentation should last six to eight weeks per the article which is pretty amazing.  Should get less than 1 plato drop in gravity per day.  I plan on measuring every few days with the hydrometer.  I think I'll just make sure everything is very well sanitized and add the samples back to the fermenter to avoid too much loss in product.

Once fermentation has reached the desired level you cold crash and then hit it with 30 PPM S02 (1 Campden Tablet per gal).  This should stun the yeast and cause them to halt fermentation.  After a few days at below freezing (25 F is the suggestion) the yeast will have sunk to the bottom and then you can rack off of them.  A few more days of cold crashing at this temp and another rack should stabilize the product.  The article recommends filtering but I'm thinking I don't want to do that (the pectic enzyme should hopefully make it clear enough.

After that you can bottle (I'm going to use beer bottles) and hope that it doesn't continue fermentation.  I plan on stopping at 20 degrees plato which is 1.083 in SG so there is a lot of room for disaster if something hungry (like Brett) gets into those bottles.  At 10-15% ABV it will be a pretty hostile environment so it would need to be a pretty hardy organism to handle that - the cider should protect itself to a good extent.

Anyway, this is a pretty ambitious plan and I probably should have waited until I was more confident in my success to write up a blog post about it but I'm thinking it should be an interesting experience regardless of how successful I am.  Ice Wine is really nice and, although I've never had the opportunity to have it, I'd expect the same from Ice Cider.  This should be a lot of fun.

Recipe Details:

• Apples/Juice:
• 10 gal of Weaver's Orchard Cider
• Yeast:
• WLP727 Steinberg Wine Yeast
• Extras:
• 0.25 tsp Yeast Nutrient
• 1.5 tsp Pectic Enzyme

Recipe Details:

• Batch Size:
• 2.5 gal (Target 2.5 gal)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 55 F
• Primary Duration:
• 6 to 8 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• 1 Week

Results:

• OG:
• 40 degrees plato (Target 38 degrees plato)
• FG:
• 23 degrees plato (Target 20 degrees plato)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 43% (Target 47%)
• ABV:
• 14.55% (Target 16.72%)

Brewing Notes:

• 12/23/16 - Put 6 gal of cider into a bottling bucket and moved into the chest freezer.  Distributed the remaining 4 gal among 5 jugs.  The juice this year is measuring 1.054 (13.3 plato), which is up from 1.044 last year,  so I have a little more margin for error in getting to 38 brix.

• 12/24/16 - The jugs were mostly frozen through by the next morning.  The cider in the bottling bucket was icy.
• 12/25/16 - Jugs are frozen all the way through - the plastic maintained it's integrity.  The bottling bucket is close to freezing completely I think.  I'll give it until next weekend before I consider doing anything with it.  The ice seems to have formed a cone which is odd.

• 12/30/16 - Everything seems pretty well frozen at this point so I'm going to start the thaw.  I had been running the freezer directly plugged in.  I'm now switching over to the temperature controller.  I'll use a gal jug of water as the temperature measurement source.  I'll set the controller to keep that at 35 F.  This should hopefully allow for a very slow thaw.  I picked up some single square cinder blocks to assist in the draining.  The bottling bucket sits on one and the jugs are balanced upside down on a couple more with glasses underneath to catch the draining liquid.  Getting some syrupy drops right from the start.  I was only able to get 3 of the 5 jugs in so I'll have to swap two out at some point.  Will be interesting to see how quickly this goes.  I'll check on it every 8-12 hrs over the weekend to make sure things don't go so fast that the draining glasses overfill.

• 12/31/16
• After about 16 hrs I've collected ~1 pint of syrupy liquid off the bottling bucket.  It's producing a drop every couple of seconds.  I checked the gravity of one of the drops with my refractometer and it exceeds the maximum of 32 brix that I am capable of measuring.  I will need to dilute with equal parts water to get a measurement.  I'll give it some more time before I do that.  The ice at the top of the container is starting to get a bit whiter as the juice drains off.  The jugs have gone a bit slower - they have produced less than 1 cup each so far.

• The melt rate increased throughout the day.  I ended up overflowing one of the glasses and spilled maybe a cup of melt.  My temperature control method isn't working very well.  I turned the chest freezer back on uncontrolled to freeze the juice again over night.  I have about 4 pints of liquid collected so far.  I took a gravity sample using some of the spilled concentrate by mixing "equal" parts water and juice.  Measured 22 brix with this method which would be about 44 brix for the concentrate.  It's a good sanity check.  The jugs have continued to melt more slowly than the bottling buckets - so far the bottling bucket seems like the better way to accomplish this task - we'll see how I feel as we progress.
• 1/1/17 - Froze over night and then unplugged the freezer this morning.  It took most of the day to melt enough to start draining again.  I'll let it continue to thaw over night but will turn off the valve on the bottling bucket to avoid overfilling my cup
• 1/3/17 - As of this morning I've collected 8 glasses (so ~8 pints) of run off.  2 of those are from the jugs and the other 6 are from the bottling bucket.  The liquid coming out of the bottling bucket is still above 32 brix.  The first glass out of one of the jugs was 30 brix so the bottling bucket seems to be doing a more efficient job.
• 1/5/17 - I've collected about 10 glasses of concentrate.  I decided to transfer these into cider jugs to re-freeze until I'm ready to start fermentation.  I measured the concentration of all of them and all except one was 32 brix and above.  The one below was a half glass from one of the jugs at 26 brix - I decided to add that one as well.  With all these I have about 1.25 gal of concentrate.  I am stopping the drain for the jug that produce the 26 brix liquid.  It has gotten really white so you can tell that a lot of the juice has drained off.  The top layer of the bottling bucket is also very white like normal ice.  It is producing concentrate above 32 still though.  I have added the last two jugs to the chest freezer to drain out. 

• 1/8/17 - I've collected just about 2 gal of 30 brix and greater concentrate.  The bottling bucket is now putting out 27 brix liquid and the jugs down to 18 brix.  I've taken the lower concentration liquid and put it into a third jug.  I'm going to re-freeze all my remaining juice and double concentrate it a couple times to get a bit more liquid in the 30-40 brix range.  I'll spend the next week doing this.
• 1/15/17 - I let the bottling bucket thaw all week.  Didn't start doing the re-concentrating as I'd planned as it was still putting out a lot of fairly high strength liquid.  It was putting out juice at less than 10 brix by this morning.  I'm going to call it done.  So, I now how 5 mostly full jugs at various levels of concentration.  I measured the following concentrations using my refractometer:  40, 36, 22, 19, and 9 brix.  For the two most concentrated ones I had to dilute the sample with equal parts water and juice which could have introduced a bit of inaccuracy.  While taking the samples I noticed that it made a lot of difference if the juice had been allowed to settle.  The sample on the top was a lot less sugary in this case.  As you'd expect, the more sugary liquid sinks to the bottom.  I am going to try to further concentrate the 22, 19, and 9 brix samples.  I will refreeze these bottles and drain most concentrated liquid off these.  I need to eliminate half the water on the first two and 75% of the water on the third to get close to my target of 38 brix with these.  I should end up pretty close to the 2.5 gal target after this round.  I'm going to freeze these upside down to see if that helps the draining at all.  Hopefully I wont have any significant leakage around the lidI ordered the yeast online and it still hasn't arrived so this extra week of concentrating isn't hurting my schedule so far.

Refreezing 3 bottles for further concentration upside down

• 1/17/17 - The juice was frozen solid this morning.  I turned off the chest freezer and put glasses underneath to drain.  By that afternoon the cups under the two most concentrated jugs were on the verge of overflowing.  Poured this into another jug and drained a bit more.  They drained off another half a glass each after an hr or so.  Ended up with about half a gal of concentrate from these.  The last concentrated batch got me about a cup of high concentrate liquid which I also added.  I think this half gal is about 40 brix.  Moved these into the fridge to keep until the yeast arrives.
• 1/20/17 - The yeast arrived while I was out of town.
• 1/24/17 - Transferred the juice to a bucket.  Collected 2.5 gal of concentrate.  It is 40 degrees plato.  Added 1.5 tsp of Pectic Enzyme.  The juice was about 40 degrees.  I decided to let it sit over night to warm up a bit.  Put the yeast packet into the chest freezer to get close to the pitching temp.
• 1/25/17 - The juice warmed to about 50 F by the morning.  I decided to pitch the yeast.  Setting the temperature control to 55 F.
• 1/29/17 - Starting to see some light bubbling on the surface of the cider four days after pitching.  Realized I forgot to add yeast nutrient.  Sprinkled 0.25 a tsp of that on the surface and then swirled the juice to mix it in.
• 2/5/17 - There is a very tame fermentation going on but it is definitely fermenting.  Some bubbles and small chunks of krausen on the surface.  Smells fruity.  I have so little liquid that I'm hesitant to check the gravity just yet.  I'll give it a couple more weeks before I check for the first time.  Hopefully it will have fermented enough at that point to be within the range of my hydrometer (1.60 max SG)

• 2/12/17 - I decided to take a sample for gravity.  The cider has developed a bit more krausen since last week - looks clean so far (no mold or pellicle).  I thoroughly sanitized my wine thief, hydrometer, and measuring tube as I'll be adding the sample back in.  Measured the gravity as just about 40 brix.  So, there has been little to no drop in sugar in 2 weeks.  I'm fermenting at the low range of this yeasts capabilities which may have something to do with this.  I'm going to let it raise a couple degrees (to 57 F) and check back in a few more weeks.

• 3/12/17 - I can't believe it has been a month since I last sampled this.  Still has a think layer of foam on the top and there is some yeast ester aroma mixed with the cider smell.  Measured the gravity as 30.1 brix which is 6.48% alcohol - still a long way to go.  Added the sample back to the fermenter.  Tasted a few drops which were still very sweet.  I'll keep the fermentation at 58 F.

• 4/15/17 - It's been a bit over a month since I last checked on this cider.  It has been fermenting for almost three months.  No signs of bubbling on the surface any more.  Measured the gravity as 26 Brix.  Getting close to the target of 20 Brix.  It's currently around 9% ABV - I'm going to raise the fermentation chamber temp to 60 F to try to help it finish out.  Will check again in a couple weeks.  Poured most of the sample back in but tasted a small bit - still very sweet but it now has a pretty good amount of alcohol mixed in.
  

• 4/30/17 - It has been about 2 weeks since my last sample.  No visible signs of fermentation on the surface still (I'd raised the fermentation temperature to 60 F last time).  Measured the gravity as 25 brix.  So, it's down 1 degree.  I'm going to raise the fermentation temperature to 62 F to coax it along.  The cider has cleared considerably.  It has a nice amber color.  Poured most of the sample back in but tasted a bit.  Has a nice alcohol presence to go along with the intense apple flavor - starting to taste very much like an ice wine.

• 5/21/17 - Gravity is 23.5 brix (down 1.5 points in the last 3 weeks).  I'm going to hold it at 62 F and allow it to continue.
• 6/11/17 - Gravity is still 23.5 brix after 3 more weeks.  I'm going to raise the fermentation temperature up to 65 F to see if I can get a couple more points out of it
• 7/1/17 - Gravity is down to about 22.5 brix.  I've decided to halt fermentation at this point.  Chilled down to 35 F and added 2 crushed Campden tablets.

• 7/10/17 - Added gelatin to fine the cider
• 7/11/17 - Transferred off the yeast cake to a 3 gal better bottle - have about 2.5 gal of cider.  Moved this back to the fermentation chamber set to 25 F to drop the yeast again.
• 7/15/17 - Bottled the cider today.  A large amount of particulate had settled out from the juice after it's time at 25 F.  Not sure what it is - pectin maybe.  I racked off of this carefully.  Ended up with 2 gal of cider which got me 20 12 oz bottles.  Cider ended up at 23 brix at bottling.  It is very clear with the solids dropping out and has a really lovely flavor.  I'm going to have to drink these slowly given how few I got.  Will do a tasting in a  month or so.

• 1/11/18 - Tasting Notes - This is really an amazingly intense beverage.  It tastes exactly like you would expect a 4x concentrated cider would taste like - intense apple and incredible sweetness.  What is nice is that it doesn't taste how a 14.5% ABV beverage might be expected to.  I really like how the bit of sharpness in the finish sort of counters the sweetness - it makes taking the next sip much more enjoyable than I think it would be if it were purely sweet.  Even so, this is a beverage to sip in small quantities.  I've found that 4 oz at a time is more than enough.  I've been taking a week or so to get through a bottle - keeps well in the fridge fortunately

Lessons Learned:

1. Concentrating the juice with the bottling bucket was quite a bit easier than in the jugs.  Next time I'll have two bottling buckets going at a time.  I think thawing at basement temps would have been okay.  I think I'd try taking care of that outside the fermentation chamber next time.
2. I wish I'd started with 20 gal of juice rather than 10 to give myself more final product given how much time and effort was required for this project - juice wasn't that expensive really.  Next time I'll do that.
3. My handling of the fermentation was a bit conservative.  I started out at the bottom of the range which kept fermentation slow and controllable.  I think I would have been okay if the fermentation was allowed to proceed at a slightly warmer temperature initially (maybe 60 F).  Would be nice to have it finish up in 2 months rather than the 5 months this batch has been going.
4. Chilling to 25 F dropped a lot of solids out of suspension that didn't drop chilling at 35 F

Flanders Red Blend #1 - Plain - Tasting Notes

I blended this beer with equal parts 18 month old Flanders Red (1.2.1) and 1 year old Flanders Red (1.4.1) and bottled it about 4 months ago.  This was my first attempt at blending.  The two beers were good enough to bottle on their own but each brought some unique character to the table that seemed like they might be good together.

I've been drinking these for at least the last three months.  It took some time to carbonate with the wine yeast and then the beers seemed to continue to improve with more time in the bottle.  They have gained acidity and the brett flavor, which was always pretty prominent, has developed quite a bit more.  I've really enjoyed tasting the beer evolve over time.  I imagine it will continue to change.

Anyway, it's developed a very pleasing set of flavors so I think it is finally time for a tasting.  The beer is good both at refrigerator and cellar temperatures.  I find that the flavors come out a bit more at cellar temperatures so that's what I'm doing for this tasting.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Rich dark fruit and leathery brett funk on the nose.  Smells a bit acidic with a hint of vinegar.  Also get a bit of alcohol aroma.
• Appearance.
• Reddish brown - quite red actually.  Pours with a 1 finger head that quickly dissipates down to nothing.  Good clarity if I'm careful not to pour in to much sediment.
• Flavor:
• Dark fruit flavor up front.  I'd describe it as cherry flavor.  Also get quite a bit of earthy flavor in the mix initially.  Finishes with an assertive sourness which lingers.  It's just as sour as Rodenbach Grand Cru, I'd say.  Also get a nice bit of bready malt flavor in the finish which adds a nice bit of complexity.
• Mouthfeel:
• Light bodied, very dry, and crisp.  The acidity leaves a slight prickling on the tongue and palate.  It's a refreshing beer when chilled.
• Overall:
• The beer ended up with a really pleasing level of complexity.  It's not as good as Rodenbach but I'm still really happy with how well it delivers the expected flavors.  The malty flavor is especially pleasant going along with the firm acidity.  Not sure how the beer managed to retain this as a number of the other batches didn't really have that.

The other half of this blend has been aging on sour cherries for the last few months.  This tasting has made me eager to try that one out.  I'll plan on bottling that soon as I imagine that it's had enough time.  Will post separate tasting notes for that as well as some comparisons.

Double IPA - Take 2 - Tasting

I can't believe it's been two months since I bottled up this beer.  This was intended to be a Pliny the Elder clone.  I normally would have done the tasting of big hoppy beer like this much sooner but I've been occupied with other things.  Fortunately, I've found that the beer held up quite a bit better than I assumed it would.  Even two months old it's still very hoppy with no sign of oxidation.

The beer was meant to end up less than 8% ABV.  My efficiency was higher than expected so I got
9.3%.  The higher alcohol may have impacted the remaining yeast because the beer never really carbonated which was a tiny disappointment every time I opened one.  This couldn't help but detract slightly from my enjoyment of the beer.

I put a lot of money into the hops used for this beer so the expectations were high.  I think it delivered the goods for the most part.  I was lucky enough to stumble onto some authentic Pliny the Elder this weekend and thought my version, although quite a bit uglier, tasted quite a bit better - so that's something at least.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Citrusy and Piney hops are the most prominent aroma.  Was quite a bit more prominent when this was younger.  Some nice sweet caramel malt comes through as well.  It's a rich smelling beer.  No yeast character an no alcohol on the nose.
• Appearance:
• Barely any head even after an aggressive pour.  Dark copper color and very murky.
• Flavor:
• Hops are the dominant flavor beginning to finish.  Up front the hops hit immediately.  It's an indistinctly fruity hop flavor primarily.  The finish has strong bitter kick along with the other hop flavors.  Also has a bit of malt sweetness coming through.  It's a strong beer and there's definitely a bit of alcohol presence in the flavor.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied.  Has a slight astringency to the bitterness.  Slightly sweet - leave a bit of a sticky feeling in the mouth.  Definitely has a warming alcohol presence.
• Overall:
• I think this is a really nice tasting beer.  It really delivered the goods in terms of hop flavor - especially young but even at a couple months old.  I am a bit disappointed about how ugly the beer looks.  I was hoping for a slightly clearer product and definitely wanted it to carbonate.  Neither of these impact the flavor though so they're not really that big of a deal.  I like the recipe enough to try something based on it again in the future - maybe once I start kegging.  I do wonder if I reached diminishing returns on the hopping for this one.  May see if I can cut back a little.

Pickled Asparagus

Given my large stockpile of beer and an immanent move I have decided to hold off on brewing any more beer for another month or so.  In this pause of beer brewing I've played around with a couple other fermented foods - cheese and bread.  Now I'll try a fourth - pickles.

Fermentation is an awesome process.  Almost seems like magic.  Especially so when no special action is taken to inoculate the food to be fermented - spontaneous fermentation.  This is the case for naturally fermented pickles which uses the lactobacillus on the vegetables to acidify.

I've decided to try pickling some asparagus via this method.

I've done quite a bit of reading on pickling after not having thought of it much.  It's an ancient form of food preservation.  Primitive humans found that salt had great preservative effects for their food.  They didn't know it but this is because the organism responsible for spoilage (like Clostridium which produces botulism) can not thrive in a salty environment.  You have to wonder how many primitive humans died in order to secure this knowledge.  Lactic acid bacteria are capable of thriving in a salty environment and they slowly acidify the food which changes the flavor and texture.

The process appeals to me for many of the same reasons that beer brewing does - you do a little work up front and then over time what you've created transforms into something quite different.  Very neat.

The really exciting thing about picking is the wide variety of flavorings that can be added during the aging.  Garlic, peppercorns, dill, horseradish, and chilly peppers are some of the common flavorings but the sky is the limit.  For my first attempt I'm using garlic, peppercorns, and hot cherry peppers for the flavoring.

Based on my reading I've decided to go with a brine strength of 1 tbs of salt to 1 cup of water.  Brine strength seems to be a variable that can be experimented with.  I'm using store bought asparagus which must have been shipped in.  The amount of processing that it's undergone is an unknown variable so the amount of resident LAB is an open question.  I expect there will be enough to allow fermentation to proceed but we'll see.

Ingredients:

• 8 cups water
• 8 tbs of kosher salt
• 1.25 lb of Asparagus
• 3 Cherry Peppers
• 8 garlic cloves
• ~ 1 tsp of peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves

Process/Notes:

• 10/8/16
• Boiled about half a gal of tap water to eliminate chlorine
• Poured ~8 cups of near boiling water into a large mason jar. 
• Added salt to the hot water - it dissolved with no stirring
• Let it cool to room temperature over several hours
• Peeled garlic and added to the water - these sunk

• Measured out peppercorns and added - these floated for a bit and then sunk
• Added the bay leaves - they floated
• Cut out the stem and rinsed out the seeds from the peppers and then cut them in half.  Added them in and they floated

• Snapped off the woody bottom of the asparagus, quickly rinsed them, and pushed them in with the heads down - these floated
• Made sure everything was submerged by weighing the contents down with a measuring cup.  Put a paper towel over the top of the jar and secured it with a rubber band.  Seemed to hold it down well
• Left this on top of the fridge to ferment
• 10/10/16 - The mixture has started to get pretty cloudy

• 10/12/16 - The mixture has gotten even more cloudy.  Sampled an asparagus.  It was quite salty (as you would expect) and had picked up some of the heat from the peppers as well as some of the garlic flavor.  A bit of sourness has developed but it's very mild at this point.  Still had a nice asparagus flavor
• 10/15/16 - The pickles seem to be sitting almost entirely submerged without any weight so I am going to remove the measuring cup and let them ripen for a few more days with just the towel on top.  Added a bit more water to compensate for evaporation.
• 10/19/16 - The pickles have started to form a bit of pellicle and the liquid has gotten very cloudy.  I tried another asparagus and it had a nice bit of sourness.  It's really crisp and has absorbed the nice flavors in the brine.  I'm going to call it done with these and move them to the fridge.  Added an air tight lid and moved them to the fridge in their jar.  There was a red film on top of some of the stocks.  It scared me a bit but it comes off very easily - I think it's from the peppers.

• 11/5/16 - I've been trying a few of these a week and they're very good.  I think they're ready for some tasting notes soon.  The vegetables all sank to the bottom of the jar soon after going into the fridge.  The liquid dropped clear after about a week of cold storage.  There is quite a bit of sediment in the bottom of the jar.
• 5/12/17 - Still have 5 or 6 asparagus pickles left.  Had a couple more last night.  They are still nicely crisp and I think the sourness has developed more over time in the fridge.  I like them but I think I was a bit heavy handed with the salt and garlic.  I'll make sure to cut down a bit on these the next time I attempt pickling.

Queso Fresco with Chipotle Pepper

For my fourth attempt at cheese making I chose to make a Queso Fresco based on another recipe from cheesemaking.com.  This was another simple recipe that doesn't require aging (which I'm still not equipped to do).

Queso Fresco means "Fresh Cheese" in Spanish - it is meant to be eaten fresh.  I've seen it in the supermarket before but haven't had it.  I chose it because it will broaden my horizons somewhat by including a pressing with an increasing amount of weight along with the use of peppers.

Like last time, I'll be using raw milk from a local dairy.  For the pepper, I found some dried chipotle at a local supermarket (Wegmans).  The peppers have a really nice flavor and are very spicy.  They're really dry - I debated whether to do something to try to re-hydrate but I'm assuming the remaining whey in the cheese will do that for me.

I've been happy with the other cheeses I've attempted - I expect the same from this one.

Ingredients:

• 2 gal Raw Milk
• 1 packet of Mesophilic Culture
• 1/4 tsp of Liquid Animal Rennet
• 1 oz Kosher Salt
• 1 Finely chopped Dried Chipotle Pepper

Process/Notes:

• 9/11/16 - Cheesemaking day:
• Left the milk on the counter for a couple hrs to warm up a bit
• Heated the milk to 90 F on the stove in a 5 gal pot - overshot a bit to 92 F
• Sprinkled the culture on the surface.  Let it hydrade for a couple min before stirring in
• Let the culture work for 45 min
• Diluted the rennet in 1/4 a cup of tap water.  Added to the milk and stirred for 30s
• Let set for 40 min - temp was 90 F by the end
• Had a nice clean break by the end of that time
• Cut the curd into a half inch grid
• Set sit for 5 min to allow the whey to come up through the cut lines and separate the curd
• Put on low heat to get to 95 F for the cooking phase
• Stirred the curd every 5 min or so.  Started gently.  The curd broke into 1/4 in pieces which shrunk and got firmer through the cooking time.  This is an important step but I'm still not quite sure I'm getting things to the right level of cooking.
• Scooped the curds in the a cheesecloth lined colander
• Chopped up the chipotle pepper
• Let drain for 30 min - stirred a few times to help the whey drain out
• Stirred in the pepper

• Stirred in the salt a little bit at a time - it seems like an awful lot of salt but the recommendation is ~3% by weight which is about 1 oz assuming I got 2 lbs of cheese (which I didn't actually measure - doh).
• Bundled up the curd and pushed it into the cylindrical form.  I folded up the cheese cloth at the top and then added the follower and put a half gal of water on top to press which is about 4 lbs (this step was specified as 30 min with 3-5 lb).  Had quite a bit of whey drip out to start but it slowed quickly.

• Pressed on one side with this weight for 15 min then unwrapped, flipped the cheese, and pressed on the other side for 15 more min.  It was pretty unstable.  It fell and spilled the water once but I eventually found the equilibrium that allowed it to stay up

• The next step was to be 60 min at 8-12 lb.  I half filled two gal jugs for about 10 lbs.  I put a box on top with the water in it to press.  The cheese wasn't all that flat and it was very difficult to balance.  It fell a couple times and spilled water.  I flipped after 20 min or so and then gave it another 20 min on the other side before it tipped again.
• The next step was to have been 4-6 hrs with 25 lbs of weight.  Given my difficulty with the previous attempts to press I opted to quit here.  I put the cheese in a zip lock freezer back an put it into the fridge for the night before trying it
• 9/12/16 - Tried the cheese the next afternoon
• 10/15/16 - I had gone through about 90% of this cheese.  It started to get quite a bit more funky over the last couple weeks and wasn't as good.  Today it had started to form some mold so I decided to throw it away.

Impressions:

• The wheel of cheese is a bit lumpy and uneven - not very attractive really.
• It is a salty cheese that gets along very well with the smoky and spicy peppers.  The peppers hydrated nicely in the salty whey - you can't tell that they were dry when I mixed them in.  It is as tasty as I'd hoped it would be.
• The cheese is pretty firm and has a smooth texture.  It has some voids that probably would have been pressed out with the 25 lb weight.  Still pretty moist as well.
• When I cut it and leave pieces on the cutting board at room temperature they start to weep why after a few min.
• I've been eating the cheese for about a week now and have gone through half of it.  No real signs of it falling off so far.
• Mostly been eating it plan.  Had some on flat bread last night - graded pretty well and melted okay.  The spicy peppers added a really nice dimension.

Lessons Learned:

1. Pressing the cheese by balancing water bottles on top wasn't ideal.  Having to get 25 lbs of weight this way was just too difficult.  I plan on making more cheeses that require pressing so I think I'm going to invest in a cheese press.  It's not a real complex machine so I may just try to build my own.
2. Dried peppers seemed to do just fine without being hydrated 

No Knead Dutch Oven Bread

We are in the process of moving so I haven't felt up to the time commitment required for brewing a beer recently.  I've been watching some videos of bread making and it looks like it, like cheesemaking, has a lot in common with making a beer. 

I always find it interesting delving into a world that I hadn't paid much attention to previously.  From my brief glimpses into bread making it had seemed that there was a fairly complex process associated with making a dough, letting it ferment, shaping, and then baking it.  I imagined that an improperly fermented and burnt product would be the result unless great care was taken.  After taking a closer look it seems like there are some simple steps that a beginner can take to produce a nice bread with not a lot of effort.

There is a fairly new technique called the "No Knead" method the greatly simplifies the process of making dough which seems like it's been pretty revolutionary for bread making.  It involves, as the name implies, minimal mixing of ingredients followed by long period of fermentation at room temperature.  Here is the New York Times Article where the concept was first presented.  It seems simple enough for me to have a reasonable chance for success.

The bread is baked in a Dutch Oven which apparently helps retain the amount of moisture professional bakeries achieve through fancy steam injection.  The original no knead recipe calls for putting the bread into a pre-heated Dutch Oven.  A clever trick that the many people who've made this recipe before me came up with is to line a bowl with parchment paper, put the bread in the bowl, and then transfer the dough to the heated Dutch Oven like in a cradle.  Pretty smart - I'm going to try this way.

The whole process, which mostly consisting of waiting, takes a good 24 hrs or so.  It seems like the steps could easily fit in my normal work day schedule.  If I like this I might have to start making my own bread regularly.

Ingredients:

• 3 Cups Flour (I wasn't super careful with this)
• 1.25 tsp Salt (I used kosher salt)
• 0.25 tsp Dry Bread Yeast
• 1 2/3 Cup tap water (I used tap water at about room temp)

Process Details:

• 9/10/16:
• Measured out Flour, Salt, Yeast, and water and added them to a metal bowl
• Mixed the ingredients together.  Started out looking like there was too much water then seemed like there wasn't enough but after 3 min of stirring with a wood spoon it smoothed out where all the ingredients seemed well mixed

• Covered with plastic wrap and placed on top of the fridge to ferment.  This was at about 8:00 PM
• 9/11/16:
• 19 hrs later dough had more than doubled in size.  It filled the kitchen with a nice flowery smell as it fermented.  I poured the dough onto a well flowered cutting board.  Was still very sticky.  Used a spatula to scrape it all out.  Sprinkled flour on top of the dough and then folded it up in each side to make a square.  Then shaped it into a ball.  Had to sprinkle more flour on it along the way to prevent sticking.

• Moved the dough ball to a floured parchment paper lined bowl and covered with a paper towel.  Let set for 5 hrs or so.  I had intended to only leave it for 2 hrs but got destracted.
• Tried to cut the top for expansion but the knife stuck pretty badly.
• Heated the Dutch oven for about 10 min in a 450 F oven
• Added the dough - didn't hold it's shape too well.  Sprinkled the top with flour

• Put in the oven for 30 min
• Removed the lid and let it bake for 25 more min
• Removed it from the dutch oven and took off the parchment paper
• Let rest over night with foil wrapping.  The bread was crackling a little bit as it cooled
• 9/12/16:
• Tried some bread the next morning
• Ate over half of it.
• 9/13/16:
• Quality starting to fall off a bit but still very nice
• 9/16/16 -  Baked up another loaf:
• This time I measured water and flour by weight:
• 430g of Flour
• 345g of Water
• The dough wasn't any less sticky with these measurements unfortunately
• Let it ferment for 18 hr
• Only had 1.5 hrs to let it rise after shaping
• Cooked it at 515 F for 30 min with the lid and 20 min with the lid off
• The bread was a bit overcooked

• 9/18/16 - Baked up another loaf.  Measured based on weight again.  This time I cooked it at 475 F for 30 min with the lid on and 20 min with the lid off.  This produced a really nice crust.  Before baking I drizzled on some olive oil and a bit of salt which were also nice additions.
• 10/2/16 - I've baked up this bread 5 or 6 more times.  I used Rye Flour for about 1/3 of the batch for a couple which makes a nicely flavored bread - although the texture is a bit different.  Also tried putting various spices on the top the bread while it bakes.  Sill like the original the best I'd say.  I'm going to play around with the ratio of flour to water a bit in the next several loaves.

Impressions:

• Really nice chewy bread.  I really like the bread at Tired Hands brewery and I think this bread is very much like it.
• Flavor was quite nice as well - I'd put it against store quality bread.
• It was fun but a bit more frustrating that I thought it would be.  I expect it will feel more natural as I try again.
• 515 F is too hot in my oven

Lessons Learned:

1. I ended up making two loves for this first round.  With the first I tried to put the bread in a cold Dutch oven with olive oil to prevent sticking.  It stuck so badly that I had to tear it apart to clean the pot.  The parchment paper method worked well with no sticking
2. The dough didn't hold it's shape well or allow me slice the top due to it's level of stickiness.  I believe this was because I was pretty caviler with my measurements of the flour and water.  I've done some further reading and found that 1.5 cups of water seems to be a good alternate amount (recipe recommended 1 5/8).  People also said the "cups" measure should be interpreted as "firmly packed cups'.  I used 1 2/3 cups of water and did not make sure to firmly pack the flour.  Weight seems to be a better method of measuring out ingredients.  I will try that next time.

Black Raspberry Tart - Tasting

I brewed up this beer back in March using Raspberries that I picked myself in 2015.

My initial plan for this beer was to prevent fermentation of the sugars in the fruit to get a sweet final product.  It turned out that the fruit wasn't really all that sweet to begin with so the gravity wasn't really raised much once the fruit was added.  I believe the added liquid more or less offset the added sugar.  Based on this I opted to just let the cards fall as they may and allow the beer to ferment out.

It had a nice fruit presence after spending a couple months on the raspberries but was a little bit bland so I added 0.75 gal of lacto soured wort.  This had the desired effect of giving the beer a bit more pep.

I've been drinking this beer for the last month.  It's going quickly (drank about half the batch).  Better get in the review now before it's all gone.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Strong aroma of black raspberry.  They're not quite like either red raspberry or black berry.  Interesting fruit that I hadn't tried prior to moving out here.  They smell very natural - not like a candy version of fruit at all.  No malt comes through.
• Appearance:
• Purple to dark red.  I usually pour in the dregs (as they improve the fruit character) so it's a little cloudy.  Pours with a 1 finger head that is a nice pink color.  Head doesn't last long and settles down to nothing.
• Flavor:
• Fruit flavor up front with a sour bite in the finish.  There is a slight incongruity to the flavor profile where the sourness has a character that is slightly different than the natural tartness from raspberries - more of a citrus maybe.  It certainly doesn't clash but I was hoping that the sourness would feel a bit more like an enhancement to the natural raspberry sourness rather than a separate sourness (not sure I'd pick this out if I didn't know there was lacto in the mix).  Very slight bready malt backbone to the flavor.
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium/light bodied with a slight sweetness.  Finishes with prickly sourness.  The sourness lingers on the tongue for some time.  Easy drinking beer that makes your mouth long for another sip.
• Overall:
• It's an interesting and really nicely flavored beer.  Not sure you'd guess it had 10 lbs of fruit but it's certainly very fruity.  It definitely provides the sour kick that I've grown to enjoy frequently.  I was a bit disappointed to not get the amount of sweetness that I'd expected from the fruit.  Also hard to disconnect the beer from the fact that I spent $40 for the right to pick and 4 hrs doing the picking in order to make it.  I didn't do that this year and I'm not sure I'd do it again.  The black raspberry flavor is nice but I think I may prefer the normal red raspberry to it.

Mozzarella Cheese - Take II

I enjoyed my first two forays into cheesemaking.  Enough so that I think I'm going to take the next step and work to setup a mini-fridge as a temperature & humidity controlled cheese cave.  This will allow me to make a wide variety of aged cheeses which really appeals to me.

We have decided to buy a house here in PA so I have put my efforts to setup a cheese cave on hold until we are settled in a few months.

In the mean time I decided to try out another simple cheese that doesn't require aging.  I'm not all that adventurous so I'm going to try to make Mozzarella again.  Last time, I made a soft mozzarella with rennet tablets and citric acid.  It turned out nicely but I didn't get to eat all that much of it as I made it at my mothers house and didn't think it would travel well.  It was so soft and sticky that it seemed like it would be ruined on a warm and bumpy trip.

For this attempt I'm going to use a culture and will shoot for a firmer cheese that can be sliced and grated easily.  I opted to use this recipe/procedure from cheesemaking.com.

This recipe was nice in that it really started to hammer home how decisions at various steps (temperature the cheese is ripened at or the size the curds are cut into) help contribute to the final product.  Making cheese is as complicated, and as interesting, as making beer I would say.

Finally, I found a local farm that sells unpasteurized raw cows milk (they also have goat's milk available).  It tastes very nice and has a rich body.  It's a bit more expensive than store bought milk but I figure if I'm going to spend hrs making a cheese it may be worth the cost to get a purer product (not that I think my palate is refined enough to tell the difference between raw and store bought milk).

Ingredients:

• 2 gal Raw Milk
• 1 packet of Thermophilic Culture C-201
• 1/2 tsp Liquid Animal Rennet
• 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt

Process/Notes:

• 8/27/16 - Cheesmaking Day - Took ~6 hrs
• Heated up 2 gal of milk in a 6 gal pot of the stove top.  Heated on low.  Stirred every 10 min or so to get even heating.  The milk started at 34 F.  Took about 1.5 hrs to get up to the target of 100 F.  Didn't have any issues with the cream settling to the top that I noticed.
• Added the culture.  Sprinkled on top of the milk and gave it a couple min to hydrate before stirring in.

• Moved the pot to a hot water bath at 100 F
• Let the cheese ripen for 60 min
• Measured out rennet and put it into a small glass of warm water
• Added the rennet and stirred into the milk for 30 s
• Let coagulate for 45 min - cheese fell to 98 F over this period without any heat
• Did a knife check at the end of 45 min and found that the curds had formed
• Cut the curds into a 1/2 in grid (suggestion was to do this to get a drier cheese)
• Let the cheese sit for 5 min while the whey seeped up through the cuts 
• Stirred to break up the curds - tried to get 1/2 in chunks.  The curds sunk to the bottom

• Moved the pot back to the burner and heated the cheese up to 106 F.  Over shot a bit and had it at ~109 F.  Turned off the heat at this point
• Let the curds cook for 1 hr.  I stirred every 5 min or so (also to help get a drier/firmer cheese)
• At the end of the hr I scooped out the curds with a slotted spoon and placed them in a stainless colander.  I was able to scoop out all of them rather than pour the contents into the colander.
• Dumped the whey
• Moved the colander back to the pot and placed it into a 100 F hot water bath.  The curds were 101 F at this point.
• Let the curds ripen for 2 hrs.  This allowed the cheese to acidify which is crucial for being able to stretch it

• Heated a gal of water up to 180 F for the stretch
• At the end of the 2 hrs I cut off a piece of curd and put it into some hot water to check the stretch.  Found that it was breaking after a short stretch so I decided to give the cheese another 20 min to develop more acidity.
• Cut the curd mass into 1 in cubes and moved half of them to a bowl
• Poured hot water into the bowl and pressed the cunks of curd to the side to get them to soften and melt.
• Consolidated all the curds into one mass.  Pulled the mass with the spoon to smooth it out.  The mass never got all that smooth unfortunately - it was very firm.

• Pulled the mass out once it had cooled a bit and stretched it by hand.  It stretched but not anywhere near was well as with the first batch.  I returned it to the water bath for a reattempt but no joy.  It probably stretched 6 inches or so as opposed to the 18 in that the other batch stretched.
• Poured about 1/4 tsp of salt onto the cheese during the stretch.
• Formed it into one big ball.  Ended up slipping out of my hands and onto the floor at one point and picked up some cat hair.  Washed this off in the sink.  Put a bit more salt on the outside and then put it into the freezer to cool
• Repeated the steps for the second ball (minus the drop on the floor part).  This one didn't stretch well either.
• Moved both cheeses to plastic ziplock bags and put them into the fridge.

Impressions:

• It tastes like Mozzarella cheese which I'm counting as a major victory.  The salt level is very nice
• It's a bit chewy and stringy - like a string cheese in texture.  You can even pull pieces off like with string cheese

• I melted a piece in the microwave - it melted well and was nice and stretchy and gooey when put onto chips

• Shreds very nicely - we plan on using quite a bit of this cheese on lasagna tonight
• Cheese was still good a week and a half later when we used it on Pizza.  All gone now.

Lessons Learned:

1. I think the curd may not have been cut into small enough chunks to get even heating for the stretch.  I cut them into 1 in chunks.  These should have been much smaller.  The difficulty stretching may have been partly due to this (although the overall firmness of the cheese was probably the main contributor)