Raspberry Sour Blonde (2024)

This will be my Raspberry version of Sour Blonde for this round.  Raspberries are a traditional ingredient with a lambic style beer and go very nicely with it.  In my last version (2019) I used 20 lbs of fruit which made a very strong fruit forward beer.  This time (even though I have at 50 lbs of frozen fruit available) I'm going to back that down to 15 lbs to give some differences to compare as I make these over time.

Raspberries are very tart on their own so I tend to choose more mildly flavored beer blends for these fruit beers.  I will use my tasting notes from last year to guide the selection of beers (will also shoot to use up beer from every one of my batches as art of that to make room to top up all my batches with fresh beer)

I'll give the beers a few months to absorb fruit flavors and ferment down to a stable level.  I'll bottle with extra sugar for backsweetening and then pasteurize.

For the blend this year I will go with:

• Fermenter #3:
• Overview:
• Aged with Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Includes beer that has undergone a lacto fermentation
• Mix of Pilsner and Flaked wheat malt
• Very lightly hopped
• Aged in glass carboy with 1 gal of head space
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Has a lactic sour kind of small along with some earthy Brett character and a bit of fruit (something like a lemon character off this one)
• Appearance:  Light gold in color and slightly hazy
• Flavor:  Lightly sour with something reminiscent of bready sweetness in the middle which is quite nice.  Has a bit of earthy flavor in there as well.  Has a little bit of fruit character.  The finish is a balance of acidity and that bready-like flavor
• Mouthfeel:  Medium-light bodied and dry.  The acidity prickles the back of the throat a bit
• Overview:  The flavors are slightly mild but it has some interesting flavors that give it a pretty good level of complexity.  I like the acidity in this one as well as that odd bready flavor in the middle.
• Volume:
• 2 gal

• Fermenter #4:
• Overview:
• Aged with Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Includes some beer that underwent a fermentation with lacto
• Mix of Pilsner and Flaked wheat malt
• Very lightly hopped
• Aged in glass carboy with vented silicone bung
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Overripe fruit (peach maybe) and a bit of earthy brett character.  Kind of smells like cider
• Appearance:  Light gold in color and pretty cloudy
• Flavor:  Lightly sour with a fruity flavor.  There is a bit of brett character in there as well - earthy and maybe leathery along with a mineral like character.  The finish is acidity along with the fruity character - gives the slight impression of sweetness although there really isn't any.  Get a slight bit of bready malt character to this on as well
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and dry.  It has a prickling sort of acidity that hits in the back of the throat
• Overview:  This is a fairly mildly flavored beer.  Has a fairly nice level of complexity - get quite a few flavors out of it even though they are all subtle.  A good level of acidity to this beer.
• Volume:
• 2 gal

• Fermenter #6:
• Overview:
• Aged with  ECY 34 Dirty Dozen
• Includes beer that underwent lacto fermentation
• Pilsner and Flaked Wheat Malt bill
• No hops in this batch
• Aged in a glass carboy with vented silicone bung
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Overripe fruit and some earthy and leathery brett character pretty strong.  Also get a mineral character
• Appearance:  Gold in color and very clear
• Flavor:  Lightly sour with a strong fruit character up front.  This is followed by an earthy brett character as well as a bandaid like flavor.  The finish is a balance of acid and brett.  Has a bit of a bready character as well
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and dry.  Very slight prickling of acidity on the back of the throat.
• Overview:  This is a boldly flavored beer with a pretty good level of complexity.  Got a fairly subdued level of sourness to it
• Volume:
• 1 gal

Blending Notes:

•     5/5/24:
• Weighed out 15 lbs of raspberries
• Measured out 2 gal fermenter #3

• Measured 2 gal from fermenter #4
• Measured 1 gal from fermenter #6
• Setup the fermenter to age in my cool basement

Raspberry Crop - 2024

This will be my eighth season for my backyard Raspberry Beds (read about 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023).  I have 4 varieties (Prelude, Joan J, TulaMagic, and Nova) each in a 2x30 foot bed.  I'm coming off of a bit of a decline year for the raspberries where I got 25 lbs of fruit and not starting with that many canes from last year.  I get busy on other projects and the beds end up getting overgrown with weeds which then stifle next year's growth.  I'm going to work to keep the weeds a bit more contained this year.  If this year doesn't help regain the strength then I may have to purchase some new stock for next year to replenish the beds.

Even so, 25 lbs of fruit is still a lot and I still have much of the fruit from previous years around to use in my brewing and cooking.  I will track the status of the fruit over the year for the record

7/14/24

4/18/24

Growing Notes:

• 5/27/24 - This has been a weak growing year.  I've decided to just eat the fruit rather than go through the effort of picking and logging what seems like will be less than 10 lbs even.  The grass has become a major chore to deal with.  I find that the first row I weed becomes overgrown before I've finished weeding the last one
• 7/14/24 - This has been a very disappointing year for the raspberry bed project.  I've been unable to keep up with the weeding.  Weeds have taken over the beds as well as the space between the beds.  I think this is going to severely limit the amount of growth coming out of this year..  I'm considering digging up the beds and starting from scratch next year at this point.

Sour Cherry Crop - 2024

This will be the fifth season for my 4 North Star Sour Cherry trees (read about Season 1, Season 2, Season 3 and Season 4).  The trees are probably about 9 feet tall now and 6 feet in diameter.  I got 39 lbs of fruit last year which more than has met my needs for brewing.  I expect we'll get a similar amount this year based on the flowering so far.

These are a dark fleshed variety of Sour Cherries which, although sour, also have a pretty strong cherry flavor like the sweeter cherry varieties.  I've just made my first Sour Beer with them and look forward to backfilling my stock of fruit to make some more.

It will be interesting to watch how they grow thicker and stronger this year:

7/14/24

6/3/24

5/27/24

4-18-24

Growing Notes:

• 5/27/24 - A good amount of fruit is forming and is starting to ripen
• 6/3/24 - Tried to pick fruit when it a very dark red

• 6/12/24 - Picking has lasted a couple weeks and I got 21 lbs.  I could have gotten at least another 5 lbs of fruit if I'd been willing to spend a bit more time but I already have so much fruit saved up from last year I didn't feel it was worth the energy

Bresaola - Dry Cured Meat

I've very much enjoyed my previous two attempts at Dry Curing Meat (Spanish Lomo and Capicola).  I don't have any special equipment or drying chamber but, in the case of the Capicola, was able to make something as good as the commercially available product.

My previous two projects were pork but this one, Bresaola, is beef Eye of Round.  It's not a cut of meat I cook with typically but it's very inexpensive ($5/lb for a 6 lb roast) and I expect to appreciate this use of it.  Like the last two I will be curing it using the equilibrium method where you apply a specific amount of salt (3% by weight in my case) and give it as much time as needed to absorb it (this is as opposed to providing much more salt than is needed and then properly timing the salting time which can over-salt the meat).  I'm using salt only here which is okay for whole muscle curing.

Post curing, I'll cover the meat with Pepper, garlic, and spicy paprika.

I will wrap the meat in dry aging wraps like last time and hang it in my basement which is in the mid 50s and fairly dry.  The drying was fairly gentle in these conditions and I didn't get much of a dry ring on the outside (we'll see how that goes now that we're in spring).  I'll plan on a 40% reduction in weight on the meat which should take something like 6 weeks.

I finished up my Capicola this week and am missing having it to snack on.  I'll need to find a better way to time the availability of these projects going forward.

Ingredients:

• 2359 g Eye of Round Beef Roast (with most fat trimmed
• 71 g of Salt
• Spice mix of equal parts covering the meat:
• Spicy Paprika
• Black Pepper\
• Garlic Powder

Process Details:

• 3/16/24 - Initial Preparation
• Trimmed my roast - removed some of the thick hard fat.  Left on a thin layer in a few places.  This is a big roast (nearly 6 lbs)

• Weighed the meat in grams and then calculated 3% salt.
• Moved to a 1 gal bag and added the salt as evenly as I could.  Sealed the bag with as little air as possible and moved to the back of the fridge

• The meat expelled juices and then reabsorbed them over the next couple weeks.  I flipped the meat every day for the most part.  Still has some free juices after 2 weeks so I'll plan to give it 3 or 4.
• 4/5/24 - Drying preparation:
• The meat had re-absorbed most of the moisture so I decided to proceed to drying

• Covered the meat with 2 tsp each of Black Pepper, Garlic Powder, and Spicy Paprika.  It took it all with a medium level of coverage

• Wrapped the meat in a dry curing wrap
• Trussed up the meat to hold it's shape
• Put this in a few muslin sacks and tied a few more times including with a place for hanging

• Hung the meat down in the basement where it is now about 60 F and 50% humidity
• It weighs 2454 g after the salting and with the wrapping.  I am shooting for a 40% weight loss which would be a loss of about 950g from the original weight - this is a target weight of 1500g
• 4/18/24 - The meat has been air drying almost 2 weeks now and is down to 1846g (25%).  This is consistent with the percentage of weight loss for my Capicola at this stage
• 5/4/24 - The meat dried down to 1488g in the last 2 weeks.  This is quite a bit faster than previous meats.  It is done at this weight.
• The dry curing meat wrap had been applied a bit too heavily and was very difficult to remove.  I ended up having to scrub the meat with a brush and still couldn't get it all off.  Ended up leaving a lot on there to be eaten (this ultimately didn't make much difference, but I was irritated about it at the time).  Sliced the meat down the middle - it is very red and very shiny with just a very minor amount of dry ring around the edges.  The basement is running about 50% humidity now which probably helped a lot (but getting into the mid-60s which is higher than ideal.

• Sliced it thin to sample.  I'd never had this before to compare the real thing with.  It has a concentrated beefy flavor as you would expect and struck me as having an iron flavor.  The flavor is quite different than the pork.  I ended up washing away much of the spices with the effort to clean off the wrapping so not much of that flavor.  The texture is a bit chewy - definitely a bit tougher than the Capicola.

• I put it in a ziplock bag in the fridge with the plan eat it all here in the near term
• 6/9/24 - I have eaten about 75% of the meat at this point.  I really like it.  It is plenty tender even if not as tender as the pork and has a strong flavor which I find to be very pleasant.  I definitely will make this again - hopefully without the stupid mistakes I made this time.  
• I've been reading quite a bit about curing meats since making this and learning that I was largely ignorant of the theory behind this practice of curing meat.  The potential for pathogens with cured meat wasn't something I fully appreciated. A big part of the salting protects meat by helping the surface dry out and stay dry (as it drives moisture to be retained inside the meat when you transition to the air-drying phase).  A dry surface is much less likely to allow harmful bacteria to develop.  The bacteria are active between 40 F and 140F.  Drying between 50-60 F, along with the dry surface and protection provided by salt, helps limit the chances of something bad growing on the meat as it starts drying out.  I feel I was a bit cavalier with this meat in attempting to dry in the basement above 60 F.  I plan to use my temperature/humidity-controlled dorm fridge for the air-drying stage in the warmer months going forward

Sour Cherry Blonde (2024)

This will be Sour Blonde Beer using home grown Sour Cherries from my crop last year.  These are a dark fleshed variety like those used for Kreik Lambic in Belgium.  They are sour but also have a fairly rich cherry flavor to go along with that (unlike the lighter fleshed Montmorency variety).  I am using about 13.5 lbs of fruit in this batch (they've been frozen which will help them expel their juice better).

I'll use about 5 gal of beer in this batch.  I'm shooting for a blend with a fairly mild flavor and light sourness as the fruit will likely dominate at this ratio.  I'll choose beers based on a recent tasting of my 13 fermenters

I have chosen the following beers:

• Fermenter #5:
• Overview:
• Aged with ECY01 Bug Farm
• Includes beer fermented with lacto
• Mix of Pilsner and Raw Wheat malt bill
• Lightly hopped
• Aged in glass carboy with silicone bung
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Strong overripe fruit and a bit of almost medicine smelling brett character
• Appearance:  Light gold and very clear
• Flavor:  Lightly sour with a fruity character.  Get a bit of earthy and mineral like flavors as well.  The finish is a balance of acidity and fruit flavors.  I also get a bit of bready character in there.
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and very dry.  Had a mild bit of prickliness on the back of the throat as well
• Overview:  This a boldly flavored beer with a pretty nice level of complexity.  The acidity is at a nice balanced level in this one as well
• Volume:
• 2 gal
• Fermenter #9:
• Overview:
• Aged with ECY 34 Dirty Dozen.  This is the second pitch
• Includes beer that has been lacto fermented
• Grainbill is a mix of Pilsner and Raw Wheat
• No hops in this batch
• Aged in a bucket fermenter with a vented silicone bung
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Musty and earthy along with a bit of fruit
• Appearance:  Light gold and a little bit cloudy
• Flavor:  Lightly sour up front.  Has a fruity flavor (citrus like) and a bit of a musty character.  Also get a bready like character and some mineral flavor. 
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and dry.  Has a fairly sharp acid bite on the back of the throat on the swallow
• Overview:  Pretty bold with a nice fruity character.  Not the most complex beer but it has enough other things going on to make for an interesting beer to drink
• Volume:
• 2 gal
• Fermenter #12:
• Overview:
• Brewed with Bootleg Biology Funk Weapon #3
• Grainbill was a mix of Pilsner and Raw Wheat.  To attempt to better simulate a cereal mash I drew off a quart of very starchy wort from the cereal mash and added this to the boil
• Includes beer which fermented with lacto
• No hops in this batch
• Aged in a bucket with a solid bung
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Fruity and slightly musty smelling
• Appearance:  Golden and quite cloudy
• Flavor:  Very lightly sour with a citrus like character and a bit of mineral flavor
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied with a light prickliness
• Overview:  Fairly mild in flavor without a whole lot in the way of complexity
• Volume:
• 1 gal

I plan to let this beer sit on the cherries for a few months before bottling

Blending Notes:

• 2/25/24:
• Added the cherries to the fermenter
• Siphoned the 3 beers onto the cherries

• Setup the fermenter with an airlock

Sour Blonde (2024)

I am sitting a large stockpile of aged Soured Blonde Beer (roughly modeled after a Belgian Lambic.  It has been about 4 years since I used any of this for a blend which I blame on being busy.  I've finally gotten my motivation to mix another one of these based on my most recent tasting (see tasting notes)

I have 13 fermenters of beer to choose from.  I've experimented with different ingredients and different blends of yeast and bacteria over the years to get a variety of flavor profiles in my beers.  For this Plain Blend I've decided to go for a mildly sour and richly flavored beer so I've chosen the most flavorful beers as inputs to the blend.  

I've chosen as follows:

• Fermenter #1:
• Overview:
• Aged with Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Includes beer that has undergone a lacto fermentation
• Mix of beers brewed with Pilsner Malt and Wheat
• Very lightly hopped beers
• Aged in a very full glass carboy with a vented silicon bung
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Earthy with a bit of overripe fruit (peach maybe) and a bit of a mineral character
• Appearance:  Light gold and very clear
• Flavor:  Lightly sour with a bit of fruity character.  Has some earthy character in there as well as mineral.  It also has a bit of bready character in the finish.  The finish is mostly acidity and this lingers.
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and very dry.  There is a bit of prickling on the palate from the acidity but not at all unpleasant to drink
• Overview:  The fruity character is nice and fairly bold.  It has pretty good complexity as well although the Brett is fairly restrained.  I think it has a pleasant level of acidity.
• Volume:
• 2.5 gal
• Fermenter #2:
• Overview:
• Aged with Bootleg Biology Funk Weapon #1 and a bit of Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Includes beer that has undergone a lacto fermentation
• Grain bill of Pilsner and Raw Wheat
• Very little hops in this batch
• Aged in a mostly full glass carboy with a vented silicon bung
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  A bit fruity (overripe peach maybe) along with an earthy and leathery character.  Also get a faintly mineral character from it
• Appearance:  Light gold in color and pretty clear
• Flavor:  Lightly sour (very pleasant) mild brett flavors and a bit of overripe fruit.  The finish is a balance of acidity and mineral character.
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied and fairly dry.  It has only a slight bit of alcohol prickling.
• Overview:  Flavors are fairly mild but are quite pleasant.  I think it has a fairly nice level of complexity.  Level of sourness is very nice
• Volume:
• 2.5 gal
• Fermenter #13:
• Overview:
• Spontaneously Fermented after cooling off in my side yard next to Raspberry Plants
• Mix of Pilsner and Raw wheat malt
• Hopped with high AA hops for 15 min of boil.  Left these in the beer while it naturally cooled which was a mistake I think.
• Aged with 3 piece airlock which has run dry several times in a better bottle
• Tasting Notes:
• Aroma:  Musty with aged beer character.  A bit of skunkiness - interesting.
• Appearance:  Golden and a little cloudy
• Flavor:  A bit of harshness up front - solvent flavor.  Once you get past that there is fruitiness on the finish along with a bready character.  Maybe a slight hop bitterness but very faint.
• Mouthfeel:  Light bodied but a bit harsh on the palate
• Overview:  An interestingly flavored beer.  Not very good on it's own but it could be an interesting blending component in small amounts.
• Volume:
• 1 gal

Blending Notes:

• Blending day - 1/21/24:
• Moved 2.5 gal from Fermenter #1 to a bucket fermenter
• Transferred 2.5 gal from Fermenter #2 to the bucket
• Then transferred 1 gal of fermenter 13 over to the bucket
• Set this up to age together for a month or two

Blue Cheese

This will be my first attempt at making a Blue Cheese. I've chosen a recipe from CheeseMaking.com called "Spanish Blue Cheese". This is intended to replicate a famous cheese I've never had called "
Picón Bejes-Tresviso".  There are a lot of steps involved including a few months of aging at high humidity so it is a pretty good investment in time to make them.  I really enjoy a blue cheese with salad but it is quite expensive - hoping I can find some success here and make some more of these.

The mold that gives blue cheese it's name requires oxygen to grow.  In order to get mold that spreads through the interior of the cheese it is necessary to have the curds come together in a way that leaves air pockets (which are later exposed to the outside by skewering the cheese).  To form the air pockets it is necessary to dry out the curds to a certain extent before adding them to the form.  You still want the curds to have a good amount of moisture as well so, apparently, there is a delicate balance to be achieved.  This being my first time making the recipe I tried not to stress too much about it - I believe I was likely fairly successful in drying the curds out and creating air gaps but will just have to wait a few months to see for sure.

Anyhow, I'll be aging the cheese in my temperature and humidity controlled cheese cave (converted dorm fridge) - the temperature in the basement is pretty good in the high 50s but the humidity is down in the 30% range which is too dry to make this cheese.

At the time of this posting I think I'm off to a pretty good start.  Excited to report on how it goes and hoping it increases my confidence to try some other more complicated cheeses

Recipe Details:

• 3 gal Pasteurized Cow Milk
• 1/8 tsp MA 4002 Mesophilic and Thermophilic Starter Culture
• 1/16 tsp Pencillium Roqueforti (PJ)
• 3/4 tsp Cacl
• 1/2 tsp Rennet mixed with 1/2 cup of spring water
• 3% weight of the cheese in Salt (I used Kosher Salt) - cheese was 1643 g so 49 g of salt

Process Notes:

• 12/23/23:
• Heated the milk in a 5 gal pot in a water bath to 80 F using my Sous Vide circulator

• Added the CaCl and Mesophilic and Thermophilic Starter Culture while the milk heated
• Reyhdrated the mold while the milk came to temperature.  Added this in once at 80 F and stirred to mix everything

• Let the milk sit at 80 F for 90 min to let the cultures start to do their work
• Added the rennet and stirred it in.  Let the milk coagulate for 90 more minutes
• Sliced the curd into a 1 inch grid on the virtical.  Let it sit for 5 min and then sliced on the horizontal
• Stirred the curds over the next 15 min and broke them up a bit

• Gradually transferred the curds to a colander and to a mat to drain in small batches.  I then added them to a separate pan to dry out a bit more before adding them to the form.  This ended up taking a couple hours since I didn't have a mat big enough to handle the amount of curd.  This is the tricky step I noted before and was a real pain.  I need a better approach for this next time.

• Added the curds to the form and let this settle in the basement over night in my utility sink above a pan full of hot water to help keep it warm

• 12/24/23 
• Measured out salt and added 1/3 of it to the top of the cheese
• Moved the cheese to my cheese cave at 88% humidity and 13-15 C

• Flipped the cheese a couple times but kept it in the form.
• 12/25/23 - Added salt to the other side and flipped a couple more times
• 12/26/23 - Salted the sides of the cheese and flipped
• 12/27/23 - Removed from the form and am flipping 1 time a day now.  Waiting to see signs of green mold forming now
• 1/1/24 - The cheese has started to form the blue/green mold.  I have poked holes about 2/3 of the wheel deep on the top and bottom of the cheese.  I'd been keeping the cheese in the high 50s F and at 88% humidity when the recipe recommends 52 F and 80% - I'm adjusting my controllers to this effect

• 1/13/24 - The blue mold has covered the whole cheese now.  I was a but concerned that the holes plugged up so I pierced the cheese again.  The cheese is getting a little slimy which the recipe warned of

• 1/21/24 - Lowered the temperature of the mini-fridge to 43 F and increased humidity to 90% for final aging - maybe a couple more months
• 1/26/24:
• The cheese is starting to develop some orange colored spots (which is expected for this type of cheese

• I've decided to proceed to wrapping the cheese (in parchment paper and foil) which is supposed to cause the blue mold to slow down and work on the internal part of the cheese to create a creamy texture and sweet flavor as it ages for several more months.  I still have it in the mini-fridge

• 4/5/24 - The blue cheese has been aging for a bit over 2 months now at about 5 C and in the high 90% humidity range.  I've got it in a ripening box which is doing a good job keeping the humidity high at this temperature (my attempts to keep the whole chamber in the 90% humidity range resulted in the humidifier running constantly). 

• 4/19/24 - I have decided to cut the aging short and give the cheese a try now (will age half in a food saver bag).  Cut it in half and was very pleased to find beautiful veins of blue mold straight through.  Tried it with a piece of the rind attached.  First impression was a bit of crunchiness which and an intense blue cheese flavor.  With additional bites the blue flavor became more intense until it was overwhelming - this is much more intense than any commercial blue cheese I've had (I've had Roquefort and Stilton and found them to be very pleasant).  The cheese has a distinct ammonia smell to it as well.  I put 3/4 of it into food savers to age in the fridge and left the remaining 1/4 on the countertop to air out a bit.  Then put it in a ziplock bag to try again later (a bit surprised and dismayed at this point)

• 6/9/24 - I have been trying the cheese a few times a week and am nearly through the first 1/4th.  I am eating it with the rind cut off.  I think the cheese is either getting a bit more mellow or maybe I'm getting used to it (probably a combination of both).  I find it enjoyable in small amounts.  It is still very intense, but the ammonia character seems to have dissipated a lot - this intensity is clearly why the cheese is referred to as "Picante" (aka "spicy").  Reading about this a bit, it seems that letting a cheese periodically get exposed to air while aging is good practice.  I'll have to consider this as eat the rest of it