Category: cooking

February 21, 2020 – Preparing to Brew Beer

February 21, 2022 /

Again, I have another packed week. I am working behind the scenes on content that is taking some time that I would normally dedicate to this effort. This is another week that I am leaning toward putting my effort into Friday instead of making sure I have something every day. I thought today that I would start with the logical first steps of brewing which are the steps that I use to get prepared and a few odds and ends that are related.

First, I thought that I would talk about what a brew kit looks like. The picture of the contents are below but essentially it is a recipe with all of the ingredients already measured out and packaged together ready to go.

This is a pretty simple recipe: Malt extract, hops and yeast. What is missing is the water. The kit provider also supplies a ‘one sheet’ of precise instructions, including a place to write notes and to keep this as a permanent record. I have my own notebook that I use but for people getting started or less disciplined, this can be really handy.

This kit is characterized as extract brewing. What this really means is that one of the major steps in brewing has already been done. Malting takes a whole grain and steeps it in water. This causes the seed to begin to germinate. That process converts the stored starches into sugar by activating natural enzymes and the sugar is what is fermented.

Malting barley can also be done by the home brewer. It requires a more significant equipment investment and more time. This is something that I actually have the equipment and is on my radar for experimentation but has been stuck behind a lot of other things that I would rather do. This is getting me motivated to step it up however.

Malt extract is made by a manufacturer malting the barley by concentrating the sugar (liquid) or evaporating the water (dried). I find the dried easier to handle but I think the liquid makes a better end product. The other prime limitation of the liquid is that it seems to come in either 1.5kg (3.3 lbs) or 6lb containers. That means that often the brewer uses some of both in a recipe.

Yeast is the mojo that makes it work. Yeast is the trade secret in all beer makers businesses because it can be adjusted and modified and is really the unknown. In the past, I used exclusively liquid yeast. In theory and definitely in cost, it is superior to dried yeast. The downside to liquid yeast is that it can get too hot, shipping in the summer can literally cook it, despite the ice packs they tried to use.

I said last week my experience with homebrewing beer has left me less than satisfied. That has driven me towards not spending the extra money on liquid yeast and this batch is no exception. Since my previous attempt at lager brewing failed (it didn’t ferment at the low temperature a lager is supposed to but it did go once I let the batch come up to room temperature), I didn’t feel like risking the money for a perceived better result. I think I have made myself clear.

End Your Programming Routine: I am planning on talking about what I am doing differently this time, tomorrow. So, if you are interesting in this topic, stay tuned. Remember what my goals are? See if the Keezer is worthy of getting integrated into the wine cellar design and while I am at it, brew a lager. Hopefully, I will get to all grain brewing and the point where I can tell the difference between the ingredients, but that is too many variables right now.

February 16, 2022 – Brewing and Keezer Project

February 16, 2022 /

I’m going to do something that I haven’t done in quite a while. That is to make beer. But of course, I cant just do something that I am proficient with, I have to amp up the complexity and number of variables.

A long time ago, I tried to brew a lager beer (2003ish). That is done at temperatures between 45 and 60. I had a refrigerator that had temperature control but it just didn’t work well. I am not totally sure why I failed but I thought that I would do it again. Part of what is causing me to do it now is that I am watching my plum wine settle and I can see the temperature going between 48 and 58 depending on the day. That is just setting in the basement, no refrigeration required.

A couple of years ago, my friend gave me a keezer. That is a freezer that has been converted to hold and dispense kegs. This is also new to me. I have never kegged beer before. It allegedly reduces the clean-up (mostly bottling time). That is the biggest reason I have moved away from brewing.

So, in order of my issues

  1. Time spent on the brewing and bottling process
  2. Cost of materials, there is little money saving brewing
  3. The quality of what I was making was substandard, in my opinion

Combine those three together and I think you can see why I stopped. Or should I say shifted focus. If you remember a long time ago, I wrote about looking for free or cheap sources to brew. Hence the plum wine, they were given to me. Just to punctuate this a bit more my kit costs $50. That is malt, hops and yeast in sufficient quantity to make 5 gallons.

5 gals * 128 oz/gal = 640 ozs

640 oz / 12 oz/bottle = 53.33 bottles yield

53.33 bottles / 6 bottles = 8.88 six packs per batch

$50 / 8.88 = $5.63 per six pack

Now, that might sound alright given that I am seeing Modelo or Corona at $11-13 per six pack. However, the other factors time and effort as well as results come into play. Generally speaking, this is going to be a low alcohol content batch. The more things that go in, the price starts to go up. Malt extract is $5/pound and hops are running more like $15/oz. That means if you are brewing an imperial IPA with lots of hops and alcohol you are getting closer to $10 a six pack or about what you are going to buy it at.

I purchased a brewing kit that is styled as a Mexican Lager. I am shooting to have this ready for Cinco de Mayo. Hopefully, I have given myself plenty of time but not so much that it is gone before we get there! If all goes well, then something else I have never done is all grain brewing. That can save quite a bit of money. So, who knows maybe this is the key to getting back into brewing beer again?

I want to try kegging. I want to try lagering. I want get this keezer working to see if I would rather like to keep going, expand or get rid of it myself. If it works out, then it is going to figure prominently in the wine cellar design as well. This all ties back to the basement cleanup efforts. See my crazy logic?

End Your Programming Routine: This is going to be a quick mini-series on brewing beer, specifically what I did. I had talked about writing on brewing in my About page and some of my early writings, but I have rarely done it. I suppose it goes back the time and the cost. I am looking forward to kicking this process off.

February 7, 2022 – What Does Eight Month Old Mozzarella Taste Like?

February 7, 2022 /

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but my threshold for food queasiness is pretty low. We had some mozzarella in the fridge that I bought last summer. It wasn’t open so there it stayed. The refrigerator in the garage, that is.

One more thing about that fridge. The door is slightly warped and the seal is bad. Occasionally, I will find that the kids got into it and didn’t close the the door with the proper technique. In the winter, it tends to not be an issue with the refrigerator portion but the freezer warms up. In the summer, the freezer tends to ice up but the refrigerator doesn’t keep stuff cold if the door isn’t properly shut. This cheese had the looked like it was melted a bit.

One time, I ate some yogurt that was probably three months expired. I look at it and then give it a sniff and if it seems alright, then I will give it a taste. If all goes well I will proceed without fear.

There is a little more to story, I am not going to go into today. But we also had a Costco sized tub of cottage cheese. I was looking up ideas to try and use that cottage cheese and decided to make some lasagna. I thought it would be a good time to use up the mozzarella if it was still good.

I opened the package, smelled fine. I cut a slice off and it was not what I expected. It tasted like sharp cheddar. I used it anyway and the lasagna came out pretty tasty if I say so myself. The one complaint I had was the cottage cheese was pretty wet, so the entire lasagna didn’t have a lot of integrity. But, it tasted good.

I happen to know a lot about mozzarella, probably too much. I spent years working for the largest mozzarella manufacturer in the country. I am not going to divulge information that I shouldn’t but let’s say I know where the bodies are buried. First of all, when buying at the store, it can already be months or years old. After the cheese is initially made, it is put into a freezer.

They produce so much volume of cheese that they will make cheese first before determining if it is any good. This is a common practice in food manufacturing. The food will be handled while fresh and then they will figure out the grade and characteristics and then sell as is, blend with other things or transform to something else. It called bulk-off/add back.

Maybe someday I will talk more about the process, but today is about the cheese. I usually find mozzarella bland and rubbery specifically the manufactured version. This cheese was not. It was soft as the variety is. Another process that drives me crazy is that they add nonfat, dry milk to some cheeses. This is to make it more inexpensive but I hate how it coats the knives and shredder. It is very difficult to clean.

The word cheddar actually means to age. Mozzarella is a fresh cheese or no aging required. It seems like in this case, it worked out alright albeit maybe not what some people want.

End Your Programming Routine: Just because something has a date on it doesn’t mean it is bad after the printed date. For instance there was a study on pharmaceuticals called the Shelf Life Extension Program to determine efficacy after the expiration date. It was found that most pill forms are still useful years after the expiration date. This is a liability limiter, not a quality indicator (in most cases). I say, if it looks and smells OK, why not?

January 26, 2022 – Eating Crab

January 26, 2022 /

Most Americans have been to Red Lobster, Joe’s Crab Shack or some of these other chains. Based on what region of the country you live in, crab mean different things to different people. Blue, King, or Dungeness crab, I have had them all. And personally, I thing the Dungeness is the best of them all. Sure, it is a lot less work to breakdown king crab but to me the meat is bland (and not worth the effort). It is another reason that you typically eat it with butter because it needs more flavor.

Quality food is best handled with simple treatment. I love Indian food and heavy spices. In that case, I think the recipes are showcasing the spices more so than the ingredients. Even in the case of crab cakes, I tend to make them when the meat starts to get a little fishy. A few nights ago, I made Fettuccini Alfredo and just sprinkled the crab on top. Even then, I think the parmesan overpowered the crab and to do it again, I would probably use olive oil and Italian seasoning with the crab.

I want to focus on the crab today, so I am not going to talk about how to make alfredo or boil pasta. But suffice to say, it is really easy.

I start with the legs. Break them off from the carcass and split the shell. If you are careful, you can get whole segments out as you work down the leg. I use a specialized shell cracker, but I have also used a nut cracker and also pliers to do this job.

Once the legs are done, turn to the body of the crab. This is called lump meat and it is not nearly as sweet as the legs. If you have a lot of them to shell, then you might want to separate for different uses. But essentially, you break the body apart and pick out all of the meat. Avoid the mustardy looking stuff called ‘crab butter’ it is edible, but not tasty. I try to rinse all of that off before I start shelling.

My wife snuck one crab while I wasn’t looking so one crab yielded about 1 cup of meat. If you think about it, this took one day and $54 in rental and license fees to yield 1 cup of crab meat. You bet it deserves special treatment for all of that effort.

I will take one detour before I finish today. I heard probably the best discussions on food and culture over the weekend. It was an interview with Wade Truong of Elevated Wild on the Orvis Hunting and Shooting Podcast. One of the sentient questions I took away was ‘How can we possibly value food when we can have anything we want, whenever we want show up in our doorstep in a bag?’.

I don’t think every meal has to be an affair, I think that there is a place to just getting it done (see yesterday for more of my thoughts on that). However I think that there are too many people that have no connection to hunting/gathering/growing food whatsoever. There are certain emotions that are related to killing something. It is a combination of sadness, disgust, reverence, gratefulness and jubilation at the same time. That is a connection with our humanity.

End Your Programming Routine: I had a good run with this trip to the coast last weekend, I will be moving on tomorrow. Clearly, it was a good experience since I wrote so much about it over the last three days. The two points I was trying to get across today were 1) treat quality ingredients simply and 2) look for ways to reconnect to humanity. If you cant (or wont) hunt or fish at least cook. Treat ingredients with the respect that they deserve.

January 24, 2022 – Don’t Be Crabby, It’s a Beautiful Day

January 24, 2022 /

I have said before, my favorite kind of fishing is the one that I am doing. My boys were headed out to a campout and we had a free day. My wife wanted to go to the coast and do some crabbing.

There are some people in my family that are pretty ‘coasty’ (including my wife). Both my grandfather and uncle had houses at the beach and looked for any excuse to go, including I remember checking the mail. Me on the other hand, I want a compelling reason but crabbing seems like a good one.

People not familiar with the pacific northwest coastline may be jealous that in less than an hour we can see the ocean. Don’t get me wrong, it can be beautiful. I think where most of the disconnect between perception and reality with me is that it is a hard formula to figure out whether it is going to be nice or miserable at the coast.

One thing I know, if it is hot here where I live, it is often can be cloudy or even rainy at the coast. In the summer time, even when it is sunny the wind blows pretty stiffly to the point that it is 70 degrees and cold (or sand in your face) because of wind chill. I think many of the best days are in the off season. That happened to be Saturday.

The conventional wisdom is that crabbing is best done in months that don’t contain an ‘R’. That means May, June, July and August are out. It is not that you cannot crab, it is more that it is molting season and the meat doesn’t fit the shell and tends to be soft rather than firm.

There is also a best time of day to do it. The best time is slack tide or the time in between incoming and outgoing tide. The incoming tide pushes crabs closer to the shore and the outgoing pulls them out. I will also say, the tides can also move your gear around as well. One time, my family lost all of their pots to a strong tide and could never find them again.

The technique is pretty simple. You attach some bait to the ring, throw the ring in the water and wait. After 15-30 minutes, pull up the ring keeping tension on the rope so the crabs don’t slip out as you are pulling them up. Once the ring is on the dock, you have to check for sex and size. Males, wider than 5 3/4″ are keepers. Crabs should be kept alive until boiled. They should be immediately cooled and cleaned and they should also be kept as close to freezing as possible until eaten. And, they should be eaten within a couple of days if not frozen.

We dilly-dallied our way to the place that we were going to crab. Consequently, we got there at 2pm and they closed the dock at 3pm. It was such a nice day that we did it anyway and we got two keepers in our 45mins of fishing. I would say that this is not always the case. I have been on days where all day yielded two crabs. So, we got lucky but that is fishing.

One last thing about inexperienced crabbing. Sea lions have figured out that the crab traps contain food. They will tear your traps apart and eat your bait and crabs. Traditionally, bait is the remains of filleted rock-fish. Some people use chicken and claim that has less problems. I have even heard of people using road kill as bait as well. But, what I am trying to say is that if you see sea lions, crabbing can be pretty poor. Fortunately, we didn’t have that problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Oregon requires a separate shellfish license to crab. It is good for the calendar year and with that we can also harvest clams as well. This is also something that I have never tried. I see more trips to the beach this year to harvest the bounty of what we have available.

December 20, 2021 – Gumbo

December 20, 2021 /

I made gumbo the other day. The inspiration for this recipe was a bag of okra in the freezer for some unknown reason. Having spent a couple of years in South Carolina, My wife and I came to appreciate okra more than the average Oregonian. I think that it was there because we tried to bread and fry some frozen okra a year ago or so.

I am going to talk about dietary adjustments and reasons later.  For now, we have stepped up the vegetable consumption and toned way down the carbohydrates.  Traditionally, gumbo would be thickened with roux or butter and flour.  Okra does help in thickening without the added flour.  That was another reason to use it.

Lets talk about gumbo at a higher level.  Creole recipes start with ‘the trinity’.  That is celery, onion and green pepper.  I don’t worry terribly about the ratios, but equal parts of all is what I shoot for.  I do however use what I have.  Sweat those and add the rest of the ingredients and heat up and done.

Mine had sausage, chicken and shrimp.  I throw in some Cajun seasoning salt and pepper and thyme.  Top with chicken broth to desired volume.  In my research, I found that gumbo has almost as many variations as there are available ingredients.  There is ‘Lenten’ gumbo that is all vegetables, some have tomatoes, some have limited meats.

Ah hah, I added the remainder (about one cup) of leftover tortilla soup as well.  Oh, I found some leftover pasta sauce (about two cups).  Now don’t go crazy, the basic ingredients in Tortilla soup was chicken, chicken broth, stewed tomatoes and garlic.  The pasta sauce was tomato sauce, garlic and green pepper.  The only thing that might throw it off would be basil, but I doubted that the after a good measure of cayenne it would be too evident.

Traditionally, this soup would then be ladled over some rice.  Not rice with sauce, that would be jambalaya but soup with some rice.  We had some leftover rice from Thai food in the fridge, I added about a 1/4 cup for my bowl.  This came out spot on.  You couldn’t taste the melded additions and it was complex and hearty.

About ten years ago, I started doing research about diet and the effects on health.  My wife has a history of immunocompromise issues.  Through my research, I found that gluten was a primary irritant for things like psoriasis. We tried paleo for a couple of months and her psoriasis went away. We slowly added starched back in and cut out a lot of junk food.  

I would say at this point we were reduced in our carbohydrate consumption to probably half of what it was before the last experiment with paleo but psoriasis came back.  So, we are going full time low carb.  For her specifically, gluten free.  I will have some carbs now and then, I had the rice, she didn’t.  As you know, I am not going to just throw out perfectly good food.  I won’t make a habit of making it again and we are not going to be militant about it.  Everyone should enjoy the festivities of Christmas.

End Your Programming Routine: Psoriasis, Psoriatic arthritis, cancer and diabetes all run in her family.  Eliminating gluten (and sugars) reduces inflammation in the body and all of those risk factors.  Inflammation also causes stroke and arterial buildup of plaque as well.  If the research is correct, this is the right thing to do.  I guess time will tell.

 

 

December 10, 2021 – An Unappreciated Art Ruined by Fakes and Slander, Fruitcake

December 10, 2021 /

A couple of days ago a friend came by and delivered us a fruitcake.  We talked a little about the process  and she said this is something she said that she has been doing for nearly 60 years.  I think it was last year, I happened to catch a segment on TV on how to make a fruitcake and my opinion and appreciation changed immediately.

Adjectives that I think most people apply to fruitcake are cheap, tacky, passé or dare I say thoughtless.  I have to say that I held that opinion as well.  The reason being is that my impression of fruitcake was that someone bought a couple $5 processed fruitcake to reciprocate as hostess gifts or ‘whoops, I forgot about your family’ enjoy this crappy fruitcake.

With a real fruitcake, nothing could actually be farther from the truth.  This is an art that takes a lot of effort and planning.  I suppose that is where the breakdown starts.  I think about mole for instance.  Good mole is incredible, bad mole is almost inedible.  It all has to do with the process.

Today, most people and restaurants make mole from a base.  That starter includes poor ingredients and substitutes like hydrogenated oils replacing lard and thickened with chemical agents.  This leaves a semi-sweet, pasty and lifeless sauce that kind of makes me regret the upcoming meal when I smell it.

But, enough with mole lets get back to fruitcake.  How did we get here?  The planning, effort and cost is how.  A proper fruitcake would be soaked in Rum 30-60 days.  That means that it needs to being made around Halloween.  When you combine a corn syrup drizzled concoction of a ‘store-bought’ fruitcake with peoples lack of dedication to the finer points of cooking our only context is a sticky, bland uninspiring mass.

We have a society that doesn’t know fruitcake because of our lifestyle and it is easy to see why we can’t appreciate it.  My wife and I are old soles.  As we were talking to our friend yesterday, she offered to give me the recipe.  I immediately jumped at the chance.  Ultimately, I don’t care to change the world and if you aren’t willing to try then fine, more for me.  But, the tradition seems appealing to me so I think it is something I want to try next year.

End Your Programming Routine: This is the definition of ‘End Your Programming’.  Tradition, culture, effort and craft combine into something special, wonderful and counter to popular belief.  I think it is an honor to learn from someone that has persevered through the opinion of fruitcake to keep on doing what you believe.

 

December 3, 2021 – Turkey Soup for the Soul

December 3, 2021 /

Still have Thanksgiving leftovers? Believe it or not, we do still. A large part of it was that things were packed for days in the coolers while we travelled and the other was that we ate last Friday with other family members. Finally, we still have a travel hangover.

Today I am making turkey soup.  I have yet to figure out exactly what the end form will be noodle or rice, leaning toward rice.  If I was thinking better last week, I would have done something about leftovers last Friday but it really didn’t occur to me until yesterday as I was planning dinners and thinking about how to use leftovers.

Going even deeper with this… this isn’t simply about using leftovers to make soup.    Yesterday, my mother-in-law had her first chemo here in Oregon.  My wife was the designated caretaker for this round and I was thinking it would be helpful for me to make some dinner to share.  

After a five days on the road on the road last week, I had my fair share of ‘snacks’  and fast food as well as eating out.  My general feeling about all of that is that it is not satisfying and leaves you only temporarily satiated. When you are a caregiver, it can be very tempting to give up on cooking and settle for temporary relief. 

Only having the perspective as a a caregiver, I think that is a much more difficult job than being the patient.  Sometimes you are walking on eggshells and sometimes you are wondering if there is an end in sight.  We still have all of the other aspects of life to manage, particularly the future.  The patients only focus is the current, it is the caregiver that is managing the future for the patient.

To get started, I am going to debone all of the turkey. It doesn’t have to be stripped but I want the bones to make the stock.  I also don’t want a lot of fat because that just sets on the top.  I have covered stock making before but as a refresher, I am going to add aromatics and set it on just under boiling if possible.  I want to try and convert all of the collagen and connective tissues from the bones into the broth. 

Ideally, that is when it is done but that also takes days of preparation before hand and if you don’t have days, it can be done the day of.   So, don’t let the planning stop you, remember Samin Nosrat said use water if you cant make your own stock, so this is the most important step for best results.

I used carrots, celery and onion along with salt and set it on the stove.  I gave it about six hours.  If I have the time, I am also going to cool and filter.  In this step, I can skim off hardened fat and remove all of the bones and vegetables.  It is not really a quality step but mostly for appearance.

I am going to dice turkey, and more carrots and celery.  I am going add rice and some parsley.  From there I will add salt and pepper to taste and that should be it.  I will probably serve with buttermilk biscuits and a side salad.  How does that sound compared to a Big Mac meal?

End Your Programming Routine:  I keep telling myself that I need to do more with food here.  Particularly the aspects that I like such as transforming leftovers.  We need to feed the souls of patients and the caregivers, as it is a difficult and many times thankless job. 

October 12, 2021 – The Cure for a Hangover

October 12, 2021 /

One of the most treasured things that I gotten in relationship of a Latino family was the ability to open up to culture that was very foreign to me. I find it fascinating that two families can grow up in the same geographic area and relative socioeconomic level and yet have experiences that are extremely foreign.

The older I get the more I realize this is more common with ethnic families. They have largely embraced the American experience while retaining elements that are important to the original culture. I suppose that I cannot speak in ultimate authority, but I have seen examples in this family for sure. Speaking outside of food traditions for the moment, there is something called Curanderismo or white magic. I am not going to go any deeper than surface level but there is a technique for solving an ear ache or taking away bad dreams.

I find that there is a lot of superstition, most of which I don’t think there is a whiff of science or logic but this one makes some sense, the cure for a hangover. When my wife and I were dating, I was enamored by so many new experiences. One of them was for young families to stay out late dancing, drinking and socializing. Then, after the social outing you would cap off the night (or morning) with soup called menudo.

On first blush, this is a fairly simple composition of ingredients. The primary ingredients are tripe, water, garlic, oregano, salt and chili powder. Some people like some variants that include hominy and pigs feet. Sound good yet? The work is in the prep and the timing because there is a fair amount of those two things.

Having made this a number of times, I would not call it exactly inexpensive. At seven dollars a pound for tripe, buying 15 pounds the price starts to add up. These are big pots, so it is typically made at 10 gallons at a time. But, let’s get into it.

Tripe is most often bought frozen. It is a beef byproduct that is cleaned and fresh frozen in blocks. Most supermarkets will cut these blocks on the bandsaw in smaller pieces but they are never small enough to use. So, these need to be thawed out plenty of time, like overnight before you need to start cooking.

I add salt and about a head of garlic for about five pounds of tripe and enough water to start boiling down the trip. If you use pigs feet, this is also the time to add them. What these do to the soup is contribute collagen for thickening and this soup will end up solid at room temperature when done right. One foot per 10 pounds of tripe is about right. I didn’t want to spring for a bunch of pigs feet, but I did use some smoked ham hock which I already had.

Now, what I have done is put this pot on overnight. This time I added the menudo mix which is oregano and chili flakes along with salt and let it go. By the time I woke up in the morning there was 1/2 an inch of fat on the top of the liquid and the tripe was boiled down to half of its size. I say this so that you are careful about how much additional water is added. I used three quarts initially but if I had to do over again, I would have done more tripe and less water.

I was serving this around dinner time, normally it would be late breakfast time so you may need to get up early to get the seasoning done. I used 25 dried guajillo chilies to rehydrate and make a paste. That happened to be all I had, it probably needed double that amount for this batch. If you don’t have enough which is frequently the case, you can use chili powder to help out. Keep tasting because you want the broth to have body.

Hominy is a slightly controversial ingredient. In Tex-Mex fashion, it is used. My wife likes it so I try to do a 50/50 tripe to hominy ratio. In Mexico, there would be no hominy added. Keep tasting you may need salt, chili and garlic.

Serve with corn tortillas, chopped onion, limes (my wife likes lemons), extra menudo mix and chili for added spice. Coffee or Coke is the best pairing for drinks and eat three bowls. That will cure your hangover.

I will be honest, I don’t love it. It tastes fine and I am good with it every couple of months but I don’t crave it. What I do appreciate is keeping the tradition alive. I also appreciate the waves of people enjoying the food and the camaraderie. I also like being the white guy that makes the best menudo and it makes my wife happy. So, once a year or so I will do it again just for the heck of it.

End Your Programming Routine: Yesterday was the two month anniversary of my father-in-law’s death. This was an homage to him as the hominy and the menudo seasoning was his when we cleaned out the pantry. I made it for my wife who returned home from Texas over the weekend who loves it. His passing still weighs heavy on her heart. We really didn’t have a hangover in a traditional sense, but in a small way hopefully this helps with the figurative one.

October 11, 2021 – Making Plum Wine

October 11, 2021 /

This is something that I should have done a long time ago. I have had these plums prepped and improperly stored in the freezer for over six weeks now. The truth is, I thought that I would talk about brewing much more than I have. This may be the first time I have written about it other than saying that this was one of the things that I was going to write about.

About mid August, a box of plums showed up on the deck. I don’t really know where they came from. I think I do, but nothing has ever been confirmed. Now, I don’t really care for them and would much prefer them dried, then called a prune. I also thought about trying to give them away, ultimately I decided to try and make wine.

Never having done this before, I did some research. Plums are a stone fruit. It seems like they are related to the peach and the almond. So, there is some risk of cyanide that is contained within the pit. It was generally regarded as minimal risk with a whole pit, (not being ground or broken) and in some cases it was preferred to have some pits with the brew. I decided to just pit them all for several reasons. Since I don’t know the source, I don’t know the condition of the fruit. Could they be rotten or green or contain bugs?

I didn’t have plans to immediately brew which is why these went into the freezer for a later date. This has several advantages beside managing schedules, freezes will kill undesirables. It will also rupture cell walls making the essence of the fruit easier to access when I decide to get started. From a (home) brewing perspective, freezing fruit is a helpful technique to to making the best batches.

I’ve done quite a bit of reading and learning about beer. However, the same is not true with wine. I guess what surprises me is that most fruit wines use sugar as an additive. In this case, I had 15lbs of fruit but also 15lbs of added sugar. At least this is the case in the homebrew world. I am aware that in the wine world, nearly anything can be done to make adjustments, from acid to flavor. I guess we will see how it comes out.

What kind of yeast do you use? I chose a freeze dried pastor blanc yeast from Red Star. In my beer research, I know that the liquid yeast strains seem to be the premium choice. However, I have not found it to make that much difference in taste. I have pretty much switched over to dry yeast for the cost and storability. I have both and could have used either red or white yeast.

Along with 3 gallons of water and a few adjuncts (that are not strictly necessary), I got my wine started. I added one teaspoon of acid blend (citric and maleic), 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient for getting the yeast going, it is some kind of urea (or nitrogen compound) and one teaspoon of pectic clarifier. I dont think that is necessary either.

Finally, I added three Campden (Sodium metabisulfite) tablets. As strange as it sounds, these are added to retard the fermentation. Traditionally, the primary fermentation is done in open vessels and the skins of grapes contain enough yeast to ferment by themselves. The brewer wants to make sure that his added yeast takes off first to have the most controlled outcome. These tablets also contain free radical scavengers to consume oxygen and reduce the oxidation of the juice.

End Your Programming Routine: So far, my experiments with wine have been not great. I have found the best place to use them is cooking or mulled. But that is OK, It is the place where my science training still gets exercised a little bit. I will keep you updated on how the process progresses.