Sauerkraut Pictures!

Apologies for the absence and intermittent posting. Here are some pictures from a recent run of sauerkraut:

Raw cabbage - juicing up

The good stuff

 Shredded cabbage, beets, and carrots in this batch, maybe a turnip as well. Trying to keep it simple, but there are so many good vegetables to use out there!

Same batch in a Mason jar being tamped down

 As you can see from the photo I got myself a tamping tool. The one I got is actually meant for tamping down the middle of a delicate little pastry tart, but I think my employment of it is better. This is good not only when you're packing a jar but also when you have your initial pile of freshly shredded cabbage. Give it a full salting in a bowl and then set to work with the tamper. It's easier than just punching your knuckles down into the cabbage and it will get more juice coming out faster.

Finished product from an earlier batch - spicy ginger-carrot kraut

This ginger-carrot was really good. Crunchy, spicy, sweet, and sour at once. It makes me want to get back to making simple, small batches.

Fun weekend and updates

I found a cool beer and wine store in Bethesda on Saturday, and have acquired not only the venerable Weihenstephaner Vitus (referenced in my earlier beet wine tasting post), but a dry-hopped Woodchuck cider which promises to be an interesting mix of flavors.

Fermentation updates:

-Brought the Memorial Day mead to Boston, where it didn't go over great, probably due to its own overwhelming sourness from having sat on the spent yeast for too long. I am going to have to persevere with this stuff, since I have about a gallon and a half left in the carboy. I'm thinking of blending it or using it for cooking or vinegar

-The beet wine is ready for racking, which I hope to do later tonight. I'm also going to do an experiment where I add extra must to the spent yeast in the jug after I rack it. I want to see how much life is left in there. It's going to be a challenge not to drink the beet wine before it's ready; it looks and smells so good right now.

-I sunk some of the beets that were boiled to make the beet wine into my current sauerkraut batch. They've been in about two weeks, so I'm getting ready to dig them out and see how much the kraut juice has penetrated into the cooked beets. Hoping for some kind of pickling effect, but absent that I still don't think there's any downside.

-Made sourdough starter from scratch and baked with it this weekend! The stuff works, simply based on capturing wild yeast from the air. All credit to Sandor Katz's recipe in Wild Fermentation, the bible of my current projects. The bread was good, and plenty sour, but I'm already thinking of ways to improve it.

That's all for now!

Illicit Tasting

After an ill-fated attempt to go to the Shakespeare Theatre last night, I came home and snuck into the basement. I was there for all the wrong reasons. I wanted a taste of the highly immature, barely week-old beet wine. It's way too early for that, and there's no way the wine is ready, but my curiosity would not be sated. As is often the case, I had to know what was happening inside that beet-red jug (get it?).

I went down with a jug of extra must that I've been storing in the fridge to top up after my tasting. Removing the airlock, I poured a little in a glass. The aroma! And the taste. Yeasty, funky, a little weird, but much different than what I was expecting. The sweetness from the added sugar in the must is mostly gone. That Montrachet yeast has been very active, gobbling up honey, cane sugar, and residual beet sugar to turn into alcohol and carbon dioxide. What remains is somewhat viscous and redolent of fruit flavors and a strong hint of banana. The yeast and shredded beets have mostly settled, but there's a lot of sediment in what I poured, leaving a chalky residue on the glass. The thing it reminded me of most is this beer.There was an immediate connection in my mind to the Weihenstephaner Vitus. The yeasty banana flavor is written all over it. There's also a musty, almost savory taste to it.

I topped up the jug with some more must to feed the yeast a little bit and replace the airlock. Needless to say, can't wait to taste the finished product.

Beet Wine - now with video

I spent Monday afternoon making beet wine. It was a long time in the offing, but surprisingly easy when I actually started doing it. I boiled about 3 pounds of beets, removed the beets from the water, added sugar, honey, and orange juice concentrate.

 Boiled that mix, cooled, added a yeast-orange juice starter mix, and voila. Beet wine, in a brilliant purple-red color. Won't be ready for at least six months, so temper your expectations, please!

Here's the video of the must bubbling away in the fermenter:



Waiting for this to finish fermenting and aging is not going to be easy. I want to drink the whole thing right now! Definitely encouraging to try something that seemed so complex and find it a fairly simple proposition. I will not hold back from attempting outlandish wines or other fermentation projects in the future. As the truism goes: you can't succeed until you try. Or something like that....

Quick post: Weekend Plans to brew for Columbus

I will be making beet wine this weekend! At last, the day has come. Montrachet yeast ordered, orange juice concentrate stocked in, beets to be bought, 5 lbs of honey in the basement. Just need to rack the maple mead out of the primary fermenting bucket, and maybe bottle it. I even bought fresh corks for the bottling process. Hurray for me!

This means I'll be sterilizing and siphoning all weekend. That's what Columbus would have wanted on his feast day! This recipe should only be for a gallon, so quantities are limited. Leave a comment if you'd like me to reserve you a bottle.

Dance Yrself Clean (Wine Edition)

This weekend, when I'm not rocking out to the breakdown at 3:08 or attending the National Book Festival, I'm going to make Spiced Beet Wine. The 1 gallon recipe from the wild wines book I got from my mother calls for 3 pounds of beets, 2 pounds of white sugar, and 1 pound of honey. I'm using packaged Montrachet yeast and some yeast nutrient for this go-round to ensure a lively fermentation, but I'm not averse to doing this recipe with the wild yeast air-capture method in the future. The spices also seem pretty mild in the recipe. No reason why the amounts shouldn't be jacked up to nausea-inducing levels of fresh ginger rather than a pinch of dry. This seems like the perfect time to try and fail with exotic recipes. Beets, tomatoes, garlic wine. I may learn something, even.

May the beet wine I make now be dug out of a dusty cellar in 2088!

This project has partly come about because I'm obsessed with beets and their color. It's so....red. But not just red, it's a living, pulsating reddish-purple. I want to capture this color and turn it into wine and keep it in a bottle for several years. The color is itching to get out of the beets, too. If you scratch them they will bleed deep dark red juice into your hands that doesn't come out except under prolonged scrubbing. If you cut them, your hands and your cutting board will bear the mark long after. I wear it as a badge of honor now, the pink hand of the beet-preparer. They have a sweet, earthy, wholesome taste as well and a delightful crunch. I would eat them every day in an ideal world.

Image credit: untitled (Alexandre Moha) / CC BY 3.0

17 or more Fermentation Possibilities, who's counting, really?

Potential future fermentation projects:

-Beer
-Kvass (Russian bread soda, basically)
-Beet kvass
-All-beet kraut (or pickled beets, you might call it)
-Beet wine
-Beet hot sauce (sweet and hot)
-Fermented beet and corn salad (very close to becoming a real thing)
-Beet yogurt (getting the theme yet?)
-Tomato wine
-Sourdough pizza
-Fermented tomato sauce (we'll need this on our sourdough pizza)
-Fermented peach preserves
-Sour pickles
-Hard cider

-Beet hard cider (why not?!)
-Fermented ginger preserves
-Pickled potatoes
-kombucha
-Kefir!

Any more suggestions? I'm open for business.

Let's not hold back here. The possibilities are limitless, constrained only by imagination and equipment. People have laughed when I told them my plans. I understand fermentation is easy to dismiss as a mad scientist-type hobby without productive consequences. This is real, though. I'm going ahead with it anyway, but I want people to know that it's not a joke. There are vast opportunities for fun, financial savings, and health improvement. I plan to laugh all the way to a tasty bank of jars containing the products of my labor combined with friendly bacteria.

It's mostly for fun right now, but it feels good to have a modicum of skill that creates something you can eat and drink and give to people. It feels good to make your own. And when people laugh at you, you can go home to your pickled beets and feast until your lips turn red.

Also, let's not lie, it's fun to be able to make alcohol. It's not just fun, it's easy too. I'm a little short on jugs, but once I get my operation running, there's going to be a large quantity of wine in production. If you're nice to me, you'll be on the distribution list.