Christmas Goodies - a book and a crock

For Christmas, my mom gave me the latest book by Sandor Katz (!) and a 3 gallon crock (!!!). One can only imagine how much this will enable my fermentation hobby/habit. The book is long and packed with new techniques, advice, and illustrations. The crock arrived last night, and in combination with the book should lead to some real fun and some audacious experiments that go horribly awry! At the very least it quadruples my kraut making capacity. It will probably come into use for wild yeast wine ferments as well. Thank you mother, and I promise to share the results.


Updates:

-Over the weekend I racked the beet wine and sauerkraut cider to clean jugs. The sauerkraut cider has really mellowed and is coming into its own. It should soon be stable enough to bottle and age. This one is unique folks, and very exciting, even if I'm the only one willing to drink it.

-I also filled several bottles from the carboy of maple wine, which may be under a gallon in volume by now. I'm a little excited and a little worried because this means that equipment will be free for a 2-5 gallon batch of something. Any ideas?

-Using a bit of my original sourdough starter that went up to Massachusetts to my mom's house in November and came back to Maryland in January, I'm making real sourdough bread this week. I'm also coming off a successful baking of rustic Italian bread which had an excellent crust and moist crumb, so I may be overconfident about my bread skills.

-Last night I started a small batch of peach nectar, cider, and cranberries as an alcoholic ferment. It's on the counter to catch wild yeast as we speak.

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!

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.