An Explosion, a Purple Goat, and Peppers

When I got home after a day at the office followed by a trip to Tractor Supply, my friend Joe was busy baling hay in the field next to our little farm.  The goats were anxious to be let out of their pasture, and the donkey was anxious to be freed from his stall.  The dogs were more than ready for some attention too.  There's always a flurry of activity when I get home now, which is nice as long as everything goes smoothly. 

I slipped on my barn shoes and shuffled the herd members - Rufus got some love and room to roam, and the dogs and I took the goats for a stroll while we watched Joe's big hay bailing machine suck up the mounds of hay and make a cloud of dust in the air.  I turned my back, and then heard a loud explosion!  We all turned in time to see a giant could of white steam erupt from Joe's tractor, blocking our view of Joe and his equipment.  Uh oh.  That sounded expensive!  I called Joe to make sure the goats and I didn't need to organize a rescue mission, but he was fine.  He said that it looked like he was done for the day.  Yep.  

Isn't that always the way.  Just when you think things are moving along like you hoped, something goes wrong!  A busted radiator hose isn't the end of the world, I know, but it made me think of all the broken things we've been dealing with lately.  The truck needed a new transmission ($!), my car needs new brakes and tires, the tractor crapped out on us too (apparently, transmission fluid is important), the hot tub got all new guts, but then burned through the plug.  Doh!  Our wifi has been on the fritz for weeks (no Netflix.  Oh, the humanity!!).  And now, to top it all off, my goat has a sore foot.  

I sent a picture of the red and crusty looking place under Peach's dew claw hooves (what are those things called?) to the lady who gave me the River brothers, and she said to soak her foot in warm water with Betadine, and gently scrub away the crust, then put a daub of stuff called blue-kote.  Everyday, for a week.  I thought I was pretty clever engineering a way to tie her to the fence and pin her still with my hip while she soaked her foot, but didn't realize the blue-kote is a bright purple substance that will magically splatter all of my clothes, my shoes, and my skin, and does not wash off.  And then, Wendigo drank some of the Betadine water while I was messing with the goat and the goat licked the purple stuff so that her muzzle, mouth, and tongue turned violet to match her feet.  I have to do this every day for a week? Ack!    

I left my poor purple stained goat and my poor puppy that now had a belly ache outside, and escaped to my kitchen to spend some time with a lovely bowl of peppers that Tamara gave me from her garden.  Hello, lovelies!  What to do with all those peppers that doesn't involve washing the dishes or digging out my canning gear?  Time to try pepper dehydration!  

I kept the biggest green peppers to use fresh when I cook, but considering my dedicated kitchen time lately has been barely enough to make a smoothie or heat up some soup, I knew I would never eat them fast enough.  I cut most into slices, but slit the little hot peppers in half, and put them all in the food dehydrator overnight.  The smell of drying peppers made us hungry!  

I chopped all the banana peppers into rounds, with chopped onion and some garlic cloves, and put them in a quart jar with a big tablespoon of salt, and a big slug of whey from the top of my yogurt, and then filled the jar with water.  Lacto-fermented peppers anyone?

This morning the hot pepper halves were still a bit moist, but mostly shriveled.

The slices of green and red pepper where dry and crispy.  It worked!  I think I can add these to soups and foods when I cook.  Nice!

Lucky Leap Year Beer (LLYB)

The approach of our annual St. Patrick's Day beer tasting with our friend and fellow brewer inspired us to dust off our brewing supplies and make a batch of home brewed beer.  We were aiming for a brew on Leap Day, but by the time Joe, Jamie, and I managed to gather ourselves, our scattered supplies, and come up with a plan, it was the second day of March.  No worries, we still brewed in the Leap Year, right?  

In the photo above you can see how the packet of yeast in warm water turned to yeasty froth within an hour, despite the packet being old and stored un-refrigerated.  The beer we brewed used two new cans of malt extract, but all the hops and flavoring malts came from our collection of left-over ingredients.  We roughly followed a recipe, but used what we had on hand.  Because we didn't have any powdered malt, we substituted about a half a bag of dark brown sugar.  We ended up with a full five gallons of beer with a gravity reading in the right range.  We hardly ever get a full five gallons, so I hope the brown sugar tastes good because it made a lot of beer!

The beer was ready to bottle by St. Patrick's Day - so we named it our Lucky Leap Year Beer.  We used the handy diary-house sink that Brandon and I bought from the farm auction to wash and sterilize fifty bottles.    

This sink is even big enough to soak five gallon buckets!  It was a little chilly outside to have our hands wet, but I was excited to find out that we can bottle beer without destroying the kitchen in the process.  

Not that we needed the kitchen for cooking, since Brandon was there to grill us up some dinner.  Welcome, grilling season! 

We siphoned the beer into a bucket with a spicket.  

The beer tasted flat, of course, but the color and flavor were pretty good, especially for a made up recipe using left over ingredients.  

We ended up with forty-seven bottles of beer.  Since we only spent thirty dollars on the malt extract, this means our beer only cost us sixty-eight cents per bottle.  Not bad!  I hope it tastes good.  We won't know for few weeks, since the beer needs to carbonate with the priming sugar we added before it was bottled.  

Each bottle cap was labeled with LLYB.  We recently did a taste test using the last bottle of each type of beer we've ever brewed.  We liked almost all of them, and had fun trying to remember what each beer was called based on the letters written on the cap.  SSW (sun shine wheat?) was good, as was BW (barely wine?) and several other types we never could figure out.  Maybe if I spell it out here on the blog, we can remember our beer titles.  Cheers!

Hop Transplant and Good Neighbor Beer

The hop plants that we planted near the back porch, which we have harvested for beer making for the past two years, are really taking off this year.  They are growing well beyond the wire cages I made to protect them from the chickens, and some of the stems are several feet long already.   Jamie and I made an attempt to transplant some of the hop overflow out to the farm.  

The method we used was not very delicate, so I hope these are a tough as I think they are.  Jamie used the shovel to cut through the rhizomes and dig up a big scope of soil with the hop plants that were sprouting up outside the cages.  I think digging up some of the hops is a good idea anyway, since at the rate they are spreading I can see that they would eventually get out of hand without control.  As you can see in the photo above, I never took down the ropes the hops used for climbing during the last growing season, so with a little training, the vines that are left should be able to grow up the ropes again.  

We have two type of hop plants, Centennial and Willamette.  If I remember correctly, the Centennial is a flavor hop, and the Willamette is an aroma hop.  I also remember that I had two plants of each, planted side by side, and that I used a sharpie marker on the side of the porch to mark which plant was which.  Now that the sharpie has washed away, I'm not sure which two plants were Centennial, and which two were Willamette.  I'm not sure I really care either, but I made sure the label each bucket and plant them in the same order when I got to the farm, just in case I try to figure it out someday.  

While we were working in the garden and I was planting the hops we dug up, which were seriously wilted, our neighbor came over for a chat.  This is the same neighbor that has several giant rolls of old hay that would be perfect mulch for the garden, and who promised to bring it to me with his fancy tractor several times. I asked him if he thought the hay was too old and rotten now for his tractor to scoop up and bring to me.  He was quick to tell me, again, that he could easily bring the hay.  I smiled at him for a few moments.  "What, you want it right now?" he asked.  I hesitated, well.. you know... I didn't want to bother him, so whenever it's convenient, and if it was too much trouble he didn't have to bother, but if he gets a chance it would be great for the plants, especially the plants I just put in the ground that were wilting, and that I really hoped it was going to rain this week because without being able to water them they may not make it, but he didn't have to go get it right now...  I mean, unless he wants to... go get it now... I mean.  Ha!  I only felt a little guilty when a little while later he drove up in his tractor with a big scoop of rotten hay for me.  I know he likes beer, and if these hops survive, which will likely be due to the ample mulch I applied, I'm going to make sure he gets some.  I may title it Good Neighbor Beer.     

The World is Alive

Even before I notice the spring peepers calling from the ponds in the horse pasture near our neighborhood, or see the buds on the daffodils, I know the winter is over because the giant silver maple tree outside my front door drops thousands of buds.  I'm not sure if the birds are causing this, as the tree is full of noisy birds, so maybe I need to pay special attention to see if I can catch them in the act.  

I asked google if it was normal for a maple to lose so many buds, since it appears that these buds have not yet opened to form flowers, but the only answers I got were people complaining about the mess.  I don't mind it at all.  I'm so glad to know the trees are waking from their winter slumber, that I welcome the excuse to sweep the porch in the spring air.    

Even though it's been raining and cloudy, and the lawn is squishy with the recent rain, Puck and I are excited to tour the yard taking photos of flowers and rocks instead of snow and ice. 

I've been taking careful notice of all the places water stands after the rain.  As lovely as the water is, I am aware that mosquito season is upon us.  Jamie and I saw small blue butterflies this week while working in the field, and last night, when I went outside wearing my headlamp to check on the chickens, a moth fluttered around my face.  I found a cricket in the shower this morning, and a tiny spider slowly descended on a long web right in front of my face while I was brushing my hair.  The bugs are back.  The flowers are back.  The trees are budding.  It feels like the whole world is alive!  

Speaking of life... I opened a capped bottle of my home brew kombucha that I allowed to sit out on my counter for over a month, and it sprayed all over my kitchen!  It was extra fizzy- extra alive.  Now I know that more than a month is too long for a secondary ferment without going in the refrigerator first to calm the activity of the organisms.  Even after cleaning up the mess, what was left of the kombucha in the bottle was extra fizzy.  And tartly delicious!

I Come Bearing Gifts

Since we are all dying to know how my new kombucha brew is coming along, I took some photos of the recent feeding and bottling.  As you can see,  I switched from the easy to clean mason jars with their handy screw on lids to the glass beer bottles with ceramic flip caps.  I like these bottle so much, I was willing to drink an entire case of Grolsh beer just to get at the bottles.  That's how much I love my SCOBY - I'll drink beer for it!

As you can see from the particularly gloopy looking SCOBY that formed on the top of my brew, my kombucha is thriving in my counter top farm.  

To harvest my kombucha tea from under the biofilm on the surface, I just tipped the jar and let the tea flow from under the film.  Since the SCOBY is larger than the opening, it stayed in the jar without a problem.  Near the bottom of the jar was some cloudy sediment and strands of SCOBY, so I stopped pouring off the tea when the sediment started to be disturbed.  The tea is a lovely golden color with tiny bubbles that stick to the glass.  It's quite pretty and appetizing once it's away from that ugly SCOBY.  

For this batch, I put a teaspoon of tart cherry juice concentrate in each bottle, and then filled the bottle to the neck with the kombucha tea.  The ceramic caps make a very tight seal, so the all the gas from the organisms, as they digest the sugar in the cherry juice, will be trapped in the tea, making it fizzy like a soda.  

Even though I've been juice fasting from Monday morning to Friday evening, I allow myself kombucha, and since I don't get other snacking events during the fast, it's become a special treat.  I put ice in a fancy glass, anticipate the POP! of the cap and the aromatic mist that comes off the bottle, and I admire the color and flavor like it's precious wine.  Anyone in the house with me gets a fancy glass of it too, even if they don't really want one, and we clink glasses and make a toast.  Cheers!  

While I was bottling, I was steeping some fresh tea in water to add back to my SCOBY and residual kombucha in the jar.  Since I have several large SCOBY's now, I was considering feeding the ugliest ones to the chickens and only keeping the pretty smooth one in the photo on the left.  But then I though, why waste it, why not spread the joy of kombucha brewing to a friend at work, and let her have the pretty SCOBY.   Jamie walked through the kitchen as I was divvying up the fix'n's, and when I told him I was giving the extra SCOBY away, he worriedly asked "Does she know she's getting one of those?"  Like everyone wouldn't enjoy this gift!  

Later, when Brandon came home from work, I proudly showed him my kombucha gift, to which I added sweet tea and covered with a paper towel tied down by one of my precious twisty-ties from my collection.  He was also concerned, and wanted to know if I had warned my friend that I was giving her one of those.  What's with these guys?!  Of course, it is like giving someone a chore, since it's one more thing to feel guilty about if you let it die because it wasn't fed.  But now that I know how to make more, no one has to worry.  

My brew is already making another SCOBY.  Be warned friends, I come bearing gifts!  

Kombucha Revival

Once upon a time, I had a SCOBY.  It lived on my counter, and I fed my SCOBY and kept it warm, and in return for my attention I was allowed to drink it's fermented fluids... wait, that sounds so gross.  Gross, but tasty!  Anyway, I tended my SCOBY and enjoyed my drink for quite a while, but as usual, I got distracted, and for a period of time I neglected my SCOBY.  Worried that it was dead, or contaminated, I guiltily composted it.  No more kombucha tea for me, boohoo.  

But luckily, my friend, coworker, and fellow kambucha drinker, had a genius idea to grow some SCOBY's from some store bought kombucha.  I didn't even know you could do that!  She brought in a couple of jars, poured in some non flavored kombucha, put a do not disturb sign on it, to keep curious co-workers from shaking the aromatic jars in her office, and a coffee filter over the top to keep out any dust, and we patiently waited for signs of life.  As you can see in the picture above, in less than a week, we had a brand new baby SCOBY!  We were back in the kombucha brewing biz.  

This was a fun experiment to have at the office, because when someone would ask what it was, I would get to say "it's a SCOBY, you know, a Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast, of course."  I could have said it's a biofilm, which it is, or even better a zoogleal mat, but that's not really any more appetizing.  In the photo above you can see the baby biofilm on the jar at the top, right before I pour it into a batch of fresh brewed tea, below.  

I actually had two biofilms, because the first one sank to the bottom of the jar during transport home, and after a few days another film grew on the surface.  They look sort of like jellyfish, don't they?  

These biofilms are a social structure of yeast and bacteria.  According to Wikipedia, the organisms in a biofilm actually cooperate and compete with each other.  So my SCOBY is really a whole team of critters, all working together to make a sour drink for me.  How friendly.  

After a week in my big jar, a new bigger SCOBY formed on the surface.  When I touch the SCOBY, it feels like a piece of wet leather.  I think it's the bacteria that form the cellulose that gives the biofilm it's firm texture.  The sugar in the tea gets digested by the yeast and bacteria to form a little alcohol, gluconic acid, and acetic acid.  Acetic acid is what's in vinegar, so the kombucha gets more vinegar flavored the longer it's in the jar.  

For my first flavor experiments with my first batch, I poured off most of the kombucha tea into six wide mouthed jars.  

I put some tart charry juice concentrate in two of the jars, pear jam in two of the jars, citrus marmalade in one of them, and just for fun, I put some spicy tomato jam in the last jar.  These flavorings also have the added benefit of a little extra sugar, which re-energizes the organisms in the tea, and creates a little fizz in the tea as it ferments with a lid on.  

Two of the jars received a spoonful of chia seeds.  I've compared chia kombuch to frog eggs before, but I've grown fond of the slimy yet crunchy texture, so wanted to see if I could reproduce the chia kombucha that's available in the store.  

The tea recipe that I used is four big black tea bags and three small green tea bags steeped in one quart of hot water.  Once the tea is a nice dark color, I removed the bags and dissolved a cup of white sugar in the hot tea.  Then I added two quarts of cool water, and poured it into my big jar which contained the SCOBY and about a pint of kombucha from the last batch.  

The final verdict?  The tart cherry juice concentrate was my favorite flavor, followed by the citrus jam.  Since I generously share my kombucha with Brandon, whether he wants some or not, I can tell you that he drank them all without complaint.  The spicy tomato jam was just as good as the pear jam, but neither had a very distinct flavor in the sour kombucha.  The chia seeds were good too, but did not occupy the entire jar like they do in the bottles from the store.  They clumped together at the top, and had to be stirred in, which sort of released all the fizz from the drink.  And, although I liked the ease of the mason jars for cleaning and adding chunky jams and seeds, the caps don't seal tight enough to capture all the fiz.    

I'm excited to have my kombucha back, and even more excited to know that it's so easy to grow a new SCOBY, just in case I get distracted again.  

Pink Sauerkraut Friends

One of my friends and coworkers recently attended the Wise Traditions, Weston A. Price Foundation annual meeting.  She wrote about her trip here.  I've fallen down the rabbit hole of the inter-web many times and found myself landing on the Weston A Price website. During these informational journeys, I've noticed that lots of folks are beginning to pay attention to some of the principles outlined there, like eating live food, such as sauerkraut, yogurt, raw cheese, kombucha, and keffir, and avoiding sugar and un-soaked grains and eating lots of bone broths and healthy animal fats and other healthy fats, like coconut oil.  Because the nutritional education offered by the Weston A. Price Foundation is contrary to so many of our long held beliefs about food (what? I can eat butter?!), I find it all very interesting, and since my friend and I spend lots of time driving to project sites, we get to share our thoughts about our kitchen experiments as we try making food in new (to us) ways.  We're getting a reputation among our coworkers as always talking about food.  Weird food.    

Not that sauerkraut is weird, even when it purple like my recent batch, but making sauerkraut does take planning and time, and there are many variations of method to pick from, so it's nice to have friends who are trying it too, so we can compare experiences.  

For this batch, I used less salt than I ever have before, and instead of using a plate and a jar to hold the cabbage in the juice, I filled a gallon zip lock bag with water and let it lay on the top of the kraut.  It worked wonderfully, and was much easier to use than the plate and jar.  The only problem I had is that my manner-less kitten thought I created a water bed that was just her size and I caught her taking a nap on top of my kraut!  Thank goodness I had a towel draped over it.  

If the goal is to eat some live food every day, then I need to keep making weird fermented foods so we can have a variety to pick from.  Have you had your dose of kraut today?  

Tasting the 13 Hop Beer

Cheers! Earlier this week Jamie and I popped the caps off of some of our most recent home brew beer.  This is the beer we called 13 Hop, for which we used all the hops harvested from the garden in 2013.  We learned some things making this beer.  First of all, we now know that two quarts of dried hops is a lot of hops!  This beer is fantastically hop flavored.  Since we like hops, we like that it's plenty strong.  Notice how dark the beer is when held up to the light?  We don't remember what kind of barley we used, but whatever it was makes a lovely reddish color.  

After the first big gulp, my comment was "this beer tastes expensive!", to which Jamie agreed. Now that we've been making beer for a few years, and had many leisurely shopping experiences at the local Liqueur Barn trying to figure out what ingredients to buy, I can recognize when a a home brew beers complicated flavor equates to a higher bill at the cash register.  This beer packs a punch with all those hops, but also has a very dark malty flavor.  Since we used home grown hops and left over bits of specialty barley, the only thing I had to buy was the malt extract (twenty-six dollars) and packet of yeast (about a buck).  This beer tastes like I would have paid more than ten dollars for a six pack off the shelf, and we made it at home for around four dollars for a six pack.  Not bad!  If we could ever get it together to make beer using all grains, and skip the malt extract, we could make it for a fraction of that price.  Not that we brew for any reason other than the fun of it, but it's nice to think that we find our own product worth more than it's price tag.   

The problem with using only grains instead of the more expensive extract is the additional time it takes to brew; it changes a four hour experience into a six hour experience.  We have a hard time squeezing an all grain brew into a weeknight.  Especially since we like to drink beer while brewing.  After a certain hour, drinking beer makes me sleepy.  

We also learned with this beer that it's not a disaster if we leave the beer resting on the sediment longer than we're supposed to.  This is probably not a good thing for us to learn, since the fear of losing all our hard work is motivation to finish our beer.