Bagels

Boy these look good. At this stage at least. The whole point behind the bagel is the super chewy, flaky crust which is achieved by boiling the damn things for a minute on each side. I am well addressed in bagel theory, just not in practice.

It is very hard to take a yeasted item and then pick it up and throw it in a pot of boiling water and hope for the best. The end result is something that while palatable, is far flatter then expected. Why I decided to make more than 12 is beyond me.

So, I either have to use these as building material for the newest addition on the house or feed them to my dubious co-workers who will be wary of the non store bought appearance.

Brewing III: Scotch Ale

Steeping Grains

• 1Lb Crystal 40L
• 80z Aromatic
• 4oz Special B
• 2oz Black Roasted

Malt Extracts

• 9Lbs Ultralight
• 2Lbs Light DME

Hops:

• 1oz Northern Brewer (translation: whatever we had in the bottom of the barrel) @60min
  

Yeast

• US-05 (How does this fit into a scotch? Hint: It doesn't)

So. This is what happens when you don't read what you are buying. Scotch? That sounds like Irish and EVERYONE love to talk about anglo-american beers. Well this baby (if you can call it that) is destined to end at 10% alcohol with a weak bitter flavor to tangle with the taste of "rocket fuel". This may not end well.
Elliott watches over us and determines that the water quality is not quite up to par... but thats ok because this is the first time we are using the turkey fryer. On first notice everything went well; thousands of small worries and problems vanished as we realized that A> The fryer holds 5 gallons and B> The burner is powerful enough to get everything up to a boil and not use up the entire tank of propane.

There is a small steel basket that we used to hold the grain and hops bags. This proved quite useful as there was some worry that the heat from the burner might melt through the mesh bags and create a real mess.
The wert chilled quickly and we used a siphon to pull out everything except for the protein that was starting to settle which might lead to the beer clearing a bit. Attempts to "cyclone" the protein by stirring met with failure.

We realized that pitching the yeast is almost kind of a religious ceremony. It went something like this:
(I throw in the yest)
Me: We hope that this enhances the... uh... glory that is God?
Roommate: Since when did we start doing that?
Me: Donno. Seemed like the thing to say at the time.

Brewing II: Bitter Bottling

Moved the beer out of the primary into the bottling bucket. The beer had been in the primary for 14+ days and was probably very ready to be bottled, but we will never quite know. The true measure, of course, is the final density of the brew, but our instrument was destroyed in an unfortunate accident this morning... so since we were all ready to go, we decided (in a small calculated risk) to go ahead and bottle with out truly measuring the final gravity.

23 22oz bottles, 1 16.9 oz bottle, and 3 12 oz'ers to round out the group. Poetry springs to mind. So does the thought of explosive bottles.

Planting Pictures IX: Stem Spots

Tori is doing quite well after she was moved to the deck. The heat my have been too much for her. Also, she has finally produce a single cucumber of which I have eaten half. There are 3 or 4 others that are forming. I am slightly worried that she might have problems due to small amount of soil (3 gallons) in which she is planted, but we will have to wait and see.

Steve and Jeff are doing well, and as always Steve is doing far better then Jeff who looks like he is secretly beaten every time I look away. I have had 3 of Steve's tomatoes and they are quite good.

On closer inspection Jeff has series if small bumps along his stem (this sounds dirty, doesn't it?). They are apparently called "Primordia" which are essentially small root nodules that can grow on the stem anywhere. They are mostly due to the high humidity and the fact that Steve and Jeff are slightly over watered.

Cherry Pie

This was a successful venture, and I managed to annoy everyone that was close by doing it, but vision has its consequences.

Just a basic recipe:
3 Cups Cherries
1 Cup Sugar (more or less)
1/4 cup flour
Dash of salt
Dash of almond extract
2 TSP butter cut up and placed on the pie, if using a covered pie (ie two crusts) lower the amount to 1 TSP.
Use store bought crust... made with lard if you can find it.

50 min at 400 degrees. Make sure you protect your oven against filling. Nothing in the world attaches itself to your oven with more vigor then cherry pie filling.

Brewing I: Munich Helles II

After spending ~4 weeks marinating at 50 degrees we decided it would be prudent to "rack to secondary" this is an important step because it gets the forming beer off the pile of condensed yest and (warning: scientific term) other crap which could produce off flavors. The gravity reading (at 50 degrees) was 1.024 for those at home keeping score.

Here you can see that we have some old water cooler bottles that we use as secondaries.

This will go back in the fridge to wait at 60 degrees for a couple of days (this is called a diacetyl rest, and it probably should have been done before racking) before being moved to close to 40 degrees.

A few months later we have beer. Just in time for October Fest.

[Edit] it had a diaceytl rest for about a week (far too long) before we cranked down the fridge to 40 degrees.

Brewing II: Bitter

Seeping Grains

• .5 lbs Carastan

Malt Extracts/Additions

• 6 Lbs Ultralight
• .5 Lbs DME

Hops

• 1 oz Liberty at 60 minutes
  
• 1.5 oz "Northern Brewer"at 5 minutes
• 1 oz "Northern Brewer" at the last minute

Yeast

• US-05
  

Brewing Notes:
This is probably the last batch that will be brewed on the stove, thank heavens. Everything went according to plan with no real discernible problems. J filled the stock pot far too high and stirring was a chore, plus the hop amounts were a bit difficult to manage. Everything went well and the OG was 1.051 which was slightly higher then expected even though some Ultralight liquid malt was spilled. Used the clarifier whirlfloc in the final 5 minutes. When the stock pot was cooled with the chiller there was a cold break and large amounts of protien seemed to form.