At Least Something Grew This Year

We were walking on our street the other day and discovered that a neighbor had hops, in flower, growing in front of his house. That got me thinking about the hops on the bike path and so today I went down to take a look. Usually I miss the season by a week or two and the hops I find are wilted but not this time! They were perfectly ready. I picked a bagful and brought them home to oast. Which took about an hour at 275-300˚F. We have a beer kit we've been meaning to brew, an Irish red this time, so I can add these at the second rack. When we finally make the beer.

Also today I made three batches of chocolate zucchini bread - two batches to make four loaves of bread and one batch to make two round cakes (for these I left off the topping) and those cakes will be the basis for a birthday cake for Saturday. No reason it can't be remotely healthy, right?

Salsa and Beer

Today I'm home waiting for a package so I made sure I had enough projects to do. I made 2 batches of salsa. First a batch of garden salsa (red and yellow tomatoes, scallion and onion, green peppers and jalapeños) and then a batch of tomatillo salsa, which finished the tomatillos. I don't think I'm going to get much more of those from the farm so it seemed wise to start to use them up. We're going camping tomorrow and I wanted to have some salsa to take.

Last night we tasted the beer to see if it was ready for the "Homebrew Showcase" at my husband's work. Even though we bottled it last Friday it was, amazingly, ready. We squeaked in under the wire this year! The difference between the 2 half-batches is noticeable, both the aroma and the taste. The beer with the added hops is definitely a deeper hops flavor. I prefer it. He'll take 2 liters of each in tonight and we'll get some feedback from people there.

I still have some apples to contend with, as well, as beets, another monster zucchini (I took 2 the other day and made 4 loaves of chocolate zucchini bread, 1 for dinner, 1 for work, 2 in the freezer), and a whole lot of squashes. But I think I'm going to take a little break soon. After I make more apple cake.

Late Night Bottling

After dinner this evening we bottled the beer we've been brewing. We'd split the batch in half and added fresh ("wet") hops to one half. After a week, it was time to bottle. First we tasted and bottled the half-batch without the extra hops, this was about 9 liters. Then we racked the half-batch with the hops into the other carboy and bottled that. Again, about 9 liters. The half-batch with the extra hops tasted smoother, almost sweeter, than the other. It'll be interesting to taste it again when they're ready to drink.

Also today I made a batch of grape jelly using 5 of the cups of grape juice I made a few days ago. I have enough for another batch which I'll try to get to in the next few days. I still have almost a half-bushel of apples to work with and some zucchini for another batch of chocolate zucchini bread but I just don't have those big chunks of time right now.

Lovely Scents

Today was the big day:  I took my Pediatric Recertification exam. We have to do this every 10 years. And I'm tired. Afterward, I got home with enough time to do a little foraging on the bike path. Something I felt might make me feel less stressed out. The hops and black walnuts smell so lovely this time of year!

In keeping with the theme that every tree and plant (except blackberries, for some reason) has done really well this year, the hops and the black walnuts on the bike path were plentiful and easy to reach. I picked almost 50 black walnuts off the trees and didn't have to resort to picking up any off the ground. The squirrels chattered their displeasure at me the whole time but, trust me, the trees had plenty to spare. Once I ran them under the wheel of the car, only 3 were bad. They're drying in the garage.

As for the hops, I picked a bag full and I timed it just right and most were fresh and green. We had been planning on using the hops from last year, which were oasted and in the freezer, but decided instead to try the "wet hops" technique of adding them in fresh. After coming back from the Town Day Fireworks, we split the beer into 2 containers; half will stay just as the kit instructed and the other half gets the fresh hops. Next week we'll bottle them and see how they taste. I'll keep those other hops in the freezer for the next time.

Lastly, I cleaned out the basement and brought everything to my neighbor's house; we're having a neighborhood yard sale to raise money for a traffic calming study and it seemed like a good opportunity to get some things out of the house. Since I'm working tomorrow, I figured it'd be easier to drop it off today. I think it's going to be rather big.

Venison Pie

As has been mentioned all week, I had a plan to make a venison pie.  I was following this recipe, which I altered just a little bit.  First of all, the juniper was OUT.  (You can find out why here, in case you were wondering.)  I didn't have Scottish ale, but I had my foraged hops homebrew, which is an ale.  I used foraged Dotted-stalk Suillus mushrooms.  And I made my own pastry instead of using puff pastry.

Ah, the pastry.  I had been trying to find an occasion to make a savory pie, so I could experiment with using the rendered duck fat to make a savory crust.  Now was my chance!  Since it melts at such a low temperature, I mixed it with butter:  2/3 butter to 1/3 duck.  Even then, it was the most fragile thing I've worked with, even with putting it in the freezer frequently to keep it cold.  It broke every time I tried to put it in the dish, which was probably too deep anyway.  I finally had to press the crust into the dish.  The top crust went better.  From a taste and texture perspective it was really, really good, but just not worth that much hassle.

The filling before adding the beer

I did, however, use the scraps to make a cheese tart, having figured correctly that the 9 year old wouldn't enjoy the meat pie as much as the rest of us.  It was obviously a hit as the kids almost came to blows trying to divvy it up.

The pie was served with baked carnival squash topped with truffle butter and a stir fry of tat soi and komatsuna greens.

Homebrew Showcase

The weekly Thursday evening happy hour event at my husband's work is occasionally a themed thing and this week it was a homebrew showcase.  We chose to name our beer "Minuteman UFO" as it was, technically, unfiltered, and the hops came from the Minuteman Bikeway.  Hence the logo.  It was well received.  He said about 5-6 people brought in homebrew but there were certainly more that 5-6 people at the happy hour.  All 24 bottles were consumed pretty quickly which was good because there was no way to get it home.  We still have a few large bottles left for ourselves, but it looks like it'll be time to start another batch soon.

Foraging Many Things

Over the past few weeks I picked a lot of wild grapes at the stables.  In addition to a small bag of mixed foraged fruits (grapes, elderberries, and blackberries so far) I got over 3 pounds of grapes to make a batch of jelly.  Today I extracted the juice from the grapes and left it to drain for a few hours while I ran a few errands.

One of those errands was to check out the foraging on the bike path.  Last year I'd found hops growing wild on the path so I went back to get more.  I must have just missed the peak of the season as many of the flowers had turned brown but I was still able to find enough to add to a batch of beer.  I'm drying them now and then I'll put them in the freezer until we're ready to brew.  The other thing I grabbed was a bunch of black walnuts.  I drove over them with the car to get the husks off and brought them home to dry.  I got about 20 but I think a few might be bad.  I won't really know until they're ready to crack open.

After I got home, I finished the batch of grape jelly - 9 cups in total.  I only canned 8 cups, though, and the rest is in the fridge.

Forgot to Mention...

Our super-hoppy beer was ready to drink when we returned, so we chilled a bottle and tried it out.  Half the batch is slated for the Homebrew Festival at my husband's workplace, which is fine with me as it is definitely more hoppy that I'm used to.  However, I have to admit that it's good, and I'd like to think that toasting the hops changed the color and flavor just a little bit.  Now I wish I'd kept some without the extra hops for comparison, but I will just be happy with what we made and save the scientific approach for another batch!

Hoppy Beer, Bottled

Today was a day of siphoning.

Not only did we bottle the beer, but we had to clean out the fishtank.  Which was a job and a half, let me tell you!  There were mineral deposits all over it, and under it, and on the light, and the lid, and in the pump, and on the bureau it sits on.  Fortunately, the minerals didn't damage the bureau.  We'll be more careful next time.

The beer was, surprisingly, less work.  The priming sugar was boiled with a little water and poured into the bottling bucket, then the beer was siphoned in from its carboy.  The hops stayed (mostly) behind.  We bottled 24 regular bottles to share at the Homebrew Showcase coming up at my husband's workplace, and 9 of the 1-liter bottles.  We had just enough for one more 12-ounce bottle; this will be the one we use to test the beer when we think it's ready.  Should be a few weeks.

Hoppy Beer, Now with Extra Hops!

Toasted hops

As I said in the previous post, I was in Ohio over the holiday weekend.  I got back this morning; everyone else is returning this evening but I have to work and I was concerned about airport delays.  Considering the havoc that the recent storms wrought on air travel, my fears are not entirely unfounded, so it was best to give myself the extra time at home.

It was time to do the second rack with the beer and add that foraged hops.  I toasted the hops in a warm oven for about 45 minutes and they lost a bit of their hoppy smell but took on a more toasted smell that could be (hopefully) interesting.  The beer itself had a potential alcohol at this point of 1.5% so something has sure been happening in that fermenter!  The specific gravity today is 1.010, also more like beer.

Cramming the dried hops into the tiny mouth of the carboy was a pain in the neck but I did finally get it all in there and siphoned the beer on top.  Now it's resting under my desk in the kitchen, fermenting some more and, with luck, doing something tasty with those hops.

Bike Path Bounty

The hops in the wild

After receiving a tip from a friend, I went looking on a bike path for wild hops.  We thought it might be fun to make beer with them and see what happens.  We went for a ride and I found nothing, but I did see grapes, and nettles, and crabapples (the grapes and crabapples were rather tasty).  So I went back on foot, thinking I must have just been going too fast.  Turns out that was the case, and I found all sorts of wild hops.

Drying the hops

Dried hops, ready to brew

I gathered about a quart, maybe more, and at home the total weight was 97g.  Then I dried them in the oven for a while and reweighed them: 27g.  While I was out on the path, however, I found autumn olives and black walnuts.  I am not sure if I'm going to go crazy over the autumn olives this year, but this shrub was plentiful, so maybe I'll go back for them.  I also snagged 28 black walnuts off the tree, so before they fell and got all nasty.  They've been husked by me driving over them with the car (there were 30 nuts, but 2 got crushed by the car) and are now drying for a few weeks.  Then I'll crack them open and see what I get.  Last year I was disappointed that the nutmeats were dried out so I am hoping that by getting them directly off the tree that won't be the case.

I checked with another homebrewing neighbor and now have a plan for these hops - we'll add them for aroma at the end of the fermentation cycle.  They smelled wonderful while they were drying in the oven!