Brew Moon: March 2010

Happy Brew Moon! Today is a new moon and the debut of the monthly "Brew Moon" post. One post a month dedicated to home brewing. I rarely drink alcoholic beverages but I do enjoy making beer, wine and mead; plus my friends are more than happy to help me dispose of the product.

What's in the carboy? Well, right now I have a stout that needs to be bottled and a Riesling ice wine that needs to be racked. There's 3 gallons of mead at my friends' house that I need to check on. I've got grain for another stout, I want to do a recipe comparison, and some soda extract for DBF.

Rule #1 of brewing is sanitation. Cross contamination is bad in cooking and it's equally bad in brewing. Rogue microbes can lead to skunking and unwanted growth. I remember the first time that my former brewing partner tried making beer, he got one of those beer kits from Wal-Mart...you know the ones with the plastic carboy and the screw on cap? They don't make a very good seal and something got into the wort that created white tendrils. It was gross, I teased him about having a yeast infection.

However, primary fermentation is often done in a plastic bucket and the home brewer needs to be aware that plastic is a porous material. If you have scratches inside the bucket then you might want to consider replacing it, the same goes for hose; I replace my hose every year. Soda extract can be very potent and can permeate a plastic bucket so it might be a good idea to have a dedicated bucket if you want to make soda. How do I know this? The #1 comment about my latest batch of beer is that it "smells and faintly tastes of root beer." The batch was a crap shoot anyway, I bought the wrong ingredients, so it might still taste like root beer if I tried to replicate the batch. Either way, I can smell the root beer extract even when the cap is on the bottle so I'm going to have a dedicated soda bucket.

"Relax. Don't worry. Have a home-brew." -Charlie Papazian

- KP

Friday Gear: Fire Extinguisher

While is is always best to have a fire extinguisher and not need it, it's very bad to need one and not have it. As Mr. Brown says, the fire extinguisher is the only uni-tasker allowed in the kitchen. According to the National Fire Protection Association, cooking fires are the #1 cause of home fires and home fire injuries.

For those of you that didn't pay attention during fire safety month, usually October, in elementary school; a fire needs four things to burn (the fire tetrahedron): oxygen, heat, fuel and a chemical reaction between the other 3 elements. Take away any of those and the fire should go out. As I mentioned previously, we had a small oven fire in my kitchen a couple of weeks ago. We closed the door to the oven and the fire stopped but when we tried to open the door again, the fire came back. Why? Closing the door deprived the fire of oxygen but opening it again completed the tetrahedron. We probably could have just closed the door, turned off the broiler and waited for the oven to cool down (taking away the heat side of the tetrahedron).

I have two, I had three, fire extinguishers in my house and I know how to properly operate them. They come in different varieties but an ABC will take care of most fires in the home. Be safe, use your brain; it's better to ruin a meal than to watch your dwelling go up in flames.

Please be safe when you cook. - KP

Water Bottle Rant

One of my biggest pet peeves is water bottles. I don't understand why somebody in the USA would need to purchase drinking water unless they're drinking water from a non-municipal source. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1974 (and amendments in 1986 and 1996) ensures that public water systems adhere to a set of standards to keep us safe. Yes, SDWA does not apply to wells on your property, it's your own responsibility to maintain private water sources, but it does mean that a lot of the tap water in the US is safe to drink.

Will you like the taste of the water? That isn't guaranteed. Some people are sensitive to the chlorine and fluoride that some municipalities add to their water. Water can taste stale or flat if it sits in the pipes for too long. Water is an excellent solvent and could pick up off flavors if you have old piping in your house. However, charcoal based water filters are very cheap and will remove many off flavors if you don't like the taste of the water coming out of your tap. Also, chilling your water (ie. putting a pitcher in the fridge) tends to make off flavors less noticeable.

My co-workers drive me insane when they drink bottled water or soda. They're in the break room where we have the water cooler and they're drinking bottled water. Then they throw the bottles in the trash when the recycle bin is right next to the trash can. They're adults and if they want to waste their money on individually bottled drinks then that's their business but at least recycle the bottle. I probably pick out at least three bottles a day from trash cans around the office and we only have six people in my office.

What's my point? Why are people paying $1+ to vending machines and convenience stores for a 20 ounce bottle of water that's often just filtered water from a municipal source? Make the investment of buying a nice water bottle that's BPA free. Plan ahead so you have water when you leave the house. Fill up at a water fountain if you run out. Save your money!

- KP 

Bottles Rescued From the Trash (03/11/10): 4

St. Patrick's Day is Coming Up

Do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day? The receptionist at my chiropractor celebrates by taking the day off and doing a pub crawl with her boyfriend. I celebrate by stocking up the freezer with cheap corned beef. We finally ate the last two packages a few weeks ago and now I need to make a decision: do I buy smaller packages from the grocery store or a couple of giant pieces from the restaurant supply store?

The difference in price is about $0.20/lb but it's a 15 pound piece of corned beef that I'm going to have to slice up and vacuum seal for future use. Plus it probably doesn't come with the spice packet; yes, that's easily fixed. I've had the corned beef in question so I know that while there may be a large fat layer, the lean meat is in greater quantity than what I get at the grocery store. So the real question here is do I value convenience or do I value a deal? I value a deal.

What do you do for St. Patrick's Day?

Happy bargain hunting! - KP

Bread Arms

Baking bread was my favorite way to work out ideas when I was in college. There's the repetitive motion of the kneading, learning to trust your instincts, punching down the dough...and the amazing smell of bread baking. The recipe that I like is from S. John Ross; I was turned onto it back when I hung out in an AD&D chat-room. I once made 15 loaves for a lunch, all in my college apartment kitchen. But I haven't pulled an all nighter in years and home bread baking wasn't fitting into my work schedule so I stopped baking my weekly loaves and lost my touch.

Up until last weekend that is. I decided to make a loaf of my usual bread on Saturday to have with the generally unexciting spaghetti. I got all my ingredients together, proofed my yeast and started incorporating my flour. The last time I made bread was for a similar dinner a few months ago but I tried to do all the mixing and kneading in the stand mixer. I have learned that my eyes are not as skilled as my hands. When you knead the dough by hand then you know when it needs more flour or if it needs to be kneaded more. When you do everything in the mixer then you pray that you can trust the recipe and that you have perfect humidity in your kitchen. Yes, I could probably get better if I practiced making bread with my stand mixer but I like the feel of the dough in my hands.

I was a little rushed, dinner was late, so I didn't let the dough proof long enough. So the crumb wasn't great and the middle was too dense, resulting in a doughy center. Something that I've learned with brewing is that I have to assume that anything yeast related will take longer in my house during the winter because we keep the thermostat below the optimal temperature for yeast. What does that mean? Yeast likes a 72°F environment and we keep the house at 65°F.

Sunday's dinner was pizza and I made two batches of crust from scratch using a modified version of the Joy of Cooking recipe. Because I'm lazy and obviously don't learn from previous mistakes; I made the first batch in the stand mixer. After 20 minutes on the hook it STILL wasn't window paneing (when you stretch out the dough until it's a thin enough membrane that you can see light through it). I was on a schedule, dinner was at 6, so I started the next batch and hoped for the best. I did the next batch by hand. I proofed the yeast, mixed in 2/3 of the flour then turned the dough out onto a floured counter to start kneading and incorporating in the rest of the flour. It took me about half an hour but the result was worth it. The first batch was for crap but the second batch was very tasty and I'd eat it again.

Kitchen Penguin, do you have a point? Yes...trust your hands when cooking; using tools to speed up processes can be great but learn to trust your hands before you use the heavy machinery. Also, don't try to do three batches of dough in a weekend if the heaviest lifting you see on a regular basis is filing paper; that's something to work towards.

From my kitchen to yours. - KP

SPAM Tasting: Cheese Edition

A group of my friends gets together on Friday nights to socialize and I threatened to bring back different SPAM varieties from Hawaii so we could do a taste test. This is the first of three tastings; Bacon SPAM disappeared somewhere between HNL and BWI.

SPAM with Cheese...I choose this first because it the only one that I had that wasn't flavored. There's little cheese nuggets/pockets/bits mixed up in the SPAM so I figured it would taste like SPAM but with cheese pockets. The can had a recipe for the SPAM breakfast burrito thing pictured on the front. We agreed that it would be a good application of this product.

SPAM with Cheese fresh from the can.

SPAM with Cheese cubes frying to golden brown and delicious on the stove.

I like my SPAM cooked, pan fried to be exact, so I cut it up into cubes and lightly fried them until the outside was browned and the inside was hot. My first reaction was, "OK, it tastes like SPAM." Then one of the little "cheese" bits oozed into my mouth and I thought, "OK, it's SPAM with what Cheeze Wiz probably tastes like." The cheese felt a little gritty and stuck to the roof of my mouth, like Crisco does, for a couple of seconds.

Other reviews included:

"It's SPAM with a cheese like product."

"I've never had SPAM before but I'm going to eat this because you made it...it has the consistency of Vienna sausage or a hot dog."

"I think I'll stick to regular SPAM."

My final verdict? I wouldn't go out of my way to purchase SPAM with Cheese. I don't think it would be tasty in SPAM musubi but it might be good with rice and eggs for breakfast.

Happy eating! - KP

Out of Town

I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days so I can't guarantee substantive posts today or tomorrow. The Friday challenge post might be late as well since I'm not sure where I'm spending Thursday night.

Happy Girl's Day! - KP