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Pickles!

stoutmakerLeave a comment

Its that time of year when the cukes start overtaking the farmers markets. Still a lot of the smaller ones, so lets make some pickles.

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About all the equipment you need to make a batch of pickles is a bucket and some jars. Not much for ingredients either, especially if you ferment them like I am for this first batch of the year. If you are looking for Vinegar based pickles, here are my IPA Pickles

All I’m using today is:

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  •  Small pickle cukes. (As little or as many as you want)
  • Kosher or pickling salt, (don’t use iodized salt)
  • garlic cloves
  • dill seed, mustard seed, black pepper corns
  • a bayleaf
  • fresh dill flowers (this optional as the dill seed is just fine)

First thing you wanna do is clean the cukes of course. Then let them cold in some cold ice water for an hour or so. This help to keep them crisper.

After the soak go ahead and cut of the tips of the cukes.

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Next get put all your other things in your fermentation crock or bucket. Here I used 5 cut up garlic cloves, some fresh dill sprigs, one bay leaf, and 1 tsp each of the mustard seed, dill seed and peppercorns. 20180712_202033.jpg

Mix up your brine. 1 gallon of filtered water and 3/4 of the kosher salt. 20180712_202933.jpg

Put your cukes the bucket and add enough of your brine to completely cover them.20180712_203157.jpg

Use a plate to keep the cukes under the brine.20180712_203142.jpg

And that’s it. Either cover the bucket with a towel or put a airlock on like I did and put it in a warm place to let it ferment.20180712_203529.jpg

After a week or so, take a test taste to see if they are sour enough. If not then let them go another day or so. Once they get where you want them pack them up in jars with the brine and put them in the fridge. (Unless you can them, they gotta stay in the fridge)

That’s its it! Start your pickles now and will be ready just in time to get your crocks back for Kraut!

 

PS: for those wanting to can these for storage this is easy too.

get your jars ready for normal canning. drain, strain and keep the liquid. pack your jars tight with the pickles. boil the liquid for a minute or two and pour into the jars leaving a 1/2 headspace. waterbath for 10 min pints, 15 quarts.

 

Patagonia Porter

stoutmaker1 Comment

I won a pound of this Perla Negra roast grain a few weeks back so I figured I’d use it all in one blast to see what we get out of it.

All of the descriptions I’ve seen on it seem to make it out to be a “softer” roast. One of the huskless roasts, so should not have the bitter burnt aspect.

Other notes I’ve seen mention coffee and chocolate. It’s 340L so a pound shouldnt make it blacker than night, but we will see.

I also won a bag of Vienna with this, so I will use that as the base. I dont wanna hide the Perla profile so just a smidge of Crystal and I’ll call it good.

Before I got this into the fermenter I gave it a tatse. Very mild roast with bigger than expected chocolate and coffee. I can’t wait to get this one in a keg!

Cascade Red

stoutmaker1 Comment

About two weeks ago I won 3lbs of Cascade hops. 3lbs. Wtf am I gonna do with 3lbs?

IPAs I guess.

I’m more partial to Red IPA. So I dug out an old version of an amber and ramped in up a bit.20180512_190252.jpg

Also won some of this DRC that I been wanting to try. I guess keeps the deep caramel flavors but less of the prune/raisin. That would fit right in with this old amber.

Duck Creek IPA- 5 gallon

  • 11lbs 2row
  • 1.5lbs 60L
  • .5lbs double roasted crystal 120
  • 1oz Eureka @60
  • 2oz cascade @15
  • 2oz cascade @Flame out
  • Mashed at 154
  • Nottingham yeast

One of the things I just noticed about using this Mash and Boil, is that the smaller diameter boiler let’s the trub pile up pretty high.

Even after a whirlpool, a 20 minute stand to settle out, and leaving a 1/2 gallon behind under the valve, I still got 2″ of trub in the fermenter.

I will figure all that gunk into the next brew formula. I will probably never get used to that in these BiaB type systems.

I’ll probably have to start thinking about getting bigger fermenters if I wanna keep doing 5 gallon batches. That much extra trub is really going to be pushing it on volumes. The buckets should be just fine though.