Tag: homebrewing

Salsa

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Like everyone else these days, I have tomatoes getting ripe one after the other. So let’s make salsa!

But not just any salsa. Fermented salsa.

This makes about 1 quart jar,, which we will be fermenting in as well. I like this size because I only usually have one or two tomato plants and get 5-6 or so tomatoes ripe at a time. Tomorrow I’ll probably have another 5-6 ready…

This quart is:

  • 5-6 medium tomatoes
  • 1/2 small onion
  • 3-4-5 garlic cloves
  • Cilatro depending your taste
  • Hot pepper depending on you again
  • Kosher or your kraut salt

Chop everything up into Salsa sized bits

Now the fermenting part. You need to use between 3-5% salt. So just weigh what you just chopped up. (It easier in grams.)

This batch I had 750g and I want 3% salt so.. 750x.03=22.5. So I mix in 22.5g of my salt. (23g really just round up)

If you let it sit a few minutes it will start to pull water out of the tomatoes. That’s good! Then just fill your jar up to the neck. The either use your weights or a hunk of onion or pepper to wedge in there to keep everything under the liquid.

Then just loosely put lid on and leave sit out on the cupboard for a few days to ferment.

You will start to see bubbles like this. And a bit more liquid. It’s probably good after 3 days of this. But better after a week! Refrigerate when it’s where you want it.

Cranberry Mead

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Now, mead is not one of my favorite things for some reason. I mean, I should like them, right? Who don’t like honey?

Oh I have had a few that were phenomenal, and also some that were the worst homebrewed things I ever had. (one was so bad it turned me off of an entire genre of beers)

I have made a couple of meads in the past. They ranged from ok, to maybe not. Mostly because of ingredient choices. Somethings just aint cut out for mead.

But I’m not a quitter. I’m going to find a combination that I like sooner or later. And this past version may be just that. Cranberry mead.

Now I put a little thought into it this time, I was looking at a 3 gallon batch. Lower alcohol so it can be drinkable relatively sooner than normal. A sweeter version. And,, well… cheap. Meads can quickly deplete the wallet quickly.

So what I came up with is: Cranberry Mead
5lbs Costco Wildflower Honey
3 lbs can Vinters Harvest Cranberry Puree
3.25 gallons filtered water
Nutrient
Nottingham Yeast

Using honey and puree is just a matter of dumping and stirring. And while yes I did figure on a bit of displacement, I didn’t figure on quite as much as we got. After getting everything mixed in as measured, it appears we have about 4-4.5 gallons of must.
Am going to assume we will lose atleast a .25 gallon on first rack then maybe another .25 between the next rack and bottling.

The last wine was the same volume and we just racked to my 3 gallon carboy and a separate 1 gallon fermenter. (its nice to have odd ball sizes of jugs laying around) But in the future I will have to adjust for this. 

We had an OG at pitch of 1.052,, and I would expect the Notty to stop around 1.010. That would be around 5.5%, and perfect for what I’m looking for. 

Will be doing staggered nutrient additions, which for mead, especially cranberry, is really needed because the honey has nearly nothing. So I’m going to put in ½ teaspoon today. Stirring every day for 5 days but adding nutrient only every other day. This helps the yeast by releasing some C02 and getting that nutrient in.

This right now is some tasty stuff. Would be a good mixer for some vodka. I hope it holds some of this character when its finished. I guess we will see.

Summer spiced

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I have already seen the complaining about beers being released too early for their season. I dont care about that. Irish Stout in Sept? Right on. Oktoberfest in June? Yes please. And my favorite summer beer of all…? Pumpkin Spiced!

Being nearly out of the 2019 spiced beer I needed to get a batch up before the real heat of August arrives. So I dug up my regular Amber Ale recipe and tweeked down the bitterness a tad and proceeded to brew this years batch at last months brew club meet.

8lbs Maris otter
1/2 lb 40L
1/2 lb 60L
1 oz Black Pat
1oz Hallertau @60
1 oz Saaz @ 10
2 TBS Tone’s Pumpkin Spice
Mash 152 Nottingham Yeast

Now I did call this a pumpkin spiced beer, and I used Tone’s. This blend is pretty tame and balanced,, but you could of course add more of any of the single spices,, like.. cloves. (Everything needs more cloves)

But, I could have called this an actual pumpkin beer.

While pumpkins them selves are on short supply this time of year, pumpkin flowers are not! The one pictured above was more than a foot across when I cut it and threw it in the mash,, so technically I used pumpkin.

Well its already fermented and kegged and is awaiting an the next opening in the fridge,, which should be today or tomorrow.