Showing You Guys What Exactly Goes On In a Bottling Day

Greetings all! I am back with another bottling day post. This time it is my Cocoa Cherry Mead. I had a bit too much headspace in the carboy and I was worried about oxidation as I was looking some color, so I decided to go ahead and bottle it and let if bottle age. Now instead of the obligatory bottle porn I normally post I decided to let you guys see what goes into bottling meads.

 Here you see my Blackberry[no post on this, too simple and not blog worthy] and Cocoa Cherry meads. The thing inside of the jug in the carboy is a racking cane. You pump it and it creates a vacuum that sucks the fluid down into the tube into a bottle.

 As you see here, the fluid flows into the bottle. The white clamp on the hose is what you press to stop the flow of liquid so you don't spill your precious wine all over the floor. 

And here is the bottle porn. I love the color on these. The left is Blackberry and the right is Cocoa Cherry. Despite the darkness of it, the last two on the left are blackberry too. 

Laters, next post I will show you how I made chicken for thanksgiving. If you have any questions/complaints/suggestions feel free to comment and let me know. 

Cheap Eats, Oh Look Some Vodka....

Suuuuup People, I'm back again with another edition of cheap eats.  In case you can't tell I am a bit of a booze hound. Everyone drunk liquor enthusiast has a drink of choice. Mine is vodka. Oh dear sweet vodka, how I love thee. Serioulsy people, I effing love the stuff. Even though I never drink to the point of intoxication I would empty a 1.5L bottle in less than 2 weeks. Drinking can be heavy on the wallet, so I am always on the look out for a cheaper but decent vodka. It is easy to find cheap vodka. Hell I have some in the kitchen now that I use to clean my mead making equipment.

Pictured: Sanitizer

However cheap and good is another story. One day I was in a package browsing the wall of  vodka when I saw a 1.5L bottle for $14.99. Meh, that is nothing new. Then I noticed it was one shelf below top shelf. My wallet tingled with excitement. 

I got it home and gave it a try. Now I am not going to sit here an tell you how smooth and full of flavor it was and all the stuff you may see on a professional vodka review. I am not that good.

What I will tell you is that it is drinkable, dare I say good. It is no Grey Goose,  not even Three Olives, but it is quite a bit better than Smirnoff which to me tastes like vodka mixed with dirt. I have since then bought three bottles of this. I won't lie. There are much better vodkas on the market. However for 14.99/1.5L, with a decent taste and great mixability this cannot be beat. I give this a solid 10/10 for value. Next time you are having a party and you need a lot of vodka for a little bit of money. I give this a try for sure. 

Speaking of Christmas.....

For a large period of my life I have hated Christmas. It was a boring holiday. I did not get or give gifts except to The Wife (who at that time was The Girlfriend). This, or I guess I should say last, Christmas was the first one for The Wife and I. She tried to make me enjoy the holiday and get into the spirit. In my own attempts to break out from my grrinch shell I decided to head to the kitchen.

Earlier in the month I decided to try my hand at infused and spiced alcohols. Vodka and rum. They both turned out great[future post] though I needed the rum for this one. What I did was take some plain white rum, any brand will do. In it I put two cinnamon sticks broken in half, along with an allspice berry and a clove. I let them sit for approximately 3 weeks. Then end result is a dark brown rum with a strong cinnamon clove taste. Voila spiced rum.

Now I took the spiced rum with some cranberry juice. Normally I use Northland, but the store was out so I had to settle for Ocean Spray 100%. I pour that into a small pot on the stove and heated it up. After it started to simmer [NOT BOILING] I added in a bit of juice from a fresh cut tangerine,, and a sprinkle of lemon juice from a fresh cut lemon. Once I had stirred it all in and brought it back to just below a simmer, I added in the rum. In case you are wondering why I turned the heat down, alcohol and heat don't mix. If it is too hot it will make all the alcohol dissipate.

Once the rum was added in I put just a sprinkle of sugar to bring down the tartness of it. I then garnished with two peeled tangerine wedges. It was wonderful. Tangy, sweet, the citrus blends well with the rum.

THIS IS WHERE A PICTURE WOULD GO IF I WASN'T SUCH  A LUSH :)

In addition to drinks, I also decided that I would make a meal I have never made before. My first thought was a beef rib roast. Ya know the ones that are basically  big ass ribeye steaks. A trip to the local publix showed me other wise. It was like  $40-$60 depending on size.













So I sat down and thought to myself what to cook....I also thought of lamb, but no stores around me had any good selections. The Wife had a few cook books so I thumbed through those, when I stumbled upon a recipe about duck. Hmm interest piqued. I immediately turned to google and began searching. Several videos and recipes later I had decided. Duck was going to be the name of the game.

Now I have never cooked duck before. I haven't roasted anything over than chicken, so this was going to be no walk in the park, especially considering every one says it is easy to mess up a duck. The first thing was to find one. During thanksgiving they were everywhere. During Christmas it was a different story. Walmart was completely out, pulbix no go. I was afarid that I was going to have to forfeit the plan. Thankfully The Wife came through.

She somehow located a duck,[kidnapping and ransom?] and a nice size one at that so I was back in the game. I looked around for a few different recipes until I came upon a simple one. I am honestly not sure where it came from, but it calls for Salt [I always use kosher], black pepper [always used crushed] paprika and butter.


Now of course being the lazy fart I am, I did not make sure I had any of these ingredients and just assumed I did. Come Christmas eve around 9pm [aka when everything is closed] I am taking out all the things I need to cook with. I have salt and pepper for days, however not even a teaspoon of paprika

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu............

Ok not a big deal right? A quick google search shoes that cayenne pepper can be subbed for paprika. Sweet I stay with cayenne.

You may notice I am not listing how much seasoning to put. There is a reason for this. Except in baking and mead, I don't measure. I just add what feels right.

The first thing you want to do when cooking duck is to wash it of course. A lot of the time the company will put the neck and liver in the cavity along with a pack of orange sauce, mine was no different. I pulled these out and tossed them aside. Next was to trim the fat. Duck is a water fowl which means they have more fat than a chicken since they need to stay warm and float on water.

I clipped the tail fat off, the neck fat and I clipped off the wing tips. Next you poke holes in the skin. DO NOT go OJ on it and stab the meat. You just want to poke holes in the skin so the fat has a place to exit as it gets heated up.

I applied the seasonings then wrapped the bird up airtight in plastic wrap to let the flavor absorb. The next day on Christmas I took it out and chopped up eight oranges

 I then stuff them inside the bird and placed it in a pot with something underneath so I could lift the duck out. Yes a roasting pan would be better here, however I don't have one so yet, so the below is the best The Wife and I could think of.

Let it roast for 1 hour at 375 degrees. Pull it out drain the fat and covered it in butter. Put it back in for 45 minutes same temp. Pull it out again , drain the fat then coat in butter. 

Let it roast for another 15 minutes. After time is up pull it out and let it rest. Once cooled for 20-25 mins serve and enjoy.

Now in case you thought I was BSing about the fat, check the pic below. That is off of one bird. That is more fat than 2lbs of ground beef. Don't throw it away though. Get you some potatoes cut them up and roast them in the duck fat. Make them cripsy. They will be some of the best potatoes you have ever eaten.