The Salad Solution

WIFEY:

As newlyweds, the husband and I have had...other things on our mind than eating a super health conscience meal. BUT, I decided that I felt like trending our meals to more healthy choices so we don't end up like like "strangers" after 2 or 3 yrs. So, I've been making salads and stirfry spinach. 

Surprisingly, the husband loves it. Win.
I like most veggies so it's no biggie for me. I put up 2 pics of our meals lately. So goood!

YET.

A Set of Beers so Delicious It Will Melt Your Face Off

The other day I was in the grocery store picking up a few things when I noticed a 6 pack of beer.( I know saying I saw beer at the grocery store is like saying I saw a mullet at the Daytona 500 but bear with me) Tuck away was a six pack of a blueberry lager. I thought the same thing you just did,

But it existed. So I bought it took it home and poured me a glass (not my pic) as seen below. It was DELICIOUS!. The blue berry flavor balanced so well with the flavor of the lager. I drank 6 of them in two days. (Don't judge me!)

Now imagine my surprise when I was in another grocery store and discovered 

*GASP* there are other flavors. (also not my pic).

 I prefer the blueberry the most, followed by the raspberry  To no one's surprise The Wife prefers the blackberry the most and the blueberry the least. (Shut up! It's because the blackberry one tastes better.-The Wife)

....

Anyways....Like I was saying they are all good. I seriously recommend you all try one if not all of them. 

Strawberry Mel Part Deaux!

As some of you may remember I made a strawberry melomel quite some time ago. Well after brewing for months it looked like this.

Not exactly appetizing right?

 Well I was reading some posts around the web when someone mentioned pectic enzyme. I already had some since  I had used it for other meads but not this one. Well I dumped some in and shook it around and in 48 hours I got this.

HUGE change.

 I let it sit for a few more days to make sure all the gunk fell to the bottom. Once the weekend hit I went ahead and bottled it. You can see it below. It is the one of the right. The one on the left is an upcoming post..:)

After tasting it I must say, I did a pretty good job with this one. The strawberry flavor is strong in this one. I am going to be excited to try this one in 6-12 months. I bet age will do it wonders. 

BOTTLING TIME!!!!!!

Sup Peeps!!!

As some of you may remember a while back I started an orange mead. Well truthfully I started it quite a while before The Wife and I started the blog. As of Sunday I finally got to bottle the mead. As a reminder it started off looking like this

After around three months of brewing I ended up with a product that looks like this.

A pic with the cork in

My initial taste notes is that the spices are REALLY strong. You can immediately taste the cinnamon and clove. It kind of smacks you in the face. The alcohol heat is strong too, even when it is cold. This one is drinkable like this, but I think it will benefit from some aging for sure. I plan to let it age as long as I can. I have plenty of people asking me for a taste. Good thing I have 3 more gallons of mead brewing with a 4th on its way.............

No meat.......lol wut?

As I briefly mentioned before. The Wife and I have started a no meat diet. Well she is eating fish, which I feel qualifies as meat however she disagrees. While I could argue that meat is classifed as the flesh of animals, and that vegetarians don't eat fish and pescetarians are the ones which eat only fish . I am going to decide to leave it be. None the less we have both dramatically altered our diets. Instead of feasting on delicious animal flesh we are now eating enough veggies to make a rabbit go "wtf".

This new diet, which has been going on now for around 2 weeks (minus one cheater day), was easy at first. Little did I know it was because I had eaten meat within days of starting. Fast forward to now and I want so bad to punch a baby cow in the face and take a bite. I CRAVE beef. I saw a co-worker eating a beef taco salad and I drooled a bit. While before I would sit and day dream about having 450HP in the S14 I now sit and daydream about the day I can sink my teeth into a steak. Even as I type this now my mouth is starting to salivate at the though of a NY Strip 2 inches thick and cooked medium with a bit of a char on top, juicy with butter mashed potatoes..... OMG *drool* I need a moment.....................

Ok I'm back.  

I'm not the only one being affected. The Wife says that she is constantly hungry now. We both consume tons of fruit and veggies and try to eat little carbs but we stay hungry. The Wife said when she is sleeping at now and pulls me closer she is actually dreaming about chicken. 

By now I am sure you are asking, "Why in the hell would one choose to inflict such a miserable existence upon themselves? " Well my curious friend the answer is simply. I just wanted to see if I can do it. That's right. This is all about me testing my will power and gaining self karma of being awesome enough to be a vegetarian for 6 weeks adding to my e-peen. 

Oh and health benefits and all that as well, but mostly the e-peen.

We still have another month to go. Le sigh..........If you hear on the news about a deranged man biting cows you know that I failed.

A few quick updates

Hello blog faithful!

This is just a quick post to updated yall on a few things. The Wife and I  have started a vegetarian period. It will not be permanent  I like eating animals far too much for that. I just wanted to see if I could pull it off so eh why not. We will be posting up our experiences  trials and tribulations. It has only been a few days and I already want to punch a baby cow in the face and eat it.

My meads are progressing along nicely. There is nothing much to update on those yet as it takes a while for those to brew. While those are chugging along I will be posting up more stuff on the liquor side of things.

I have discovered there are wing fest across the nation all throughout the year. There are a few in the surrounding states I want to attend, plus one next Saturday I want to go to. I will try my hardest to be there. I am also going to try and make it to a few others through out the year.

Stay tuned there will be lots to come!!!!!!

Cranberry Fruit Tea Mead

The other day I was in the mood for some tea. We had this lipton caramel black tea which sounds delicious on paper. However in real life it is quite terrible. In attempts to make it taste something drinkalbe (I do not waste money) I poured in a bit of cranberry juice and gave it a taste

I was immediately struck by a thought...........this would make a pretty good mead. A recipe was born

Recipe
3.5lbs clover honey
2 cups Lipton Vanilla Caramel Truffle Tea- 2 teabags per cup
1 fresh tea bag in brew
24OZ cranberries fresh then frozen
Berries in a bag in 2 gallon bucket.
3 Cups of Northland Cranberry Juice (no preservatives)

Lavlin KV-1116
Yeast Nutrient
Yeast Energizer
Pectic Enzyme

I mixed the honey and water together on the stove to heat it up. I made sure not to let it bowl. I then added the tea and cranberry juice to the bucket. I put the berries in the bag.

Now you may be wondering, why a bucket? As you may remember with my strawberry melomel fruit makes mead foam. This is made using wine yeast and not just regular bread yeast so I wanted to make sure foam was not an issue. A two gallon bucket allows me to brew it with fruit and plenty of space for it to foam up with no clogged airlock.

To aerate I stirred with a spoon, the poured water in to around 1 gallon. I dissolved nutrients and pectic enzyme in water and added to mixture. Stirred again. Rehydrated the yeast per the instructions on the pack. While that was going on I again stirred the must to added the yeast in and also took a gravity reading. It read 1.092.

The first, 2nd and third days I aerated it once in the morning and again in the afternoon with a vigorous stir.

I let it go about 5 days on the berries, then I pulled out the bag and beat it with a sanitized pan so the berries would break open. It was a lovely shade of pink. I let it go another 6 days on the now crushed berries then racked it onto some potassium sorbate to kill the yeast off for backsweetning. The gravity was at 1.001 aka dry as sh*t.

Here it is on the left. It is a lovely shade of red. The jug next to it is the excess I made. Apparently I made a bit too much. I did not want to waste it so into a jug it went. Once the yeast dies off I will back sweeten then let it age to clear then bottle it. Depending on how much lees' (dead yeast) it drops I may rack it once more.