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.

Quick Cider

The other night while The Wife was out and about I was lazing around watching  youtube videos of brewing. I came across one in particular video where a guy fermented some apple juice to make a kind of hard cider.

I was instantly intrigued. I had The Wife bring home a bottle of apple juice, though because I wasn't clear enough she brought home a small bottle. I wanted enough for a gallon so I had to wait till the next day.

The following day I pick up a big bottle and a 2lb bag of brown sugar.


When I got home I got right to prepping. First rule of brewing, always sanitize everything. After I washed my items I let them sit in bleach water. A lot of brewers use starsan since it is no rinse, but I just used bleach. Bleach is considerably cheaper since a tablespoon per sink is all you need, plus rinsing is not that big of a deal.

I heated up the apple juice to an almost boil then dissolved most of the 2lb bag in, not sure how much. Like an idiot I didn't measure anything.

While that was simmering I rehydrated the yeast by warming up some water putting some sugar in then letting the yeast sit in it. After the sugar was all dissolved I dumped it into the carboy along with the yeast nutrient and tried to shake it, forgetting it JUST came off the stove. Notice how melted that ice is? That is after 2 mins. I put the carboy in an icebath for about 15 mins. I would alternate between the water and shaking it till I felt it was cool enough to pitch the yeast in.

After I got it shaken up nice and good I added the yeast in which by this point had formed a cloud looking shape in the dish. Means it was nice and healthy. I pitched it and put it into the carboy. Slapped the airlock on with a 80/20 vodka to water mix. It started bubbling very quickly.

As of this morning it was fermenting quite vigorously. It was burping about 1.5 bubbles per second. I plan to let it sit for a week, sample, see how it is.

Now keep in mind I know this is sloppily thrown together however that was the point. I just wanted to see how this turns out. Now if it comes out decent like this imagine how it will be if I put some thought into it by measuring, taking a gravity reading, using spices in it etc. I'll let yall know how it turns out.

Nacho Casserole

The other day I got a craving for nachos. After eating them, it didn't go away fully. While sitting with my little brother an idea popped up in my head.

Guys and Gals, I present,

Nacho Casserole

First thing to do was of course buy the ingredients. I am a simple person, so I did not have many ingredients, this dish can be customized to taste. Yes that is Cheerwine in the background.

First thing I did was open the ground beef, season it and line the bottom of the tray with it. [I discovered something about this, more on that later]

After getting the beef in the dish, I then coated it with a nice thick layer of cheese.

Now while this was going on, I had another pot on the stove. What was in it you ask? Nothing but that BACON...................with some jalapenos.

I let it cook down till the jalapenos were soft and the bacon somewhat crispy  It smelled soooooo good with the jalapenos in it.

After the bacon was done I  dumped in and spread on top. A layer of crushed tortilla chips were added in on top of the bacon

After that on went another layer of beef, and more cheese, this time White Queso. [Yes I know queso means cheese, but dammit that is what called on the label lol]

After the white cheese went down I sprinkled more of the bacon/jalapeno mix on top the coated that with yellow cheese.

Finally I added one last layer of crushed up chips.

Sideview of things. See how the ground beef is sticking up? Yea, that should have caught my attention....

Into the oven it went for 40 mintues at 350, no pics of that,  I am sure you know that an oven looks like.


IT'S DONE ZOMG.

It was grea i f I do say so myself and I do. However I made a few mistakes. First off since I did not cook the ground beef prior I ended up with tons of grease from the meat . Also while the bottom ground beef was done through all the way the middle layer was almost raw in some places. I had to put it back in the oven. Next time I will also cook the bacon in the oven and crispy it up as well as using a food processor to grind up the chips. to get a more even coating. I will also use more ingredients  such as salsa, a smidge of sour cream, more cheese, more peppers.

As I said before this has lots of ways to customized it. For those of us who  don't eat beef, turkey or chicken could easily be subbed in, as well as salsa, sour cream, chives etc. So it can definitely be made to taste.

Egg Drop Soup

The other night I found myself in a rare situation. The Wife was working late, so I was home alone....

which also meant I had to cook. For some people out there, this would be a small problem, however for yours truly this was huge problem as The Wife had taken out super thin strips of ribeye[kind of like this] we picked up from the international place. I had NO IDEA, what I was going to make with them.

So I did what any normal man would do and promptly ignored the problem and went back to playing Skyrim. Skip ahead a few hours and the rumble in my stomach reminded me I would soon have to get off my lazy butt and make something.

Lately The Wife has been into Korean drama comedies [dramedy?] so I figured I would make something with an asian twist to it. Having absolutely no experience in that style of cooking I spent an eternity racking my brain. Finally after an excruciating 4 minutes [what? I said I'm lazy] I came up with something

Egg Drop Soup

3 eggs
2 cans chicken broth
1/4 can beef broth [optional]
Tablespoon of ginger
Crushed Black Peppr
Kosher Salt
Green Onions
Jalapenos [optional]
tablespoon of cornstarch [optional]
Super thin strips of ribeye meat [optional]



The last time I had egg drop soup it was made at some random Chinese place we stopped in to. It had good flavor but the water was not hot enough so the egg white was still kind of rawish. With that flavor in mind I set off to make the meal.

First I took the meat, and coated them with crushed black pepper, kosher salt and a smidge of garlic powder. I then put then in a contained with a lid, added more black pepper a bit more salt and shook them around then put them on a plate  [sidenote: Be careful with your spices on meat this thin. It does not take much for pungent spices to overwhelm]

Next pour the two cans of chicken broth into a pot and add the ginger to it.

 Chop up you green onions and jalapenos and toss  them in then turn it on high to bring to a fierce boil.

  While it is heating up, whisk your eggs together

If you are making it like I did, pour the beef broth into a cup and add in the cornstarch

Once it is boiling something fierce grab the egg bowl and drizzle the egg in. DO NOT POUR IT ALL IN AT ONCE. Some people like to drizzle it onto a fork then let it spread out into the boiling water. If you take your eggs fresh out the fridge like I did be prepared for this to take a few mins as it will drop the temp of your water each time. Once all the egg is in, add in your meat. Since the meat is so thin it will cook very quickly. Once done it should look similar to the below

It tasted AMAZING. I put a bit too much pepper in for The Wife but other than that she loved it. I will definitely make again.