This past holiday season was a prime season for people to do cookie exchanges, where several people get together and trade cookies so that each person receives a bag of everyone else's cookies.  This does mean that a baker needs to make at least 6 cookies for each person expected to go.  In my case, it was expected that we would have 15 people visiting, so we needed 90 cookies, a little over 8 dozen.

The crux of the problem though, was not only did these cookies need to be gluten free, since it's a gluten free group, but I knew that some people had dairy allergies, egg allergies and soy allergies, so I altered a gluten free recipe to fit this scenario.  Unfortunately, while I avoided soy based shortening, I did hit a spot since the shortening was palm oil, and palm oil is considered a tree nut.   At least though, no one in the group had a tree nut allergy.

My first batch didn't turn out so well.  Instead of rolling dough into balls, I sliced them off a log to try making a sort of biscuit cookie.  The shape didn't turn out too well, and the cooking didn't work quite right.  The second batch, created after some consulting, was much better.  The dough was chilled in log form, 2" in diameter, and 1/4" slices were cut and rolled into balls which were then rolled in a spiced sugar and then flattened into a cookie form.

This wasn't a complete loss at least, since my consultant took the first batch back to a second baker, who doesn't always do gluten free, and used it to create a crust that did quite well for cheesecake.

The recipe was modified from a gluten free recipe from serious eats for the use in a cookie exchange where there are other allergies, including gluten.

Equipment: mixer, measuring equipment, oven, parchment paper or plastic wrap, baking sheet, heavy flat bottomed glass.
Cookie Recipe

• 8.5 ounces (2 cups) brown rice flour
• 2 3/4 ounces (1/2 cup) sweet rice flour
• 2 ounces (1/2 cup) tapioca starch
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground clove
• 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 5 ounces (10 tablespoons) Spectrum brand Palm Oil Shortening
• 6.3 ounces (3/4 cup packed) dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Libby's Pumpkin (plain canned pumpkin)
• 3 tablespoons molasses 
• 1/2 Tablespoon water if needed

It appears that despite all the mishaps, the pumpkin ale turned out pretty well.  After the taste tests it was decided that I'd bring the keg home for Thanksgiving.  It wasn't touched until most people went home, especially because most of the family doesn't drink.  For the members of the family that did, it was a decent drinking beer, and when the family poker game turned into a drinking game, it depleted very quickly.  All 5 gallons were done in by under 7 people in a span of 5-7 hours.

Because of this, I've decided to try to make another batch, or rather, a double batch which is sitting in carboys.  I do not know if it will be anywhere near done by the time Christmas rolls around though.  I started this on Sunday, 4 days ago.  I expect that it will take until at least Sunday the 11th to ferment, then I will add the settling ingredients and it will settle, outside in a shed where it's 40 or so degrees.  I don't know if it will be clear by the 18th or not, but between then and the 22nd I'll taste test to see where it is. If there's a chance, then I will keg it and bring one home.  I expect that I will have about 14 gallons, or 3 soda kegs worth.  I just hope I have enough kegs.

I also started a cranberry mead using 18 pounds of honey and 6 pounds of cranberries.  We'll see how that ferments and comes out.  I'll eventually be moving that into one of the carboys from the bucket it's in.   I used a bucket because I'd need the wide mouth due to the cranberries.  I hope that one of the carboys will be ready by the time I need to rack the mead, otherwise I'll have to stick it outside to keep it cold, or worse, spend even more money on a 3rd carboy.

Pumpkin Ale in a glass, cause it's hiding in the fridge

Throughout the month of October, I have been working on a pumpkin ale.  I didn't post my recipe up front like I normally try to, and perhaps it would have been a better idea to.  I'll explain why in a bit. 

For quite some time, sous vide has been a rising item in the consumer items for home cooks.  Most of us are used to cooking at a high temperature for a short amount of time.  Grilling a steak for a few minutes, or quickly cooking some burgers, putting a pork loin into the oven for half an hour, or stirfrying thinly sliced meat and vegetables for just a scant few minutes.  Our lowest temperature and longest time tends to be using a slow cooker for 8 hours.

The difference with sous vide is that not only is the temperature much lower, ranging around 135=145, but that the time to cook is much longer.  A cut of meat that normally cooks for 45-60 minutes in the oven will take 12-48 hours.  Why so long? The low, constant temperature will slowly cook the cut of meat, and will not bring the temperature above this, so the end result is that the cut will not be cooked over this temperature.  Great for cooking something to rare or medium rare, without being too raw on the inside and not too cooked on the outside.

There are a number of resources out there, and I'm not used to this enough to do a full explanation, however, I will explain the parts I'm using and the ingredients I've used used.

I hooked up my handy crock pot and filled it with warm water, then plugged it into a temperature control device that had cost me 75 dollars new, and that I use for a number of items including:  Making yogurt, incubating koji and now, using as a low temperature cooker.  The temperature control device consists of a thermometer probe and a unit that plugs into the wall.  The heating device, in this case the slow cooker, plugs into the temperature control unit, and the thermometer probe is set into the water.  I set the device to cut the power when the temperature reaches 140 degrees, and to start heating as soon as the temperature drops below 135.  

While the water was heating up, I've sliced up a single carrot, a small onion and added it into a ziploc freezer bag along with a small splash of cheap, but drinkable, wine.  Actually it was a Kroger special Pinot Noir.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any other wines to use at the time.  I seasoned a beef sirloin roast with garlic salt and freshly ground black pepper.  The particular cut (which I'll have to check which kind it is in detail), is a fairly solid slab of meat, with little to no marbling or connective tissue which would normally render out fat and flavor into the meat.  Because of this, I had decided to use the vegetables and wine, even at the risk of this becoming more like a stew.

I will be letting this cook over the next two days, and finish it up on a grill, or on my cast iron pan, in order to brown the outside of this small 3 pound piece of lean meat.

Ideally, what will happen tomorrow night, will be slicing some veggies (the remainder of the carrots, onion, garlic and a parsnip) and putting that into the hot water to slow cook, finishing it the next day in the oven.  Unlike meat, I'm of the opinion that root vegetables really need to be cooked at a higher temperature than meat.  Usually around the 185 degree range.  I'm not sure what heating the vegetables up to 140 will do for me

Haven't managed to do anything notworthy on the gluten free side of things lately, plus it's tax season (extensions) which means even less time to do anything.

The mead is still slowly fermenting away at 60 degree's, it's optimal temperature for the particular yeast, and it's still bubbling happily away.

A few weeks back, I also started a sorghum process that was similar to creating sake:  Innoculating steamed grains, and using the enzymes created to convert other steamed grain to sugar.  This process did not happen at all like I had hoped, so instead, I've been trying it like the full sake process.

I had hoped that the Koji creation process would produce enougn enzymes that it could convert more starch to sugar if introduced to a higher water temperature than sake sees.  This was not the case.  Perhaps I may need to innoculate large quantities of grain to do this (all the grain I'm trying to convert for example), as well as crush them into small enough pieces that water at a certain temperature would convert the starches to sugar.
For now, I had added some yeast, 1118EC I believe, a champagne yeast, just to see what would happen.  After all, there were no hop flavorings involved.

After several weeks, I have not yet strained the liquid away from the grain, and really need to.

The mead is still kicking away at 60 degrees, still fermenting, still smelling quite sweet, but soon I'll need to move it out of the temperature chamber.  I recently purchased some beer taps (faucets and shanks) and wish to add these to the freezer that was converted into a refridgerator suitable for kegs.

I've recently (last week) went to the Rennisannce festival and have suffered no ill effects.  It has been quite pleasant, however the only items I can eat are salads and turkey legs.  There is little else that I can really have.

It has been some time since I posted.  Haven't been doing too much other than trying to organize my life up and going up north to Traverse City with family.  I didn't manage to search for any gluten free tidbits in the area since my parents and their friends (who really kinda have the place) decided to cook the entire time.  There were quite a few wineries though.

Once I got back, I decided to finally start on my mead.  I had cleared out my top loading fridge so that the sake could sit in there for a while, so I knew I had room to put in the plastic carboy of mead.

I looked at my materials and calculations and unfortunately got confused.  I had planned on a 5 gallon batch, but the container was a 6 gallon batch.  At 5 gallons, 15 pounds of honey was expected to give me a 15% ABV, at 6 gallons, 15 pounds was only going to give under 13%.  Which I somehow thought was going to be too low for a mead.  Thus, I decided to add an additional 3 pounds of honey.  However, I only had one more 5 pound container.   I thought to myself,  "Well, 20 pounds of honey and 6 gallons of water makes 3.33 pounds per gallon.  Still good."  So I put in 20 pounds into the carboy.

The astute person will have already realized what I've missed.  Indeed, I found out after I poured 20 pounds of honey into the carboy and started filling jugs and adding water, did I realize that I was using half gallon jugs per 5 pounds of honey, and that I didn't account for the volume honey would take up.  Somehow, I thought that 20 pounds of honey would dissolve in water, as if it were a dry sugar product.  Yet I knew from baking, that when using honey as a sweetner, a person had to use less liquid because of the fluidity of the honey.

This means that I had 2 gallons of honey, and only room for 4 gallons of water.  Indeed, when I took the measurement, I found that I had a gravity of about 1.130.  Not necessarily a bad thing, however, the yeast I was using was Lalvin's D-47.  A yeast that would tolerate up to 14% abv, and is used for dry white wines (whose style I was aiming for.).

At this point, I have been letting the mead ferment, using some nutrient additions to feed the yeast, however I have to consider 3 options after the fermentation has completed.  Assuming that the yeast will cease it's activity exactly at 14% abv (which is unlikely, since it varies) which happens to be a gravity of 1.020

1)  Leave the mead as a sweet mead.  However, the residual sugar would be around 10% per a graph I found here.  If I were to do this, then I'll have to find the appropriate acid blend to bring the acidity up to balance the sweetness.  Sweet reislings (and even semi-dry but probably not dry since it is dry) have their sweetness balanced out by the natural tannins and acids in the grape.

2)  Use a different yeast to continue fermentation until the mead is dry, however this further means that the aging time will be pushed to 2 years, since this would give a higher alcohol content of 18.5, and this would likely strip away much of the varietal characteristics of the honey.

3)  Dilute the mead with water and continue fermentation.  I could potentially split the batch into two separate containers and add just a single gallon of water to each, and let fermentation restart and finish to give me the 14% (or less if I decide to add more water)

I'm not exactly sure why I keep aiming for the 14% other than the yeast limit is 14 percent, and that my calculator showed that 3 pounds of honey and one full gallon of water (or 15 pounds honey, 5 gallons water) would ferment dry at 14% abv.  I somehow forget that it's certainly possible to aim for a 10% abv, and many times, is what I would prefer.  Many dry reislings for example, hover around the 10-12% range (with 3% residual sugar), and sweet reislings down at 8% (with 8% residual sugar).

Perhaps next time I'll try a batch at 1 pound of honey topped off with water to equal a gallon, which (when fermented completely dry) will give me an estimated abv of 6% equal to a beer.
Or 2 pounds of honey topped off with water to equal a gallon to make a 12.5% mead.

One pound of honey takes up 0.1 gallons of space, so the 1 pound of honey is .9gallons of water, the 2 pound of honey is .8 gallons of water.  Thus the ever increasing %.  Which leads me to 3 pounds of honey and .7 gallons of water would actually give a dry mead of 20.94.  Which likely halts earlier than that at around 16-18% and leaves a bit of residual sugar.

And although I've waited a week to post this, today 8/6 is national mead day!

It has been some time!  I was trying to craft a post about my summer drinks, but it appears I have too many and need to pare them down.  However,  lets put that on hold for today.  Last week, I went on a family trip to Cape Cod and we located a great gluten free seafood place.  Unfortunately, my keyboard of this laptop broke on the trip and remains broken, until the replacement part comes in.  As you may imagine, writing without the use of several of your keys, including the space bar, is very difficult.

The place was the Chatham Fish Market / Chatham Fish and Lobster company, surrounded by beautifully landscaped residences.  The Fish Market was the section of the building to purchase fresh seafood, however the food area was more like a small diner. Two glass cases with a selection of precooked foods, including gluten free cheesecake, gluten free asparagus risotto, and what I thought was the best, gluten free crabcakes.  Crabcakes are a mix of crab, breadcrumbs, spices and seasoning and a binder like mayonaise, formed into patties, coated in breadcrumbs, and fried.  Delicious, but because they were cold in the coolers, I picked up two to bring to the place I was staying.

Why?  Because I was after the fried foods.  All the fried foods there are gluten free.  Fish&Chips, Fried Clams, Fried Shrimp, onion rings, yum.  They seem to use a cornflour coating that fries up nice and crisp.  However, I doubt they would stay crisp for the two hour trip.  They were worth getting.  Crisp and hot, with tartar sauce.  I'd have preferred cocktail sauce for the clams, and a horseradish mayo for the rings.

I'd consider frying, but it's not quite worth the effort for one person.  Especially because it means that there is quite a bit of cleanup after.

I've been trying to get myself organized so I can get some more posts out.  I've been doing quite a few things and haven't had anything to really show yet.

I've joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) through work and get vegetables every week.  I haven't done too much with them, however I will try to post what I get.  Mostly, it's been eggs, lettuce and tomatoes at this point.  Some asparagus too since it's in season, and I've tossed that onto the grill with a bit of garlic salt.

The tomatoes, I was going to grill, but I've recently been trying to make mozzarella using a simple 30-60 minute recipe.  There's some effort involved, but it's not really too bad.  I want to get some pictures of the process soon.

I also plan on making some sake, including making the koji from the spores and rice that's used to make the rice turn into sugars to ferment.  There are some people planning on doing this, and using this process to create enzymes for gluten free beer.

In addition, I've been using a sprouter to try to sprout some seeds (mostly radish and broccoli sprouts) but I'll try sprouting some other things soon.  I'm working on a few designs so I can get some racks or something.

Busy day today.

Today, I started a witbeer.  This should be a spicy, orange flavored beer, and it would likely be better with something that would act like wheat, however I didn't have any to use.
I used:
A single gallon pot to boil
1 oz halletaur hops, .5 at 60, .25 at 30 and .25 at 10.
.5 oz sweet orange peel (I couldn't find bitter) at 10
.5 oz coriander, crushed @ 10
less than an oz of grains of paradise @ 10
This was added directly to my fermenter which contained 6.6 lbs of sorghum syrup.

We'll see how this goes.  Ideally, I would have had malted buckwheat, or malted millet to act like wheat, to give this a maltier, sweeter flavor.  We'll see how this goes.  I plan to let it ferment for a week, then directly add some gelatin to help clarify the beer, as well as to remove the tannins.  I'm wondering if I add more gelatin, and let it sit for a shorter period, that it might work better than using less and letting it sit longer.  We'll see.

I also didn't have the right coriander (there's a difference between morrocan and indian coriander.  The first is spherical and will give a "hotdog" flavor to the beer, the other is more oblong like a football, and would be the stuff I want.)  Should this not work out right, I'm sure I'll be using it to braise food.

In the meantime, I've been occasionally testing the single gallon jug of the IPA that I added gelatin to.  It seems to be less "sorghumy" which is good, but it also has lost a bit of body.  This concerns me, and I may have to replace it by adding a bit of maltodextrin to thicken the beer back to normal.

Also, the Malbec wine-cooler style of wine is progressing well, and I expect that it should take one more week before it's ready to be served and stored away.

I'm also wondering about starting up a lager, the issue with doing any temperature regulated beers is the lack of space for a temprature regulated location. 

On the way home today to celebrate Mother's day, I stopped off at my brewing supply store to pick up some sorghum syrup.  With the last batch, I had used up my last 7 pound container and will be attempting another lager soon.  So I knew I needed more.

Actually, I picked up a rather dated, yeast vial of a wyeast Czech yeast at my local-local supply store, and I'm seeing if it's still possibly viable.  I could get a newer vial I suppose, but unfortunately, wyeast does not really have a gluten free yeast, so what we have to do, is dilute the yeast to a point where it becomes more gluten free.  That is to say, that the initial vial of yeast and growing medium (was wort, is now beer, or maybe it's just distilled water), is normally said to produce under 2ppm of gluten in a 5 gallon batch.  This meets the European standard of being gluten free, but not the American.  Also, many people have to go on a 0ppm gluten limit, which is why I prefer the strict limit over the relaxed one. 

I'm actually surpised that Europe would designate it this way, especially since many things in Europe have more of a purity rule than the US would.  For example:  Chocolate.  For many european countries, chocolate had to show that it used some other fat source other than cocoa butter, if anything other than cocoa butter was used.   And the German Reinheitsgebot, beer purity law, and the modified version which is still pretty strict in it's additives.  The original law, which is still emphasized as being followed as a matter of pride, though not enforced, said that to be beer, it had to contain barley, water and  hops (and yeast).  Nothing more.  

In any case, what gluten free, or at least gluten reduced brewers have to do, is to create what is known as a yeast starter.  Adding the vial of yeast to a gluten free wort (combination of water and a sugar source, usually sorghum syrup or brown rice syrup) that has a gravity of about 1.040, which the yeast will reproduce and feed off of.  It will ferment like normal beer, and the beer will be drawn off, taking with it some of the gluten protein from the original vial.  This is repeated several times. 

The media used to propogate the yeast uses a 120ppm gluten amount (as reported by Wyeast in 2009).  This is why we gluten free brewers tend to use the Fermentis brand of Safale, Saflager and Safbrew, because Fermentis uses a non-gluten media.  Unfortunately, Wyeast has a larger selection of yeast strains.  So a 50ml vial at a concentration of 120ppm would be normally diluted in a 5 gallon amount of gluten free wort, giving an ordinary dilution of:   120ppm * 50ml=? * 18927ml giving us a 0.31ppm amount.  Not a lot, but still, it's present. 
In a half gallon dilution it becomes: 120ppm * 50ml = ?* 1892ml giving us a 3.17ppm amount.  The beer is disposed of, leaving us with just the yeast.  So again:  3.17ppm * 50ml = ? * 1892.  This now gives us a 0.08 concentration of gluten.
Now:  0.08 ppm * 50ml = ? * 18927ml gives us 0.0002ppm.  So a safer, and lower, concentration of gluten in this gluten free(ish) beer. 

I will still relate this information to anyone who needs to be gluten free, and wether or not they trust the math and feel safe about it.  Knowing my tolerance level, I would be comfortable with the lower concentration, especially since it opens up the option of using a different yeast that may possibly give me a clearer, crisper lager with less diactyl flavors.

This ends the explanation of what I'm doing for the next beer, and why I need the sorghum to produce the next beer.  It will also undergo a gelatin clarifying test.

In the meantime, I picked up another picnic tap.  This way, I can attach it to my 3 foot hose, and then to the keg that I currently have filled with my first kit wine.  Or rather, wine cooler.  I also picked up another wine kit.  I saw it sitting there, in a stack, with a sign that said 50% off for this one day only.  Today happens to be the National Homebrewing Day.  Since the normal price is 135, this means that I get to save almost 70 dollars on a limited production wine.  It will be a Italian Primitivo wine, and requires aging from 6 to 12 months. 

After some consideration, I will still be aging this in a keg.  A keg is a stainless steel vessel.  Many wine producers age their wine in stainless steel vessels.  It is then placed into bottles and shipped out when it's ready to drink.  I will do the same.

Prior to going home, I drained the last of the beer from my first keg.  I tried to fill two bottles and a half-gallon growler jug.  One bottle burst as I was trying to cap it, or more accurately, the neck broke, so I had to toss the bottle.  (I was already doing this in the sink because filling from a keg was kind of messy, and required counterpressure otherwise foam would fill the bottle and come running out.).

Once at home though we finished up the beer and tried the wine cooler.  The wine cooler was pretty good.  Light and sweet, though I think it would have benefited if the day was warmer. 

After searching my beer fridge, I decided to make this:

7 pounds Sorghu extract
.75 oz Whitbread Golding hops @ 60 minutes
.75 oz Kent Golding hops @ 60 minutes
1 oz Kent Golding hops @ burnout (for aroma)
a bit of irish moss at burnout
Safale S04
and eventually some gelatin in the secondary.

The expected IBU is 28, the OG is about 1.045.  I didn't measure the og though, kind of forgot to.  Two of the hops packages were opened from a prior beer, but were subsequently sealed, which is why I didn't want to use them for aroma.  I'm sure there's some other losses involved too, but I'd like to use up what I have in my fridge if at all possible. 

In the meantime, I think I should really start bottling up some of these 3 gallons of cider so I can stop bumping into them.

For the past few months, I've been toying with the idea that some of the tannins within sorghum, is what may be causing the astringent/metallic flavor that many people describe when they come into contact with sorghum-based gluten free beer. 

The loose reasoning behind this is that too much tannin in any product will cause a tart, astringent or metallic flavor.  Not enough tannin in some things, means that the flavor can absent.  Strawberries and cranberries have a tartness to them due to their tannins, they just wouldn't be the same without them.  Black tea also has tannin, which gives it that dry flavor.  Enough tannin in tea makes it taste good, too much tannin, usually from overextracted tea, makes a person's mouth feel dry.

The hardest part though, is that the word tannin encompasses a large range of organic compounds and those compounds are different from item to item. So some items can have the same amount of total tannins (lets say 12 for each) but both can have a completely separate set of 12, and thus the tannin has a different effect. 

Apparently sorghum has about twice as many different phenolic and flavinoid compounds as barley does, and only a few of them overlap.  So the desired experiments would be twofold, to reduce tannin compounds overall, or even to remove one type of tannin, until the desired effect results. 

Now that second option is definately eliminated for me, and I can't even appropriately do the first set of experiments since I don't have any viable setup, including:  Space, constant temperature & environment, which are crucial to having constant elements in an experiment.  I'll still be doing some loose, not so scientific experiments in the meantime.

One set of experiments is to malt my own sorghum. The enzymatic process involved is said to reduce the amount of tannins.  (Note: Link to scientific paper from 1978)
A second set of experients is to first soak the sorghum in an alkaline solution prior to malting, or even using an enzymatic compound to break the sorghum down to fermentable sugars.  (link to 2010 scientific paper studying the effect of alkaline solution & sorghum tannin amounts)
The third set of experiments is to use a fining compound that will react with the tannin to reduce it during the secondary/clearing process of the beer.  Possible fining compounds include gelatin, isinglass, egg whites.

These (and some other) fining compounds react with tannin, which will drop it out of the solution.  If I'm not too careful though, this will also mean that flavor and body will be removed from the beer as well.  In the meantime, I'm using about a gallon's worth of my first 5 gallon beer to test this out on.

My next set of beer, I expect to be testing this as well, and this will be reported on the next post.

Insert single picture here. (I only took one at the end.)

There are many kinds of pulled pork with different cooking methods. Some people use smokers for hours on end, until the meat falls apart on its own.  Some people will toss it with a sauce right in a slow cooker and shred it when it's finished.  Quite often, when roasting meat that contains fat, the fat will melt away, basting the meat, and then either pool at the bottom of the pan/crockpot/foil or into the coals/fire. 

I decided that I wanted to make something with pork and barbacue, even if I didn't have a grill or smoker I could use.  I figured that I could use the oven, set it to a low 200-225F and just let it cook for a few 8-12 hours.  In the mean time, the sauce could be set in a slow cooker where the shredded pork would eventually be placed into. 

I also decided to try using the oven this time around, because I wanted to see if I could collect the drippings for another use. Because of this, I didn't season the meat like I normally would.  I was actually surprised that I didn't get much dripping, or rendered fat from the pork.  Next time I do this, I will add a dry rub ( a mix of spices and seasonings that has no liquid added) to the pork and let it sit in the refridgerator for 24 hours. 

There's something about any type of pulled pork that calls out for coleslaw, shredded or chopped cabbage with some sort of sauce.  There's different kinds of slaw, and the main two types of cabbage based slaw tends to be either a creamy slaw, or a vinegar slaw.  I went with a vinegar slaw.

Also, with barbacue pulled pork, another important ingredient is the sauce.  Some pulled pork use a vinegar based sauce, some use a mustard sauce and some use a tomato based sauce.  I went with a tomato based sauce for mine, which I made from nearly scratch.

The Pork

I picked it up from Kroger, just because it was the only place open at the time (11 at night when I finished working), and it was about a 7.75 pound piece with a bone, that set me back only $17.  The cut was the Boston butt (upper part of the leg) that has great marbling and a superb natural flavor that can be eaten without additional seasoning.  Some people like to cut away the fat, but I think it's where most of the flavor lies and when the cut is raised higher and the fat is allowed to drip away into a container, then I think it winds up doing the same thing.  Plus, the fat is rendered and can be used for other things, like flavoring.

At the same time, the fat means that the long cooking time, even at a higher temperature, will result in a moist flavorful meat.  I like pork tenderloin, however it's higher price and dryness when overcooked means tenderloin can be more difficult.
Seasoning:  A little bit of salt.
Process:  Stick on a slotted or wire rack above a deep pan and let it cook at 225 for 8 hours.
Easy enough, right?  No basting, no poking, no peeking.  At the end, let it cool for about an hour, then shred either using fingers, some forks, or a cleaver.

Next time, I'll add a dry or wet rub of some sort to really let it soak up some extra spice, but on it's own, it's still extremely flavorful and juicy and didn't even need that tiny bit of salt I tossed on top.  I was short on time and would really have prefered letting it cook for an extra long time (12 hours+) to really get it to just melt apart.  There were just a few pieces that were still firm enough to give me shredding trouble, but the part near the bone and the outer few inches came apart quite easily, enough that it was difficult not to keep snitching away pieces. 

Other things I can do with this pork

The Sauce

Quite often, I'll make my own sauces.  This time around, it was a tomato based barbacue sauce.  I started with several cans of tomato puree/sauce though sometimes I'll add in some tomato paste to make it thicker.  I tend to add juniper berries to my tomato based barbacue sauce because I like the flavor it gives.  I also added some thyme, garlic powder and onion powder, a bit of salt, plenty of molasses and a bit of cider vinegar.  I also added some paprika as well as some chipotle pepper powder I had on hand.  The result gives a nice sweet and tangy heat.  I did various additions, including adding some of the spice and molasses at the start, and some towards the end.  This way, there was a sweetness and spiciness that still stood out, and wasn't all mellowed in the background.
I wound up making plenty, so I put some into a jar and mixed the remaining amounts with the shredded pork.  I'll add the sauce whenever I reheat the pork, which will probably be all this week, and if I have any remaining, I'll use it as a sauce for something else.

Approximate ingredients:

4 cans of pureed tomato/tomato sauce
1/2 to 1 cup molasses
1/8th cup juniper berries (pulverized in a food processor preferred)
5 allspice berries (I really don't think this did anything, so I'd omit this next time)
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 Tbs paprika
1 Tbs onion powder
1 Tbs garlic powder
1 tsp chipotle pepper powder

Approximate process:
I tossed in all the sauce, all the juniper and half of everything else in the slow cooker then towards the end of the 8 hour period for the pork, I tossed in the other half.  I did use a cornstarch slurry at the end (cornstarch and water) to try to smooth it out and add a little bit of extra thickness, but it didn't really do anything.  I'd prefer to have added some tomato paste instead, but I didn't have any on hand.

The Slaw
Vinegar based slaws tend to be pretty easy.  The most difficult part tends to be shredding the cabbage, which is made easier by the use of mechanical means.  I used my kitchen aid slicer unit (the unit that attaches to the front of a kitchenaid mixer) and fed chunks of cabbage through it and into a single slicer unit.  This produced nice shreds of cabbage.  I don't recall the weight of the cabbage, but the resulting shreds filled a gallon sized pot. 

I heated up some cider vinegar (approx 2 cups) just enough to dissolve some salt (1 tablespoon?) and some sugar (quarter cup?)  and I added some black and yellow mustard seeds (4 Tbs?).  I also added some olive oil (quarter cup?).  The result was much like a vinagrette that I added to the shredded cabbage. 

I mixed the cabbage up with a gloved hand, though I could use a bare washed hand if I wanted, since it was the easiest way to coat the cabbage and I modified the seasonings by adding a little bit more vinegar, both cider vinegar as well as red wine vinegar and a bit of garlic salt along with some freshly ground black pepper.

The result was a nice light slaw that cut through the strong barbacue spice.

Approximate ingredients:
1 large head of cabbage
2 cups cider vinegar
2 Tbs red wine vinegar
2 Tbs yellow mustard seeds
2 Tbs black mustard seeds
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbs kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar

Ingredients I'd change:
Omit yellow mustard seeds, go with black mustard seeds
Add celery seeds

Procedure:
Everything but the red wine vinegar went into a non-reactive pot and was warmed until the sugar dissolved.  This was then slowly drizzled over the shredded cabbage and tasted.  Because I wanted more bite to the slaw, I then dashed on the red wine vinegar.

And what did I drink with the entire dinner?  Well, I still have quite a bit of the IPA from my first 5 gallon batch that I was chilling and testing outside (the temperature had dropped enough to keep it cold) and it's cold, crisp flavor and strong hoppiness cut through the oil and spice rather nicely.

Though I've not had much time to bake, cook or even post, I did manage to find the scant half hour that it took to start up yet another branch of my brewing hobby.  This time, it's making wine.  Yes, wine.  To be honest, I've always been more of a fan of wine, than I have been for beer, but due to the higher alcohol content of wine, it's difficult to always be holding a glass.  Especially when a person is the odd one out since  the people around are having several beers.

Many people have talked about kit wines, and according to them, they're pretty well on par for most of the wine a person would buy and drink from the store at the mid level.  While I may not have the quote, they say that the $60 dollar kits are equivalent to the $5 dollar bottles and the $200 dollar kits will be equivalent to the $25 per bottle wines.  Add in that you wind up getting 6 gallons (approximately 25 bottles worth), it's a pretty good price comparison.  In fact, it looks like the topic came up recently here. 

I purchased two simple quick kits at under $60 per kit and started one last week.  It's a simple white zinfandel and isn't destined to be any fine wine with any subtle nuances, but instead a light summer fruity wine.  I added the ingredients per the instructions and managed to cart it to a tub where I've let it sit to ferment.  Just earlier today, I racked it into a plastic carboy where it will sit for a while longer. 

Eventually, I plan on bottling one to one and a half gallons, perhaps just putting it directly into gallon jugs, while the remaining 4.5-5 gallons will be stored in a keg.  I've been liking these kegs because it's just less of a pain than bottling and I can get as little as I want without worrying what to do about the remainder.  I was worried about using CO2, which I'm using for the beer, but it turns out that not only have homebrewers been using kegs to dispense wine, it seems that some companies are as well.  Pretty much for the same reason, that it's easier to dispense, easier to store and that you don't have to think about storing a half used bottle, or worse, having to throw it away.  In addition, there are cost savings on packaging and labor (bottle cleaning, filling, weight, disposal). 

Looking through their examples, it seems that a very low amount of CO2 is fine for dispensing, so I don't have to get another container for a CO2/Nitrogen mix (though it is recommended).  I'm looking forward to completing this one, and even more, I'm looking forward until the end of my busy season so I can get back into baking and even cooking.  My single pot meals and precooked chicken with frozen vegetables is starting to wear me down.

Also, spring is finally here, the temperature jumped up to 80 today, from the 40's-50's that it has been for the past month or two.  Because of this I had to bring all my kegs in from outdoors.  I guess it's time to look at getting a cooling system for them.

I think this is the first weekend I've had open for a while where I'm not working, but unfortunately, I came down with some sort of cold.  Because of this, I don't think it would be wise to do any baking, or brewing.  However, in the past few weeks, I have been making hard cider.  Two of the gallons (Using D47 yeast)are sitting outside in a shed where it's cold, and one is in a fridge (using EC1118 yeast).  I have two more gallons in my regular fridge waiting for yeast to be added, however I'm not sure which I want to use.

I feel like trying to do this one gallon at a time has been rather annoying.  Because of the one gallon quantities, I have to bottle them up, especially if I want them carbonated.  If I left them as a still (non-carbonated) drink, I suppose I could put them into a gallon sized growler so it's still not sitting on the yeast.

I've toyed with the idea of combining all 5 gallons into a single container, but I'd prefer to keep them slightly separate for the taste difference between the yeasts.  Next year, I'm going to get 5 gallons at a time, just so it's easier.  I'll eventually bottle these into champagne bottles, which means I need approximately 20 or so bottles (50 bucks).  It'll definately be easier to keg next time.

Speaking of kegs, I picked up another keg, as well as some supplies to make a kit wine.  I've been wanting to try making a wine and thought it would be easier to use a kit, a kit being mainly juice and a few other additives.  Many people have said that kits are pretty decent and that the lower end kits will create wines that are around $8 a bottle retail, and that the higher end kits can do wines that are similar to the $20 a bottle retail.  Kits contain supplies to make about 6 gallons of wine and can range from 60-several hundred.   Ideally, I'll be using a large bucket to start this in, then move it to a plastic carboy (I'd use glass, but the weight and possiblity of breakage dissuaded me), then move it to a keg and bottles.  From the keg I expect I can bottle whenever I want to.

Also, I had actually picked up the keg since I *thought* that my earlier lager was ready to be transfered.  It turns out that it probably wasn't ready, and that the gravity was 1.020.  About midway between beginning and ending and that it had just stalled.  I did wind up transferring it to the keg and it seems that the fermentation has restarted.  I keep measuring the pressure since I had added some sugar to carbonate prior to testing and it keeps jumping up to far higher than I want. 
What I'll do is let it ferment more completely, keeping it at a pressure of around 30 psi, then transfer back to an empty keg.  I suppose that I should let it stay in the cooler environment outside, because inside, it's around 68 degrees, which is too high for the yeast.
I keep having trouble with the new keg though, and it seems to be holding pressure, but it's annoying that I had to continuously reposition the lid and pressurize it in order for the pressure to hold.  We'll see how this holds up and what I may do with the cider.

I've been extraordinarily busy lately with work and haven't been doing much around the apartment work at all.  I've been hoping to once again try the tiramisu, however have not had the time to bake. 

I somehow did manage to start up another batch of beer though.  It was composed of  just under 4 pounds of brown rice syrup (3 pounds 15 ounces, since each jar was 1 pound 5 oz)
2 pounds 12 ounces of sorghum extract (two varied sizes of 45hm syrup)
and later on 8 ounces of honey (I put this in at the end so it would decrystalize)
I used 1 ounce of Saaz Hops at 60 minutes and .5 oz at 10 minutes and some irish moss (about 1/8 tsp at 10 minutes)
I overdid the water again since I expected more evaporation during the boil, but I had it completely covered so I wound up with about 6 gallons of liquid.  I added a packet of Saflager W-34/70, the Weihenstephan strain.  There's not much details about it on the saflager site, other than that it's a classic pilsner.  Wyeast (who doesn't do gluten free) says that it's a wheat beer strain which produces a "balance of banana esters and clove phenoics" and that overpitching would lose this banana character (which I wish I did) and that a higher fermentation temperature, hidensity wort or low pitch rate would get more of that banana flavor.  I dislike the banana flavor to be honest and I believe I underpitched. 

I stuck the keg and gallon jug out into the outside shed where it's been slightly below target temperature.  The range is from 9c to 15c, or 48.2F to 59F where the target is really 12c or 53.6f.  The temperature out there normally ranges from 40 to 50 and can go up to 60 on a warm day.  The temperature has been swinging back and forth in my area too, which has not really helped.  We'll see what happens.

Alternately, I've been having more trouble with the chocolate beer from before.  I had left the keg's pressure valve open, which meant no pressure or carbonated beer and I cannot seem to get it to carbonate now.  Hope I figure it out and that I won't have to toss all 5 gallons of it. 

I figured out that ladyfinger, the cookie-like pastry used in a tiramisu was just genoise cake piped out, and to make it easier, I was planning on baking the genoise with the correct amount of xanthan gum.  This time I used the kitchenaid.  It was much easier this time and the cake turned out much less dense than the chocolate one.  (Not that the chocolate one still wasn't good. People loved the truffle covered cake pieces even more than the triple layer truffle cake itself.)

Now tiramisu is a combination of ladyfingers, espresso, possibly a liquor, marscapone cheese and cocoa powder.  Pretty simple....

But my espresso machine broke.

I own a Expobar Brewtus II, purchased back in '06 that I've used for years.  I pretty much said that it'd pay for itself in a year or two, since I could make my own espresso drinks.  It was very worth it.  This year I knew I would be doing some long awaited maintenance, replacing gaskets, washers.  In fact, the machine was constantly dripping due to a worn out washer (I believe).  While baking, I decided to take it apart and clean it.  There was quite a buildup of calcium, created due to me not recharging the water softener filter as often as I should.  While I cleaned that off, I saw that the washers were indeed worn out and needed replacing.   
You can see here: http://coffeetime.wikidot.com/e61-internal-diagram that there are lots of different pieces involved.  I found out I will need to replace quite a bit, especially since valve was so worn out, it snapped in half.
I'm tempted to upgrade, but I expect that I'll be able to repair it for under 100 dollars, even less if I don't have to replace all three valves (maybe 25 including shipping).  I pretty much need to save money due to needing other repairs done to a large number of things, including my car, which is 13 years old, and seems to have some invisible leaks for oil, steering fluid and antifreeze.  It's been said it's not worth repairing.

Of course, I also seem to keep purchasing beer supplies.  It's a nice hobby, but like any hobby, it can be expensive, but on the plus side, I learn a craft, new skills and an enjoyable outcome.

In any case, I'm working on repairing the machine now and will redo the cake at another time.  In the meantime, I'll see if I have the energy to make it a cake, or if I'll just snack on it with some leftover chocolate truffle when I have my french press brewed coffee.

I will occasionally cook a weeks worth of food for myself so I don't have to cook after work.  I'd prefer to have time enough to shop and make something different at least every other day, but working a normal day job, I find I don't have enough time or energy to do that.  Instead, I try to get everything cooked either on different days, or on one day so during the other days I have time to clean or exercise or work on other projects. 

These days are even busier.  Working 10 hour days and occasional weekends means that there's very little time for doing anything else so I cook as little as possible during this time of year.  Some weeks, I'll buy a cooked chicken, cook some vegetables, or use frozen ones, and cook some rice.  Simple, easy, and I stick the bones into the freezer and make stock at a later date. 

This past weekend, on Sunday, I had some potatoes, 2 pounds maybe, an onion, some left over 1/3rd of a block of cheddar cheese, and half a bag of frozen peas and some ground beef 2-3 pounds perhaps.

I diced the onion and mixed it with the meat, along with some worchestershire sauce, ketchup, onion powder, garlic salt, garlic powder, crushed garlic, black pepper and some other spice.  It was a sort of pepper powder, perhaps poblano. I also shredded half the cheese and mixed it into the meat as well. I patted this down at the bottom of a foil lined pan and then layered the peas on top. 

I then used the kitchenaid attachment to the mixer, a food slicer, and ran the potatoes through this, which grated them nicely and I spread that over the top.  The slicer always leaves the last layer behind which either gets stuck, or just stays in the hopper so I collected each of those last bits of potato, diced them up and also added it to the potato layer which was then seasoned with garlic salt and pepper.  I added the remaining shredded cheese on top which was also shredded by the kitchenaid.

It hasn't turned out too bad and was pretty simple to make.  I've eaten it with salsa, drained yogurt and standard burger condiments.  Since it's like a shepards pie, I do like the drained yogurt, or sour cream.  I usually have it with some rice.

If I make it again, I'd add some diced tomatoes, and perhaps put some or all the potato on the bottom.  Somehow the potato on top darkened as if it was exposed to too much air. 

With it being February, I felt like making myself a chocolate cake, or chocolate truffles.  I was having trouble deciding which so I decided to try to find some recipes that involved both.  What I eventually put together was a génoise cake that would be frosted with truffle material.  Chocolate truffles are mostly known either in it's solid state as 'chocolate truffles' or in it's warm liquid state of chocolate ganache.  In between it's solid and liquid state is a frosting like consitency which will later firm up a little, but not actually become hard. 

Génoise cake, is a spongy firm type of cake primarily made of eggs, sugar, flour and sometimes butter.  It's a great cake base, and is an often used cake style for decorated cakes and cakes with layers of something inbetween.  It can also be glazed or soaked with flavored syrups or flavored liquors.

I used a recipe that called for:
4 eggs
75 grams unsalted butter (melted)
125 grams sugar
75 grams flour
and to make it chocolate 50 grams melted chocolate.

To me, grams are easier because I have a scale, and because I'm a horrible measurer of dry cups.  (I don't bother leveling).  The chocolate I happened to use was Ghiridellis since I always keep several bars of their chocolates around for baking and truffles and I used their unsweetened baking chocolate.  I used plain, white refined sugar, and I used a gluten free flour mix I had made using:
4 cups rice flour
2/3 cups corn starch
2/3 cups potato starch
2/3 cups tapioca flour

Corn starch and potato starch are interchangable but because I have both on hand, I like doing half and half whenever I make flour.  I will often try different flours in addition to these, including; quinoa, millet, soy, coconut, chestnut, buckwheat, oat and almond.  I usually use it separately depending on what I make.  I also leave out the xanthan/guar gum, since I ordinarily add it during the baking process since some gluten free baked goods tend to require more for some products (bread which often needs to be firm and chewy) and less for others (like certain cakes).  However, since I haven't baked in a while (or even made pancakes in half a year) I managed to completely forget the xanthan gum!  This likely resulted in a flatter, denser cake than I was expecting.  It was still a good texture though, despite this omission.  I'll be sure to use it next time, and then perhaps try coconut flour for extra moisture.

I actually used 5 eggs, because two of them were on the small side, so it should have averaged out to 4 large eggs.

The truffle material is simply chocolate and cream.  Sometimes people will add corn syrup, or butter.  I normally do chocolate and cream after having watched Jaques Torres do it back when the Food Network showed informational shows.  This time around, I followed what was on the Ghiridelli bar wrapper of:
8 ounces 60% chocolate (2 bars)
6 Tbsp butter (58 grams)
1/3 cup heavy cream.
Normally I like my chocolate darker and I get their 70% but I was out and the store didn't have any that I saw.

Flour, melted butter, sugar

Here is everything ready to go, except for the xanthan gum.  It should have been added to the flour at this stage.

I let this cool for a bit to thicken, until it became like a frosting. 

Once the cake finished, I let it cool on a rack for a while, then sliced it into three equal sections and stacked them on top of each other and sliced around the edges so that it was even.  I then spread the cooled ganache/truffle/frosting on each slice, getting a good, thick layer, then stacked them up on each other and covered that in the frosting.  Because it didn't have a smooth glossy coating, I had two options.  One option seems to be to dip a knife or spreader in hot water to warm up the metal, wipe the metal and then smooth it all over, but since I couldn't find my spreader (I believe I stored it away somewhere), I just took some more ganache and warmed it in the microwave and poured it over the top.  Once it cooled, it has a nice glossy layer.  I would plan to serve it with either ice cream, or whipped cream, some coffee and maybe a few rasberries.  It's a dense chocolaty but not sweet cake.





In the last picture, you can see what I did with the cake edges.  I melted more truffle/ganache and dipped the pieces and placed them onto the other side of the baking parchment paper.  I was thinking of covering them in cocoa powder like truffles are coated, but somehow it just didn't feel or taste right this time.  I would consider tempering chocolate (going through a heating and cooling process with plain chocolate so that when it cools it's glossy and hard) and then covering the truffles with that, leaving a nice candy-like piece of chocolate coated truffle cake.

I still cannot seem to locate my camera cable in order to transfer any pictures.  I can't imagine where the cable was last left at.  What I've been doing lately is mostly cleaning, however in the meantime, I have transferred beer from one 5 gallon keg to a second 5 gallon keg, to which I've added some dextrose syrup and will be leaving for approximately three or more weeks to naturally carbonate.  This saves me from using a co2 gas tank, plus lets the beer's flavors mellow and age.

I've also been working on plans for a Gluten Free Stout which didn't go as well as I'd like.  There are several recipes floating out on the internet now, particularly where some people have been working on various renditions of a stout.  A Stout tends to be a dark, slightly sweet, and heavy beer.  Heavy in the way of mouthfeel, texture and flavor.  It tends to be made from darkly roasted grains and have a coffee or chocolate flavor.  Those of us unable to have the normal grains have to try to find different workarounds using toasted oats, buckwheat and other gluten free grains.

There are many combinations that I would like to try, but I had toasted about half a pound of gluten free steel cut oats until it was a fairly dark color.  I may have overtoasted it, or toasted it too quickly because what had happened when I steeped it in hot water two weeks later, was that it gave off a burnt odor. Perhaps I'll let it sit and degas even longer than two weeks next time.  It did give off a fairly dark color however.  I believe that it would be better if the grains contained sugar (like malted grains) so that it would caramelize rather than toast.

I continue to be impressed by the number of companies that are producing gluten free.  What's more interesting is that some of the older established companies have for a while been taking notice of the gluten free need/demand.  It's a bit worrying, perhaps, about the smaller companies that have grown throughout the gluten free need, now that larger companies are producing the same type of goods. 

Some foods were always gluten free.  Hormel brands had a number of items that were close to being gluten free, and now many of them are labeled as such.  Useful when I want to make a quick chili and cheese chip dip.  (Superbowl party, here I come.)

Betty Crocker also produces a gluten free line of baking goods.  Its still fairly expensive compared to their regular mixes, but nice that a regular store will carry them. 

Progresso is who/what surprises me, when they completely replaced their normal line with a gluten free product.  Particularly their clam chowder and cream of mushroom soup.  Not a second line, but completely replaced, without making a large price change either.  Yes, I know they've all been out this way for a while.

I still like going to my local Whole Foods, and even Trader Joes to pick up gluten free foods, but those stores are not everywhere, so it's still a nice change, knowing that wherever I am, I can probably get a can of Hormel Chili, or Progresso soup, or Betty Crocker baking mix.

No sooner did I say that I haven't done anything, the I went and did something.  I saw that a nearby store had started listing sorghum syrup as one of the products they carried, and I know I did not see that several months ago.  It turns out that the store just started carrying them as of the end of December.  They purchased ten 7 pound containers, and it seems that they're down to half already, so they said that they would be getting more.  I also said that I'd spread the word because I would like to have more gluten free brewers in my area, as well as a source of sorghum syrup. 
True, eventually I'd like to be able to use malted grain and such, but until then, this works.

I finished building my wort chiller using 50 feet of copper refridgerator tubing and some compression connectors and tested it for leaks.  Not getting any, I then filled up a large 6 gallon aluminum pot, used for turkey frying.  I added 5 gallons of water and started it heating on the stove, it took an hour or two to heat up to boiling.  I then used a similar recipe to my very first batch, since I wanted something simple.

7 pounds sorghum syrup (30 minutes)
2 oz Kent Golding hops (60 minutes)
1 oz Kent Golding hops (10 minutes)
Irish moss (as a clarifier)
The OG turned out to be 1.054 at about 65 degrees. (However the brewing calculator calculated it at 1.048)
The expected bitterness should be about 41.40 IBU
and I'm using a full packet of Safale S-04 (English ale yeast)
I also plan on dry hopping, with 1 oz Kent Golding hops in a nylon bag, tied up and suspended in either the primary keg, or the secondary for about a week.

The wort chiller worked as expected so the 5 gallons of liquid was quite cold.  I shudder to think how much water I waste, perhaps I'll eventually circulate ice water like others do, but at the moment, the cold water runs from the faucet, through copper coils and out the other end which drains to the sink.

I then siphoned the liquid from the pot down into a keg, where it was filtered by a nylon bag.  This was perhaps a bit of a mistake because the nylon bag kept getting filled up with hop bits and was difficult to try to drain.  Some of it spilled out due to this.   I believe next time, I'll stick the siphon into the nylon bag and put that into the pot so it filters there.

I then poured in rehydrated yeast and sealed the keg shut then tossed it into the bathtub and rinsed it down with the shower to try to clean the spilled sugar liquid off of it.  I also had to mop the puddle on the floor too.
I think shook the keg, even to the point of laying it on it's side and shaking it, just to try to airate the liquid.  Perhaps I'll get the drill attachment to make it easier to airate, or even an airstone, plastic tubing and an oxygen regulator to connect to a typical oxygen tank sold at a hardware store.

Cleanup was difficult too.  I pretty much emptied the sludge into the sink and tried to spray out the remaining gunk using the plastic hose connected to the sink, as well as running a bottle brush around the thing.  I still managed to get water all over the place and had to mop up again.

Hopefully, this batch will go well.  I also need to get a keg piece that I left behind at the store, so I can transfer beer from one keg, to the other, but leave the yeast sediment behind.

Here is a difficult topic, presented due to several situations, most particularly due to some discussion among some gluten free people and some tests done by a well known beer brewer.

Also, I've started another tax season so I haven't really done too much.  I haven't even gotten to brew anything lately, both due to the lack of time, and the lack of resources.  It seems that my store ran out of the ingredients for gluten free beer, and the website I had looked to also ran out.  I've been searching around and I think I've found another store that does carry what I need, so I'll be looking to get some ingredients from them soon to try yet another beer.  Hopefully I'll have some testers around so I can get a comprehensive taste test.

Back to the subject at hand, there have been some people who talk about gluten free beer, particularly making it.   There was a discussion about how gluten tests of regular barley beer, as well as regular beer that had been augmented with an enzyme called Clarity Ferm has been coming up with a gluten/giladin detection of under 20ppm which by European standards is considered gluten free. 

Clarity Ferm was designed to break down proteins in a beer, leaving it clearer, and some people hoped that these enzymes would break apart gluten proteins.  The results have been mixed so far.  While these tests have shown by the EZ Gluten test to not have over 10 ppm.  There is still enough left to cause a reaction from people who have tested the resulting beers.  Many have said that they get a reduced reaction, but still get a reaction.  Many have said that because of this, the risk of having a reaction is not worth having a beer made from barley.  They also have said that the body of the beer has also been reduced due to the Clarity Ferm, but that Clarity works as advertised, making a beer clearer.

Its unfortunate that it doesn't seem to work, and I perhaps wonder that if a person tests for gluten prior to the enzyme and a separate batch that contains the enzyme, if there really is a gluten/giladin difference or not.

Although I don't know if I could handle the under 10ppm limit or not, I'll still work with the non-gluten sources to make a beer I like.