Well, tax season has ended, about a month ago, and unfortunately I'm rather behind on several projects.   The temperature fluctuations hasn't helped the beer that I had out in the storage room of my apartment, even though I was monitoring it to make sure it didn't drop below freezing, but somehow, the process didn't go as smoothly as the first lager I had made out there several years ago.    It was the exact same recipe using saaz hops and sorghum syrup, however, I'm beginning to wonder if the pressure based fermentation did have an effect on it.  The first result was a pale, clear beer, however the one this time is more amber, and has the definitive taste of sorghum, and the fruity esters of the yeast.  It will still age under pressure for some time, and I may be trying it this weekend.

I've finally run out of the cider that I've had on tap for two years.  Admittedly, I had been only slowly going through it, due to last year's disastrous apple crop for Michigan.  I don't have a particular apple blend, nor do I have a source for specific apples, or fruit grinder, so I normally pick up ciders from certain producers, I usually look for a tarter cider, rather than sweeter when I was doing this for the prior years.   As of two days ago, there has been a frost, but while there are reports of frost damage, it's nowhere near the damage that existed last year.

I've also finally run out of a too-sweet white zinfandel that I've had for three years.  These have been in kegs, and yes, has been drinkable despite being 3 years old.  This was one of the early batches where I had followed the instructions, rather than the later batches where I've been adding half the sweetener pack during the first fermentation and the other half at the end.

I also brought a keg of a plain gluten free beer that had used the New Zealand hop motueka.  Because of the timing of my drinkers (usually just me), it's been about half a year since it was made, so it had lost a lot of the up front grapefruit flavors that the hops introduce.  The remaining tropical fruit flavor did, however, blend well with the diminished sorghum flavor and my initial testers liked it.  I wound up dragging several gallons out to a brewing day in Ann Arbor to see if I could receive any feedback.  Unfortunately, there wasn't much in the way of detail.   It wasn't a terrible beer, but it was not a favorite (in comparison to the normal barley based beers).  It was, however, the only gluten free beer out there.  Among the taps, it was one of the last two remaining beers at the end of the day, and I still took home a gallon or two.

Again, I managed to discuss some gluten free brewing to people who were looking at trying it out for friends and family, but nothing to the extent of people who were currently brewing gluten free, or had any suggestions for changes.

With two empty kegs, and the third expected to be empty this weekend, this does mean that it's time to start making something again.   Perhaps I might have been able to fit something in January or February in a carboy and let it sit for a few months, but I honestly didn't expect for three to come up at once.  I do have a Cellar Craft Sterling International GSM that is currently in secondary fermentation, so I do expect this to go into one of the kegs, and to finally bring out either the Cranberry mead, or the other Red wine.

I also need to catch up on cleaning, since I won't brew in a dirty kitchen, (And being in an apartment, it's all I've got).  But once that's done, then I can expect at least two more posts of something being made.  I'm considering another variation on the Orange & coriander beer.  Also, I really need to finish the sprayers that for the grain sprouting test in the spare bathroom.

Over the past month, I've largely been playing around with a tuber called a taro root.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try it out too much, but I expect to play with it some more.  Normally, with gloves on, I just peel and slice the tuber in cubes and cook it in water, coconut milk, sugar and tapioca for a quick and easy dish.  This is a pretty common asian dish.

Taro can be used many ways, sometimes cooked and mashed to a paste with sugar and used to fill pastries, sometimes boiled or steamed and in a savory dish, sometimes fried, and sometimes a combination of steps such as steaming, mashing, mixing with ingredients, chilled and fried.

One dish that I've really wanted to work on is a dish served in Dim Sum resturants called Wu Gok.  The Taro root is normally cooked by boiling or steaming, then mashed and mixed with a fat and wheat starch and an egg, chilled, then formed around a savory filling, usually consisting of pork, shrimp and mushrooms, then fried.  The end result should be a crispy, flaky pastry like dish with the outside kind of open and lacy.  However when biting in and chewing, there would be a contrast between the crispy layer, the soft mushy layer, and the saucy meat texture.

The difficult part was that I've not made them before, though I used to eat them, and that even people making it with wheat starch have had trouble getting the feathery, lacy outside, winding up with a more solid fried outer layer instead.  Still edible and delicious though.

I didn't do the inner filling with the tests this week, but worked on the outside to see how it would react. The oil I have is somewhat old and used, and I really need to fry with fresh oil, so I currently do not have good pictures.

The wrapping recipe called for
300g peeled taro, steamed or boiled until tender then mashed.
50g fat (butter, oil, lard, shortening)
50g starch, wheat
50mL hot water
15g sugar
5g baking soda

Interestingly, the starch is mixed with the boiling water first, then it cools into a doughlike substance, then blended with the remaining ingredients, then chilled for about 30 minutes.  Then about 35g of the mix is taken, formed into a ball, flattened and filled (usually on a flour dusted board), then closed around into a semi circle, one side over the other.  This is then fried in a pot of oil on medium heat (350F/ 177C)

I simply rolled the taro mix into a ball and dropped it into the fryer.

The starches I had and tested with were, in order: Tapioca starch, Potato starch, Corn starch, Arrowroot starch, Sweet/glutenous rice flour.

Tapioca starch didn't create any flaky later at all, but gave the ball a slightly firmer, chewy texture.
Both Potato and Corn starch worked somewhat well, in that it created a lacier outside.
Arrowroot starch didn't work too well, instead spreading it's layer out too quickly and dissolving.
The Sweet/glutenous rice flour didn't work at all, dissolving without leaving behind anything.

At this point, it's a matter of trying to confirm the texture, or go with a mix of tapioca and potato or corn starch.  This will likely be the next test, unless I either sacrifice my digestion with a bite of wu gok that I would have to spit out and rinse after, or find a test subject.

Recently, I had the craving to make some chocolate truffles.  With chocolate, it's hard to make just a little, so I went through 8 pounds of chocolate.  When planning, I checked around to make sure dark chocolate would be the prime chocolate, and it turned out that only one person wanted milk chocolate.  This did give me a chance to make milk chocolate truffles for the first time.

I started with a mix of Trader Joes large chocolate bars (72%) and some Calebut chocolate chunks that I had from buying back in Feburary and stored in a cool, dark, sealed bin for emergencies.

Dark Chocolate Truffle Base
For every 8 ounces of dark chocolate, I used 8 ounces of heavy cream.  I created 2 pound batches (32 oz), or rather, slightly extra because the Trader Joes bars were over 16 oz per bar.
Step 1) I chopped the chocolate into small bits and put them into a large bowl.
Step 2) I heated the heavy cream until it was simmering but not boiling.
Step 3) I poured the cream over the chocolate and let it sit for a few seconds and started stirring and folding with a silicone spatula.


Milk chocolate truffle base
I used 24 oz chocolate and 8 oz cream for this one and used the same methods as the dark chocolate truffles.


For the first batch, I used 4 oz of Grand Mariner and 4 oz of Cointreau' and several (I didn't measure oddly enough, I think it was 4) teaspoons of cinnamon.  This just wasn't orange enough, so for a second batch I added half a teaspoon of orange extract to get a bolder orange candy flavor.  

The third batch used 4 oz of peppermint schnapps.  I would have preferred a mix of peppermint schnapps and extract because like the first batch, the flavor was not prominent enough.

The fourth batch used a combination of cinnamon, 2 tablespoons honey (which was heated with the cream), 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, cayenne pepper and ancho pepper.  I believe I used approximately 4 teaspoons of cayenne, 4 teaspoons of ancho and 4 teaspoons of cinnamon.

The mixtures were then covered and left to cool for a few hours at room temperature, or in a cold environment (the fridge, or this time of year, outside in 32 degree F weather).  I also tried pouring a few batches into ziploc bags and cooling.

After the chocolate had cooled to the point of being malleable without flowing, I scooped small balls (1 tablespoon, or 1 inch diameter) using a cookie scoop and deposited them on parchment paper.  The ones in bags were easier, because I snipped off a corner of the bag, and piped out the chocolate into small piles and eventually, gave up and just piped it out in long logs.  I let these cool a bit as well.

When the chocolate was slightly more firm, I covered my hands in gloves and rolled the chocolate into balls. The logs were sliced with a sharp knife and then rolled into balls.  The heat of a persons hands will make these melt a little and form, but also makes the chocolate a little too warm to work with, so these cooled as well.

Finally, they were rolled in cocoa powder, or in the case of the orange cinnamon truffles, a mix of cinnamon and cocoa powder.  They could also have been dipped in tempered chocolate, but I chose not to do that this time.

They were then separated into bags and given away for people to eat.  It appears people loved them, and some wound up eating 8 a night.  I ruined many a diet these past few days.

People liked the stronger orange flavored truffles and many loved the pepper truffles.  They weren't spicy up front, but would leave a lingering burn after being eaten, usually in the throat.  Some people who would eat theirs slower would feel it in their mouth.

In retrospect, the pepper should have steeped in the cream for a while to really get the pepper to release into the cream and bring forth a more forward pepper taste.

I recommend people use a truffle or three in hot milk to make a hot chocolate.

I only made one batch of milk chocolate truffles, orange-cinnamon.  The difference with this one, is that it uses less cream due to the existing milk content.

I expect to get another truffle craving in February and perhaps try white chocolate truffles for a few people.

It's been half a year and surprisingly, I haven't really done too many projects related to anything gluten free.  In fact, my meals have been very simple and somewhat scary in their repetitiveness.  In a large part, it's been, baked chicken with some sort of seasoning, some rice and sauteed vegetable.  I haven't been drinking a lot of beer either.  In fact, it took until the week after thanksgiving to finally give some away.

Back in July, I made another two batches of Orange Coriander beer and then, didn't touch it for months and didn't even write about it.  I kegged one, and stuck it into the fridge for months, the other sat in the primary fermenter (a big bucket) until a week or two ago.  I gave away several gallons, emptying the keg, and refilled it with the other orange coriander.  An interesting result was that both had lost nearly all their orange and coriander flavor, but had also lost a lot of it's sorghum flavor.  I also put on one of the spiced pumpkin beers from last year.  No trace of spices whatsoever, but again, no off flavors of sorghum.  I'm considering that a good idea for extracts is to make a generic beer base, and then a few months later adding flavoring components and then later kegging it.  This is of course assuming that I, or others, will be drinking it within a reasonable amount of time.

I've barely had any of the sangria mentioned in the last post, I believe I've given away maybe a gallon's worth and had a few glasses on my own during the summer.  It actually turned out quite well, not as sugary/syrupy/cloyingly sweet as I would have expected.  The downside was that I really did not do a side by side test with a batch that I didn't modify.  I expect that someday, when I find more drinkers, I'll do a side by side and see who likes which versions.   And yes... in 6 months, I still have 3-4 gallons of sangria remaining.

I *still* have the cranberry mead from last year sitting in a carboy in the spare bathtub.  I will soon be kegging this, after I've washed out the beer fridge, the moisture and temperature causes mold to grow and I still need to modify to include better airflow and less clutter.

Once the tub is clear, I expect to set up a multi-tiered spraying assembly along with some form (probably ceramic) heat lamps so I can try sprouting some sorghum this way.  The problem is that I don't quite know what the temperature will get up to with heatlamps and how many I would need.  Troubling since due to some car payments, I haven't been able to buy the equipment anyways.  (The car has actually been one of the reasons I haven't been doing as many projects).

In the past week or two, I've had a craving for truffles, so I made several batches, which I will explain in the next post, along with what I think I would do differently next time.

I started a wine kit a month and a half ago and had decided that since the previous two kits that I have done turned out too sweet by following the directions, that I would try modifying the process.  Ordinarily, wine kits are designed to follow the specific steps.  I think that for most kits, this would be true.

There are some kits, usually with the term "mist" involved, that are designed to be sweeter and have different flavors than normal wine.  Apparently, back in the day of the 80's, there was something called a wine cooler.  These used to be made with real wine and were diluted with various fruit juices and water to the equivalent of a 3-6% drink.  At some point, the tax rate on wine greatly increased and because beer was taxed so low, businesses used barley to base this type of drink on.  Now they are known as malt-based beverage, or malternatives.  Some well known ones are Smirnoff Ice and mike's hard (lemonade).

Of course, because they are made with barley malt, this means that they're off limits to those of us with celiac's or have a gluten intolerance.  This is where these winekits are useful.  They can ideally make a fruity, somewhat sweet drink that isn't too expensive.  Some examples of standard types would be like a white zinfandel, or a sangria, but these kits go beyond that by mixing various flavors to make a cranberry red wine, or a tropical fruit blush wine.  There's also a new line that mimics traditional bar drinks like the cosmopolitan, pina colada, and margarita.  I'm not quite sure what I make of those, and how those could have any benefit over making it from spirits.  It only takes a few seconds to make a mixed drink, perhaps longer if you don't have the bottles handy.

Wine cooler kits (mist/breeze wines), do have an advantage to taking a wine and mixing it with fruit and juices.  Ordinarily, to make a wine cooler, you need to choose a wine, out of the very many types wine, choose the juices that you wish to mix with them, and then figure out the quantities of each.  For example, taking a rioja or temperanillo, or a syrah or other types of earthy red wine, some fruit (limes, lemons, oranges, apples), sugar, some spirits like cognac or orange liquor and mixing it all into a pitcher where it sits overnight.  It's hard to have the foresight to have all the ingredients necessary sometimes, plus the expectation to make it the prior day.  Wouldn't it be easier to have it on tap?

Unfortunately, in making a sangria, I couldn't compare a version that stuck with the original instructions, and only could compare to two Winexpert kits that I had previously made.  Those had been too sweet and I often mixed it with inexpensive wine to cut down the sweetness.  When choosing, I had strongly considered doing one of these two to compare, but with my drinkers liking sangria during the summer, I felt it was a good decision.

I decided on RJ Spagnols Seville Orange Sangria and started it per the instructions with the bag of grape concentrate, water, yeast, and I added half of the post-ferment sweetener (the Orange flavoring).  I also added a touch of tart cherry concentrate as well.  I let this ferment normally, racked it into a carboy with the sulfites to prevent further fermentation and added the remaining sweetener.  After letting this clear, I racked it into a keg and the next day had a taste test.

It was agreed that it was drinkable, quite good and not too sweet.  The orange stood out and there was a hint of cherry from the cherry addition.  I would like to try one of the prior kits done in a similar fashion, to see how it really compares.

These are likely to be the only type of kits that I would consider modifying by adding some of the flavored sweetener to the initial fermentation, and the addition of concentrates.  It would be more difficult to try to modify a kit that normally creates a pinot noir, chardonnay or reisling.  The primary modifications would be the timing and amount of oak flavoring.  Fruit concentrates may be interesting, but it would also risk a kit that takes anywhere from six months to two years after bottling (or kegging) to find out as well as four to ten weeks to ferment, whereas these mist/breeze kits are ready within 4 weeks from the initial fermentation.
Cost is also a factor.  The wines that can take several years before drinking (but of a good quality) costs in the range of $US150-170.  The lighter kits cost from $US50-70.  Granted, the alcohol% is 12% vs 6.5%, but it's easier to experiment with something whose results are pretty quick, rather than take the chance of having something come out okay several years later.


Wine kits:
Winexpert
RJ Spagnols

Tax season was a bear this year so I didn't get to work on any projects, but nearing the end of it, I had been researching more and more about malting my own sorghum.  I had actually started researching a few years ago, but really ramped it up in the past month and finally made the attempt.

I won't go into the failure of the first attempt, but I will say that 48 hours into the process I knew something was wrong and had to start over.

What followed was a multistep process first steeping the grain, germinating the grain and then drying the grain following updated processes modified to what I could possibly do.

Step 1:  Sorting the grain.

After receiving the grain, I picked out approximate 2 pounds of sorghum and tried to pick out broken and odd looking grains.  I expect that a series of graded sifters would work better for this, but it's not likely something that I will have handy.  Broken grain, stones, twigs,  bugs.  These would not malt and could be quite detrimental to the process.  Thankfully, because the sorghum purchased from Pleasant Hill Grain was triple cleaned, all I had to deal with was the occasional broken grain.



Step 2:  Steeping the grain

Once I measured out my 900g's of sorghum, I did an initial wash, using the same metal bowl, filling it with water and running my fingers vigorously through the grain to clear any husks and floating non-viable seeds.  I scheduled out a soak/air dry schedule of 6 hours soak in 30 degrees C water, 3 hours air dry for 45 hours, plus a final higher temperature soak at 40 degrees for 6 more hours.
I soaked using a .1% alkaline solution.  Ideally, I would have been using sodium hydroxide (NaOH).  What I had to use instead was sodium carbonate(Na2CO3), derived from sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) by heating baking soda in the oven at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes.  I think I could have found the right time vs temperature formula for that though.  A 1% solution is 1g/100g water (and 1g water = 1ml water), so what I used was 1g/1L of water.  I used 4 liters of water per soak period.
In a comparison between a non-alkaline soak vs a alkaline soak, the alkaline soak showed the brownish result, either a reaction from the soda, or something being drawn from the grain.
*Note, ideally, after the final 40 degree C steep, I would have sterilized the grain with a 1% solution for a few minutes.

After the soak, the small chits (sprouts) are starting to grow.  (Image taken from a viability test.)

Step 3: Germinating the grain

I used my oven as a germinator, sterilizing it first by running the clean cycle a day before.  I spread the grain on a screen and used a plant heater to keep the oven at 40C, an ultrasonic fogger to keep 90-100% humidity and an air pump to keep new air circulating into the oven to prevent stagnation.  Germinating grain does use up oxygen, and it's been studied that the soak water also has oxygen taken from it, though aerating the soak water showed that grain sprouts too soon for malting.

Unseen in the photo was that I moved the airstone and heat pad under the bottom rack, moved the grain to the bottom rack and put a bowl and fogger above it.

Despite the high humidity, higher than what is used for other grains, sorghum quickly loses water, so its necessary to spray the sorghum once or twice daily, as well as to rotate and stir the grain to keep it from matting.

Germination day 4

Germination day two.