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.