2012 Analysis

So, this time last year I listed my New Year's Resolution. Let's see how well I did:

1) Don't work as many hours - make it home for dinner with my husband most nights a week.
Score 1 point! I will admit there were times I worked many late nights, but I did make it home in time for dinner MOST nights a week. YAY!
2) Major promotion at work.
Score 1 point! By June I was promoted to Preconstruction Manager and currently manage all the estimating, budgeting, and purchasing functions of our company and have 4 direct reports! Awesome!
3) Cook all week meals at home.
Score 1/2 a point. We did OK at this - but we have some room for improvement.
4) Buy less prepared food.
Score 1 point! We did pretty well at this! And we are going to take it one step further in 2013!
5) Take back the chickens.
Score 0 points. I failed at this resolution. Luckily - my husband is still the best and loves those little chickens and makes sure they don't starve! In my defense, I decided to go back to school to get my Master's degree, which was definitely more time consuming than anticipated!
6) Clean up, clean out, and get rid of the JUNK in our house.
Score 1 point! We had a yard sale this spring and then immediately called a donation service and had them come pick up everything that was left. Of course, as the year went on we have identified more things that we never use and are planning on getting rid of those in 2013!
7) Not bring more JUNK into the house.
Score 1 point! I did really well at this. Don't get me wrong, I spent more money in 2012 than I should have, but it was on things like - a new fence, soil and stone, plants, canning supplies (amazing how many jars we went through!), homebrew supplies, etc. All that work definitely relieved the stress way better than retail therapy anyway!!

So, final score: 5.5/7 = 78.5%  Hmm... C+   I can definitely do better than that in 2013.

Merry Christmas 2012!

Hot Sauce Completed

So after letting the pepper mash ferment for about two months, I decided to bottle it up.  Back when it started fermenting, some small spots of white mold started to form on the surface of the pepper mash that was above the brine.  So I topped off the jug with more water so that it was completely filled with pepper mash and brine.  The first 2 weeks of fermentation was fairly aggressive, as it forced all the pepper mash to the top of the jug, and pushed some up through the airlock, which made a mess.

You can see the pepper mash changed from a greenish color to more brownish, and even after the fermentation slowed down, all the mash was still forced up against the top of the jug:

It definitely had a sourish strong aroma, a little funky.  Upon tasting the mash, two things were clear.  One, that I used way too much salt (6 oz).  Two, that either the Tabasco peppers or Fish peppers were VERY hot.  I hoped that most of the salt was in the brine, so I strained the liquid from the mash.

That definitely helped.  But the pepper mash was much too hot (and too thick) to use as straight hot sauce for "everyday" uses like on eggs or tacos.  So I thawed a container of tomato puree that we had frozen from the garden.  Since the tomato puree was just blended whole tomatoes that were cooked down, it was very thin and could thin out the pepper mash and cut some of the heat. I made three variations, X, XX, and XXX, increasing in heat.  Most of the sauce was made as the milder X recipe which has a nice balance of flavor and slow burn heat, with just few bottles of the others.  The variations:

X - 1 part pepper mash to 4 parts tomato puree, with rice vinegar and brown sugar to taste

XX- Equal parts pepper mash and tomato puree, again with rice vinegar and brown sugar

XXX- Pepper mash, with some rice vinegar and water to thin it out a bit. 

For reference, the mix of varieties of peppers was:

1/2 lb Red Zavory

1/2 lb Fish 

1/2 lb Tabasco

1/2 lb Jalapeno

2 lb Salsa

2 lb Poblano

1.5 lb Sweet Bell

Hard Cider Experiment

So Sheila has become a fan of some hard ciders, especially some of the "craft brewed" ones that she's tried when we're at beer bars.  So I put together some experimental batches to see if I can successfully homebrew some.  For two of the batches, I used some very tasty fresh cider from a local orchard that they were selling at Keystone Homebrew Store.  The plan is let these age until next fall, and see what the results are.

Batch #1:
1 gallon Solebury Orchard cider
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Wyeast 4766 cider yeast

Batch #2:
1 gallon Solebury Orchard cider
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Danstar Nottingham Ale Yeast

Batch #3:
1 gallon Nature's Choice organic apple juice (no preservatives)
8 oz corn sugar
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Wyeast 4766 cider yeast

Black IPA with homegrown hops

So the Black IPA that I made using the staggered harvest of Cascade and Nugget hops turned out pretty good.  The beer has a big hop aroma from the dry hopping, and the taste is nice balance of slightly roasted grains and pungent hop flavors - citrus, pine, grassy, earthy.  Nice body too.

Recipe was:

6.6 lb Pale Liquid Malt Extract
2.0 lb Light Dry Malt Extract @30min
.75 lb Carafa III Special Malt (steeped)
.75 lb Crystal 60 Malt (steeped)

1.75 oz Chinook @60min
1.5 oz Centennial @60min
1.0 oz Nugget @30min
2 to 3 oz (equivalent) of homegrown wet Nugget and Cascade @ 5min

Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast
Dry Hop of 3 oz of homegrown dried Nugget and Cascade in secondary for 1 week

O.G. 1.070
F.G. 1.020
abv ~6.5%