A weekend of yeast and alcohol
Kris has had a homebrew kit he’d received as a gift almost two years ago, and we’d been trying to figure out the best time to get it started. With the downpour rain and cold that came on Friday, he finally decided it was time.
Earlier in the week, I’d started a sourdough bread starter, so it was also time to take some out and bake a loaf in our breadmaker. We always love making bread, and since it was raining, it was a really great day to make a loaf. So I got all the ingredients together in the breadmaker’s loaf pan while Kris started sanitizing the kitchen and organizing all the things he would need to start the homebrew.
The process is fairly simple - crush some grains, steep them in a big pot of water, remove and add the malt, add hops and boil for 30 minutes to an hour. I keep trying to make it into a scientific process - exact measurements and temperatures, which is the way I usually cook - but it’s more of an art and a “whatever” laidback process, which is certainly more along Kris’s terms. Every time I get panicked about how long it’s been, or what temperature the wort is at Kris has to remind me of the homebrewing motto - Relax, have a homebrew!
Jason joined us for an “inside look” at the homebrew process, and we were able to share some fresh-baked sourdough bread with him. Finally, it was time to strain out the hops and dilute the wort to a total of 5 gallons and lower the temperature. Unfortunately, our cold water isn’t really cold from the tap, and we don’t really have room in the fridge for either the giant tub OR pitchers with enough water…so when Kris got to this step, the temperature didn’t drop as much as it needed to. So we brought the whole thing outside. It took a while, but eventually the temperature decreased enough and we brought it back inside for the start of primary fermentation. (Eventually we had to bring it back outside because it just wasn’t cool enough inside…)
Another part of the weekend was making some homemade vanilla extract! Kris had been searching Make Instructables, and came across this great one for DIY Vanilla Extract. It’s quite easy - all you need is a dark bottle, some vodka, and a few vanilla beans. We actually have a whole bunch of vanilla beans that we got on our honeymoon - a gift from the hotel - and since we’d changed rooms we got twice as much. We’d been wondering what the heck to do with the vanilla, even while on our honeymoon because it was presented as a “specialty item” to buy and bring home. I wonder what most other people do with the vanilla beans since it’s so expensive… Those thoughts aside, Kris also showed me that once you strain out the vanilla bean and pods, you can use them to make vanilla sugar, ala Alton Brown.
I was super excited when Kris showed me the instructable thing, because not only was it something to DO with the vanilla beans, but then we’d have homemade vanilla extract AND vanilla-flavored sugar made with vanilla from our honeymoon. The fact that these things will be homemade and reminders of our honeymoon in years to come make the whole thing extra special.
