This was my first go at an all grain brew,
The process I followed was mash the grain in the cool box at about 65°c for an hour.
Then I batch sparged them with water at about 75°c.
Following this it was time for the boil for an hour with various hop addition. The results and ingredients will be posted to this page Beer when I have bottled it.
After I said in a previous post that I wouldn’t recommend anything again and then went on to recommend a few things I am going to do it again. I was chatting to a friend and they asked for some “media” recommendations I said that I would put them in a email but then I thought I would put them in a blog post.
Recommendation are hard because you don’t want to recommend something then somebody spent there time on it only for them to not like it so sorry if you don’t like any of these things!
podcasts
film/tv
music
I love aubergine, I think they are probably one of the best things to eat.
I seem to be making a lot of fermented food at the moment so thought I would make some sour Aubergines
Rough method
This didn’t work for me as they went all moldy which I don’t think they are meant to.
So i started to make this drink 
I have now drunk some and it doesn’t taste great it is sharp and has a bit of a bite to it. In summary not very nice. My wife described it as ermm a slightly weird beer tangy taste, and asked what could be put with it to make it nicer! I didn’t have any ideas. 
If you haven’t watched the dectorists I really think you should. It is lovely program that makes you think that everything will be alright. This article about the dectorists sums it up nicely. So you should go and watch all three series of it now. Enjoy. If you don’t enjoy don’t blame me!
The third series is on iplayer here but watch from the first.
I was looking up bread recipes, as I wanted to make some bread but then I got distracted by a recipe for Khlibnyy kvas- Russian fermented rye drink. It is the very last recipe in Olia Hercules’ book Mamushka This needs 200 grams of dried rye bread crusts. So I thought I would make some.
I search for how to make Rye bread and as ever the Guardian knows how to make the perfect Rye bread It was fairly easy to follow and I left it over night to prove. It didn’t get much bigger.
The bread was fairly solid with a beery taste it was not unpleasant but fairly heavy. I have saved some in the freezer to make the drink at a later date.
Now to the Sauerkraut– I decided to put some in a jar and put it in the fridge this way it will carry on fermenting but a lot slower than it would have done at room temperature. I also heated up a couple of jars and put these in the back of a cupboard to maybe enjoy in a year or so. Heating up the Sauerkraut kills all the bacteria so the fermentation cannot continue. Some people say this means that it won’t taste as good and won’t have the full health benefits of unheated sauerkraut. This page explains a bit more about it.
There is a bit of scum and it tastes a lot of onion. I should have tried making it without the onion.
I am going to leave it a bit longer before I put it in the jars. When it goes into the jars this will stop the fermentation process.
As promised here is a post with no promotions!
After hearing The Food Programme on Radio 4 a few weekends ago I thought that I would have a go at making some Sauerkraut.
As I normally do when I try and make something new I look at loads of different recipes or instructions and follow a combination of them in no particular order or without any reason.
For Sauerkarut I looked at the following:
I also looked in two books we have Sloe Gin and Beeswax by J Newdick and S Allison’s Book of Preserving
The basic summary of all those recipes is:
Cabbage + Salt + Time – scum = Sauerkraut
Or in a bit more detail
I have basically done the first few steps of the above- I added one onion maybe a mistake as the kitchen stinks of onions . Also in the mix was caraway seeds, dill and juniper berries. I am waiting for the first 5 days or so.
After the introductory offer I got from ipage when I was first setting up my website ended I have since changed my hosting and domain registrar.
I have moved the hosting to Hostgator Get some money off Host Gator by clicking on this link the main reason for this was price and some alright reviews I read online. I found that most reviews for hosts were mixed. Hostgator did a great job of transferring my site from ipage and got it up a running very quickly. The website seems to be running faster than when it was hosted on ipage.
My domain registration has transferred to Hover get some money off by following this link
Hopefully this will all work out okay! My next post will not contain any links for money off i promise!
I have also spent sometime setting up the plugin Postie which is great for emailing blog posts. This works great if you have limited internet access and quickly want to post something without using the wordpress app.
If you have been thinking about green energy now is the time to switch to Bulb. If you do this using the link above then we both get a some cash back ££££££.
Do this by Monday 20 November and we both get £100, do it after then we both get £50. So switch now.
If you want anymore info just send me a message. When Sarah read this she said she thought it was a virus/spam post it is not!
