urbandryad

Cranberry honey 6kg with 1tsp acid and plenty of nutrient on the yeast cake from the truly excellent berlinerweisse cyser (previously had added a little sweet mead yeast too). Put in cold. 11% potential.

Intention mead 7kg orange blossom honey with potential to add more since it was reading weird. Maybe 11 or 13% potential, nutrient, wyeast sweet mead yeast.

Bottled this year's candy apple graff, it's very light and needs to age but may end up pleasantly light and tart for summer. Also bottled the berlinerweisse cyser which is lovely lovely tart and honeyed. Both carbonated in small bottles.

Also made rose lemonade with honey in the instant pot. Definite yes.

Moved, so I can get back to it. In preparation for bottling, which is in turn preparation for refilling carboys with new stuff:

Rose petal mead: very sweet and gorgeous. Rose and honey aroma play so well, just enough clove to balance. Might benefit from that orange peel I skipped. Need to be sure it's stopped. A little bit thin - feeling, I think to counteract that and the sweet I'll bottle it sparkling. I hate the rapey awful term 'panty remover' but yeah. Have two carboys full, might bottle one sparking as is, try adding orange peel infused vodka to the other and tasting to see if it'll be good still.

Apple mead: crazy apple aroma, again sweet like candy but with enough other stuff going on I'm not worried about needing carbonation to complexify it. There's some sort of secondary fermentation going on with this, it's sucking air very slowly in. I will filter this before bottling therefore. Weird taste disappeared.

Barleywine: wouldn't be bad if it hadn't oxidized. I understand what they mean about a flat papery taste at the end. I'm not sure if adding some raisins would help? It's ok but not great.

Kousa: I love the taste of this. Lots of yeast flavor, which plays in a super fun way with the taste of the kousa itself. There's a lot of alcohol in here, which a touch of bitter finish, that could maybe usr another six months. Good to be bottled though.

So, I've achieved my goal of 180 jars, one for each day of a six-month winter. Last night I did a recipe of my own invention, Rose Peaches (Slice a bunch of peaches, put some sugar and honey on them and mix together with a tiny bit of rose essential oil, let sit awhile till the syrup covers them, mix in a generous dollop of lemon juice, can for 10min). I also made another batch of sweet zucchini relish. That added 17 and 13 jars, respectively, and I water-bathed my 11 cans of grape juice.

HOWEVER, Julia is getting more peaches next week, and I've discovered the punk domestics site. I clearly need to make Peach Jam with Sasparilla Root (I have the root just hanging out waiting): http://cookcanread.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/peach-jam-with-sarsaparilla-root/ and I'd like to make a peach habanero jam too. So I'm not done with peaches yet.

I have no salsa yet, and I found a Zucchini Salsa Verde recipe: http://sweetdomesticity.blogspot.ca/2012/09/zucchini-salsa-verde.html which is pretty exciting.

And I'm going to make a half-batch of Tomato Jam http://www.letsgivepeasachance.com/2012/08/tomato-jam.html with my CSA tomatoes, for gifts, as well as popping a couple cuke slices and green beans from the box into a brine for mixed pickle jars (I am so fond of mixed pickle jars).

Then there's that chocolate plum jam recipe which I can't stop thinking about, though there are no prune plums yet (soon!) http://growitcookitcanit.com/2012/05/11/gratitude-improved-chocolate-plum-jam/

Etc, etc.


Roundup of this week's farm canning was mostly a zesty dill green bean -- we did 60 jars straight beans, then just started chopping to get through more. You know, straight ones for the people who eat one at a time in cocktails, chopped for the rest of us. The jars had 1tsp dill seed, one clove garlic, and 1/4 tsp cayenne. Brine was just 2.5 cups water, 2.5 cups vinegar, 1/4 cup salt.

Oh, but I was also in canning the day before that, we did a whole bunch of green tomato pickles. The green sausage tomatoes weren't very good, so we turfed the plants and pickled everything on them, from very green to basically ripe (they're very firm tomatoes anyhow).
We used http://www.gardenbetty.com/2011/08/four-ways-to-pickled-green-tomatoes/ recipe, without the curry powder, just cumin, ginger, and allspice (2 allspices per jar). The green sausage tomatoes cut into beautiful coins that look fabulous, super curious how they'll turn out when done pickling.


And... I discovered the punk domestics website. It's pretty rad.