Smokin'

This year for Christmas my Dad got me a smoker. The day after Christmas we started with a nice brisket. It was real good but didn't quote have enough smoke flavor for me. The next weekend I cooked a pork shoulder with only hickory to have a stronger flavor. It was great. It took much longer to cook but it had juicy and had great flavor. The seven pound shoulder only lasted three days. We had friends over for pork tacos on Monday and ran out of it. Pork shoulder was on sale at Ingles and I almost bought another one yesterday but this weekend I am going to make some ribs. There are tons of different ways to make ribs so I will have to try a few to find out my favorite. 

Bain Brewery, Wine, and Foods First Annual Tasting Party

This past Saturday we hosted our first hopefully annual Bain Brewery, Wine, and Foods Tasting Party. It was a great success. We had great time with Brittany, Melanie, Jason, Mitch, Joseph, Rich, Christina, Sean, and Stacey. Earlier in the day I made two types of mozzarella. I started by heating two gallons of milk and adding citric acid and then rennet.

After letting it coagulate for fifteen minutes, I cut the curds with a long knife and stirred it. The curds separate from the whey and then I begin to heat and press the cheese to remove more of the whey. Right now I just throw away the whey but it is often used for protein shakes and supplements (whey protein). 

After extracting the whey, I added flavoring. I added Italian seasoning to half and then fresh pesto to the other half. I then spent the next thirty minutes stretching and folding the cheese to get the classic mozzarella texture. I ended up with slightly less than a pound of the pesto mozzarella and slightly over a pound of the Italian seasoning mozzarella.

I took the Gouda out of the aging fridge. I made this in August (http://bainbrewery.blogspot.com/2015/08/making-gouda.html). The bacteria cultures I used ended up being more appropriate for French style cheeses so the final product wasn't that similar to store bought Gouda.



I brewed a Scottish Spiced Winter Ale this week. I made this last year and it was one of my favorites. I am making it a bit late so it won't be ready for Christmas like I wanted but it will be nice in the "winter" months. I took the spent grains from the brew and used them to make granola bars. This is my third time doing it and it certainly turned out the best. The main difference is I dried the grains first prior to mixing with the wet ingredients. I also added flacked oats and roasted it with the grains at 375 for the last thirty minutes. I made two batches. The first batch had mixed nuts, peanut butter, and honey. The second batch was peanut free. I didn't added more sticky ingredients so it fakes apart and doesn't stick into bars.

A few days prior to the party, I bought four bottles of wine at Walmart for a blind wine tasting. I bought a cheap (~$3) and nice (~$10) Riesling and Pinot Noir. I then wrapped then in brown paper and had Brittany randomly label them 1-3.

The cheeses were a big hit with the Gouda being the favorite. It didn't last very long. Everybody liked the mozzarella with the pesto variety being more popular. The wine scores were interesting. They were rated from 1 to 5 with ties allowed. Several people rated both the cheap and expensive Riesling the best with my wine usually second or third. The average score was a virtual tie between the cheap (Sutter Home) and expensive (Chateau Ste Michelle). The Pinot Noir numbers were more conclusive. The expensive (Mark West) received seven of nine first place votes with the Bain Brewery receiving the other two. The cheapest (Liberty Creek) received very low scores. I think the lesson here is to buy cheap whites and nicer reds.  It was great to get solid feedback with a blind test. I'll have to do it again.

Right now I am brewing a Gewürztraminer white wine. It is a German variety similar to Riesling but sweater and more aromatic. 

Fall Update

Things have slowed down at a bit since I have filled up my fridge and am lagering some beers. In August, I started a 6 gallon (30 bottle) Cabernet Sauvignon wine kit. This kit also had a pound of grape skins to soak in the wine during fermentation.  That was interesting and a made a bit of a mess. I have the wine in bottles now. It is drinkable now but will be better after 2-3 months in the bottle.

I hadn't brewed a summer beer since things were busy with Charlotte so the last day of July I started on a lighter beer to drink with meals and by itself to compliment all the heavy IPAs and stouts. I had a 6 gallon fermenter available since my two five gallon fermenters had a wine and a beer. I couldn't let that extra gallon capacity go to waste so I modified my 5 gallon American Summer kit. I added a pound of honey and the zest of two oranges. I then just fermented it for 13 days and went straight to bottle. It didn't need the extra fermentation step since the yeast remains in the beer to add flavor. 

I have been using the fridge to lager beers so they have been taking longer from fermentation to bottle. In July, I brewed a Christmas beer with my dad. It is a 7.1% spiced winter lager. I fermented it at 55 F for 12 days and then transferred to another fermented for 58 days. This gets the beer off the dead yeast and hop debris so it can clarify and stabilize. I bottled it and have been keeping it in the fridge since then. It has a nice balance of a malt front, then hops and spices finish with a hefty alcohol punch to warm you up when the weather gets cold (or rainy like it has been lately).  

Right now I have a Czech Pilsner lagering and ready to bottle. This is the type of beer Budwiser and Miller claim to be but isn't watered down and has more hops. I'm excited for it since it is the first true lager I have brewed. It uses an actual lager yeast instead of an ale or hybrid yeast. It is ready for bottling one evening when everybody else goes to sleep. After the Pilsner finished primary fermentation, I poured the yeast into a separate bottle to use for my next batch. This is a kit that is supposed to be similar to Samuel Adams Boston Lager.  That beer started fermentation on October 8 and should be ready for Christmas. 

Next on my brew schedule in no real order: 

Redoing a Spaatan Dopplebock clone. This has been my best beer but was over carbonated.

Vanilla Porter. Brittany gave me one last year that was really good and so I have been wanting to try to make my own. 

Oktoberfest as a true lager. This is usually my favorite beer. I have brewed it 4 times but now want to do it as a true lager since I now have the refrigerator to do it. 

A wine: Not sure what but probably should do another white since it takes 3 months for it to be ready. The Riesling might be about out by then so may just do that again. 

Making Gouda

Gouda cheese is named after a city in Holland.  I made my second attempt at hard cheese this week. I'll try to add some more information about the start to satisfy the GBI contingent. I've never taken any biology or biochemistry classes and just one chemistry class, but I did sleep with a biochemist last night so here it goes:

I started with two gallons of whole milk. Raw milk is actually best, but I don't have a cow yet. I heated the milk up to 90 degrees F in my brew pot. I then added a mesophilic starter culture that contains lactose, lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris, and Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis. I let those grow in the milk for 10 minutes and then add a vegetable rennet. Rennet is a series of enzymes that coagulates milk. 

After letting it set for an hour, I used a long knife to cut the curds in 1 inch cubes. 

Gouda is a washed-curd cheese because I slowly pour out the whey as I heat the curds and replace the whey with water. This washes the lactose from the curd and lowers the acid level of the cheese. Over the next hour I slowly added warm water every 10 minutes to raise the temperature of the curds to 100 degrees F. This also breaks up the curds into smaller pieces. 

I strained them using cheese cloth and then put them in a cheese mold. I then began pressing the cheese with 20, 40, and finally over night with 50 pounds. 

The next morning, I put the 1.5 pound block of cheese in a brine with salt (Canning salt so it didn't have any iodine) and calcium chloride. After 12 hours, the cheese was removed and placed in the wine/beer/cheese aging refrigerator. It will sit in there for three weeks so it can dry out. I will then wax the cheese. The recommended aging time is 3-6 months. 

I have two beers and a wine in secondary fermentation. I plan on bottling the Summer (probably should have made that a few months ago) I made by with a pound of orange blossom honey, the zest of 2 oranges, 6 pounds of American wheat liquid malt extract, Willamette and Cascade hops. The other beer is a Santa's Helper Winter Ale and a Pinot Noir. Those both can be bottled in the next few weeks. I won a 50 dollar gift card to the brewery because I was wearing my lucky beer shirt so I will probably start a Merlot and a Vanilla Porter next.  

Farmhouse White Cheddar

After a few successful mozzarella tries, it is time to move onto something more difficult - Cheddar! Cheddar is a hard cheese so it needs some new equipment. It starts similar to other cheeses but this time I started with two gallons of milk, instead of one. I also added a bacteria culture. Here is the cheese curd after it separated from the whey

The next step is to press it to remove moisture. I went to Lowe's and bought a few pieces of wood and threaded bolts. The first step was just to use 10 lbs of pressure on the cheese wrapped in cheese cloth in a cheese mold.  

 It starts to firm up as the moisture leaves. Next I added 20 lbs of weights for 10 more minutes and then 50 lbs of weights for 12 hours. It's a good thing I kept most my college textbooks.

The next day I removed the weights and let it dry out. It is a little over 2 lbs of cheese. After a few days it starts to form a hard rind on the outside. The next step is to wax it. I bought a pound of cheese wax and melted it. I then dipped the cheese into the wax and used a paintbrush to fill in the gaps. Now it is ready for a month of aging. 

The Not-So-Secret Hops Garden

Hops are the female flowers of the hop plant, Humulus lupulus.  Depending on the strain, they can add flavoring and stability to different types of beer.  Wikipedia has a very good, extensive page on hops if you would like to learn more about them.

Here is a schematic of the hop leaves:

We have 3 different strains of hops growing at Bain Brewery, Wine, and Foods.

From left to right:  Nugget, Magnum, Willamette

The Magnum is for bittering typically for ales and lagers.  It has high alpha-acids.

The Willamette is for aroma and flavoring.  

Finally, the Nugget hops serve a dual purpose, bittering and flavoring.

Here is what a full grown hops garden looks like:

Germany

I'm sure Jeremy would love for this to eventually be our view from our porch over looking our back yard, but we'll settle for what we have for now.  

Welcome!

Welcome to the Bain Brewery, Wine, and Foods blog!  Here, we will discuss how our many types of beer are brewed, tips, and pitfalls to avoid if you choose to do your own home-brewing.  Additionally, as our name suggests, we also make wine, a variety of cheeses and other foods such as, but not limited to, sauerkraut, dog treats, and granola bars.  We are also currently growing 3 different types of hops and will update their progress here.  Please feel free to comment or share your own ideas and thank you for visiting!

Oktoberfest, 2009
Munich, Germany