spontaneous cider :when good fruit goes bad

I admit it. I'm a little skittish about home brewing. While I'm a good cook I'm kind of bad at following orders (um I meant recipes). I am also not punctilious about the state of my dishes. I was also raised by a woman who was the kind of teetotaler who is uncomfortable with using alcohol based extracts in high temperature baking. Add to this the exploded beer atrocity of 1998, the scary bottles of dandelion wine no doubt still lurking in the basement I haven't seen in a decade and the ubiquitous horribleness of my first sourdough starter (since rectified) and I've gotten almost silly about it. These factors have led to things like making slow fermented sauerkraut in the fridge rather than risking fermentation in the warmer (no doubt) faster climes of my cupboards. Meanwhile I envy the glowing jewels of mead, beer and lately other wines that arrive periodically at my house courtesy of benevolent friends.

My favorite alcohols are cider, bourbon and mead- in that order. I'll also admit a fondness for gluhwein. Witbiers used to also be on that list but then I found out I'm not supposed to eat wheat. Unless I research, cider is safer out and about. I still get a mood for the occasional oatmeal stout. Beer is tasty but frankly cider is even better. Plus, no risk. In the plains I mostly had a choice between Hornsby's and Woodchuck. When we moved to Chicago I discovered two things. 1. Alcohol is really really expensive here....like 8$ for a six of the cheapest frankly not very tasty cider I can find in these parts. 2. cider is everywhere and for some reason bourbon is 2x the price it was in Kansas. 3.The apples here are awesome.. I had forgotten.

Now, I can spend 10$ on 22 oz of a fabulous organic sweet cider from Michigan (JK Scrumpy) or an extra 2$ on a six pack of Original Sin or Wyder's. Given that it still takes me weeks to finish that sixer I was ok with that.

One hot late summer day this year I grabbed a half gallon of cider along with some tofu and the peck of apples from our csa. A few hours later I deposited our purchases in the fridge and thought nothing of it. The next am I went to grab a glass of juice and noticed that the cider was carbonated though not yet funny smelling. I looked up some stuff online which said it was fine to drink but thought that maybe I should wait a day or two to see what developed. I checked and stirred it daily to release the gases building up on the plastic walls of the cider jug. Three days later it smelled and tasted like the 10$ per 22 oz product including the ridiculously high alcohol volume and stayed that way for about 5 days by which time it was gone. It makes sense, wild yeast here can't be too different from Michigan and the cider was a preservative free Organic Michigan apple cider (cost 5$ for the half gallon: a bit of a splurge). So now with our CSA Thanksgiving share of 2 gallons of cider I was wondering. how we could fit two jugs of cider in the fridge. It came to me...I could see if I could make it into hard cider was as easy as it appeared.

The day of the share arrival I poured 1 gallon of fresh apple cider -a mixed apple variety from our csa with no preservatives (or it won't ferment) into a 1 gallon sterile carboy (old Rossi jug) and covered with a bit of clean fabric secured with a rubber band. The next day I stirred the mixture (not bubbling yet as it's late November and it's chilly cause we're cheapskates) and added 2 oz Wyder's dry apple cider (because that's what's around and again, it wasn't bubbling yet).

Day Two. rotated and stirred to aerate as I a read blog that said this was important

- apparently. Makes sense, the yeast need to breathe. Mixture appears quite fizzy and tastes like apple soda. To taste this I poured off an ounce or so.

Day Three

The cider appears full on cider-ish, it smells sweet and a touch skunky at first. Keep in mind it took me a minute to smell this and I have quite the sniffing abilities. After allowing it to breathe a few minutes while I googled the possible dangers of skunky cider the eggy smell had evaporated. Now it smells sweet and appley. Mixture tastes like a nice honey sweet cider with a light kick and a mild sour bite. Drank half a glass. So far not ill. Aerated remainder and left on counter. I will let you know what happens on day 4 and beyond.

Warnings: 1. Don't be an idiot with alcohol. Drinking with kids (inside or outside of you) and operating machinery like cars, cell phones (in some cases) or drills is not only hazardous to your health but it's likely to get you arrested or killed. Drinking with idiots is likewise inadvisable. Please, just don't.

2. This is clearly an experiment. Like mushroom hunting you probably shouldn't do this without an expert on hand, decent equipment, testing strips and possibly a cold cellar. I AM NOT AN EXPERT. This might be dangerous, or lethal. I don't know. Research safer methods, ok?

3. Being an experiment, I'm not sure how this will turn out. I'll let you know.

I still venture that this was dangerous...and tasty.
While storing in fridge day 4-10  I rotated the bottle regularly . The sweet bubbly stuff had more of a kick and got gradually drier,and less skunky .
We drank about 1/2 of it before it started smelling like vinegar (no gas resistant bottles around) around day 10. At this point we just opened it up and rotated it daily to allow the gases out. On day 30 it had separated clearly into vinegar and mother of V. We strained and rebottled for use in salads and as hair rinse.
 

barley and apples

The 25 lb sack of barley flour I ordered from a local mill arrived a few days ago. It's been sitting on my living room floor imploring me to bake something already or at least put it away. For those of you wondering why any city dweller would want a 25 lb sack of barley flour let's just say Barley flour is normally 3.79 for 20 oz plus tax. That brand is not local or organic. Barley is a whole grain which I use as the main flour in all kinds of things including bread, pie, cookies, muffins,pancake mix, cake..this was 37$ for 25 lb of local organic barley flour including shipping which is 9.25 cents per oz. as opposed to 18.95 cents per oz at the local store. Barley is a whole grain flour with a moist crumb that no one in my house is allergic to. It is not gluten free but it is tasty and wholesome. I also only have to lug it up the stairs once and don't have to worry about running out later this winter when we have less $. So it's about half the price , more convenient, local, organic and I can afford to get it right now. Win! Lesson here: search for local mills online for inexpensive grain prices.

There's also a 15 sack of apples on the kitchen bench reminding me there's another 10lbs still in the fridge from last fortnight's csa delivery and the thanksgiving delivery is in 10 days...which all means I better get cooking soon.

First the apples.....

I thought that using up the 10 lbs or so of apples sitting in the fridge was a good plan so I went by my old standby of applesauce. Stef and I eat a lot of applesauce. I didn't have time to sit near the dutch oven for an hour so I decided to experiment with crockpot applesauce. I prepared half of them , paring off bad spots , core and a few worm holes (because those happen in organic fruit), I leave the peel . I then threw them in our 3 qt crockpot on low with about 20 oz of water 1 lg stick of cinnamon. 2 inches of diced fresh ginger, 2 cloves and a pinch of all spice. The next morning the sauce wasn't quite as chunky as a I like so I decided to add another 20 oz water and prepped the other half of the apples and threw them in the mix. I had a cold and forgot about them for a day. This am I realized that I could smell apples cooking and discovered they were almost smooth. Applesauce disaster. The 'applesauce' tasted like applebutter... kind of. I added other stuff. Then I ran it through the stick blender until fully smooth. Now it tastes like apple butter but a touch thin. IT should be applebutter in the morning when I turn off the heat.

Applebutter

a slow cooker with a low setting

10 lbs of apples pared and diced (not peeled) and divided in to 2 equal piles.

set one pile in the fridge

water

1 stick cinnamon, pinch of allspice

1 thumb fresh ginger diced

3 tb honey

2 tb lemon juice

1 tb blackstrap molasses

2 tb cider vinegar

1. Put 5lb of apple bits in crockpot with chunked ginger and spices

2. Cover with water (about20 oz) and set to low

3. The next day add the rest of the apples and another 20 oz of water

4. Allow to continue cooking overnight

5.add honey,lemon juice,molasses and cider vinegar

and blender this thoroughly until smooth

6. Store if it's thick enough for your uses, cook up to 8 more hours. Note: the naturally occurring pectin in the skins should help it firm up a bit so err on the slightly runny side. Refrigerate and give some to a friend.

now I will be making up some of this stuff:

http://squirreleats.blogspot.com/2011/11/barley-quick-bread-and-barley.html