clean plate club

Friday, December 17, 2010

Nettle Beer

4/4/10

Okay. This is the last nettle thing, I swear. I hope you've realized by now that you can use nettles in just about everything.

This was my second time making this beer, but when I made it last year it was my first beer ever! Basically, as with the dandelion liqueur, you make a strong tea (this time with nettles), add a fuck-ton of sugar, juice from a couple lemons, a lot of fresh ginger, and yeast.

This beer is known as a "young" beer because it brews and is ready to drink really fast. Most recipes I've read have said to bottle after three days of fermentation, but I eyeball it and bottle it when all of the bubbling has slowed way down.

There were a lot of excited bubbles. So it took about a week of fermentation before it was time.

Then I sterilized all my bottles,

siphoned it,

and capped the bottles. It just takes another week in the bottles for the beer to carbonate into a light, refreshing, and zingy (thanks to the ginger) sweet beer.

Drying Nettles

3/31/10

I hung this window screen from a few hooks in my ceiling for drying nettles and other herbs.

Enough nettles for tea all winter long!

Dandelion-Plum Liqueur

3/27/10

Did you know: This little yellow friend is extremely good for you.

If you want to eat them, it's best to get them from a place where you know they haven't been sprayed with chemicals, like your yard. Unless you spray your dandelions with chemicals. Murderer!

You can also make them into a traditional and medicinal wine. Which is what I did. (Let me know if you want the measurements I used- again, I'm not posting recipes right now for speed, but I'm also away from my copy of the recipe right now and it's pretty simple if you want it.)

You start by pouring boiling water over several fresh quarts of blossoms.

Then you cover them and let them steep for 24 hours. I think I may have let them sit for 2 days so the tea got good and strong.

Then I added orange peel,

a lot of sugar,

golden plums from the summer, and yeast.

I poured it into a bottle and covered it with a condom, the poor man's airlock.

A few weeks later, it was a sweet, but incredibly complex liqueur-like wine! The orange and plum both came through in a heavenly medley. I've been letting most of it age and serving it over ice as an after-dinner cordial.

Plum Vinegar

3/25/10

I tried to make wild fermented plum mead.

I put summer frozen plums in a mesh bag in a 6 gallon bucket with water and honey.

I gave it a stir every day for a couple weeks to call the wild yeast from the air to come ferment it. (What you see on the top in this and the other picture are the bubbles that rose to the top from the fermentation happening.) It smelled like sweet sweet nectar.

Then I let it sit for way too long and the whole six gallons of it turned into vinegar. Really really good vinegar, that is. I'll trade you a bottle if you got somethin good and homemade you want to share!