Private: Egg recipes urgently needed!
February 13th, 2007 - Posted in Blackball, chickens - by Sarah|
On Monday 22nd Jan our 6 chickens (a birthday present from the Bogles) arrived courtesy of a very stressed out woman who was in the process of moving house and who, over the course of the preceding weekend, had hosted a 21st party for one son and taken another to hospital with suspected appendicitis! When we opened the boxes we were a bit taken aback by the size of them – they’re HUGE. They’re Light Sussex, an old-fashioned English dual purpose breed (eggs AND meat) perfect for us.
“Where are we?”
“There’s food here!”
“Stick together girls.”
For the first 4 days we didn’t have any eggs and then, just as Brendhan was sharpening his carving knife…
Our first egg.
Then there were another couple of days before the next one and another couple again before the next. My mission became trying to find out which one was laying so that she wasn’t the one chosen for the pot. As our chickens are determinedly free range, all look exactly alike and were still extremely skittish in our presence this was harder than it sounds.
“You’re not getting me!”
Then, on 1st and 2nd Feb we had eggs on consecutive days. On 3rd Feb we had 2 eggs. This was getting exciting! On 4th we had 3 eggs and we were on a roll. The only problem now is eating them all. In the last week we have had 25 eggs…
Please send us your egg recipes, no matter how bizarre or commonplace, we’ll give them a try. Needless to say, the chickens are now settled in and happy in their new home.
Happy chickens.
Private: The home-brew blog.
February 13th, 2007 - Posted in Beer, Blackball - by Brendhan|
In these blog entries I will be putting all of the gory details of my experiences in training myself how to brew beer using only ingredients we grow ourselves – assuming we can get barley to grow on the wet west coast!. The first step is to get a handle on the basics by brewing a few simple ‘kit’ beers…
You remember the picture I posted a while back of the home brewing equipment I got? I attempted to use it and found during the cleaning and sterilisation process that the tap at the bottom of the barrel leaked. It’s just as well I found this before putting starting the brew or I would have had a sticky ‘orrible mess when the malt extract leaked out! A phone call to the supplier confirmed that they had come across this problem before and I could buy an ‘O’ ring to fix it. I had recently discovered that the brew barrel was half the size of normal home brew barrels which meant I would be stuck with their kits (the combination of hopped malt extract and yeast) for 11.5 litres at a time. So I used the opportunity to get a refund. I then went down to the local home-brew supply shop and put together my own equipment using stuff that I am pretty sure I’ll use long-term.
23 Litre glass carboy and stuff – I kept the plastic bottles from the first kit.
So to brew the Macs beer I will need two kits per brew and you can see that I have two of Pale Ale and two Macs Dark, altogether that’s 46 litres of beer (81 Pints!)
So once I sterilised everything (no leaks this time!) I followed the instructions and heated the cans of Pale Ale by putting them in hot water for 20mins then opened them up and mixed the contents with boiling water. Inside each of the cans was 1.7Kgs of malt extract that had the consistency of thick golden syrup and was dark brown. Once it was thoroughly mixed I added it to cold water that was already in the glass carboy and gave it a good mixing. Once it got down to 25 degrees I chucked in the yeast and gave it another good mixing. Then it was on with the bung and air lock.
Ingredients in the fermenter and ready for action.
The air lock is the clear plastic thing in the bung (the red thing is a chop-stick – obviously!). It allows the carbon dioxide to escape without letting any air into the fermenter – air might carry bugs and spoil the brew. The towel wrapped around it is wet so that evaporation keeps the brew from getting too hot and killing the yeast. With all the cooking done I sat back and waited for the brew to start fermenting and bubbling… and waited… and waited, and then got bored and went to bed.
The next morning…
Oops, the fermenter is too small.
Overnight it had got going really well and this is when I discovered that you need extra capacity to allow the froth caused by the rapid fermentation enough room. Ah well, you live and learn. By the evening it had slowed down a bit and I gave it a clean up and wrapped it back up in garden fleece to stop it getting too cold overnight.
All wrapped up for bed.
By the next morning it had slowed to a steady buzz and stopped frothing but in the meantime I had lost nearly a litre of my 23 litre brew – only 39 pints left!
Mmmm beer….
All this is apparently quite normal except that the fermentation vessel is supposed to be big enough to not overflow! No damage seems to have been done except the loss of a pint and a bit and the bubbles coming through the air lock still smelled of fresh lovely beer.
Over the next two weeks it was just a matter of keeping it dark and not letting it fall below 18 deg or above 28 deg and preferably around 20-22.
And tomorrow the bottling….
