Beer Update: Narrowly Averted Disaster.

Lucky me. I was blessed, the first time out, with an extremely happy, hard working yeast. Yesterday was quite exciting. It started with the bubbler leaking beer onto the top of the fermenter.


Is this why they call it a "bubbler"?


I swapped out the bubblers, replacing this dirty one with a clean one. I came home for lunch at about 3pm. Good thing I checked on the beer, as the situation was critical. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture. I was too busy panicking. The top of the fermenter was covered in beer sludge, the bubbler was clogged, and the top of the fermenter was bulging. I'm not very smart, but even I knew this was very, very bad. I was minutes away from having beer sprayed all over the ceiling. I did a quick sanitize on the other airlock and switched them out. Probably just in time. When I checked on it, after work, everything had settled down. I think the worst is over. The bubbler is now doing a gentle blub, blub.

Willoughby Brewing Company (part one)

My dear husband bought me a deluxe brewing kit for our 28th wedding anniversary. Nothing says love like 10 gallons of home brew! Last night we rounded up all our equipment.



This morning he and I set about mixing our first batch, a weizen. This will make 5 gallons. That's a LOT of beer. Yay! While he brought the 2 gallons of water to a boil, I sanitized the equipment. I will probably end up preferring bleach for a sanitizer, but I used the iodine type stuff that came with the kit, for most of the items, this time. I'm not digging the way it stains. And bleach is cheaper. And you know I'm a thrifty girl. I soaked the lid for the fermenter, separately, and in bleach.



Once the water in the brewpot was boiling we added the wheat malt syrup and the dry malt extract.


We also added the Saaz hops.


Then it boiled for 50 minutes until it was time to add the Hallertaurer hops. It boiled another 10 minutes and then the wort was ready to cool, in a cold water bath, then add to the fermenter, along with 2 gallons of cold water. The straining of the hops, as the wort was poured, was the only tricky thing that would've been next to impossible for me to do all on my own. I will rig up some kind of cover for the fermenter, with a hole drilled for the funnel, so I can do this all myself. Rick wanted to aerate the wort, so we poured it back and forth, between the brewpot and the fermenter, about 6 times.


At this point Rick had to leave for work, which meant I'd have to finish on my own. Once the wort had cooled below 80 degrees I pitched the yeast (a nice Hefeweizen) and secured the fermenter lid (which involved a hammer).



Then it was time to lug the thing to the fermenting room (aka the spare bedroom) and attach the bubbler airlock.


Now we just have to let the yeast do its thing.

A Blanket Of Leaves

I am feeling quite smug, having gotten my backyard all clean and tidy for the winter. I even mulched the garden, for the first time ever. We'll see how well it works. I put down a good layer of newspaper, then covered it over with the gorgeous leaves from my sour wood tree. The leaves make the garden look like it's covered in an orange blanket.


I had a little left over, so began mulching the back corner garden.


And I have pruned all the spent canes from the raspberries and tied the good canes up and out of the way.


I hope to get my indoor garden sown this weekend. And I also plan on making my first batch of beer. I love weekends!

Under Pressure

I had been looking for a used pressure canner. They've been hard to come by, over the summer. But I put out a request on the Puyallup Freecycle list and was fortunate to find a lady who had one sitting unused in her garage. Remember when that David Bowie/Queen collaboration, "Under Pressure", came out in 1981? Well this pressure cooker was around before that. Look at the groovy box.



Apparently this lady had not canned in a long, LONG time. When I opened up the box, this was inside. Notice the old-school price labels. No bar codes on these babies.



The only thing it didn't come with were instructions. And those were easy to find online.


I made the mistake of asking the husband if he'd like me to bake some white bread, for a change. Of course he would. I guess it's the least I can do after months of forcing the family to eat my wheat bread. Here are four loaves of white bread, fresh out of the oven.

Putting The Garden To Rest

It's time to move my gardening efforts indoors and clean the yard in advance of the first hard frost. The vegetable garden is finished for the year and not looking very attractive.


Once a good frost hits all those squash plants will turn to a slimy mess. I don't want to have to look at that all winter. And the tomatoes need to be tossed or they'll go to seed and I'll have all sorts of "volunteers" next year. Here is how it looks after being cleaned and weeded.


This is the back corner, by the fence. You can see a butternut squash peeking out. My squash didn't do well, this year. I got one acorn and 2 butternut.


And here is my poor little canna baby that I rescued from behind the water barrels. I haven't had canna in about 4 years. I thought they were all dead and gone. But this little guy was very determined and popped up this year. I am going to cut him back and mulch the heck out of him to try and keep him alive over the winter.


The back corner after cleaning and weeding. There is the little canna, hiding under a blanket of hay.


To celebrate the harvest, and a day of happily digging in the dirt, I baked the acorn squash with butter and brown sugar. Delicious!

No More Tiny Barbie Kitchen

My kitchen has been transformed. Barbie would be proud.


The weather here has been stormy all weekend. Lots of wind and rain. Time to focus my energy indoors. I had been saving up to take a nice vacation the beginning of November. Those plans hit a snag. Hmmmm....what to do with my savings? How about expanding the Barbie kitchen? Time to make another visit to Ikea. My shopping list included: A Varde base cabinet, another Gorm shelf and a a 5'7" x 7'10" Dragor rug. First, let me remind you what my kitchen eating area looked like.


We rarely sit down to eat as a family. The teen is never home and the husband and I work different shifts. The table becomes a catch all for all sorts of junk. You usually couldn't sit down to eat if you wanted to. My first order of business was to move the table and chairs, around the corner, and into the living room. The new rug is underneath it, to protect the hardwood floor.


Now it was time to have the hubby assemble the new base cabinet. Here it is, with Gladys happily perched on top.


Look at all this storage room! Before:


And after I rounded up all my various kitchen paraphernalia from the spare bedroom, linen closet, and everywhere else I'd stashed it:


The second Gorm shelf joined the one already in place. I'll have the hubby fasten them together and install a couple of cheap 4 foot shop lights under the shelves. The plan is to use this space to grow lettuce, green onions and herbs over the winter. I'll keep you updated as to my progress. And you can see that the bottom shelves are handy for storing my crock pot, dehydrator, etc...


The last addition to the kitchen was found on my favorite shopping site, Craigslist. I wanted some type of rolling butcher block island, for additional kitchen work space. When I saw this Oasis Concepts island offered on Craigslist I knew it would be well worth the drive to Kirkland to get it. It was brand new, still in the shipping box, and I paid a mere $100. Sweet!


It doesn't appear my model is offered anymore, but this is the closest. It looks the same, except mine has a towel bar. BTW, if you are in the market for a kitchen island, I highly recommend the Oasis Concepts products. They are extremely well made, and they fold up, in case you want them out of the way. So now you know what I've been up to. The rain continues to come down and the wind is not letting up. I swear, my chickens have webbed feet. Their run is a mud pit, and they are so happy. The 3 of them have produced 6 eggs over the past 2 days. That hasn't happened since the summer. They are truly Pacific Northwest hens.

Breakfast Sausage

Safeway had a BOGO deal on their pork and beef roasts, last week. I decided it was time to try to make some sausage. First up? Breakfast sausage with 3# of the pork. I recently bought some sheep casings. Just the right size for little breakfast sausages. I opened up the package of casings, took one whiff, and thought they must be spoiled or something. They smell rank. But after looking around on the web I discovered that they aren't rotten, they just smell awful. I had to rinse the salt off them and soak them in water for 30 minutes, to soften them up. While the casings were soaking, I ground the pork.


After this first grind, I mixed in the seasonings, let it sit in the freezer for 30 minutes, then reground it. Now it was time to stuff the casings.


Let me just say, I am not at all impressed with the sausage stuffer attachment for the KitchenAid. It took FOREVER to stuff this 3# of sausage. Sausage stuffing is really a two person job. One to load the grinder, and one to control the casings. Since I was all by my lonesome I had to do both jobs at the same time. Needless to say my sausage isn't the prettiest. And my arms got really tired. But here is my filled sausage.


Now to twist it off into individual links and hang it to dry for 30 minutes. Hang it to dry? Where? Time to rig up something like coat hangers on the back of a chair.


Good thing the cat didn't wake up. Here are my little sausages, all ready for the freezer.


And here is the breakfast I fixed for my sweetie, this morning. He said they tasted like breakfast sausage from the store, and he's still alive tonight, so I guess it was a success.


Here are the seasonings I used.

Mild Breakfast SausagePer each pound of ground pork, add:
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. ground sage
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 TBS. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. dried parsley
1/8 tsp. paprika