If you mix a Smithwick's Ale with a Corona, do you get a Typewriter?
( If you need an explanation of that... )
When I made butter a couple weeks ago the byproduct was "churn buttermilk" which I found to be good, but ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jmaynard did not as he prefers cultured buttermilk. While cultured buttermilk is available around here, it's the low fat version, which starts with skim milk. That has been something of a complaint of Jay's for a while, that the buttermilk, especially one brand, is, he says, "wimpy."
Last year, when I was experimenting with homemade soda-pop, it started partly because of this page and I remembered the page about making buttermilk. This was not the byproduct of butter production, but the infecting inoculating of milk with specific bacteria, thus the use of the word cultured. It seemed simple enough: Get a bit of fairly fresh cultured buttermilk, pour a cup or so into a clean jar, fill with milk, seal, shake, let sit in a warm room for a day or so, and it should be ready but for refrigeration.
A couple days ago I cleaned up a couple quart Mason jars, bought a half pint of cultured buttermilk with the expiration date the farthest out I could find (best chance of live and lively bacteria), and a half gallon of whole milk (Oddly, I didn't see any brand calling it "Whole milk" as every brand said it was "Vitamin D milk" - but isn't vitamin D added to skim and 2% as well?). I followed the directions and started a jar going.
About 24 hours later it looked like it had clabbered (turned thick) to the point it looked lumpy to me. I sampled it and it tasted like cultured buttermilk to me (a unique but not pleasing taste, IMO) and so chilled it. Jay sampled it and said it tasted right, then said something about seeing if he'd get sick in a while. An understandable concern as leaving milk out intentionally warm has a certain weirdness to it to someone used to it being cold almost all the time. Later I knew things has worked as Jay had more of the stuff. I've started another jar going.
Once chilled, the whole milk derived buttermilk is quite thick indeed and seems reluctant to leave the side of the jar. I haven't heard any complaints about it being wimpy. It still seems if not lumpy, very nearly so, to me.
jmaynard likes Diet Coke with Lime and used to buy it in 24-packs. Then the local bottler/distributor ceased packaging Diet Coke with Lime in 24-packs and we've only been able to get 12-packs. When we looked in the Twin Cities and in Mankato, it seems that no bottler is making 24-packs of Diet Coke with Lime. I haven't looked in other places, at least not yet.
Not that I (or we) are likely to go very far just for this, but now I'm curious: Are 24-packs of Diet Coke with Lime to found anywhere anymore?
A few polls back there were a few options "get snockered" in celebration of or to drown sorrows (don't those things swim?) about the election results. Folks should hopefully be recovered by now if they did that. I won't ask if you really did or not. And the individual votes will not be public, unless you care to comment. Why comment? Perhaps you have a libation of choice to extol, or care to explain the "other" option.
[Poll #1292261]
Cel-Ray sounds like there would be radium in it or was once upon a time, but it's just a name for a celery soda. jmaynard brought me a bottle (from the same place that has the Walnetto) and I'm drinking it now. Jay doesn't think much of the soda as it tastes like celery, a flavor he does not appreciate.
I expected it to be, well, weird. The flavor is from "extract of celery seed" which makes sense. The flavor is rather concentrated in the seeds and it's how celery salt works. I tried it and found that I like it, rather to Jay's chagrin. The bottle cap is marked "kosher for passover" so this was made with proper sugar and not corn syrup.
Upon seeing that some consider Cel-Ray the ideal accompaniment to saltier foods such as pastrami, I find I now have a desire for something I will not get in Fairmont: a really good pastrami sandwich. And I'd need another bottle of Cel-Ray to go with it.
The new Pepsi logo is drawing some attention. I'm even writing about it and I don't care for Pepsi. No, I don't believe that it's a stylized version of the Obama "O" thing. Pepsi has used variations on the theme of red, white, and blue in a circle for some time. Those who really track these things noticed that the new logo isn't all that new anyway. The coincidence, which is all I expect it is, does mean there are folks talking about Pepsi who otherwise would not be. So it's an advertising bonus for them in the "There's no bad publicity, just spell the name right" way. This bit of Pepsi advertising reminded me of another.
Advertising does at times amuse me, and not always when the advertiser wishes it to. Ours was a Coca-Cola household, but there was a Pepsi item around. It was a trash can. It was a smallish thing, like might be found in a kitchen or bedroom. I remember it not being big around enough to seem like a enlarged can of Pepsi. Nowadays I could say that it looked more like an enlarged Red Bull can wearing Pepsi colors. This can amused me in a way, or perhaps confused me. Pepsi was getting their name and logo out and visible in daily life even away from their product. But a trash can? What does that say about their product? "Hi. Drink our cola. It's garbage."
I tried making another bottle of vanilla cream soda, but not the single-bottle method. Instead of putting the sugar and yeast in that bottle, I put them in another bottle (along with orange flavor) and connected the bottles with tubing glued into the caps. The idea was that the bottle of orange soda would use the sugar and yeast to produce carbon dioxide and pressurize both bottles. It didn't work. The air in the bottles and tubing was compressible enough that pressure never really built. I even put some Silly Putty around the tube-cap seal to see if the seals were bad - they weren't.
I gave up and removed the tubing arrangement and put normal caps on both bottles. The orange soda is coming up to pressure. As it sat out quite a while, it might well have a noticeable amount alcohol.
I chilled the vanilla cream bottle overnight and used the tubing setup again. This time with a baking soda and vinegar setup as a carbon dioxide generator. The whole works is in the fridge so that the seal won't be broken until the gas has hopefully dissolved.
( Beer? Well, sort of. )
When I visit sistaur we will generally go out to eat at least once during the visit and maybe she'll introduce me to some place to which I have not yet been. That happened recently, and in looking over the menu I noticed a beer that I had not tried before. Amstel Light.
Okkay, it's a Light beer, and Light beers tend to... well... suck. I knew that going in. I wasn't expecting much. I was expecting colored water that tasted vaguely like beer and wouldn't be very filling. If I was lucky, it might surprise and be that thing of legend, the Light beer that doesn't suck.
As you have read the title, you know that like Ponce de Leon, I was unsuccessful in the quest for that particular fountain. Sure, failure was expected. Ah, but the degree of failure in this case is the thing. For sistaur is a veterinary technician and she worked that day. And she tried the Amstel Light. And it was rejected most brutally.
"This smells like a urine sample I ran today."
Now before you make horse-excretion jokes, which admittedly do come to mind, I'll tell you that she works in a city small mammal practice: dogs and cats with the occasional rabbit or ferret. No large or farm animals, no birds, no fish, no reptiles. This sample was from a Standard Poodle with a urinary tract infection. Make up your own name or joke, but don't feel obligated to tell me. I wound up drinking the Amstel. I will not be ordering that again.
This one seems to be a success except for my handling of it once it was finished. The yeast smell is way in the background, and with a whopping SIX tablespoons of vanilla flavoring it had better be. I used one half cup of sugar for the yeast, and the Splenda equivalent of a cup of sugar for sweetness. Jay said it seemed about right. I think this indicates just how much people (at least in the U.S.?) have gotten used to a lot of sweetness and a lot of flavoring.
My mistake was siphoning the soda from the chilled bottle into another. The intent was to have a bottle that could be treated as any other soda bottle, without having to extra careful to avoid stirring up the settled yeast. The result was a tremendous loss of carbonation, so the very final result wasn't the ideal. This has me pondering complicating things by seeing if I can set up one bottle with sugar and yeast to generate the CO2 and pressure and have another bottle be the actual soda mix. This would allow me to leave sugar and yeast out of the final soda completely, at the price of a more complex arrangement. Whatever I do, it won't be for a while. I don't want to start another bottle (or whatever) until the current batch is gone. That might be a while, as neither Jay nor I drink very much of it since it has sugar in it.
Meanwhile another 1 L bottle of anise soda is going. I started it the same time I started #5 of the cream soda, but with the last of the first packet of champagne yeast, which wasn't very much. So I'm letting it go for a rather longer time in hopes of getting more carbonation by simply waiting longer. It appears to be working, but I won't know for sure for a couple more days.
The fourth bottle of vanilla cream soda turned out pretty good. There's still a hint of yeast, but it's way in the background and probably unavoidable with this carbonation method. Compared to a commercial cream soda (Wildwood from Kwik Trip) it's still not as flavorful and is not nearly as sweet. The Wildwood is 120 Calories per 8 fluid ounces. Mine is 45. The next bottle will have yet more flavoring, and have the sweetness boosted with Splenda. This reminds me of something I heard at Penguicon. At least one of the people who mixed up the syrup for OpenCola wouldn't drink it or at least not very much of it, having seen the huge amount of sugar that goes into it.
The small bottle of anise flavored soda sort of worked out. Predictably, any yeast note was drowned by the anise and I figure I can cut back on the amount the flavoring. (jmaynard says I need to cut it back to zero as he claims including any just makes "yuck soda.") The carbonation seemed a bit weak, perhaps more time was needed as I cut everything in half for the lowered volume and perhaps the time needed to double.
I also tried making ginger ale. This worked, though it either needs a bit more ginger, or I need to find a finer cutting grater. It's decidedly ginger ale, just not quite ginger enough. Also, the warnings about keeping a closer eye on ginger ale than other sodas is true. Yeast loves something in ginger and the pressure builds fast. A day or maybe a day and a half is plenty for ginger ale while three or four days are needed for everything else.
And I really need to be patient and only do one bottle at a time or per week or such. Even cutting back on the sugar, I don't need more than one bottle of fizzy sugar water around at any given time.
The second bottle of soda, still using baker's yeast, turned out as one might expect: it smelled strongly of the yeast and wasn't very good. It met the same fate as the first bottle.
The third bottle, made with champagne yeast, is not a failure. It's not a complete success either, but it is progress. There is some yeast smell, but not very much. The carbonation is good. The flavor is weak. I will be drinking this bottle, albeit slowly due to the sugar content.
I've started another bottle, this time with more of the vanilla. A stronger flavor will also help mask what little yeast smell there is. I'm staying with the vanilla and using 1/2 cup sugar until I think I have the flavoring amount right. Then I'll see about easing back on the sugar (one source claims that less than 1/4 cup will do for a 2L bottle) and other flavors.
I made another loaf of bread and that also sort of turned out. It's not bad, but it is a bit more dense than I'd like. I probably didn't let it rise quite enough. I also probably haven't managed to judge the right amount of flour or water to get the dough just right. Still, it's not a brick, it's just a more dense loaf.
The first try at homebrew soda didn't work out. Altivo suggested trying champagne yeast rather than baker's yeast. Looking around, I found a source in the Twin Cities and asked sistaur to see if she could obtain some Lalvin EC-1118 (another site says it's, "Also great for carbonating sodas.") since she was going to be sending a parcel anyway.
That parcel arrived today, with the new yeast. I've started another bottle and am now in the waiting stage, again. The baker's yeast will get used for bread.
I did go to the store to get some more vanilla. As this is still just experimental, I went with the cheapest artificial vanilla. Curiously, it was the only vanilla that didn't have corn syrup in the ingredients list.
The attempt at vanilla cream soda didn't work out all that well. There was some vanilla flavor and there was carbonation. There was also an overwhelming yeast odor. It swamped and ruined the vanilla flavor. I sampled it. Twice. jmaynard sampled it. I dumped it down the drain.
I have started another bottle, going lighter on the sugar and the yeast, and leaving a smaller air gap in the bottle. If I can get the yeast smell down to a tolerable level and still have carbonation, then I'll consider things a real success. As it is, well, who wants yeast soda? I certainly don't.
Yesterday morning I started a bottle of what should hopefully be vanilla cream soda. This morning the bottle is more firm. That is, harder to indent by pressing it with my thumb. Some bubbles or foam can be seen at the top the liquid. It'll be another day, at least, before it's ready but it is progressing. I'm tempted to start another bottle, but I think it'd be better to wait and see how the first one turns out.
I was getting a bit impatient about detecting any activity last night so I followed the directions on the yeast packet. Well, sort of. I only added a little bit of it to some warm sugar water and didn't notice any activity right away. That doesn't mean there wasn't any activity, just that I didn't notice it. So I added the rest of the packet and waited. And for a while I thought nothing was happening. Then I realized that surface I was looking at wasn't changing (bubbling) bit it was rising and the sugar water was growing a head of foam. Yeah, I haven't done this before and it showed.
With the yeast started, even though the expense was small I didn't care to just dump it down the drain. I did a quick web search for single-loaf bread recipes and found a couple. I settled on this one and went to it. I learned a couple things. One is that the multi-loaf recipes do make sense. If you're going to do the work to make bread, you might as well do a bunch at once and be done for a while. And the other is more a confirmation. Freshly baked bread is dangerous as it's way too easy to eat a lot of it. Even the heels of a loaf are good then. Normally they're just endcaps. My supper was (too much) buttered bread. Also, either I need to have the oven hotter or (despite the claims of the recipe page) pre-heat the oven. Even adding some baking time the bread didn't seem quite done. Certainly not bad, but just not quite what it should have been. For my first attempt at leavened bread "from scratch" I'll take it. I will be doing this again, just not right away. Once I get things right, then I'll see about variations.
Yesterday I wandered across a few things fermentation, or at least home microbiology, related. In the first couple, alcohol is the point of it all, in another the big deal is not ethanol but lactic acid, and in another there is some alcohol but the real point is carbon dioxide.
Years ago I would occasionally read the goofily named site kuro5hin, but it pretty much disappeared and after a while I didn't really expect it to come back. Turns out it's still around after all and there are a few interesting articles (and a lot of nonsense) there. A couple recent ones were on making wine, of sorts, and beer - both with the emphasis on simplicity. I like simplicity. But I also like quality, and those don't always go together. For example, the wine article is Brewing Your Own Hobo-wine on Today's Subprime Mortgage Budget which isn't exactly encouraging. Hobo-wine suggests, well, not quality. And the line, "let's just get lit!" makes it plain that taste isn't a big consideration. That it's just water, sugar, and yeast says it's purely about alcohol, though the author does actually include fruit juice concentrates and uses table sugar as a boost so there is something to it. Still, it doesn't seem terribly appealing except on a "prove to yourself you can do it" level. I also can't help but think of the hideously bad homemade wines mentioned in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
A bit earlier the same site had an article, Brewing Beer on Today's Subprime Mortgage Budget which also was more about simplicity or at least being on the cheap, than anything else. The memorable lines were: "Throw out any preconceived notions of style or brand. We're going to make the AK47 of beers - cheap, reliable, and works with sand in it." This is likewise not encouraging. Simplicity is great, and lack of expense is wonderful, but taste is important.
Later, I happened across a web site mainly about dairy products. Various pages tells how people can make their own buttermilk or at least extend a culture of it, and the same thing with yogurt, and once a person can make yogurt it's not a very big step to a simple cheese. Interesting, but while jmaynard likes buttermilk, I don't see the appeal. And he's content to let others deal with its production. I have about the same opinion (let others do it) with yogurt. So it'd most likely be more of an experiment than anything useful for either of us.
However, that site isn't just about dairy products. There are also pages about ginger ale and root beer and the mention that other flavorings can be substituted. The batches can be rather small: a single two-liter plastic bottle's worth. This seems if not more interesting, perhaps more reasonable to do. Granted, I hardly need a sugary drink around, but at least it would be a sugary drink and not a corn syrup thing. And I get to choose the flavor. First would be something mentioned, such as the root beer, ginger ale, or vanilla cream soda (the root beer article suggests that). Then once I've proved to myself that I can do it and it works, I can play with the flavorings some. As the author mentions, there is some alcohol in the end product, but so little that unless one has a medical or religious restriction it can be ignored.
Thus tonight I bought a couple 2 liter bottles that will be emptied in time, some sugar (I had run out a while ago and made a conscious decision not to get any more just then), and some yeast. Chances are in a few days I'll start with an attempt at vanilla cream soda.
I've been wanting something to drink that doesn't seem to exist. I expect it does, but I'm just not aware or haven't been recalling it.
When it's cold, it's nice to have something warm or hot. This is covered by coffee, tea, cider, and hot chocolate. When it's warm or hot, something cool or cold is nice. This is covered by fruit juices, soft drinks, milk, iced tea (and now iced coffee), and ice-water. Also, beer and wine are served at least somewhat chilled.
But the only thing I can think of that is served at or around room temperature is hard liquor. And what I want is something that is neither hot nor cold, and is not intoxicating. So far all I can come up with is letting some water, without any ice, stand and warm up for a while. It's not bad. A little lemon or lime juice helps. Water is probably the best thing I can drink: no caffeine, no alcohol, no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no calories. So I don't really mind that other than the delay of letting it come up to temperature.
But this does have me wondering, are there any drinks (other than hard liquors) that are served at, and considered good at, room temperature?
Placed an order with Stash tea, mainly for their Licorice Spice tea, but also will try their Wintermint, and sample a discontinued (but inexpensive) item, Sweet Licorice. Now to wait for the stuff to arrive.
Had supper at the Truman Drive-In (formerly Tee's, formerly Ja-Tee's). Had a yummy olive burger (swiss cheese burger with sliced green olives). Jay had the casserole.. I can't trust a casserole. I'd rather have a hotdish. (I maintain they are two different things: casseroles can have tuna [blech!] in them, while a hotdish would not - common mis-usage not withstanding.)
The local County Market had an item I was not expecting. In the chilled pop/lite-beer cooler there was Coca Cola. Big deal, right? This stuff was bottled in Mexico. Coca Cola.. made with real cane sugar, not corn sweetener. I bought a few bottles. Oh yeah, and in the proper *glass* bottles. There is just something so very right about Coke from glass bottles.
jmaynard brought a single tea-bag packet back from PenguiCon. "Licorice Spice" herbal tea. I tried this morning. Yummy. Quite sweet. Not overpoweringly licorice or anise, but enough to get noticed. So probably Jay'd like it almost as much as I like buttermilk: exactly not at all. There is, alas, a problem. I want more. And I'd never heard of Stash brand tea before. For my personal convenience, I'm putting this link here and noting that page 20 of the catalog is where to find the stuff.
I'm taking a bit of a break from digitizing stuff from tape. Decided to see about ripping a CD last night. Seems Grip was just waiting there, ready to be configured. Still need to get lame installed and working right to generate mp3s, but ogg will do nicely. Grip works rather well, now that it's configured. Put in a CD, it gets ripped after a lookup - or played if the lookup fails. Nice. I can see digitizing my entire collection rather easily.
Took another on-line quiz somewhere or other. Which 'The Princess Bride' character am I? Miracle Max, it says. I find that amusing. I'm not entirely sure why, but I do.
Am pondering taking half a day off on the 30th, so that arrival in Waterloo will be early on a Friday afternoon or evening instead of later. Maybe see some faire folks for supper. I wonder how far along Hwy 218 is now.
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