Pure Wisconsin Fridge

We're brewing beer, a pilsner. That's Karl (I gave him a good German name), our carboy, chillin' in the fridge. Surrounded by bottles and bottles of beer... hopefully inspiring Karl to make some fermentation happen. And really, we consume more than beer, though this shot of the fridge may lead you to think otherwise. We also have cheese and sauerkraut in there. And soy milk.

A pilsner, which unlike the amber ale we did the first time, needs to be cold to properly ferment. We aren't actually sure whether it is fermenting, though the "Ale Pail" (I didn't come up with that corny name--it came emblazoned on the side of what would otherwise be your standard five gallon white bucket) did have a healthy coating of gunk after its first fermentation:



(I realize it looks like puke. I assure you it is not.)







Brewing is a fairly straightforward process, especially if you buy a kit. The basic steps are: making wort, fermentation, conditioning, and bottling. Kits usually come with liquid malt extract, which when reconstituted in water produces wort (generally means unfermented beer), hops, and yeast. As you boil the water and malt, hops are added at two different points--the first for bitterness and the second time for flavor and aroma. The hops come in the form of compressed green pellets, a far cry from the vivid green pinecone-like hop flower that you see climbing poles in the fields. Just for kicks we tried one and it was truly terrible (Disclosure: I hate hoppy beer). It took a while to get that horrible bitter taste out of my mouth! After the wort is done boiling, the hot wort is poured into the Ale Pail (the first stage in the two-stage fermentation; Karl is second) filled with cold water. The yeast is then "pitched" (aka poured into the bucket), which, according to the Carl Sagan-inspired label, releases "billions and billions" of yeast into the wort and fermentation begins!

So now we wait... for Karl to make us some beer.

Master Cheesemaker, amateur edition

Living in America's Dairyland for more than six years now, I can attest that cheese (and attendant dairy products) truly is everywhere. I had never seen a cheese section so large as that at Woodman's (also the largest grocery store I'd ever been in) nor had I ever gone to a school where cheese was made on-site or where you could become certified as a master cheesemaker, or lived in a place where cheese curds are as ubiquitous as Coke and Pepsi. So it's really a wonder that took me so long to try to make some of my own.

I've been on a DIY food kick of late--my boyfriend and I have been brewing beer, growing mushrooms (edible not hallucinogenic... at least that I know of), and growing herbs, among other things, in our rather small place.


Enter the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company hard cheesemaking kit (for some reason I got two of them in the mail so the cheese gods must really want me to make some cheese). The kit was labeled for "beginners" but flipping through the instruction booklet, "beginner" must mean daughter of a milkmaid or at least a native of a dairy state (my hometown, Redmond, WA, is known for many of things, none of them milky). But I pushed on, confident in my abilities...

I decided to make feta, mostly because many of the other options, cheddar, colby, monteray jack, needed to age and wouldn't be ready until fall 2009--I'm not known for my patience. And despite lacking what appeared to be necessary equipment (who has a pot big enough for two gallons of milk that will then fit inside of another pot?), I did the best I could and produced, in 12 hours or so, a fairly passable feta. The instructions were a tad unclear at points--what exactly does "cut into convenient-sized blocks" mean?--but if it looks like feta and smells like... well, cheese, it must be okay. It might taste more feta-y if I had used goat's milk but cow is what I had so cow is what I used.

Master cheesemaker, here I come.