I figured my cooking knives deserved a little love after seeing rather heavy action in the last weeks. Since climbing stairs is not my favourite activity these days, I looked for a possibility to sharpen them properly in the kitchen, not downstairs in the shop. So behold Farcyde’s newest ingenious piece of engineering: My kitchen sink whetstone holder!

It took easily one whole hour to make it and another heaping 5 minutes for some protective oil coat! It’s taylor-made to fit into my kitchen sink snugly and to be on the safe side I also added an anti-slip pad under the whetstone and at the areas of support. One night of drying to let the oil set a little and it’s ready for use. A simple construction, the images speak for themselves.

(This is part III of the cider making series. Read part I, part II and part IV here.)

It seems the primary fermentation has come to a halt do far, so it’s time to transfer everything into another vessel and let the secondary fermentation take it’s course. The correct english term for this seems to be “racking the cider off it’s lees”.

While the primary fermentation is about yeast cells converting sugar into alcohol and CO², the second fermentation is lactic acid bacteria converting malic acid into lactic acid and CO² and give the brew a smoother, less sour taste. It occurs naturally and spontaneously when the liquid is transferred to a storage container and the yeast is no longer the dominant microbiological species in the soon-to-be cider.

(This is part I of the cider making series. Read part II, part III and part IV here.)

I want to make my own apple cider! Years ago, I’ve been brewing beer which was fun, boozy and – well – messy. Now I want to try my luck with apple cider, which is a little easier to make regarding the effort, but nonetheless interesting and promising.

So, you need apple juice for brewing cider and in order not to use store-bought material I’ll need an apple press to make my own. Here it is:

I don’t have much opportunity to move around and do “real” work these days, so I chose something that I could do standing at one place and with not much strength and mobility required.

I made a new approach to the Tabletop-Indoor-Grill-Thingy I tried last summer (which worked great), but this time I wanted it to be a little more versatile.