This guy has too much free time at his hands… 🙂 I made a cheese press, because I was offered an eBook on cheesemaking – for free! Well, I like cheese in almost all of its forms, so I’ll try that out. Here’s how it was made and how it’s supposed to work.
Whetstone Holder
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.
Cider Making, the Second Stage
(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.
Cider Making, the Preliminaries
(This is part II of the cider making series. Read part I, part III and part IV here.)
Yeah! Some cidermaking progress! I got some apples from a local shop (a little less than 10 kg) and de-juiced them using my apple press. I’m not going to write a book on cider making here (in fact, I just can’t due to lack of experience…) but I want to give an outline:
At the beginning there’s always sanitizing the equipment. Just like with brewing beer (which I did often in the past), clean and sanitized tools and containers are crucial for a good outcome. A good way to to deep clean things is laundry bleach. Follow the instructions on the bottle and make sure to rinse everything most thoroughly with water after treating.
Mushroom Growing 2021
I officially declare the mushroom season open! And to honor this appropriately, I’ve started new king oyster mushroom cultures that I hope will thrive and grow. This time, I used store-bought grain spawn (this shop is cool, give these guys a try!) – the last propagating attempt with the used up mycelium didn’t work out sooo well.
The whole action doesn’t take much time and effort (and it’s perfectly doable, sitting, with a broken knee…). But it is absolutely vital that you work as cleanly as possible, so to give your spawn an edge over any possible competing contaminats. I’ve got two versions:
Apple Press DIY
(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:
Spelt Flour Bread
Today I’ve got something completely new, at least for my standards. I made bread from spelt flour for the first time – and I was surprised about how much I actually like it. Now, spelt has a little bit of a reputation of being in the eco- or treehugger corner (at least here where I live) but at the end of the days it’s just plain normal flour to work with.
Living her best Life
The Lady of the House is enjoying the first strong rays of sunshine so much today…