Round Two - Day 16 and Beer

Are you as bored as I am with the daily report of what I am eating? It's just not as fun as it once was... There isn't much left in my house that would be considered contraband and when a lot of it is the same thing day after day it just get's too monotonous. I think I will have to work backwards this time. I just ate a banana. Before that I had some left over lentils cooked with salsa, onion, green pepper, bacon and mashed up meatballs I had made for Baby J. I made the meatballs almost a week ago and he really loved them, but I was afraid they would go bad if they didn't get eaten, and he only eats one per meal, so we finished them off. They were very good. I think I will post the recipe, as with a lot of the recipes for him, grown people would enjoy them as well. For breakfast I had oatmeal again, and coffee.

Last night I had a slice of pumpkin pie from Thursday night, before that we went to Wurstküche for dinner. This is a sausage and beer restaurant in Downtown LA. For obvious reasons it is a favorite of mine. In fact when I first read about it I felt as if it was created with me in mind as it's target demographic. Judging from it's popularity, I am not alone in my love of sausage & beer. The menu is simply that, about 20 different and exciting types of sausage (I had rabbit, veal and pork seasoned with white wine), your choice of two toppings from Carmelized Onions, Sauerkraut, Sweet Peppers and Spicy Peppers (I had onions and sweet peppers) and Belgian Fries and an assortment of dipping sauces (Bleu Cheese Walnut and Bacon). There are also about a hundred different beers, and they all come in the appropriate glass. I had the Floris Apple Ale, a witbier fermented with apples. It was sweet and autumnal tasting. We were inspired to go there because we were downtown at a beer making workshop.

We walked away with a half gallon jug of Winter Spice Ale. It is fermenting in our kitchen as we speak. If we don't carbonate it, it will be ready on December 5th, which is the official end day of this project. It is fitting to have some beer to drink, since we haven't had any in the house the whole time.

It looks like moonshine, which I love. The process was easier than I had imagined. The only ingredients you need are yeast, sugar and water. If I got it correctly you just have to bring one gallon of water to 140º, then add grains (must be at least 1/3 barley) and slowly raise the temp to 160º. Strain out the grains (which have broken down into sugar at this point). Then add your flavorings, spices and hops, etc. (I did learn that hops came into popularity because the Protestant Church of Germany required they be used exclusively because the majority of other herb growing was controlled by the Catholic Church - I might need to check the exact facts on this, but it was intriguing). Then you cool down the wort - that's what this mixture is called. When it gets to about 130º you can add a few gallons of cool water, which will bring the temp down even further. When it is about 95º, you pitch your brewers yeast. (Pitch means add). Then you cork it and put an airlock on it. Fill the airlock with some cheap high proof booze, like vodka, and wait 2 weeks for it ferment. At this point you have what Donny (Fella in the pic above) calls "alcoholic tea". He said they drink it this way all the time. But if you want to carbonate it, you can pour the mix into empty, clean beer bottles and cap them. They had a little device that puts caps on. If you leave it a few more days it will create the carbonation from the CO2 that naturally occurs. You can also sprinkle a little sugar into each bottle before capping to help the carbonation process along. The other alternative was to get a 5-gallon keg and a CO2 compressor. I'm not planning on doing that, so I didn't pay that much attention to that part. I'll let you know how it turns out.