Dandelion Wine Part II

Last week I harvested dandelion petals for a dandelion wine, boiled them up with some other ingredients and left them in a fermenter with some yeast. After a week or so the vegetable matter had risen to the top of the fermenter and was forming a raft, under which hopefully goodness was happening. Some people suggest stirring the mix daily to break up this raft, others view it as a 'cap' under which safe fermentation can take place. In my view it would depend on if you were around and if you could be bothered to regularly sterilise a spoon.  

After a week or so you've got all the flavours that you're going to get out of the solids, so strain everything into another fermenter or other container such as a demijohn - but don't fill to the top. Don't be too fussy about little bits getting through the sieve, they'll get filtered out further down the line. Equally the yeast will get through the sieve so you won't need to worry about re-pitching at this point. 

I like to mix & mash the remaining solids up with a spoon for a bit  to get all of the flavour & sugar out of it 

As you can see the next day the clingfilm / glad wrap was bulging because the yeast was fizzing away underneath, gobbling down sugars and producing carbon dioxide as a side product.

After that just cover and leave it for a month or so to fully ferment out - if you have a hydrometer you're looking for a gravity of around 1.006, but then again if you own a hydrometer then you probably know that already. If not, leave it until all signs of activity have died away!

Enjoying a Christmas break

This year I had my first Christmas Day on the beach, and it was awesome...

Fresh mango for breakfast

 Hugs on the beach

 Ready to go in

Paddling out

And catching a wave back in

We haven't managed to stand up on the board yet, but that doesn't stop us having a great time in the water

Back for a much-needed Xmas lunch

And after a nap in the air-con, a wander round the Christmas lights put up by the caravan owners in the camp site

Note the (working) trainset at the front of the tent...

I spent the whole of Xmas Day & Boxing Day in a pair of boardshorts. That explains the Christmas link to St Nicholas...

Hope your Xmas was equally enjoyable!

A tale of two hemispheres

I got an email from a friend in the UK who was preparing for his Christmas boarding trip

And we've been doing the same...

 Hope you all have a safe & happy Christmas!

 

Dandelion wine

Summer has lead to a dandelion explosion in our garden, somehow triumphing where the grass has given up

Dandelions are a non-native species in Australia but are very widespread and considered a weed. Which is a shame, because like nettles they have a whole host of medicinal and culinary applications. If they grew in a remote Amazonian rainforest then they would be being touted as a superfood. You can use all of the plant - the leaves as salad garnish, the taproot in soups and stews and the petals as edible decoration - and there are a host of health benefits assigned to it.

You can also brew with it - either using the leaves and stalks as a bittering agent in beer (as was done in the days pre-hops) or using the flowers to make a white wine. I needed to mow the lawn and it seemed a waste to let so much good produce go to waste so I thought I'd go for the latter.

 

First off you need to harvest your dandelion petals. Some recipes suggest using the whole flower, others just the petals, and I found it was just as quick to grab the flower and snip at the base of the petals, leaving the green stub on the stalk. 

It's a hot and tedious business though, and best left to cheap immigrant labour

Some of the websites suggest harvesting in the middle of the day, but after half an hour outside at 11am on the longest day of the year all I'd achieved was this many petals and a mild case of sunstroke

The next morning I went back out and finished it off.

How many petals do you need? Theoretically it's roughly the same volume as the wine that you're trying to make, but in reality it's the number of petals you can pick before your back gives out, you get sunstroke or you get bored of passing dog-walkers asking you why you're moving your lawn with a pair of scissors.

Once you've got your petals pour boiling water over them and leave to soak for a day or two. Then add in another few litres of water, bring to the boil and add blended / chopped raisins, lemon zest, lemon juice and sugar. Quantities depends on how much wine you want to make and what you have to hand - I used 700g of raisins, 2 lemons & 2kg of sugar . That will give me roughly 10 bottles of wine at around 10% alcohol by volume (I think!).

Boil for a few minutes to make sure the sugar dissolves and then take off the heat. Country wine making is a little different to beer because the flavours don't come out in the boil, instead you add the whole of the contents of the cooled pot (or 'must') to a fermenting bucket, lumps and all (although I took out the lemon segments in case the pith gave a bitter taste). Mix in wine yeast and yeast nutrient, cover and leave for a few days to a week to get the initial fermentation going.

I'll add further posts as I carry out the next steps because wine making has as few more processes than beer and takes longer to reach a drinkable state. 

 

The petals I used were harvested on the Summer solstice, so if all goes well we'll be able to crack the first bottle on the evening of the Winter solstice, watch the night sky and enjoy a taste of summer sunshine.

Edit - Part II is here

Playing catchup

Last week I tried using the helmet camera when I was following Gordy though some of the singletrack at Daisy. Results were mixed, although it was an interesting experience trying to ride whilst keeping focus on someone who was a couple of seconds ahead of me on the trail. The most interesting part was how he kept gapping me, pulling ahead mainly as we exited the corners, despite the fact that he was riding a fully rigid bike and taking it steady for the filming. He's a far better rider than me - I just don't have that race heritage -  and he knows the trails a lot better than me but I think the main reason is that I break down the track into discrete chunks and gather myself between each one. Ride a corner, settle, roll over a log, settle, ride another corner, settle. In those 'settle' periods I'm grazing the brakes and that's what is losing my momentum. Something else to work on.

He took it easy, I got my best time down that first trail!

Incidentally, I used Youtube's stabilisation tool to smooth out the video. It works, but it also keeps shifting the image around inside the frame so parts roll out of frame. Here's the same video without the stabilisation...

Which do you prefer?

Friday Xmas tune

Happy Christmas everybody! Hope your festive break is fun of fun, frivolity, beer and bikes :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vernjP36rK0

 

Christmas Wit

What do you make with the following ingredients -

Zest of grapefruit, orange and lime - is it just me or do the fruit look somehow bashful in their nakedness?

Mix with cranberries, cloves, star anise and cinnamon and then soak in brandy for a few days

Soak 300g of oats in 70 degree water for 30 minutes or so, run through a sieve and keep the gooey liquid

 Bring to the boil with four more litres of water, just don't let it boil over

Add the fruit & spice mix and boil for 20 minutes or so

With 10 minutes to go mix in 2kg of wheat malt & 1 can of wheat beer concentrate. Bring back to the boil for a few minutes, turn off the burner and throw in 40g of Tettnanger hops

Cool overnight and strain into a clean fermenter the next day, then top up to 23l or so. I pitched directly onto an existing wheat yeast trub from my ginger beer, so there will probably be additional spiciness coming through, but that will hopefully suit the beer 'style'. I'll also dry hop with 15g of Cluster once the initial krausan dies down. 

As you may have guessed this is my Christmas beer...I was a bit disorganised this year (hence the use of concentrate) so it'll turn out to be more of a late January beer, but if it tastes half as good as it smelt then it should still be tasty!

Fun Machine

I've upgraded the Scandal a little bit over the last couple of months - it's now got an X-fusion HiLo dropper post, which means that at the flick of a lever I can drop the seat down from this height

 To as low as this height

There's a remote lever that I can mount on the bars as well, but I like to leave the bars as clean as possible. I may change it later on if I need to, but it seems to be working fine as it is. It just looks a bit weird when I regularly reach between my legs to adjust myself...

I've also taken off the front three rings and instead am running 1x10 setup with a Raceface Narrow-Wide chainring and a Shimano Zee rear mech. The rear mech has a clutch which stops it bouncing around on the rough stuff, so that means I can run this without any front chain device and still not lose the chain. The cassette has a 36 tooth cog on it so there's a fairly low gearing option when things get steep. The 32 tooth chainring means that I lose out at the high end but it's rare that I'm sprinting fast enough to outrun my gearing on dirt.
    

A new saddle, decent flat pedals and some surprisingly hard-to-find All-City grips round out the changes

Plus of course my lucky seatstay feather...

It climbs like a goat, rails the corners, is stable in the air and is generally a hoot to ride......I'm very happy. I just need to learn to ride it harder!

Check out my edit...

OK it's not really an edit, just some footage from a Go-Pro knock-off helmet camera that I picked up at the airport Duty Free. Beware impulse buys after a 14hr flight! These were filmed on an overcast afternoon in temperatures of around 30 degrees and with stupid humidity. I've used the Youtube tool to stabilise the image as it was pretty shaky, and there are two versions. One is the natural colour, one has had the colour tweaked with the Youtube tool. Let me know which one you think looks the best!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpB00xngAQA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOnXiT3U4Rk

 

I've got some more if you want to see them once the seasickness subsides...

  

Road Bike Party

A bike video instead of a tune this week, watch it and you'll see why!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhabgvIIXik

I'm sure having that much fun on a road bike isn't sanctioned by the UCI...

Black Dog

Churchill once famously referred to his depressed periods as his black dog, although he was quoting an old Scottish & English expression that's been around for a lot longer. As most people who have suffered from depression will agree it's a stunningly accurate metaphor in a number of ways, although it is a little hard on the many loyal & loving black canines out there. Fortunately public awareness of the scale and the mind-numbing impact of depression is on the rise, which is helping both to assist in the diagnosis of those who are suffering and to inform their friends and colleagues as to what might be going on and what can be done to help. And no, telling someone to pull themselves together doesn't work.

As you may have guessed depression is something that I've had to face up to over the course of my life. I'm in a good space right now but I know that for the rest of my life I will regularly see it out of the corner of my eye, slinking into cover waiting for a chance to pounce again. Which is why I thought this cartoon was beautiful and well worth sharing with those that suffer, for those that have suffered and for those who know people that suffer. Which is pretty much all of us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiCrniLQGYc

Stay safe & look after each other. Else who will read my blog? :)

Naughty Nigella...

You almost feel sorry for her*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvYmGzIzMs0

 

*Well, you would if she wasn't the smarmy over-privileged daughter of a bloodsucking Tory leech who made his money & reputation by selling off British assets at the expense of the general populace trying to use them.

Single speed Santa

Christmas shopping is never fun, but it's a lot more palatable when the weather's like this. Just slap on plenty of sunscreen and strap on an extra pannier bag :)

 

Hard out here

Hands up who checked this morning & thought my tune this week was going to be from Geri Halliwell? Fear not, my indie integrity remains intact....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0CazRHB0so

 

Best use of a slow-motion camera ever...

Ginger spice

If you hadn't noticed, Christmas is looming fast and in Australia that means sun, humidity & refreshing ginger beer. I had some success with my ginger beers last year but it still wasn't 'bitey' enough for me, so this time I thought I'd start by upping the ante a bit more...

• Just over 1.5kg ginger, cleaned, frozen and then run through the grater-thingy on the blender (sorry blender)
• 2 lemons, sliced
• 2 limes, sliced
• 2 star anise
• 4 birdseye chillis, sliced
• 2.75kg raw sugar (ish, there was a partially used bag which I didn't bother weighing)
• 1kg wheat malt extract (liquid)

Boil the above for an hour, and with 5 minutes to go add 5g crushed Tasmanian pepper berries & another 4 sliced birdseye chillis

After taking off the boil add juice of two lemons & 3 limes

I left it to cool overnight, strained it into a fermenter and sprinkled WB-06 yeast on the surface. This is a wheat beer yeast and although I should claim that the intention was that the esters of bubble-gum & clove will complement the ingredients, the reality was that it was the only yeast packet I had left in my homebrew box. Although I think that the esters of bubble-gum & clove will complement the ingredients nicely. 

This won't quite be ready for Christmas but should be good to go for the New Year. Can't wait!