Gold Coast parties

We were lucky and didn't see much evidence of schoolies week  - this is the closest we got, you can see the lights of the night-time entertainment on the beach like the illuminated toenails of the beast

Things were more sedate at Burleigh, although on Sunday night there was a drum circle & firespinning on the shore front

I used to firespin and play djemebe so it can be hard to just watch on, and it gave me the urge to dig out my firestick again. An uncoordinated 42 year old trying to revisit his youth, a firestick & high fire risk conditions. What could possibly go wrong?

Chilled out

It's been a very relaxing few days, and the perfect time to post up some Slowdive. Another early 90's band (regular readers may be spotting a theme) and in my humble view the finest of all the 'shoegazing' bands of the era.

 They're equally lovely live, albeit with some dodgy camera panning...

 

Schoolies and Toolies

Non-Australian readers (hi Mum!) may have been a bit confused over the phrase 'schoolies' made in the comments section of the previous post. Schoolies is an Australian equivalent to Spring Break in the US where year 12 students (ie 16-18yr olds) celebrate the finish of their school days by partying en-masse in holiday get-aways like Surfers Paradise. There's no real equivalent in the UK, or at least there wasn't in my day where we basically gave a collective sigh, had a few beers, got thrown out of the Coach & Horses and blamed any next-day queasiness on the kebab we got from a van on the way home.

Schoolies is big business over here, and around 50,000 teens will descend on Surfers Paradise this week. The presence of so many drunken teenage girls attracts more than a few unsavoury males who are keen to take advantage of the situation, and these are known as 'toolies'.

Because of all this we were a bit uncertain about coming South for a week, but we hoped that Burleigh Heads was away from the main action. The hotel was a good choice and I guess you could say that the view from the living room & balcony is OK

If the sight of all that sea gets dull just look inland over the local bowls club and the town to the mountains beyond

We basically have a 270 degree view from the living room, although we do need to change seats to see it all. Life is tough.

It's hard to get out of the apartment because we can sit on the balcony and watch the world come to us. I'm an inveterate people watcher and it's the perfect position to sit and watch the surfers, joggers, skateboarders, cyclists, locals and tourists pass by below. I almost wish I'd bought binoculars, but then again that might make me considered to be a toolie..... 

Heading down the coast

I'm off on holidays tomorrow - we're heading down to Burleigh Heads for a few nights and a well deserved break.  I may even attempt to get my weak, pale flabby body out on a surfboard once or twice.

It always seems so appealing beforehand, but the allure quickly dissipates after getting dumped upside down on the 18th attempt to paddle out beyond the break with arms like wet noodles and a face full of salt water. When you finally make it out the first wave you try to catch leaves you half-drowning whilst being beaten around the head with a lump of laminated foam. A few hours later your aching beaten body gets gently washed to shore and you stumble to the nearest bar on wobbly legs. When feeling has finally returned and you're talking up your day your nasal passages decide it's time to let go of the litres of mucus-infused salt water they've been storing up in a long drooling stream. It's a soul thing.

 

Partially eclipsed and generally obscured

Queensland experienced a solar eclipse on Wednesday morning. The total eclipse was only visible in the far north of the state, but down in Brisbane we got to see around 80% cover. You couldn't easily spot it by squinting at the sun but the light was strangely diffuse and lacked some of it's usual bitey heat.

I tried to get some pictures of it, but sadly my photographic skills weren't up to scratch and all  I ended up with was a lot of lens flare and a touch of arc eye. I did manage to get some strangely impressive shots though

 

 

In this one you can see the shape of the partial eclipse somehow reflected upside down in the lens flare

The best picture I've seen comes from friend and regular commenter Pete, who noticed this dappled effect on his back patio

Sometimes you need to look away from the light to see what's really going on....

When life makes you sour,

make sourdough!*

A friend of mine gave me some sourdough starter the other week and after a false start last weekend I thought I'd complete a fermentation triptych yesterday. read up on what I was supposed to do with it and give it a go. Turns out that there is a lot of information on sourdough out there, and unlike the brewing and cheese making websites & forums (which are generally pretty easy-going) sourdough people seem to have strong views on what it is and how it should be used. You get the impression that if you get it wrong your starter will tweet your failure for the world to know and a collective of eye-rolling San Franciscon arthisans will hold a memorial ceremony for it.

Luckily I also have a copy of 'Wild Fermentation' by Sandor Ellix Katz, a great reference book for all things fermentable. He follows the 'as much as you think and then a bit more' school of recipe construction and was the original guide for my kimchi experiments. He also has a section on sourdough which offered some good advice on how it all works and that, coupled with Liz's previous experiences in breadmaking, helped a lot.

First off make sure that you have at least two cup fulls of good, bubbly sourdough starter

In a large bowl, mix the starter with around 4 cup fulls of breadmaking flour and stir well

 Add some lukewarm water as it thickens up and keep stirring - you're looking to make a stiff batter

Cover & leave it in a warm place for anywhere between 8 and 24 hrs and stir it occasionally. This is called a sponge, and gives the yeast some time to prepare for the trials ahead  

 When the sponge has increased in size and is good and bubbly you can start stage 2

Mix in another 3-4 cups of flour into the bowl until you can't stir it with a spoon. Then take out of the bowl and put on a floured surface for working & kneading. Handy hint - prepare this before you get dough all over your fingers, or have a helpful partner who can assist with the minimum of eye-rolling and "I told you so's"

Keep kneading the dough for a good 10 minutes or so until it becomes smooth and elastic. You'll probably need to add more flour to the board, to replace both the flour that is being absorbed by the dough and the flour that is ending up all over your shirt, trousers, feet, floor, walls etc

Eventually you'll have a nice smooth ball of dough that is elastic and slightly springy.Leave in an oiled bowl under a damp tea towel for a few more hours until it has increased in size from this

 to this

You're almost ready. Next grease a bread pan or a baking tray and shape the dough.

Leave for another couple of hours for the dough to increase in size again (or until you realise that bedtime is fast approaching) and then pop in the over at 200 degrees C for 40 minutes or so

 And voila - 'easy' sourdough

It's nice, especially when it's hot and fresh, but I'm not convinced. I reckon making two loaves of sourdough took almost as long as the brewing part of making 24l of beer......  

*OK, I recognise that I've worn that title joke out....

And when life gives you beetroots.....

I saw these at the markets for $3 and they looked so good that I couldn't say no

We have a cookbook of old Australian recipes called 'Possum Pie, Beetroot Beer & Lamingtons', so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give one of the title recipes a shot.

This isn't your usual ingredients list - anyone with German sensitivities for beer should look away now -

• 1kg sugar (the book suggested 3/4 lb or around 400g, but see below) 
• 30g hops
• 1 beetroot
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger 

The recipe is pretty simple -

• Bring water to boil and add in hops and some grated ginger. I misread and added the sugar at this point as well, but that should have come later.
• Boil for 20 mins and then add the beetroot and the sugar (if you haven't done so already).
• Boil for another 30 minutes or so and then allow to cool.

At first I though the colour wasn't coming out of the beetroot

But after it had cooled it was looking much 'beetter' (*arf*)

The actual recipe suggests that you bottle at this point with 'barm' (I think that's yeast cake left over from making bread) and then it's ready to serve 5 days later. This wouldn't give much chance for alcohol production and you'd end up with a bitter fizzy 'soft drink'.

I decided to take it to the next level so once the wort was cooled & strained I added it to a fermentor. Then i pitched some S-04 ale yeast and let 'godisgoode' work its magic. The next day everything was bubbling nicely and the colour was developing beautifully. Once the initial fermentation dies down I'll top it up and leave for a couple of weeks.

Boiling 30g of hops for almost an hour gives a intensely hoppy brew - in fact by adding the hops to the wort and then bringing it to boil you're actually 'first wort hopping', which is an old way of ensuring maximum bitterness in the body of the brew. So far from being a novelty drink, I think this will turn out more like a beetroot IPA and I'm already planning a full size batch :)

All I have to do now is catch a possum for the next recipe...