Cold Frames (Winter Comes)

"The days are getting shorter, the air is getting colder, and while you sip your rum and coke, kid, you're just getting older." - Jason Webley, Winter.

I've been thinking a lot about the upcoming Winter. Apart from the fact that it's likely to be horrendous, (for Seattle anyway), I've actually really appreciated having noticeably different seasons again. South Florida has two seasons, the Wet Season (aka Hurricane Season) and the Dry Season (aka 'Winter'). But here, trees change colors, plants flower and then die, mushrooms begin to pop up everywhere with the first late-Summer rains, the sun tracks lower and increasingly weakly across the sky, and growth is notably stunted in most of my remaining garden plants. It smells differently this time of year, and it makes me realize: Winter Comes.

First up, after harvest I decided to repot my hops. They were rootbound, and I was thinking of different ways to get cheap, large pots to put them in. Solution: 18 gallon Laundry Tubs from Fred Meyer, $5 each. Now they're sitting pretty in much bigger pots, with some fresh potting soil. Hopefully the harvest will be better next year.

The tomatoes began to show serious signs of Late Blight about three weeks ago. We let them vine ripen as long as we could, but we got a sunny weekend day and decided it was time. So we picked all the tomatoes that were in good shape, ripe or green, and have been storing them. They're slowly ripening away inside, and they're pretty darn tasty. My guess is they'll last at least another month.

The basil that was planted with them and spent the entire summer kindof sad and stunted suddenly took off. Then two nights ago it was 38 degrees. Now they look pretty sad. One last round of pesto and that's that. Got a few more zucchinis too, but they were getting pretty serious powdery mildew, so I pulled them. Not wanting a glut of zukes I only planted two plants. Unfortunately, at the end they seemed to put up only female flowers so while there were several proto-zukes possible, I couldn't pollinate them. Lost quite a few that way.

With Summer's veg wrapping up I was faced with a decision. One option would be to let some of the beds go fallow, planting a cover crop of Rye, Vetch, Peas, and so on. Then mow that down in the Spring, mulch it on in, and arrange some cloches to get things off to a good start in, say, April. Some portion of the beds could also be planted with hardy, overwintering crops like leeks and kale.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I'd like to see what I could grow in our maritime winter. We tend to rely heavily on the supermarket during the Winter, importing bright and shiny fruits and vegetables from far, far away. But it wasn't always like that. What about here? Maybe I could manage some fresh salads past the New Year? Maybe with a little thought and a little effort I can grow a lot of my own food this season, and store the rest in the form of my potatoes, and root veg from the Farmer's Market.

So step one was acquiring plants. I signed up for a Winter Plant Start CSA through Cascadian Edible Landscapes. These folks are really friendly and helpful, and you can usually find them at the Ballard Farmer's Market selling plant starts in the Spring, right up until the first berry harvests begin. I love their idea of a plant start CSA. The investment helps them plant without needing bank loans and to plant more of what people actually want, and it removes some of the guesswork of sales. We get a box of great starts, picked to be just the sorts of things that will grow really well, right here, right now. For about $30 we got, near as I can remember:

• Six Std. Broccoli starts
• Six Mixed Variety Broccoli as well
• Six Collards
• Six Asst. Kales
• Six 'Eros' Endive
  
• Two pounds of organic cover crop seeds
• Two heads of seed garlic
• A start of Sorrel
  

Plus I picked up some leeks and six Brussels Sprouts starts at Swansons. Couple that with some Mild Mustard Green seeds and Mache seeds and I've got the Winter Garden going.

I managed to find enough pots for the kales, collards, broccoli, and brussels. Frankly, if it stunts the kales or collards I'll consider it a blessing. I pulled the big Red Russian kales that grew up all Summer from random seeds in a mesclun greens mix. They were huge, over three feet tall and several feet across. This provided shade for lettuce underneath during the Summer, but by now we were sick and tired of kale, and shade was no longer our friend. They had to go. Added some of Walt's Organic Rainy PNW Blend in and planted mache and mustard greens in its place. The scattering of salad seeds began to pop up all over, which made me happy.

Then the squirrels came.

It's that time of year where they bury little caches of food around, digging up any patch of open looking dirt. Scattering and mauling my little lettuces. Grrr.

The solution appeared one afternoon when I drove by a neighbor's house. They were in the midst of some remodeling and there, on the street corner, were two sliding glass doors and a 'Free' sign. The wheels began to turn and I ran back and hauled them into the garage.

Cold Frames! Basically, cheap mini-greenhouses. A solar oven for plants. The glass traps light and keeps excess wind and rain out. On colder nights, or if it snows, the plants will be significantly warmer and protected from the harshest of Winter. With any luck I'll have salad through February, and be able to start plants earlier in the Spring. Ideally I'll get tomatoes in a couple weeks earlier, without resorting to my semi-effective penny-conscious cloche, and have a head start on other things as well.

So this weekend I got some lumber, conscripted a friend and got to building.

The basic idea is that it's a collar that sits on top of the existing raised bed. In fact, it's exactly the same as the bed, with a few minor adjustments. To make two, 2' x 6' frames I needed:

• two big old thick sliding glass doors
  
• four 2" x 12" x 8'
• two 2" x 6" x 8'
• two 4" x 4" x 8'
• 3" wood screws
• six 6' long 1" diameter sections of foamy pipe insulation
  

Basically, cut the 12" plywood to a 6' section and a 2' section. That's the sides of the base. Cut the 4x4 into four 12" sections and four 16" sections. These are the corners. Screw the 2' sections onto the 4x4s, one short one on one end and one long one on the other. Then screw the 6' sections of 12" onto the 4x4s, front and back, forming the frames. Cut the 6" boards into 6' and 2' sections. Screw the 6' sections onto the back side of the frames, where the 16" 4x4s stick up. This creates a slope that will allow rain to drain off the doors. Cut the remaining 2' long 6" boards on the diagonal, and screw the triangular pieces down on the sides. Then run around and staple the pipe insulation around the edges. This isn't so much to make it more airtight, as it is to protect the glass. I don't want to have to clean up a broken sliding door from my lettuces. The frames really don't need to be airtight. Which is good, because fine woodworking this was not...

The frames just sit on top of the existing beds. When it's cold out, say it's snowing or we have a cold, clear night, I can close them. The rest of the time they get propped open a bit with some removable sections of scrap 4x4. This keeps them from getting too hot and humid. Once the rain really starts up I'll open them completely every few days to water everything. To muck around inside them, pick things, weed, etc., I can prop them up against the siding of the garage and they seem pretty secure. The glass is really, really thick and heavy.

Hopefully they'll work out. Unfortunately, there's nowhere in the yard that gets really great full sun, so I hope the added shade from the lip of the frame doesn't hurt too much. It's a balancing act between providing space for the plants to grow tall, and shading them while they're younger. They have about 12" of headroom in the front and closer to 20" in the back. But one of the cool things about this is that conceivably these are just basically planter boxes, so in the future I could always put them in the yard as such, if say, there isn't enough light for them to work well where they are or if we move somewhere with a spot of full sun.

As for flaws, I overbuilt them a bit. They'll last a while but they take two people to move. And the glass is heavy, and I'd like an easier way to open them up fully. I may also paint the inside black, to harness more heat, or coat it with tinfoil to reflect some light into the darker corners.

So that's the situation. Will I have fresh Salad in February? We'll see how it works out.

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Experiment: Belgian Candi Syrup

Most homebrewers are taught, or have somehow come to believe that sugar, plain refined sucrose, is the devil. It makes your beer "cidery". It's a relic of the old days. Of a time of poor ingredients and even poorer methods. It smacks of the sort of cost-shaving that is the hallmark of The Big Guys, added to save a few pennies at the expense of real flavor and "real" beer.

Across the pond, well, outside the confines of the Reinheitsgebot at least, brewers have long known that yes, sometimes you could save a dime by using sugar but you can also add character to a beer. In fact, sugar allows you to do some things that are much more difficult to do with all grain brews, and to achieve flavors unavailable from malt. That these sugars and syrups have left such a mark on the brewers of England and Belgium is shown by the fact that many continue to use brewing sugars, even after changes to tariffs and tax structures have made the sugar much more expensive in comparison to malt than it once was.

Though there are some notable Belgian brewers who do not use sugar, almost all do. And for good reason. Sugar, and here I mean plain sucrose, will ferment out almost completely. This means you can add alcohol without adding body, a hugely important characteristic in the effervescent, strong, and yet satisfying beers of Belgium. The monks call this balance 'digestibility', a character that everyone should try to emulate whenever brewing a Belgian. Without some serious skills, equipment, ingredients and practice, it is very difficult to get the degree of attenuation seen in most Belgian strong beers, typically more than 80%, without the use of sugar. Failure to reach that level of attenuation results in a heavy, cloying beer that seems to sit in your belly like a gargoyle in a cathedral basement, rather than a spray of Summer sunlight through an Abbey stained-glass window. (Preferably not a spray of Summer colors on an Abbey window. Always in moderation.) Point is, you should always be adding 10-20% sugar to your Belgians, and I like to add up to 10% in British beers as well.

But not just any sugar will do. Much has been said about how "Belgians use beet sugar" and that that somehow makes it clearly superior. Allow me to say poppycock.

Poppycock!

At the level of refinement we see table sugar, the clear white crystals, sucrose is sucrose. It's a fructose and a glucose showing a little too much PDA and that's it. Any 'character' between the sugars would be the result of impurities, which you just don't see much of in refined sugar. Sugar is sugar, cane or beet, and I've not seen anything to convince me otherwise.

However, Belgian brewers are known for using something called 'Candi Sugar'. This has been available for a while in rock form, and more recently in syrup form. In it's lightest form, clear candi sugar, it's basically just the exact same damn thing as table sugar. If you buy those little clear rocks you are being suckered into paying roughly 10 times too much. Just use table sugar. If you really, absolutely must have it in little rock form, go ahead, make a simple syrup and dangle a string in it for a week or two. Rock candy will form, just like in elementary school. That's how they do it. Really. It isn't magic. Clear Candi sugar is just table sugar. Don't waste your money.

The darker colors on the other hand are something more special. Without them you really can't make a proper Dubbel or Strong Dark. Many of the abbey brewers will mash in with pilsner malt, maybe a little wheat or carpils, and then add color and flavor solely with the darker syrups. Fortunately, in the last few years Dark Candi, inc. has made them available to homebrewers. But how special is dark candi sugar?

It's just caramel after all, how hard can it be?

Well, yes you could take plain sugar and caramelize it until it is really dark and you'll have something that will have some interesting dark caramel flavors. But you'll get more toffee and burnt caramel, like you might find in a nice Toddy Porter, than you'll get dark fruit, cherry, rummy flavors. Also it will probably turn into a rock when you're done.

To really get at the dark fruit and chocolate notes in dark candi sugar, a little chemistry is needed. If you were just to caramelize the sugar as above, you're using pyrolysis to break down the sucrose under heat, at temperatures about 320 degrees F. But the flavors in the darker candi syrups come also from a different process, our good friend the Maillard Reaction. Here the sugar browns through the combination of heat and complex reaction with amino acids, producing similar yet distinct flavors from caramelization. It's the reason bread crust browns and tastes good, for example.

Poking around on the internet one day I came across this thread on Homebrewtalk. Though I'd read about this sugar chemistry in both Radical Brewing and Brew Like A Monk, I'd never tried to actually make some dark candi sugar from scratch. In the past I'd just made do with inverting and deeply caramelizing various sugars, which frankly works fairly well. But this looked like a fun experiment.

The basic idea is that you're making a syrup with the notable addition of an ammoniac compound, in this case our good friend and common yeast nutrient di-ammonium phosphate (DAP). The DAP breaks down, providing free nitrogen and a phosphoric acid to supercharge the maillard browning process. Once either boiled off or consumed in the reaction, the ammonia is gone, leaving a funky dark maillard candi syrup.

Sweet!

Literally.

So I set out one afternoon to make a test batch or three.

The recipe I used was SnickASaurusRex's Sugar #5:

Over medium heat bring to a boil

2 Lbs Sugar
1 Cup Water
3 tsp DAP

Raise this to the terminal temperature of 290F. At 290F begin stirring and add in:

1 Cup Water

Continue stirring until the sugars are dissolved. Again, bring the solution up to 290F over medium heat. At 290F begin stirring and add in:

1 Cup of Water

Stir this until the sugars are dissolved and the temperature starts to rise a couple degrees. This Should be right at or just above soft ball (240F). This is when the syrup is done. Stop the cooking by submerging the pan in cool water or by transferring the syrup to a preheated mason jar.

So I got everything together and started boiling it on the stove.

And it was a complete failure.


A word on yeast nutrients. Frankly, there's a poor naming convention with regards to what is a "yeast nutrient", "yeast energizer" and so on. For this you need DAP, straight pure DAP. If it's clear, it's probably DAP. If it's brown and labeled 'Yeast Nutrient' it's one of the blends, which probably does have some DAP in it, but also has dead yeast cells, vitamins, and other things in it. It will not work for this.

I used some "Yeast Nutrient" because that is what I had around. As you can see, at the various temperatures where the reaction should have been taking place, it wasn't. Oh well, waste not want not. I poured it in a preheated mason jar and later inverted it, caramelized it up a bit more, and used it in a little British Fresh Hop Bitter which turned out delicious.

Once back from the store with some proper DAP I set out again. As you can see, this time I got a much more marked color progression. The first syrup I took a bit far, maybe 295 and it has an edge of burnt bitterness, but also exhibits dark stone fruit, plums, cherries, and a deep dark rumminess. I think it will be great in a Strong Dark.

One problem though was that, despite my best candymaking techniques, I could see small sugar crystals starting to form. This wouldn't be shelf-stable indefinitely. Yes, you could just make this on the day of brewing and pitch it right in at the end of the boil. But I figure it's better to make it beforehand and have it ready when you need it. No one wants to clean a boilover of this stuff, brought about by a busy and inattentive brewer.

So I set out again and made a batch of Amber, bringing it up to only 280 degrees. This time, at the end when I added the water back in I also added a tablespoon of tartaric acid. Bringing the whole mess back to a boil with this acid addition partially inverted it, meaning that some of the sucrose broke down into simpler sugars, fructose and glucose, which act to impede crystallization. This one was a much, much smoother syrup.

Just for fun I put a pound of honey on the back burner and caramelized the hell out of it. Unfortunately I was wrapped up in the candi sugar experiment, and it went a bit far. But it's still got a really interesting flavor, which I'd describe as burnt marshmellows with an edge of honey.

Finally some advice:

Ventilation. The syrup will pump out ammonia in the early stages. Don't take a big whiff, and make sure you open windows or run your stove fan. It was...intense.

Fresh air good!

Choose the right pot. You want one with a thick, conductive bottom and high walls. The syrup will bubble up and I promise you, you don't want a caramel napalm spill. I've got a nice high wall 4-quart All-Clad that works great. If it's too big you'll get a hot spot in the middle, which could make for uneven browning and probably darker syrup than you're shooting for.

Prevent crystals. Stir in the sugar really well at the beginning but stop stirring once it comes to a boil. You can take a pastry brush and some water and wipe down any sugar crystals from the side of the pan, if they're left there they could provide nucleation points for crystal growth later. I do recommend inverting the syrup when you're done, or you could just add a few tablespoons of corn syrup (glucose) at the end.

Preheat your jar if you're using glass. Let the syrup cool to at least boiling temp before pouring it in the jar and be sure to fill the jar with hot water for a few minutes first. Otherwise it may shatter from heat shock. Broken Glass. Scalding caramel. Bad news.

I'll be trying out my syrups in a series of brews to come, stay tuned!

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You Say Potato, I Say Ye Chick'n Of The Dirte

So the Potato Project is officially finished. In terms of rigorous scientific method it was a total disaster. Which is why all my evidence will be of the best kind: anecdotal.

I managed a harvest of about 18 lbs of Yukon Gold and Purple potatoes from two 1 lb. packs of starter potatoes. Not bad, but not great. I think I can do better next year.

Here, in short, is what I learned.

1. Potatoes are really, really easy to grow. Seriously. I neglected the hell out of them and they still grew just fine. Barely watered them all Summer. Never fertilized them once. Subjected them to daily psychological and emotional abuse. The soil was just a 2:1 mix of garden dirt and compost, without any lime added to soften it and no fertilizer. And yet they struggled through it. Lesson learned: Potatoes appear to be immune to psychological torture. And yeah, I probably should water them more next time. Maybe a dose of fertilizer wouldn't hurt either. But damn, potatoes sure are hardy critters.
2. Potatoes grow just fine in whatever you put them in. Just plant them near the bottom and mound away. In terms of yield, I didn't notice a difference between the boxes and the grain sack. The potatoes in the plastic tubs were larger, so I guess the tubs win. But those potatoes were planted a couple weeks before the rest, so they had a head start. Lesson learned: plant earlier. Around St Patty's.
   
3. The plastic tubs and the grain bag held up just fine and will be used again next year. The cardboard boxes though... Ok. They held up just fine, in that they more or less kept all the soil in and supported the plants as they grew. But the bottom did eventually rot out around them, so moving them once planted: not an option. Also my Weedwhacker did a number on the cardboard, so watch out for that one. But it was nice to chuck the boxes and spent plants into the compost bin all at once at harvest time. No fuss, no muss. Lesson learned: the plastic bins are probably the best, but cardboard worked out just fine. I seem to be racking up old tires right now, so I may try the tire stacking method next year too.
4. I recommend harvesting on a sunny day if possible. It's much more pleasant to dig around in the dirt and the potatoes are easier to spot.. Also, they face less chance of molding or anything else untoward.
5. Growing potatoes in boxes is a great way to plant them without having to dig up your landlord's lawn or put in a bed. I'd say if you put a good tarp down underneath (to help with cleanup) you could do this pretty much anywhere.
   

So the harvest is now in a big paper bag, sitting in the house in a corner. You need to keep the newly harvested potatoes in the dark and reasonably warm for a couple weeks in order to "cure" them. The skin thickens up and dries out a bit, giving them a much longer shelf life.

Not that they'll last that long. They're delicious.

Died back and ready to harvest!

Rotten right down to the core.

Digging Yukons is fun. They're like buried gold bars. Arrr, treasure!

Sometimes I can take OK photographs.

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Project: Rain Barrel

So Saturday my friend Al arrived at my doorstep with one of the stranger birthday presents I've ever received, a 55 gallon plastic drum. "This guy was selling them on Craigslist for like $20, so I bought two!" It was from the back dock of some kind of bakery and contained 'Maltitol', a sort of sugar-alcohol artificial sweetener. It was slightly sticky, and smelled of cupcakes.

Actually, as birthday presents go this one is pretty sweet. Part of our renewing out lease was an effort to cut down on our water bills. Get landlord to fix leaky things, put new guts in the toilet, etc.. A rain barrel was also on my mind. So seeing how it was Memorial Day weekend and we had nothing else going, Al and I hopped into the car and sped off to Home Depot.

Rain barrels are actually really easy to build. At its heart you need something to divert your rain gutters into the top, then something to filter leaves and bugs, then a spigot on the bottom. Finally, and most importantly, some kind of overflow setup (more on this later). The goal was to make it modular, so we could fix anything that went bad or was ill-thought-out. I wanted it to cause little or no damage to the existing gutter system, so I can put that back together when I eventually move. I also wanted the water to divert well away from my heating oil bunker, and still allow access to it. So we looked around the yard, looked around the garage, wandered around Home Depot for a while, and came up with this setup.


The gutter diverts (via some duct taped pipe fittings) to a hole on the top. In there is an atrium grate, with window screen rubber banded on to keep bugs out. The spigot is a threaded plastic electrical bulkhead, glued in with a bunch of Plumber's Goop glue. A garden faucet is screwed on that. The overflow is a 2" to 3" ABS coupler, glued in with more Plumber's Goop at a sloping angle. The overflow and main pipes were cut from an 8' section of 3" PVC that I used to protect my fishing rods during the move. The whole thing is propped off the ground by some sections of 4x4 that was left over from building the raised beds in the garden. All told, the barrel cost about $20. (Well, $40 if the barrel itself hadn't been a gift.) But how well does it work?

Do you know how many gallons of water pour off your roof every time it rains? A LOT. The guestimation formula is:

Roof Square Feet x 0.6 = Gallons of Water per Inch of Rain.

Based on City estimates, I'm going to say that rain gutter drains about 1/3 of my 1500 sq. ft. roof space, maybe 500 square feet. Which means that for every inch of rain 300 gallons fall on that part of the roof! Given that it rains about 37 inches annually in Seattle, that's 11,100 potentially useful gallons that otherwise go to the storm drain.

Here's where the overflow comes in. As we finished the project it began to drizzle. Soon we could hear a drip, drip, drip in the barrel. By morning, it was full. Completely full. 50 gallons. The overflow was draining nicely into the blackberries off on the side of the house. Guess this is why people put three or four barrels in series. But since it takes 1/6 of an inch of rain to fill the barrel, and it rains about 150 days a year here, I don't think I'll run out very often. My garden's not huge anyway, and I don't water the lawn in the Summer.

The BIG use I had planned for this was in cutting down on my brewing water use. My plate chiller uses a lot of water, usually 20 gallons or so to cool 5 gallons. Typically I either just drain this off, or use it to water plants if it's Summer. Today though, I used rain! And it worked pretty well, I got a good cooldown to 66. Perfect for ales! Unfortunately, of course I was brewing a lager... Best part though, I just poured the used water back into the barrel. This cut my total brewing water use down by at least half.

Of course, the City charges me about $3.80 for 100 cu. ft. of water (over 700 gallons) so in terms of savings...yeah I saved 11 cents. Wooo! But it's about Green building, and the DIY gratification I guess. My part of the city is under a major stormwater reclamation project right now, as each of those 11,000 gallons would otherwise drain into Shilshole Bay. And once I start watering the garden more often the gallons will start piling up.

Unfortunately the flow from the barrel is pretty slow. I blame drag from the long hose I have attached to the barrel, I'll try a shorter one and see if that changes anything. No way I'll be spraying anything with water pressure from the barrel, but if I get a watering can and maybe a soaker hose I should be set.

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Chive Blossom Vinegar

My chive plant overwintered just fine and is already flowering. So just for kicks I picked a handfull of the flowers and stuck them in a bottle with some white wine vinegar. A week later it looked like this:


What a fantastic neon-pink color. As for taste, it's garlicky vinegar. Goes great in salad dressing.

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The Potato Project

How about another garden post? This year we're growing potatoes for the first time, but I'm trying something a little different. One of the problems of growing potatoes in a bed is that potatoes are subject to a wide and interesting variety of diseases and over time your bed will probably develop blight. So you'll need to rotate beds at least every three years. On top of that, potatoes need to be mounded, so they also take up a lot of space.

Or do they? One solution is to grow them in containers. As the plant grows, you 'mound' by raising the dirt level in the container. Every time it is about 4" above the soil you add 3" of new dirt. The plant responds by growing taller, and will start to shoot off future potatoes from the newly buried stalk. When the season is over you can just dump the whole container out on a tarp and sift through it to find the taters. If it looks like there's a disease afflicting one container, it is isolated to that container's soil, which can be disposed of.

I've seen people grow them in a variety of things. Garbage cans, old oil drums, packed earth columns. A stack of old tires is interesting: as the plant grows you just stack on tires and fill with more dirt. So I decided to try a few different things, with the goal of finding something cheap or recycled that works well. At the end of the season I'll weigh the potatoes harvested from each container and compare.

First up are two big storage lugs that I got at Home Depot for about $4 each. They're 18 gallon capacity. I took a 3/8" spade bit and drilled drainage holes all around the bottom. Then put in about 3" of moisture control potting soil. (Potatoes do not like wet toes.) Then put four little Certified Seed Potatoes in and covered them with about an inch of soil. Pros: cheap, easy, big, reusable. Cons: cost $ (though not much), not recycled, possible chemical transfer from cheap-ass plastic?

Second, a cardboard box. I know this seems crazy, and it might be, but hear me out. It only has to last for one season, and if you've ever left cardboard outside for a while it holds up better than you'd think. And at the end of the season I can just toss the whole thing in the compost bin. This one was a leftover box from a 6-gallon carboy, and my only concern is that it may be too small. Poked some holes in the bottom and planted as above, but only three seed potatoes. Pros: free, recycled, compostable. Cons: chance it will completely fall apart on me. But I can always use duct-tape to reinforce it.

Third, a malt bag. A leftover Maris Otter bag to be precise. Took the plastic inside-liner out and rolled the bag down the sides. The plastic mesh should drain well. Filled and planted as above, again only three potatoes. My favorite part: as the plants grow I can just unroll the bag up as it fills, meaning the plants will probably get more light in the early stages (not being shaded by the walls of the container). Pros: free, possibly reusable(?), recyclable, quite large, and the whole-roll-up-thing is neat. Cons: a bit floppy, I'll have to lean it against something as it gets more full.

So now we let them grow. I'm planting "All Blue" purple potatoes and Yukon Golds. All the purples are in, and soon as I get another malt bag and reasonably same size cardboard box I'll get the last of the Yukons in. I'm hoping to end up with 30-40 lbs of each by the end of the season. We'll see.

UPDATE 9/17/10

The Final Results

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Garden 2010

Check out that gorgeous day in Seattle! The new raised beds are in and the garden is prepped for 2010. We moved right around the beginning of June last year, which sortof cut the preparation/harvest cycle in half. As a result, we grew a few things in pots but it wasn't really on a big scale.

So this year around we decided to do it right. I built three 6' x 2' raised beds in the back, up against the garage and the back fence. The fences in the yard block the sun during part of the day, but the house also blocks afternoon sun in the back, so I decided that this was probably the ideal place. Even this early in Spring it gets sun from about Noon to maybe 5:30, though it's getting dark about 7:30 right now. Oh sweet June ... dark at 10:00. As the sun gets higher in the sky it will get even more sun too. So I think this will work.

Each bed is made from two 8' x 2"x 12"s, and about half a 4' x 4'. Not pressure treated because of poison and not cedar because I'm not made of airports. So it won't last more than a couple years, but hey, we rent. I had trouble organizing the topsoil to fill it. I only needed about a cubic yard, but I also knew I'd need compost. So I settled on a yard of premium garden topsoil from Sky Nursury and a half-yard of compost. Had a local 'man with a van' deliver the small mountain, which cost as much as the soil did. Ugh. But I don't know anyone in town with a pickup, and the hassle of U-haul was worth the $10 savings to have this guy pick it up for me. And he was quick and relatively cheap. Anyhow, last weekend we got to work with shovels and now the beds are in.

All told the garden now has:

• Snap Peas
• Ruby Spinach
• Various Lettuces
• Purple Mustard Greens
• Green Onions
• Shallots
• Leeks
• White (Hakurei) Turnips
• Mizuna
• Thyme, Parsley, Chives, Rosemary

I'm gearing up to plant some Yukon Gold potatoes soon as my seed potatoes start to sprout. This will be its own weird post. Some radishes will go in one of the beds to kill the time until tomatoes are in season. Yard Long beans will go up against the trellising in the middle bed next month.

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Brewday: The Great Classic American Pilsner Off

American Pilsner.

Could any beer be more loved, and loathed, than American Pilsner? Loved, because it makes up the vast, vast majority of beer sold in this country, and increasingly, the world. Loathed, because it has a reputation for being tasteless, bland, low-brow and unstoppable in its quest for total world beer domination.

It's hip to trash on American light lager beers when you're a homebrewer/beer snob. After all, we owe much of the current craft brewing movement to a rejection over the last 40 years of these mass-market lagers by small brewers and their supportive customers. Popular mass-market beers are bad, because they're popular and mass-market, while all the cool kids drink craft beer.

This contrarian stance seems a very human one to take. Many people start drinking fizzy yellow beer, then move on to more complicated styles as they get into brewing or are exposed to more craft beer. Your tastes grow up. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways."

I was going to paraphrase that as "When I was a child, I drank as a child..." but that didn't seem quite right. The point is that these beers are something you move past as a regrettable proof of your earlier state of ignorance. Now you're a Big Boy and drink nothing but Double IPAs and Russian Imperial Stouts. You rebel, you.

Eventually though I think we come full circle. The fact is, American Light Lagers are very, very hard to brew. There is no room for error, nothing to hide behind. And it's a technological marvel that every can of Bud tastes the same the world over. Seriously, that's an achievement on par with the Moon Landing. So you begin to respect it, in a grudging kind of way.

But it's still, well, bland. But it is designed to be that way. The irony of American Lager is that the very height of the Brewing Arts is used to produce a beer that tastes as much like nothing as possible.

But it wasn't always like this. What if there was another way?

The Classic American Pilsner

The story of American Light Lager is the story of Railroads, Immigration, Prohibition, Class Warfare, Junk Science, Television, Advertising, War, Monopolization, Baby Boomers, the Growth of the Middle Class, Suburbia, and well, basically, the story of everything that happened in the last 150 years. In short, way too complicated for much discussion here. Suffice to say, many factors contributed to a race-to-the-bottom in terms of flavor. Bud-Lite today doesn't taste anything like Budweiser did, say, 120 years ago. In fact, the beer that built the fortunes of Messrs. Busch, Miller, Coors, and Pabst was a very different beast indeed.

So why not make one? After all, the joy of homebrewing is the ability to brew whatever strikes your fancy. Why not brew a Classic American Pilsner like Grandpa, or even Great-Grandpa might have drank when he was young?

Unfortunately, this beer is functionally extinct. What would such a beer look like? Much of the homebrewing revival of the style can be attributed to the writings of Jeff Renner, whose research and methods have been used for years by homebrewers resurrecting the style at home. (See The Revival of the Classic American Pilsner, Zymurgy, 2000; and Reviving the Classic American Pilsner - A Shamefully Neglected Style, Brewing Techniques, 1995.)

Traditionally, recently immigrated Continental brewers would have been faced with a challenge. Most barley grown in America back then was 6-row, meaning that the kernels grow in six vertical rows around the stalk, instead of just two as in 2-row barley. This created a problem, because 6-row has higher protein and thicker husks than 2-row, which means it could cause chill haze when used to brew the newly popular, and preferably clear, lager beers.

But 6-row had other tricks up its sleeve. Firstly, it was suited to a wider variety of growing conditions which meant that it was planted and thrives in many areas of the country. When malted, 6-row also had the benefit of increased enzyme levels over its 2-row brother, meaning it could easily convert high percentages of unmalted grain adjuncts. The higher percentage of husks also meant that lautering was fairly easy, even with gummy adjunct grains. Substituting in a percentage of corn or rice meant that the protein levels of the 6-row could be tempered a bit, resulting in a clearer beer, while the cheaper adjuncts and ready availability of the malt saved the brewer money. Consumers also enjoyed the mellow sweetness of corn, and the crispy dry quality of rice. It is a match made in heaven that continues in the American Light Lagers and Malt Liquors of today.

So what's the difference between those beers of yesteryear and today's beers? Well, there are several important technical differences in the industrial brewing process, but I think the most important difference is hops. The German and Czech brewers tended to hop these beers like a Continental Pilsner, making the hops noticeable not just as bitterness but also in taste and aroma. Traditionally they would have used Cluster, America's historic variety, but also possibly some of the Noble varieties, either imported or cultivated for the brewery. But over the years this hoppiness was slowly chipped away, until now most American Pilsners are about 1/3 as hoppy as their forebearers.

So in a nutshell, a Classic American Pilsner (or CAP, as they're often affectionately called) is a light lager, made with 6-row malt and high percentage of corn or rice, probably a bit stronger than modern lagers, and hopped at a level similar to a German or Czech Pilsner.

Well, I'm up for a challenge and my New Years Resolution was to brew lighter, more drinkable beers, so I figured I'd give it a try. I set out to write a recipe in BeerSmith, trying to use as many ingredients that I already had as possible. Most notably the beer would be based on 2-Row pale malt, because I had a 50# sack of it.

Another important step would be the use of First Wort Hopping. An ounce of my hops, normally destined for late addition for flavor and aroma, would instead go into the freshly run-off wort and kept hot (175-180) for the duration of the sparge. This results in a smoother bitterness, and retention of aromas and flavors that would normally be boiled away in a conventional hop addition. Why this works no one really knows. One theory is that the hop oils and acids attach somehow to other molecules in the wort prior to the boil, which helps them survive the process and emerge on the other side. Personally, I chalk it up to magic elves. Thank you magic elves.

Water is really important for pilsners, and Seattle's water is, big surprise, basically rain water. In the winter our water comes from rainfall, and in the summer it's melting snow. So it's well suited to brewing Pilsners. Just a little calcium chloride would be needed to drop the pH into the right area, and lactic acid to lower the pH of the sparge and knock-out water.

But as I worked on the recipe I quickly got in over my head, mostly due to mash schedule issues. Protein rest or no protein rest? Multi-step, or just infusion? Cereal mash or flaked corn? Decoctions? Argh...

So I sent a post out on AHA Techtalk to see what others thought and ended up kicking a beehive. I received a lot of advice, opinions, uppity snide comments, and well meaning suggestions, much of which was contradictory. Finally I even heard from Jeff Renner himself. Based on his suggestions I put a recipe together, but I was still somewhat attached to the first one I'd cooked up by myself.

The Project - A Tale of Two Pilsners

In the end I decided that I would brew two CAPs. One I would make as simply as possible. 2-row malt, flaked corn, single infusion. The other would more or less follow the recipe in Renner's 2000 Zymurgy article. 6-row malt, corn grits in a cereal mash, with multiple rests following the traditional American Double Mash schedule. Yeast will be the same. Hops the same. Water treatment the same. Fermentation temp the same. Carbonation levels, etc.

It was to be a battle of convenience vs. authenticity. Historical Perspective vs. Modern Sensibilities. At the end, I'll take a couple growlers to the club meeting and see what people think. Was it worth the extra effort? Is one more stylistically accurate, but the other tastes better? Well have to wait and see.

Brewday #1: CAP 'n Trade 2-Row Classic American Pilsner

This recipe was designed to use ingredients I already had, and to be a simple and easy as possible.

Classic American Pilsner, All grain, 5.25 gallons, 90 minute boil
Est. O.G.: 1.057
Est. F.G.: 1.015
Est. ABV: 5.6%
Act. O.G.: 1.060, overboiled so diluted down to 1.053 with distilled water
Act. F.G.: 1.011-1.012
Est Act ABV: 5.5%
32.5 IBU
3.7 SRM

Grain Bill:

• 8 lbs 2-Row Pale Malt (Great Western)
• 3 lbs Flaked Corn

Mash: Single Infusion Mash at 150, then infusion to 170 for mash-out. Added a couple handfulls of rice hulls with the mash-out infusion, and 0.1 ml lactic acid to the knock-out infusion water.

Mash Water treatment: 3 gm Calcium Chloride. Campden tablet to remove chloramines.

Sparge water treated with 0.5 ml lactic acid. Collected 7.5 gallons for the boil.

The Boil:

• 1 oz Domestic Hallertau, leaf, 4.7% AA. First wort hop.
  
• 1/4 tsp Calcium Chloride at 90 (to help buffer pH of boil)
  
• 1 oz Domestic Hallertau, at 60 minutes.
• 0.25 oz Domestic Hallertau, at 15 minutes.
• Whirlfloc tablet at 15 minutes.

After 90 minutes, cooled to 53 degrees using my plate chiller. Settled cold break in carboy for two hours in a chest freezer set at 40 degrees, which you can see in the image to the left. Racked off of cold break into another carboy and oxygenated wort. Pitched two packets dry SafLager-23, rehydrated in warm water with some GoFerm 15 minutes prior to pitching.

Fermenting in a fridge set to 48 degrees. I'll pull it out and give it a D-rest at 60 degrees for three to four days after 9 days fermenting cold. Then lager for 6 weeks at 34 and keg.

Notes:

Nearly flawless brewday and super easy. Had my first boilover in a long time though, too busy blogging... :) Minor mess, need to pay more attention! Vigorous boil to encourage protein break, actually overboiled wort and had to dilute with distilled water. My tap water is cold right now, on full blast it was chilling to 53. Not too shabby, was shooting for 48-50. Mash was easy, but flaked corn tends to float, which made seeing the sparge water level over the grain bed a bit difficult.

Procedure for first wort hopping: collected a gallon of wort in a 5-gallon bucket, then mixed in the 1 oz. of leaf Hallertauer First Wort Hops. Continued to collect wort until I had three gallons in the bucket. Transferred to the kettle and kept wort and hops around 175-180 degrees as best I could. As the rest of the wort continued to sparge I kept adding it to the kettle at 1 gallon intervals, keeping it hot, until I had the full boil volume and began the boil.

So there's the 2-row CAP. Two days later I invited some interested members of my homebrew club over and we brewed the 6-row CAP.

Brewday #2: CAP 'n Trade 6-Row Classic American Pilsner

This one is designed to be a far more traditional CAP than the 2-row version. The recipe is based on Jeff Renner's 2000 Zymurgy article. It utilizes a cereal mash, which gelatinizes the starches in the corn grits and acts as a sort of decoction to pull the main mash temperature up for an alpha rest at 158. Otherwise pretty much everything is the same: water, hops, boil time, minerals etc.

Classic American Pilsner, All grain, 5.25 gallons, 90 minute boil
Est. O.G.: 1.052 (6-row has less extract yield than 2-row)
Est. F.G.: 1.013
Est. ABV: 5%
Act. O.G.: 1.050 (Underboiled, ended up with closer to 5.75 gallons)
Act. F.G.: 1.010-1.012
Est Act ABV: 5.1-5.3%
33.8 IBU
3.7 SRM

Grain Bill:

• 8 lbs 6-row malt
• 3 lbs Corn grits (Two 20 oz. packages was only 2 1/2 lbs. It was like hot dogs and hot dog buns, I wasn't going to buy another box just to get that last half pound. So I used a half pound of coarse cornmeal instead.)

The Classic American Double Mash

This was the mash schedule I worked from. I printed it out and posted it in the kitchen so it was readily available.

• Prepped 3 gallons of water at 114 degrees with 3gm of Calc Chloride and some campden tablet.
  
• Time 00: In a large pot, mash in 3 lbs corn and 1 lb 6-row malt with 5 quarts of 166° prepared water to hit 153° F
  
• Time 15: Mash in main mash of 7 lbs 6-row with 1.4 gallons at 114° to hit 104° F
  
• Time 20: Bring cereal mash to boil
  
• Time 30: Cereal mash boiling
  
• Time 35: Add about 1 gallon boiling water to ramp main mash to 144-146° F
  
• Time 65: Add cereal mash to main mash, adjust temperature as needed to 158° F. Have boiling water and cold water ready for this.
  
• Time 95: Ramp to 170° F mashout. Should take about 1.5 gallons of boiling water. Include .1ml lactic acid in water.
  
• Time 105: Begin sparge and lauter

That was the plan anyway, and it went more or less like that. I had to use some boiling water to adjust temperatures here and there. Most notably, as the cereal mash got thicker I turned the heat down, and so when I added it to the main mash it wasn't as hot as it could have been. As a result I had a hard time hitting the 158 degree target and got closer to 154. Oh well. Iodine tests confirmed conversion at Time 95 so I mashed out and began the sparge. Included .5 ml lactic acid in the sparge water.

Sparge, boil, hopping, cooling, pitching and everything else was the same as the previous beer. As a result of the 6-row and a less rolling boil, I ended up with an O.G. of 1.050 and 5.75 gallons of wort. Oh well, at 5% ABV it's still stronger than Bud-Lite...

So there we have it. A tale of two pilsners. They are fermenting away, and the next post will be in two months or so when they've been lagered and kegged. Then comes the taste test. Will authenticity triumph? Will modern malts make a cleaner beer? Will both be good in their own different ways? Most importantly: did I brew a clean lager?

We'll find out.

UPDATE: The Results

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Neat: Paper CD Cases

So I had need to send a DVD-R out today but I couldn't find a case to put it in. On further reflection I realized that it's been a long, long time since I've bought or received a CD of any kind. Time was I'd have a hundred old cases around from every CD I moved into my big old album or when AOL sent me the thirtieth CD that month. Now I feel old.

Well I was on the Internet and I found this...

Papercdcase.com. You tell it the name of your disk and any track info you want and it makes up an origami CD case you just print out and fold. Not a wildly new site but new to me. And neat!

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Jack-O-Lanterns

I like Halloween. A lot. And finally we seem to be in a neighborhood that at least gets some trick-or-treaters and people, you know, put out a pumpkin or two. Also, we no longer have the Miami jungle miasma that visibly rots your pumpkins before your very eyes.

So I went all out on two pumpkin ideas this year.

First up, the "William Tell Missed Pumpkin". I was inspired by this 'Carrie' pumpkin by Rob Cockerham of the wonderful Cockeyed.com (check out his Halloween costume for this year!). But I wanted to do something different. So it began with a large-ish pumpkin. Rule One in proper pumpkin carving is to largely forgo the knife in favor of power tools. Jigsaws work great. Removed a big plug from the bottom to hollow out the pumpkin. Used paper taped on the surface, a sharpie to draw the design, and a push-pin to poke holes along the design, then the jigsaw to cut it all out. Cut some channels in the bottom of the pumpkin to let the pump cord out and water back in. The arrow hole was cut with a drillbit. Inside the pumpkin was a small fountain pump (145 GPM) that I had, and a length of tubing reaching to the arrow hole. In went an old arrow I had around, carefully chosen to fit in the tube. Set it on a cookie sheet and ran water through it... Success! Outside it went and the water was replaced with a fresh half gallon mixed with 2 packets of Cherry unsweetened Koolaide and one Black Cherry.

It was quite a thing.

When it got darker I stuck a candle in there, but it really is better in daylight. If I made the 'blood' any thicker I worry the pump might not handle it, but in the dark the koolaide was too transparent. Also, my pump was probably a bit overkill... I had it turned low as it could go but the added pressure of the arrow in the tube did spray some koolaide around and it took some tinkering to get the flow right. Actually, it worked pretty great without the arrow. But something about it just didn't sit right. Somehow the arrow to the head is cheeky and fun, while gunshots to the head are cruel and tragic.

Number Two: the Devil Pumpkin.

Here it is with a single candle. Fairly impressive. The horns were parsnips and there's a red jalapeno sticking out like a tongue. I was pretty well pleased with it but I thought it could do better.


Road Flares! That's more like it. The smoke and ominous hissing this thing made were almost as good as the flashing red light spewing out of it. Highly recommend road flares for lighting pumpkins. They last a good 15 minutes, they cost me $1.79 each, and they are just damn impressive. And since they burn bright but relatively cool, after all they are designed specifically to not light the side of the highway on fire, they will scorch the pumpkin but won't burn through it. Just get a pumpkin big enough to fit it. Also flares are just plain fun to light for some reason. This was pretty great but as the night wore on I thought we could do better.

There we go! The final fuel of the night is an old Boy Scout signaling technique: a roll of toilet paper that's been soaked in kerosene! This shot flames about 3' out the top of the pumpkin for nearly a half hour. I only soaked the roll for about six hours too, it might burn longer if soaked overnight. When the wind shifted it would belch flames out the eyes of the pumpkin.

It was quite a thing.

And now an appropriately timed word on Halloween Safety. This pumpkin was out in the middle of the lawn, away from the path the little trick-or-treaters would be on, and had no overhanging obstacles to, you know, catch fire and burn the place down. Also we had a fire extinguisher and hose on hand because if Boy Scouts taught me anything other than how to light fires, it was how to also put them out. These weren't needed, it didn't even scorch the grass around it, but better safe than sorry.

Also, we stayed outside to monitor it. Which was kind of nice actually, it was reasonably warm around the fire. I was worried that it would burn up within a few minutes but the pumpkin held its own. At the end it was somewhat worse for wear, a bit blackened with soot in places, but otherwise fairly undamaged. Pumpkins are mostly water after all. I bet it could have withstood at least another roll.

Next year: Angry Tiki God.

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