Jar Of Eyeballs

Anyone who follows me on Twitter has already read about it yesterday, but I finally made another batch of beer. It’s been months since the last time. This time, I didn’t use malt extract like all previous times but started from scratch. This means: crushing malt, mashing it, filtering, and then the rest of the process like all previous times.

“Mashing” means you mix the crushed malt with water and heat it up to a specific temperature so the enzymes that convert starch to sugar are activated. You have to keep a series of temperatures for a specific amount of time, because there are different enzymes that all work at different temperatures. This process is the starting point and determines for a large part the final taste. You can start with the exact same materials and end up with something entirely different if you change the mashing scheme.

A major difference was also that after boiling, there was lots and lots of stuff in my wort (the unfermented beer) that needed to be filtered out. This stuff is mostly proteins from the malt. When I used malt extract, this wasn’t so much of an issue. Getting the stuff out was not so easy, because it immediately clogs every filter. I have to think of a better way to do this next time. It was quite messy!

So right now, the beer is fermenting in my boiler room, where it’s a nice 25°C. The fermentation seems to go very well, and I expect it to be finished in a few days. After that, it’s two weeks of secondary fermentation in the basement, then bottling and finally, two months waiting until it’s ready to drink.

No, this isn’t about hacking a gaming console. One of my hobbies is brewing my own beer. Today, I made something I hope will turn out pretty great. I got started with homebrewing not so long ago, so I’m not yet starting completely from scratch. The very first step in brewing is heating malt in water, wich turns starch in the grains into sugar. This process, called “mashing”, is the most difficult and critical step, and requires you to keep a very close eye on the temperature and time. I don’t do that myself, yet. I use a kit wich contains a dried malt extract wich has already undergone the mashing process.
So here’s what was left for me to do. The kit contained the dried extract, hops, spices and dried yeast. I had to dissolve the dried extract in water and then boil it with the hops and spices. After boiling, the solution (now called “wort”) is cooled down. This has to happen as fast as possible, because when warm it’s very susceptible to bacteria. After cooling, the wort is transferred into a large fermentation bucket and the yeast is added.

The last batch of beer I made tasted like crap, to be honest. I have some ideas of why this is, and here’s what I did different this time:

• I used bottled water instead of tap water (wich contains chlorine). Even though all the chlorine probably evaporates during boiling, I’m not taking any chances. I used the cheapest bottled water I could find.
• I used liquid yeast instead of the dried stuff that came with the kit. Liquid yeast is considered a lot better, but it has a limited shelf life. That’s why the kits come with dried yeast, wich keeps for a very long time.
• I put the fermentation bucket in the basement where it’s a few degrees cooler (around 19°C at this time) and the temperature is very stable. Higher temperatures can have an effect on the taste of the beer. It will probably take a bit longer to ferment now, however.

The fermentation will probably take a bit over a week. After that, the beer goes into bottles, and that’s when the hardest part of it all starts: waiting. The beer has to ripen in the basement for about two months. With one of my previous batches I had opened a bottle sooner and it really makes a huge difference. This means I’ll probably have to wait until september to find out how I did!
All I need now is a name for my brew. Any suggestions?

I’ve written another Instructable, about how to make creme caramel. It’s incredibly easy to make. It’s basically flan with caramel sauce. The hardest part is not burning yourself when making the caramel. And not making a huge mess when taking them out of their pots. A very easy and tasty dessert!

See the recipe on Instructables

No, this isn’t about the movie (haven’t even seen it yet, should really go rent it or something). It’s about my first Instructable! Instructables is a user-submitted howto website. It contains tutorials about almost everything you can imagine, including food. Ratatouille is a French vegetable stew. It contains tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant and onion. It’s very tasty and healthy as hell. I like it either with a grilled tuna steak, or with some bread and parmesan cheese.

Since one of my hobbies is cooking, I’m gonna publish some of my favourites on Instructables. This recipe is very easy, and I have included a lot of pictures so it’s very easy to follow. I chose not to put the full recipe here because the article would be too long, and at the moment it would get a lot more views on Instructables (wich can lead some traffic back here, wich is always a good thing).

Ratatouille recipe on Intructables.