Spiced Cider

Big beautiful bottles of delicious spiced cider.  Its sharp and clean, the spice is in there, but not like it is in the Winter Spice Ale that I put the exact same spices in.  The ale is sweet and gingerbready, this cider is more like a white wine with really spicy notes.  It's different and very good.

Peppery Goodness

Whether Peter Piper picked them, we'll never know.  It seems unlikely, since some of them came from an asian grocery and some from a Mexican grocery, but maybe...

Salted, weighted, and waiting.

Holiday Spices

So I put this New Year's Ale together back in September (now I'm calling it Winter Spice Ale) and it's time to add the spices.  I have a cider in an extended fermentation (I *always* have a cider in extended fermentation, because you never know) so I decided to do a little experiment and get two beers into the holiday spirit.  Both batches got the above spice blend: cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, whole cloves, and some nutmeg.  I think that's the "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" of Xmas.  I wasn't sure how much to add, so I looked in the joy of cooking under spiced apple pie and put in enough spices for a whole pie.  A good spiced beer is like a slice of pie, right?

If you want to taste them side by side, hit up ilbmke.com for the December 2014 tasting, they'll be there.

Hot Sauce Fever

Sometimes foods have indescribable tastes.  

That can be either a good taste or a bad taste, but there is a sensory X-factor that you can't put your finger on.  Good Barbecue has it.  Sometimes barbecue is just warm meat with sauce on it.  Sometimes its something else.  Something more.  Something that keeps you coming back and signals that everything important was done right.  

Every decision to add (or not add) an ingredient was made with the final product in mind.  Every opportunity to act or wait was taken or skipped based on the clock of the thing being made.

This hot sauce has that thing.  As soon as I whipped it up and tasted it, I thought, "Oh no, I'm almost out of hot sauce!" because I knew it was going on e'erythan'.

Thanks to Lou from 10ap.com who taught the Fermented Hot Sauce Class at Fermentation Fest, and let me take this pint of peppery perfection.  There's more coming.