Oh, and by the way...

I won the beer trivia. 

Parfait pour le Vinaigre

I have a new piece of equipment today, which is always fun.  This time it is in the form of a 3 liter Le Parfait Super Jar.  As you can see, it makes a quart jar look like a chump and is now the new home to my first batch of red wine vinegar.

The vinegar is all moving along well, and as much as ma femme likes it and likes having lots of different vinegars, she rightly points out that it's getting a little ridiculous.  Never fear, dear reader, I have a plan.  Vinegar seems like the kind of thing that can easily be corked and  bottled, then stored indefinitely and/or given away.  It just needs to be well finished and aged.

In truth, there is wine.

Time has passed.  Time to pass the wine from one vessel to another.  

I transferred two reds this weekend.  A Pinot Noir that's been going for a while, and a Cabernet Sauvignon that's only just coming out of primary.  The Pinot is getting there: it's starting to flatten out and clear up, and it has a really clean flavor; no lingering, syrup-y, jammy aftertaste.   

The Cabernet is still very young.  This was my first kit with grape skins, and I hope that I never try to mash them all into a carboy again. That was a mess, as was "racking" it to secondary.  A tortured ordeal, but it is done now.

So good.  So easy.  Makes me want to start more.

The (Belgian) Bounce is Back.

It's been about three or four weeks in bottles, and I think this one is on track.  This could be the one, you guys.  It's a lovely light color, with just the faintest haze.  The taste is good, not mind-altering yet, but it is reminiscent of that legendary first batch in the first few weeks.  Now I must leave it be as long as I can stand; three months is when the magic starts to happen.

This is a Belgian Abbey Tripel: clear and light in color, but full of aromatic flavor and fairly high in alcohol content.  A fairly warm fermentation and the addition of some sugar give this beer a kick you don't taste right away, but definitely feel.  

Wine in Line

Second Malbec bottled: 

Cabernet Sauvignon begun:

I've learned a few things, and got a few good tips at a Northern Brewer mead class.  Number one: I think I leave my oak in too long.  After 6 weeks it starts to impart a woody flavor.  In a bad way, like actually sucking on a piece of wood.  So I'm going to rack it out of there before that happens.  Also, more racking, more better, so I'll probably try a tertiary, quaternary, whatever-five-is-ary, until it's as clear and well-aged as I want it to be.  I think a little exposure to oxygen is a good thing for wine, too.  It helps keep fermentation going, and you actually want it to oxidize a little, apparently, especially for reds.  And shaking is a good thing for wine.  It helps degas and keeps things well mixed, which also supports strong and complete fermentation.  In later stages of racking, I will probably also degas with my whip-on-a-drill mixer.  Wine is pretty great.

Vinegar Cycle

I can make vinegar!  

Really it's the bacteria.  

I can set up conditions hospitable to the organisms that make vinegar!

On the left is my second(!) batch of Czech Pilsner malt vinegar.  I may have mentioned that this beer tastes like wet newspapers.  That grossness is totally gone in the vinegar.  I made some salad dressing with the first batch and it was really good.  It does not seem as strong as the store-bought 5% vinegar, but I don't know yet whether that's because it's really not as strong or if it's still got some sugars and alcohol in it because it's still young.  Learning!

On the right is the Ginger Bug starter that will go into my Ginger Beer.  It's starting to get actively bubbly, so I think it's time to get on with the brewing for that.  But this post is about vinegar...

Here I'm starting a new batch of malt vinegar using some Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Porter that tastes like ashes from too much black malt.  I started it with 1 bottle of beer, ~6 oz of "finished" malt vinegar with its mother, and 1/4 cup of table sugar.  Degas the beer, stir in the sugar, pour in the vinegar, and plop in the mother.  I put finished in quotes, since the fact that this batch regrew its own mother just a week after being strained from its old mother tells me that it's not completely finished; also, as I mentioned above, it's not as strong as some of the commercial vinegars I have.

The addition of a significant amount of finished vinegar helps acidify the mix right away and prevent the growth of mold until a new colony of bacteria can get established.  I'm starting to get a cycle going, and pretty soon I want to have three or four kinds of vinegar going, one bottle finished in use, and one batch with the mother colony in process.  Then when it's ready, I can split the active batch, strain some for use, and feed the rest with more beer/wine/cider/etc to keep things going.  Vinegar also seems like a great thing to give away once things get going.

Updates in Jars

First, the preserved lemons.  I'm not calling these pickled lemons for some reason, I think because they are so salty; but then what's pickling?  There's definitely some bacterial activity going on, because it's building pressure and releasing gas when I loosen the lid.  I did not put it in the refrigerator, as recommended by the recipe, it's been in a cabinet under the counter, in the dark, relatively cool.  I opened it once or twice, and the lemons are definitely softer and somehow "greasier" if that's possible.  Also, now, after a week, they are yellower, too; more "lemon-colored."  The jar is usually pressurized a little when I look at it, and I always open the lid *just* until it vents some gas.  it always heaves a sigh of relief and bubbles a little bit.  Sometimes I think it's just air slowly escaping from the pulp of the rind, but the pressure buildup tells me there's definitely lactic acid bacteria afoot.  I want to rush out and fill another dozen jars with lemons, but not until I cook something that calls for preserved lemons.

Next, Vinegars.  There seem to be conflicting reports out there about exactly how long and under what conditions vinegar is made.  The instructor and several people I talked to in Reedsburg said it took weeks or less.  Some of my vinegars have been going for nearly two months.  Admittedly, they are in my basement which is in the low 60s, but I've got them above my furnace, which is the warmest spot.  I'm just now starting to see what looks like a thin film of mother starting to form on a couple of them.

Other sources indicate that it takes much longer to make vinegar.  The Cooks Illustrated DIY book mentions 3 months in a crock, and talking about it with my mom on the phone over the weekend, she said her grandparents used to make vinegar, and it took all winter in the basement.  She also said they guarded the mother with their lives, I assume until they could get another batch going.  The Kentucky Housewife Cookbook (from 18-who-knows-when) lists a recipe for vinegar something along the lines of: "in the fall, throw all your apple cores into an open topped barrel.  Set it under a tree, out of the sun, but where it fill with rainwater.  By the middle of the next summer, it will be vinegar."  For real.

I think my results are more in line with the second set.  I made some salad dressing with the Concord grape vinegar I got from my Fermentation Fest friend, and it was darn good.  I really hope my batches take off and I can get some real production going.  I have a couple cases of questionable beer bottled that I would *love* to turn into vinegar, and I think I would make a quart of vinegar out of every batch of wine I make.  Come on, acetobacter.

To Port, Mr. Sherry

The Port is in bottles:

It is a syrupy delicious mess.  The original label file had January 2013 on them, so I've thinking about bottling this for at least 11 months.  I tasted it once before when we transferred it and added the oak spiral, and it's even better.  Maybe I would say it's a little sweet, but hey: it's Port.  I don't get much of the oak, but it definitely tastes well aged, and I think it will just get better.  The thing I am most impressed with is the color.  In the glass it's nice and burgundy purple, but when it you tip it or get down to the last bits, it has a gorgeous brown tone.

Moving on, the Belgian looks wonderful in primary: 

with a golden honey color and a kreusen like a cloud.  About 12 hours after this picture, it had pushed a bunch of foam up and out of the blowoff hose and had started to settle back down.  So I added a pound of sugar.