The Candle Wine Project

Moving Blog

2010-08-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

For awhile now, I was running my blog on two different blog sites. Even though this blog site is superior in posting videos, I find it to be a little lacking in formatting and administration. Therefore, I will no longer be posting to this site. To keep reading what I'm learning about and watching me grow at making cider and fruit wines, please follow me at:

http://candlewineproject.wordpress.com/

Thank you,
Heather
The Candle Wine Project

Book Review on Infusing Spirits and Making Liqueurs

2010-08-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

Here are some books on infusing spirits and making liqueurs – a process completely legal so long as you don’t sell it.

Classic Liqueurs: The Art of Making and Cooking with Liqueurs by Cheryl Long and Heather Kibbey is part of the Creative Cooking Series and was updated in 2005. It has a nice short and concise intro including the basics, equipment needed, alcohol basis, other ingredients, and ageing before offering up 37 pages of fruit liqueur recipes and 21 pages of non-fruit liqueurs using herbs and spices. It does have some cream liqueurs in it. Next, it has 17 pages of drink serving suggestions, followed by 65 pages of food recipes using the liquors. This seems like a fun book, but there are no pictures to inspire you. Still, it seems very well organized. I accidentally got my hands on the older version printed in 1996, which appears to have less recipes in all the categories.

Cordials from Your Kitchen by Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling was published in 1997. It is set up very much like Classic Liqueurs, but with more chapters breaking out fruit liqueurs, nut liqueurs, herb and spice cordials, cream liqueurs, candy cordials, coffee liqueurs, flavored brandies, rums, and vodkas, and fruits preserved in spirits. There are chapters dedicated to drinks or food recipes with the liqueurs, but instead are included as side notes in the margins. Again, it doesn’t have pictures, but I would probably pick this book over Classic Liqueurs.

Homemade Cream Liqueurs by Dona and Mel Meilach was published in 1986. Not to be confused with crème de liqueurs, which is a sweeter liqueur, cream liqueurs such as Baileys contain dairy cream. There really isn’t another book like this out on the market. It starts off with a brief intro and then the history of cream liqueurs, explaining that cream liqueurs contain cream, and saying that cream liqueurs have really only been on the market since 1979 when Bailey’s Original Irish Cream Liqueur figured out how to add cream to their product, keep it from separating from the alcohol, and keep it stable enough for it to be on shelves for years. Homemade cream liqueurs, it warns, will have a shorter shelf life than store bought because a person at home will not have the same tools to homogenize the mixture. To make a cream liqueur, the book says you will need a blender, measuring spoons, clear liqueurs, flavorings, canned or fresh milk, possibly eggs, and containers to store the final product in. It warns that the quality is a bit tricky to control, but offers up a suggested recipe record sheet. It talks a little bit about theory so that you can later go and experiment to make your own cream liqueurs. It then offers up 23 pages of cream liqueur recipes, followed by a chapter on cocktails, coffees, and ice creams, a chapter on cakes and cheesecakes, a chapter on pies, filled pastries, and fruit dishes, a chapter on cookies and cupcakes, a chapter on candies and confections, a chapter on sauces, quiches, fondues, and flan, all made with cream liqueur in it. While other books might have cream liqueur recipes, I feel that they don’t cover the topic as well as this book does.

Luscious Liqueurs: 50 Recipes for Sublime and Spirited Infusions to Sip and Savor was written by AJ Rathbun in 2008. The library lost the copy, so I can’t really tell you how this book is laid out or the quality of the recipes. However, I do remember this book for having pictures, which can inspire you on how to package the liqueur up, especially if you are giving it as a gift.

Drink Review: Jalapeño Infused Guava Margarita

2010-08-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, my husband and I went to a restaurant, and their drink special of the night was a prickly pear jalapeño margarita on the rocks. We asked them how it was made, and much to our surprise, they told us. Thing is, they used prickly pear puree, which is kind of hard to find, so we modified the recipe to guava juice instead as it is a mild juice. Look for guava juice with lower amounts of sugar.

The process involves infusing tequila with jalapeño, and then mixing it into a margarita drink. In this case, infusing is just flavoring the tequila by letting it seep, but not sweetening it like one would do for a liqueur. This is not a spicy make your eyes water drink, but instead a nice smooth sweet drink that gives a little bit of a jalapeño burn in the throat. The whole drink works together quite well. My mother’s cousins love it, and once we made a pitcher of this drink and offered up our entire liquor cabinet, and everyone drank the margarita rather than touching anything else. Mind you, this was before we made our own beer and wine.

One starts by taking a jalapeño, cutting it open, and removing the seeds from it. I highly recommend wearing gloves when you do this, as the jalapeño is hard to remove from your skin and under your nails, and will burn your eyes if you rub them hours later. Place the jalapeño in a mason jar and add tequila. Since this will be used in a margarita, it does not need to be the best tequila you can find. Cover the jar and let the jar sit at least three days, and then begin sampling it until it reaches your desired taste. This is usually around a week, but it could be faster or slower depending on the jalapeño. Remove the jalapeño, and recover the jar and label it as being jalapeño infused tequila.

The margarita is then as follows:

1.5 shots jalapeño infused tequila
2 shots guava juice
1 shot triple sec, blue curacao, or other orange flavor liquor (or infuse it yourself!)
3 shots sour mix
1 squirt lime or lemon juice (fresh is better)

Mix together and serve over ice.

Actually, I have come across infused spirits recently, including pepper, but why pay the extra money when you can do it yourself?

Other infusion inspirations:

Making Liqueur

2010-08-25T15:57:00.001-07:00

In my last blog, I talked about adding an alcoholic spirit to wine to increase the alcoholic content. But one can also add juice, sugar, and other flavorings to a spirit to make a liqueur. Only the act of distilling is illegal, but if you purchase an already distilled alcoholic spirit and convert it into a liqueur, it is legal so long as you don’t sell it.

Let me back up and say that a spirit is a wine or beer that that been distilled in an attempt to capture only the alcohol, and it is completely dry with no sugar in it. Examples of this include vodka, rum, tequila, gin, brandy, whiskey, and others. A liqueur is a spirit in which flavoring and sugar has been added to it, such as schnapps, Grand Marnier, Frangelico, and others. All liqueurs start off as a spirit.

It isn’t hard to find liqueur recipes on the internet. Some of them are quite simple. My grandfather used to take vodka and mix it with hazelnut syrup that you would use in coffee, and he would call it Frangelico. Some are a little more complex.

According to LiqueurWeb.com, the basic recipe for a general fruit liqueur is as follows:

1 lb. (450 g) berries or fruit
3 cups (710 ml) 80-proof vodka (or 1.5 cup pure grain alcohol + 1.5 cup water)
---------------------------------------
1 1/4 cup (300 ml) granulated sugar

Rinse the fruit or berries. Fruit must be cut into small pieces. Place berries or fruit in a container, add vodka. Cap and store in a cool, dark place, stir once a week for 2 - 4 weeks. Strain through metal colander. Transfer the unsweetened liqueur to an ageing container (glass bottle or container with tight cap). To 3 cups (710) ml unsweetened liqueur add 1 1/4 cup (300 ml) granulated sugar. Let age for at least three months. Pour carefully the clear liqueur to a new bottle. Add more sugar if necessary.

The fruit used for liqueur making can be used as deserts: mix with sugar and use with ice-cream.

Storage of liqueurs
The flavor of almost all liqueurs improves during storage. Fruit and berry liqueurs should be stored for at least 6 months for maximum taste. Some lemon liqueurs (e.g. Limoncello) should not be stored for a long time.

Sugar content
Liqueurs should contain approximately 1 cup sugar per 3 cups finished liqueur (300-350 g sugar per liter). If your liqueur is too sweet, add a mixture of vodka and water (1:1).

Sweetness change during storage
Sugar is converted to glucose and fructose which are simple sugar types with less sweet flavor. Therefore sugar must sometimes be added to homemade liqueurs after storage for some months.

Alcohol content
The alcohol content should normally be 20-30% for fruit and berry liqueurs, except for citrus liqueurs which might have higher alcohol content. If your liqueur has too strong alcohol taste, add some water (or fruit juice) and sugar. If your liqueur has too low alcohol content, add vodka and sugar.

Liqueurs of fruit mixtures:
Don't mix more than two types of fruits or berries in liqueurs. You can make successful mixtures of bitter berries with mild ones, like blueberries and cranberries. If you mix more types you might end up with a sweet-sour drink with no interesting flavor.

Other liqueur making websites:

http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Homemade-Liqueurs/Detail.aspx
http://www.liqueurweb.com/
http://www.guntheranderson.com/liqueurs/flavors.htm
http://www.drinksmixer.com/cat/6/ (some recipes are cocktails, and some are for liqueurs)
http://doit101.com/Foodrink/Home%20Made%20Liqueurs.html

Target SG 1.090

2010-08-23T08:25:00.001-07:00

Lots of fruit are coming into season around here, which means it is time for making fruit wine. Thing is, most fruits do not contain enough sugar to make a wine that is stable. That is to say, the sugar in the fruit becomes alcohol, but not at a high enough quantity to act as a good preserver of the wine. Therefore, more sugar should be added until a hydrometer reading comes out to be SG 1.090. This gives the wine a potential alcohol content of 12%. This process is called chaptalization, and is usually heavily frowned upon with grapes and apples, but necessary for other fruits.

I find chaptalization very frustrating.

First off, one would figure out how much sugar is in the juice that you are working with by taking a hydrometer reading. For example, maybe it reads 1.070. Based on Daniel Pambianchi’s Techniques in Home Winemaking, I was converting the specific gravity to degrees Brix, and having to do all my other calculations in metric. What a headache! However, I have recently found out from Ben Waston’s Cider, Hard and Sweet that it takes about 2.25 grams of sugar per gallon to raise the SG 5 points. So, to raise a 1.070 reading to 1.090, which is a 20 point difference, so 20 divided by 5 is 4, which is then multipled by 2.25, so it would take 9 ounces of sugar times the number of gallons you have.

But wait, it isn’t that simple!

First off, it is difficult to get sugar to dissolve into juice, so it is usually added to boiling water first and dissolved. However, the water can dilute your total sugar! Therefore, the syrup that you create should try to be the highest amount of sugar to the lowest amount of water possible.

Secondly, sugar has a volume, even without being dissolved in water. 1 kg of sugar will have a volume of about 0.7L. Therefore, if you have 1 gallon of juice and wish to add 2 lbs of sugar, those two pounds are 0.9 kg, which would have a volume of .63L, or .16 gallons. Since there are 8 pints in a gallon, one pint is .125 of a gallon, so the 2 lbs of sugar will increase your one gallon by a little over a pint! Either you have to toss some juice, or find a new container to put it in because you now have more than a gallon.

So, when chaptalizing, remember:

You want a target of 1.090 SG to have a stable wine.
2.25 grams of sugar per gallon to raise the SG 5 points so long as there is no added water.
1 kg of sugar will have a volume of about 0.7L, without water. Adding 2 lbs of sugar is like adding 1 pint.

Game Review: Wine Tycoon

2010-08-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

My husband’s computer died a few months ago, so we went out and purchased a new one. Of course, with the new computer, he had to have a new computer game, and while I was browsing with him, I discovered Wine Tycoon by Got Game. I had a coworker rave about Railroad Tycoon to me once, so on an impulse, I bought this game for $20.

I played it for a little bit, thought I wasn’t really impressed. You are given an estate in some region of France, and you have to manage the existing vineyard for weeds, pests, over growth, and soil depletion. You have to make a one time purchase for equipment to do this, and then periodically check in to see if the equipment needs any maintenance. There is a market demand, which helps guide your selection of what grapes to plant, though one would think that some of the market would find the product other places in the amount of years it takes to meet an order. You have other buildings such as grape sorting/crushing, fermentation, and bottling, and you have to build a storage room and purchase barrels for aging. When fermentation is done, it asks you about “blending”, which is really what you have ready to bottle unless you want to set some aside for aging in barrels. It seems to me that you can buy x number of barrels and put less wine in it than they can hold, and the program will treat them all as full when maybe only a quarter of them are. Also, two types of grape wines are never bottled together, so I’m not sure why they still call it “blending.”

The game marches on in time with or without you. In fact, at one point I was cooking dinner and just letting it run, and would periodically check in on it. You just have to periodically check in on the vineyard to make sure it is healthy, on the equipment to see to maintenance, and also deal with blending and possible selling of wine. So much more of it is automated, including harvesting and bottling. I was never really sure if I had the right equipment for crushing or if I needed more fermenters, but I figured if I didn’t, that hopefully, like a real wine estate, the employees would come to me and make recommendations for new equipment purchases. Maybe I just haven’t played enough to hit that point. In fact, I decided to look up reviews to see if I was missing something about the game. There were very few reviews out there, but the ones that did exist were not positive. I wish I had known this before I bought it.

I also found the controls to this game very clunky, and I find myself repeatedly opening windows upon windows, wishing it was all there in one window to begin with, and cursing about how I clicked the wrong button and opened the wrong window. Saving is also a bit odd, as I don’t seem to be able to title my saved games.

Apparently, there is a Beer Tycoon out there, made by a different FIP Publishing & Virtual Playground. If it is anything like Wine Tycoon, I would stay away. As for Railroad Tycoon, I would probably still purchase it because it is done by Sid Meier, and I love playing his Civilization games.

Wine Tasting: Clark County Fair Beer and Wine Competition Results

2010-08-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

I entered a cider and my bell pepper peach wine in the local fair last week, and I got the results and the judge’s notes back. I found the judging experience quite fun, but the entering part quite odd.

I got a blue ribbon for my bell pepper peach wine 12 points out of 20 points, which is 60%. According to the judging scale, that is a “Good” wine. A lot of the comments I got I was actually kind of expecting, but I decided to go ahead and enter it anyway just to see it though. Everyone was talking about it, and when I went to pick up the score sheet, the clerk even commented on the buzz it produced. I’m definitely going to make this again with recipe modifications for next year.

My cider didn’t hold up as well, which could have been because it got shoved over to the beer competition, where it is impossible for them to score the “hops”. It got a red ribbon with 32 points out of 50, which fell into the “Very Good” category. Actually, that is a 64%, which is higher than the bell pepper peach wine even though it got a red. Good news was that was the top cider, but I think next year I would purposely mislabel it as a “apple wine” to get it into the wine competition. You see, there is a organized Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) which has encompassed beer and mead, even those two are made in a wine like fashion. I would not expect beer drinkers to really understand how to judge it, as it would be like having a coffee drinker judge tea.

As far as judging goes, my favorite wine that I had tasted that night was a Pinot Grigio by Ken Stinger. I originally ranked it a 17, but some of my fellow judges ranked it only an 11, partly because it was the first wine we had of the night. As a result, I lowered my score to a 15 due to we all needed to be within 4 points of each other, which we all later regretted, giving it an average score of 13.44. I’m glad that he had a Pinot Nior that took second place with 16.50 points. I wish them luck with their amateur winemaking label, Gam Cellars. If they ever get a license, I would definitely recommend them.

Basic Winemaking Equipment

2010-08-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

I mentioned that a person could start making wine from a wine kit with a purchase of $100 in wine making equipment. Most any homebrew supply store that sells the wine kits have wine making equipment starter kits.

These equipment starter kits usually include a carboy to make a 6 gallon wine kit with, but the price will vary if the carboy is plastic or glass. It should also include a plastic bucket, fermentation lock and bung, siphon tubing, auto siphon, bottle filler, wine bottle brush, carboy brush, double lever corker, corks, hydrometer, sanitizer, instructions. This kit starts around $90. These kits are missing the test jar for the hydrometer, but if you use the bucket as a primary, then you don’t need the test jar. Also, if you were to use a wine kit to make wine, you would need bottles, which you could either buy or keep out of your recycling.

From this basic winemaking equipment kit, there are some upgrades available. Most upgrade the double lever corker to a floor corker, which then increase the price by $100, and maybe throw in a bottling bucket. Some will also offer a wine thief, which is useful, and a plastic paddle.

I could see that getting a funnel would also be very useful and not included in this kit.

Is the basic equipment kit worth it? Well, looking at Northern Brewer Homebrew Supply:

Northern Brewer Basic Kit with Glass Carboy - $119.99

7.9 gallon fermenter w/lid - $21.99 for the bucket and $6.99 for the lid
6 gallon glass carboy - $39.99
Fermentation lock and bung - $1.10 for the airlock and $0.75 for the bung
Sipon tubing – 5 ft x$0.35 per ft
AutoSiphon - $8.99
Bottle filler - $2.75
Wine bottle brush - $2.75
Carboy brush - $4.75
Double lever corker - $24.99
30 9x1.75 corks - $4.99
Hydrometer - $5.99
8 oz easy clean sanitizer - $7.50
Instructions – not available separately, but usually can be found for free

Individually priced total - $135.28.

A savings of $15.29 to buy it as a kit. So buying a basic winemaking equipment kit is worth the savings.

Making Wine from a Kit at a Winery

2010-08-17T06:37:00.000-07:00

A good friend of my husband’s recently wrote me to tell me that a Classic Winemakers in Lacey, WA was having a good sale to make your own wine. There was a bit of confusion at first as to why I was uninterested in this.

See, a place like Classic Winemakers who offer to let you make wine there are using wine kits. Once you have selected what to make, they then make the wine for you using their equipment at their facilities. In my post about wine kits, I said that to buy the equipment to make a wine kit at home costs about $100, but in using their store, you wouldn’t have to buy that equipment. Plus, you don’t have to know how to make wine, as they will do all the labor for you. All you have to do is show back up, pick out a label, and they will give you a finished bottled wine custom made for you from a wine kit.

These type of wineries are not for me because I do have the equipment, and I do want the experience of making the wine myself. However, if someone wanted a custom wine but didn’t want to deal with all the details, this would be very ideal for them.

I know of at least two other wineries who operate like this. One is Bader Winery in Vancouver, WA, and the other is Cork This! in Texas.

Wine Kits

2010-08-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

vineyard to give you the grapes to crush and press. This means that one month you could make a cabernet and the next month a Riesling all from the comfort of your home.

According to “Wine Kits: Save Money, Make Wine” written by Tim Vandergrift and published in the October-Novermber 2009 issue of Wine Maker Magazine (article not available online), making wine from kits is much more economical than buying wine. After spending $100 on wine making equipment that can be reused, the cost of the wine kit can break down into about $2-$7 a bottle. However, the savings is in that that same wine would retail for about $6-20 a bottle. Vandergrift shows how that can really add up, saying:

the example I use is about three bottles per week, yielding 156 bottles per year, with a built in factor of about 20% for wine-related emergencies bringing it up to around 180 bottles per year, or six 6-gallon batches, covering red, white, rosé, and dessert wines… your total cost is roughly $100 (equipment) and $600 for kits, for a total of $700 for 180 bottles which works out to $3.88/bottle.

He gives another example for weddings:

Caterers will tell you to budget ½ to 2/3 of a bottle of wine per person, depending on the nature of the invitees… and the time of day of the reception. If you’re inviting 200 people you’re going to need between 100 and 135 bottles of wine. If you were planning on spending $15-$20 per bottle, the tab would be between $1,500 and $2,700! And you wouldn’t get customized labels and capsules color-coordinated with your bridesmaid dresses (lavender taffeta is just so dreamy!)

Running the numbers makes producing your own wine for an event like this very attractive. Five kits at $120 each, with capsules, custom labels (or DIY for the personal touch) and you’re going to spend under $750 all-in – less than what you would have otherwise.

One other thing to note on the economic front is that you are buying grape juice, and is therefore not subject to any alcohol tax because it is not yet alcohol. That is also savings.

Of course, the last reason for using a kit is pride. It is a good feeling to think, “I made this.”

Admittedly, I have not made grape wine from a kit yet, but after listening to Vandergrift give a presentation at the Wine Maker Conference I attended, I am very tempted to.

Some Wine Kit Manufacturers:

Also, RJ Spangnols has a label called Vinoka, which makes cider kits, and about any homebrew supply store will have a mead making kit.

Book Review: The Compleat Meadmaker

2010-08-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, my spell check is going bonkers on that title, but the book is indeed named The Compleat Meadmaker: Home Production of Honey Wine from Your First Batch to Award-Winning Fruit and Herb Variations by Ken Schramm, published in 2003. This is the number one recommended book about mead, but some of that is because there aren’t many out there dedicated strickly to mead, and this one is the newest.

Part One of this book goes though the history of honey and mead, including the decline and recent resergance of mead. He talks briefly about styles of meads, and then he finally moves on Part Two, the Process.

Learning how to make mead in Part 2 starts with a shopping trip to get equipment and supplies, of which a recipe is then presented. He then sort of goes though the process with the recipe so that you are learning though doing, and he explains along the way. However, there are some things I think he glosses over that should have gotten more attention in the general introduction process. For instance, he says that if the mead is clear and there has been no fermentation for two weeks, it is okay to bottle, though he usually ages for at least six months. Most people I talk to who make mead say that mead is undrinkable unless it has been aged, so he really should have broken this out into an “Aging” step.

Next, he moves into a little more advanced ideas, such as note taking, heat’s influence on mead, sulfites, making sparkling mead, more advanced equipment, and additives such as acids. This section is followed up by a lot of science about the actual fermentation, such as fermentation phases, flocculation, nutrient levels, pH levels, and various issues regarding yeasts. Admittedly, the last part drove me a little bonkers because with wine and cider, there is definitely pH zone to be in, which is controlled by the addition of acids, and I couldn’t get a straight answer out of this book about what that zone might be for mead. This is probably the primary reason I haven’t really made mead. It wasn’t until I recently took a class and asked flat out what the pH should be that I found out mead makers don’t care about pH as it will fluctuate during ferment. They will finally measure when it comes time to bottle, at which point it should be in the same zones as wine for taste and stability reasons. I wish he had said that plainly instead of scientifically.

He goes on to talk about fermentation issues before moving on to conditioning, aging, and using oak. Thing is, I’m not sure how many beginners would read that section, as it would probably be the more advanced people who do, so there should have been a quick summary back in the basics of making mead.

In Part Three – Ingredients, Schramm begins by talking about bees, beekeeping, making honey, honey properties, and varietal honeys with a chart of scientific properties. This is followed by chapters on fruits and melomels, grapes and pyment, spices and metheglin, and grains and braggots. Again, I wonder how much of this is initially skipped by the reader, only to be read when the reader is more comfortable making mead.

Finally, in Part Four, does Schramm get to the recipes, which is contained on eight pages out of a 200 page book. Honestly, I would probably use Making Wild Wines and Meads to gain more recipes.

Next, he writes about how to appreciate mead, including glassware, temperature, evaluation, a brief section on hosting a mead tasting.

The appendix includes ten pages of just honey suppliers, wine and meadmaking suppliers, websites of interest, conversion charts, glossary, a large bibliography, and an index.

Overall, this can be an intimidating book, and it kept me from really going out there and making mead. However, it is highly recommended by mead makers, and I think the technical information would be good once a person has a few mead batches made. It is lacking in recipes, probably because he figures you will be creative and create your own recipes after reading all the technical information, so I recommend Got Mead.com or Making Wild Wines and Meads to supplement this shortcoming.

Mead Review: Mountain Meadow Moonlight Magic Mead

2010-08-12T08:45:00.001-07:00

I have had Mountain Mead Meads before at various beer festivals. The first time was at the Holiday Ale Festival and again more recently at the Portland International Beer Fest.

When I found out that my mother had never had a mead, I went to my local grocery store hoping to find some, and was surprised that I found three. It was in the port section, also grouped with the sweet dessert wines like ice wines and muscats, all of which I like. I bought Mountain Meadow Moonlight Magic Semi-Sweet Mead.

When I was drinking it a few nights ago, wondering how to describe it, it came to me that this was very much like drinking a slightly sweet Chardonnay wine, as it kind of had a buttery feel for it. I agree with the labeling that it is only a semi-sweet or a medium sweet, as it is a mild sweetness that doesn’t overpower the palate.

Looking at their website, I see that my description actually fits with their goals when they made it, as they said it was inspired by semi-sweet white wines. I think they succeeded wonderfully.

Got Mead?

2010-08-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

Mead, like cider, is a growing industry. Check out Got Mead.com. This website has a plethora of information regarding mead, including meaderies, recipes, and other information. It is quite the website.

Some meaderies to check out and try:

Beowulf Mead
Blacksnake Meadery
Chaucer's Mead - sold with a little pouch of mulling spices.
Fair Winds Mead
Honeyrun Winery - they do a lot of meads and fruit wines that are blended together
Iqhilika Mead - they have a chili mead
Meadow Vista Honey Wines
Mountain Meadows Mead - they come to several regional festivals
New Day Meadery - they post up YouTube videos that are kind of interesting, ranging from bees to their latest product and steps in between.
Rabbit’s Foot Meadery - besides mead, they also do cyser and braggots
Redstone Meadery - comes in a blue bottle, and I really like their juniper mead
Sky River Mead

You may have to go to a specialty beer or wine store to find mead, but also check the Port section in wine at in your local grocery store.

As far as finding honey to make mead, start with your local farmer’s market. Also, you might be able to find local honey via associations. For instance, Washington State Beekeepers Association is broken down into regional clubs. There is also a National Honey Board that has a Honey Locator website that lets you search by type of honey or by state.

One other thing I should mention about drinking mead or any alcoholic beverage with honey in it is that it gives horrible hangovers, so be careful with this stuff.

Choosing Honey for Making Mead

2010-08-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

Honey is made by bees collecting flower nectar from flowers, mixing it with a few enzymes, and then sealing it in wax. This process actually makes honey very stable, as it will not ferment or mold unless water is added. Honey will sometimes crystallize, but it is still very usable.

If a hive is placed in an area where there is predominately one type of plant flowering at that time with a few weed exceptions, beekeepers are allowed to call the honey a single variety honey by the name of the plant. Therefore, if a hive is placed in an apple orchard, and the beekeeper believes the honey to be made out of at least 80% apple flower nectar, then the honey can be called apple honey. However, if that guarantee cannot be met, they honey will usually be labeled as wildflower honey, or not labeled at all.

At last weekend’s mead class, they had about 30 different jars honey, in which we got to taste by dipping toothpicks into the jars. I have to say, pumpkin honey was probably my favorite, as it had a little bit of spice to it. I didn’t care for chestnut, as it seemed a bit bitter to me.

So what honeys make the best mead? The first rule is to taste the honey. If it doesn’t taste good, it won’t make a good mead. After that, fruit honeys are pretty good with the exception of melons, which can give off sulfur. We were told to stay away from maple honey, and pine honey apparently creates off flavors such as menthol. We were also told that buckwheat in general does not make a good mead. I tasted the dark colored buckwheat honey, and it was very malty, but they had a second Eastern Oregon honey that was much lighter in color and tasted very different that they said made a good mead. So this proves that there are exceptions to the rule and reinforces that the honey should be tasted first. However, they did suggest that the darker buckwheat honey could be good if blended with other honey to tone it down while perking another honey up.

In the case of the two buckwheat honeys tasting different, according to Honey.com, “the darker the honey, the more apt it is to taste stronger and more robust. The lighter colored honeys are usually more delicate and sweeter in flavor.”

They told us that orange blossom honey and fireweed honey make some very good mead, and recommend it for beginners. I have seen a lot of orange blossom honey from the homebrew stores, but never fire weed. Also, I usually see clover honey in the grocery stores, which makes a decent mead.

After my class, I went down to my local Saturday farmer’s market to see what I could turn up there. Again, I found orange blossom honey which is imported to this region, and clover honey. I also turned up blackberry honey, which I realized to be a lighter milder honey than the other varieties. Still, it tasted good and would probably make a decent mead while supporting my local region.

Review of Mead Class

2010-08-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

On Mead Day, first Saturday of August, I attended a mead class at F.B. Steinbarts in Portland, OR. Mead, simply put, is a fermented honey drink, sometimes called honey wine. It is as simple as fermenting honey and water, but there are other words for mead if other ingredients are added, such as:

Braggot – a mead made with malted grain, usually malted barley.
Cyser – a melomel made with apples
Melomel – mead made with fruit
Metheglin – mead made with spices
Pyment – melomel made with grape juice
And many more lesser known kinds…

After learning how to make fruit wine, I have thought about dabbling a bit with mead. Mead is a honey wine, made by diluting honey usually with water. However, due to Oregon homebrew laws, they could not actually demonstrate how to make mead because it is so simple to make. It shouldn’t be cooked like beer, or it will lose its aromas, and it doesn’t need to be sulfites or pH balanced like wines. Honestly, after the honey is diluted, they can add yeast, which is when it becomes illegal to transport homebrew in Oregon.

So the event ended up being talking about making mead, sampling some meads, and tasting honey. They must have had about 30 different jars of honey, including honey made from the nectar or alfalfa, buckwheat, blueberry, clover, holly, honey, poison oak, pumpkin, thistle, and wildflower. Interestingly, items like poison oak, which causes people to get rashes due to the oil in the leaves, does not have the same poisonous oil in the nectar, making it safe to consume.

Book Review: Traditional Country Winemaking Including Mead

2010-08-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

Traditional Country Winemaking Including Mead was written in 1997 by Paul and Ann Turner. Instantly, I noticed that it was different than most wine making books because this book is chalked full of pictures. For instance, something as simple as reading a hydrometer has six different pictures. Racking is laid out in eight pictures. There are a series of techniques demonstrated in this book on how to extract flavor, be it boiling carrots or soaking berries, AKA, adding water. If you are a visual learner, this is the winemaking book for you.

Another thing that strikes me is how very similar it is to First Steps in Winemaking by C.J.J. Berry. I say this because Traditional Country Winemaking Including Mead also has a brief word on poisonous plants before going onto the recipes. The recipes are alphabetical buy season, which is similar to Berry’s book. Both books were published in England, so they have a lot of the same recipes. I checked to see if they were published by the same company, but they were not.

Just before the index is a wine maker card to copy and take notes on for the batch of wine you are making. It’s not the best record I’ve seen set up, but it is nice that it is included, as most books don’t include anything, and is aimed at country wines instead of fruit wines.

My Experience Judging Wine for the Fair

2010-08-05T07:49:00.000-07:00

The Clark County Fair wine and beer competition that I entered my cider and bell pepper peach wine into is sponsored by Bader Beer and Wine Supply Homebrew Supply. I met the owner, Steve Bader, while attending the WineMaker Magazine Conference in May, and he invited me to sit on the judge’s panel for this competition. Later, and email was sent out to all their email subscribers asking for judges.

There were about 30 judges who were split into teams of three or four, with each team having some experienced judges and some new judges. There were about 80 wines, most of which were fruit wines due to ease of getting fruit versus paying for grapes, and most were sweet wines. My team ended up judging four grape wines and about five fruit wines in about two hours, at which point we had some food and were free to taste what was judged the best by other teams or other wines that interest us.

When Bader invited me to judge, I hesitated. He explained that the score sheet would help guide me, and he was right. It was probably the most useful wine score card I have seen, and I will probably adopt it because it does guide so well. It was broken down into appearance, aroma, taste, aftertaste, and overall impression, each with different scores. Each category had some word descriptions, which I circled if they applied, and then space to write down thoughts. This space was very important, as winemakers, such as myself, would want that feedback as to what was wrong, what was right, what was liked, and what was disliked about the product. The maximum scoring went like this:

Appearance: 3
Aroma: 4
Taste: 6
Aftertaste: 4
Overall Impression: 3

This gave a total of 20 points, so the classifications were something like this:

18-20 Exceptional
15-17 Excellent
12-14 Very Good
9 - 11 Pleasant
6 – 8 Drinkable
0 - 5 Needs improvement

Really, there should be very few “Exceptional” wines, and hopefully most wines get a 9 or higher, with the “Pleasant” category maybe having a few flaws, but nothing to really stop a person from drinking it willingly. Believe you me, we hit a peach wine that we scored a 4-5, and later gave it to others at the end of the night and they smelled it and refused to taste it. It got points for looking nice, and that was about it. The higher scoring wines were also rememberable, while the pleasant wines lacked that something to push them over.

We would go though and score as individuals, and then compare notes. As long as the scores came within four points of each other, and they usually did, we submitted as is, though we usually talked about what we found. Sometimes I felt bad that I didn’t write down very good descriptions, but then talking to the more experienced tasters, I would realize that they were able to vocalize clearly what I couldn’t and so I didn’t worry so much.

Unfortunately, the best wine we had was the first one, which, being the first wine, we rated a little low at 15. It probably should have been a 17, with a ding because it wasn’t clear. It was a pinot grigio, and that wine maker ended up having another bottle of pinot noir make the nomination table for best wines. We also tasted a blackberry wine that we had to ding because it looked more like a raspberry wine, and one wine that escapes me now had very little aroma. We had a chocolate raspberry wine that I called cheap and another gal said it tasted like a tootsie roll. I believe the award for best wine went to a raspberry wine, which was very good. The official results will be posted in a few days.

I’m definitely doing this again next year!

Labeling for Competition

2010-08-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

While I was at my local homebrew store getting bottles for use in the fair, I decided I would go ahead and get some wine labels to print on rather than use my string method. The store sold different sizes from Classic Studio. Part of the attraction to this was that I could get a label to stay on for a few months, but it would come off easily with a little bit of soaking.

I would not recommend purchasing these labels unless certain things were done.

First off, I was smart in that I would design the labels and then print on regular paper and then hold it up to my labels to see how the margins turned out. It took me two hours to finally have something acceptable, but not perfect. These days, so many pieces of software use Avery to guide the margins, and Classic Studios did not. Classic Studios did provide me with what the margins are, but they were things like 5/8”, which is 0.625 inches. The software I was using did not like three decimal places, and kept truncating it to 0.63 inches, and therefore moving it a sixteenth of an inch and messing it up.

There are two work arounds for this issue. The first is that you can actually design labels on Classic Studio’s website, in which they would print them off and mail them to you for a fee. Since I already had the blank labels, this was not an ideal situation. The other work around is to pay about $40 for software from Classic Studio that allows you to design and print off labels. Call me cheap, but I didn’t want to go that route. In the future, I’ll stick to using Avery labels in the future because of ease of use. Actually, I probably put too much work into the labels for that competition, as I saw others just write on paper and use tape to stick it on, and it worked for the competition without all the frustration of trying to make a label that I went though, especially since the bottles were not going on display. Mine did look nice though.

I did recently go back to the store that I bought the labels from, and they had the packages on sale for $5. I told them it was tempting, but too difficult. One clerk agreed, and said that the store did have the software and would allow me to use it if I wanted to. I’ll keep that in mind to use up the rest of my label stock.

As far as the design goes, I went online looking for pictures of apples and then a bell pepper and a peach. I found lots of apples, but no bell pepper and peach in one picture. However, I found an artist named Carol Marine who did a small painting a day in sort of an impressionist style. Now I have a little bit of artistic talent, and I decided that I would give a try at drawing a bell pepper and peach in this style. I’m not as good as her, and I was using pastels instead of oil paints, but I’m fairly pleased with the drawings. From there, I scanned them into a computer and made a few touch ups, and adjusted the framing for the label. However, I was a little disappointed with the final outcome, as I lost the shadows a bit on the apples, and the printed yellow on the label does not show any “brush strokes,” so some of the hand drawing quality that I was attracted too was lost. Not that I’m talented enough to draw like that on a computer anyway, but computers sometimes leave things too sterile, as it has the same color everywhere instead of a variance due to pressure, thickness, and smudging of the medium.

Anyway, here are my first labels:

I used a font called Tall Paul. I wanted something whimsical yet unisex, that is to say, fun but not flowery. It is a smaller font, and I find it sometimes needs to be spread out when I use it.

Classic Studios did offer one piece of very good advice when it came to adhering the label. They told me to find a striped towel and lay it flat on the counter, and then lay the bottle on the towel. I then used the stripes on the towel to help guide the placement of the label so that it went on straight.

In hind sight, I probably won’t use such big labels on 375mL bottles again…

Bottling Bell Pepper Peach Wine for Competition

2010-08-03T08:04:00.001-07:00

Most of the time when I bottle, I use bottles that either myself or my friends or family emptied, rinsed, and saved. Because there are so many different styles of bottles out there, quite often a batch of wine will be bottled into different bottles. Sometimes I even go for different sizes, such as a few wine bottles and a few beer bottles.

After I had blended my bell pepper peach wine, it was time to bottle. Since I was going to enter this into two different fairs, I turned to the competition rules for guidance on what kind of bottle to use.

The first set of rules I was interested in is the Clark County Fair. The rules stated that I was to enter one bottle, which would be open, tasted, and all remaining contents dumped. They recommended using small 375mL bottles, which are smaller than the more standard 750 mL. The other smaller competition I was looking at had almost identical entry requirements, but said that I had to enter two bottles larger than 4 oz – one for tasting and judging, and one for display. Since 375mL is not the standard wine bottle size, I actually went and bought some bottles. Because of the added sugar water, my previously one gallon batch of wine fit into twelve of these bottles.

One other interesting thing to note is that wine bottles, despite how much they hold, be it 750mL or 375mL, all have the same size opening, and therefore take the same cork. So just because I changed bottle sizes did not mean I had to go buy special cork to fit the new bottles. The same is true when using beer bottles in that a 22 oz bottle and a 12 oz bottle both use the same sized cap. It makes things nice and simple.

Finalizing Bell Pepper Peach Wine for Consumption

2010-08-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

Last December, I decided that I wanted to make something to enter into the local fair, per the suggestion of Crush It! As I had mentioned before, I was going through my freezer and realized I had bell peppers and peaches, and decided to ferment them together, and that would be what I entered.

It hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride with this project, but in the end, I did have a unique product. I don’t know if it is blue ribbon material, but I have to try and I have to start somewhere.

It finished fermenting a long time ago, and has been aging for a few months. A few weekends ago, I decided it was time to bottle, even though the peaches in it were still causing a little bit of a haze and fall out. I hope the judges don’t hold that against me.

My husband and I tried it out with three sweetnesses. The first was completely dry, which had a good body, but admittedly tasted a little off. I tried adding a little sugar, but it seemed to make things worse, so I added more sugar, and things got much better. However, to dissolve sugar in wine, you have to first boils some water to dissolve the sugar in and then add it to the wine. That added water did two things. First, it lowered an already low alcohol wine further. Second, it made the wine thinner, loosing some of that body. However, my husband and I felt that despite the lack of body, the taste was much better, and so the trade off was made.

I think if I was to make this wine again, I would definitely boost up how much alcohol would ferment.

Book Review: First Steps in Winemaking

2010-07-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

My local library has a donation box, and every few months they have a sale of the books put into that box to help fund the library. This time around, I found a gem, a 4^th Edition book called First Steps in Winemaking by C.J.J. Berry. The book, which was published in Great Britain, does not give a date published, but I believe it was from 1970. Today, you can buy the 8^th Edition published in 1994.

Berry gave a little introduction, saying, “This little book really started as a collection of recipes, reliable recipes which had appeared in the monthly magazine, “The Amateur Winemaker”. First published in January 1960, it was an instant and phenomenal success…”

It is a lot like today’s wine making books. There is a nice cartoon diagram showing the process in which fermentation happens, and black and white pictures of various winemaking activities by people with 1960s haircuts. This book does talk about growing your own grapes a little, including varieties, planting, and cuttings. It also talks about how to form a winemaking club, and how to organize a wine competition.

The bulk of the book, though, is dedicated to 130 recipes set to a suggested calendar. For instance, one would make a prune wine in January from dried prunes, and cherry wine in July when cherries are ripe. However, some recipes are for making liquors, such as taking fresh pineapple juice and adding enough brandy to it to keep it stable.

Some of the more odd recipes that I have not really seen before include: Birch sap wine complete with tapping instructions, primerose wine, coltsfoot wine, cowslip wine, farmhouse tea wine made with wheat, tea, and lemons, hawthorn blossom wine, sack wine as mentioned by Shakespeare, wallflower wine, pansy wine, oakleaf or walnut wine, honeysuckle wine, marigold wine, marrow wine, meadowsweet wine, golden rod wine, vine pruning wine, and cornmeal wine.

An odd thing is that before all the recipes, it has a warning about poisonous, doubtful, and not recommended plants for making wine out of. I say odd because the not recommended category contains items that there are popular recipes for today, such as potato (how else do you make vodka?), pumpkin, and tomato. Berry claims, “they are not suitable winemaking material either because of fermentative difficulties or because they are not palatable.” Winemaker Magazine would beg to differ on the tomato, as they had several pages on the topic in their June-July 2004 issue!

One nice thing is that since Britain was attempting to go metric at the time of publication, all recipes are given in the British system, metric system, and US system.

Washington Initiative 1100

2010-07-29T07:24:00.001-07:00

This fall, I’ll be able to vote on Initiative 1100, which would allow privately owned stores to sell hard liquor instead of state run stores.

It is really easy to find those in support of I-1100 like me, but I think the best neutral article I have see actually comes from Oregon. The two states have very similar liquor control laws (with the exception of transporting homebrew), so the outcome of this election could very well push for a change in Oregon as well. I recommend you read it.

Part of the reason I am interested in this is that if I-1100 passes, it would also do away with requiring wholesalers. I believe in a perfect world, wholesalers will still exist for distribution, but it would make a small winemaker or cidermaker such as myself able to sell my product directly to a mom and pop grocery store. This is good, because if the wholesaler thought that I didn’t produce enough to make it worth their while to distribute, or didn’t think that the grocery store dealt in enough volume, the wholesaler could deny either one of us business. Doing away with the required use of a wholesaler would promote local business. However, if either business were to grow, then the use of a wholesaler would be beneficial, but only on a voluntary basis.

Clark County Winery Ordinance

2010-07-28T08:56:00.001-07:00

In the United States, to produce cider commercially, one must have a winery license. In my home county, the wine industry is barely beginning to grow, and county officials wanted to know, as published in The Columbian, “Was this a commercial use of agriculture land? Retail? Is food being served? Does the health department know about this tasting room? What about the fire marshal? How many customers are going to come, and are neighbors going to be calling the county to complain about noise and traffic?”

Part of the reason this created some conflicts was that Washington State Liquor Control Board will not issue a liquor license until a winery proves that it is in compliance with local land-use laws, and the local officials were not exactly sure how to deal with wineries, and so a new business that could draw in money to the local economy would be vastly delayed in opening.

So local officials and wineries came together and had the Board of County Commissioners approve an interim wineries ordinance, which will probably be made permanent by November 30, 2010. The Clark County news release says,

The ordinance was drawn up in consultation with winery owners after some were delayed in receiving their Washington State Liquor Control Board licenses because they could not demonstrate compliance with local land use laws regarding wineries.

Clark County did not have regulations governing wineries, which have increased in number only in the last couple of years, and so winery applicants either encountered a confusing permit process or filed nothing with the county.

To better support fledgling ventures and ensure that wineries and tasting rooms comply with fire, building and land use laws, county staff developed codes specifically applicable to small scale wineries in Clark County. These codes clarify and simplify the development process and establish permit fees for wineries, distinguishing them from large-scale development projects.

The interim ordinance also designates acceptable functions at wineries in order to protect neighbors. It sets out regulations regarding access, parking and use. For example, a winery can host a maximum of 24 events annually and events must be completed no later than one hour after sunset. Food can be available on a limited basis, but charging admission for the primary purpose of listening to live music is prohibited.

As approved, the interim ordinance requires compliance with applicable building codes, which will help ensure the safety of those who work in or visit wineries and tasting rooms. Agricultural buildings, including older ones, have been converted to winery use, and a permit assures an annual inspection to be sure the structure is safe.

Video: CVTV news clip (requires Windows Media Player)

I’m glad this is in place, as it will help me open up my cider house some day.

Oregon Homebrew Laws

2010-07-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that it is illegal to transport homemade wine and homebrew outside the home in Oregon. The law has always been there, but recently the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has decided to somewhat enforce this.

I say “somewhat” because it does things like cancel the this year’s Oregon State Homebrewers competition after 22 years. Brew clubs are somewhat canceling tasting events, or pushing further underground.

This is a pity, because Oregon has a lot of breweries, and they would have gotten their start with homebrew clubs and winning brewing competitions like the state fair. In fact, the Oregon Brew Crew nominates a brewer every month to go to the Green Dragon Bistro and Brewpub in Portland, OR to brew up a batch. How can they select a person and recipe if they can’t transport the beer to test it first?

It is a sad time in Oregon….

Don't Ruin My Wine Smelling Experience

2010-07-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

My mother is allergic to perfume, causing her to not be able to breathe, and she starts coughing a lot to try and breathe. So many cousins’ graduations missed because people wore perfume and she couldn’t breathe. I was taught young not to wear perfume.

Good thing, too. When I was in college, my roommate worked for Starbucks, who forbid their employees from wearing perfume because it would change the flavor of their customers’ coffee. I’ve also heard that chocolatiers also can’t wear perfume, as chocolate will absorb smells out of the air, effecting the taste. I believe it because one year, Mom bought a box of peppermint patties and chocolate peanut butter cups, and the peppermint smell was absorbed by the chocolate peanut butter cups, and they tasted awful.

Shortly after spending money to take a “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine class, the Oregon Wine Press ran an article by Janet Eastman in their May 2010 issue titled “On-the-Nose Advice” about avoiding breath mints, perfume, and even smoking when tasting wine. With the mints and smoking, it would be difficult to taste the wine as these two items would have covered up the taste buds with another flavor, making it difficult. With wearing perfume, aftershave, lotion, etc, it is hard to tell if the wine smells like roses, or if that is just you. In all cases, the smell also waifs off, affecting other people smelling and tasting. Some wineries, Eastman wrote, will have polite pleas, “We request that you be considerate of others at this event and refrain from wearing scents that conflict with the enjoyment of the bouquet of the wine. Thank you for your respect.”

In Tasting Club: Gathering Together to Share and Savor Your Favorite Taste, Dina Cheney does say that when sending out an invitation to people for a tasting to include, “A request not to wear perfume of cologne (which would interfere with everyone’s olfactory abilities).” The Wine Club by Maureen Christian Petrosky seconds that.

At my cider making class a few weeks ago, there was a man who wore heavy scents, and I avoided him, especially when it came to drinking cider, as I wanted to smell and taste my cider, not his cologne.

Book Review: The Wine Club

2010-07-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Wine Club: A Month-by-Month Guide to Learning about Wine with Friends by Maureen Christian Petrosky caught my eye as being something different when it comes to learning about wine. Most books talk about specific wines and leave the door wide open for your own experimenting, possibly leaving you still overwhelmed and lost at where to begin. This book is organized to take it slow, one month at a time, with a specific wine and instructions on how to do a tasting that month.

The book still has the generic opening you will find in any wine tasting book, but the most interesting part about the intro is the calendar it has for throwing a wine tasting party. It is set up in a grid, and it kind of reminds me of the check lists for having a wedding, including setting up music, polishing glasses, and even sending out thank-yous after the tasting.

As for the wines included, they are not your usual, and she does chose wines that go well for that time of year, such as she starts with Champagne due to New Year’s. The wines included are:

January – Champagne: Become a Bubblehead
February – Cabernet: By the Flight
March – Syrah/Shiraz: A Spicy Sip
April – Merlot: Merlot, My Dear
May – Viognier: Chardonnay’s Sexy Sister
June – Riesling: Picnics and Porch Swingin’
July – chardonnay: The Queen of Whites
August – Sauvignon Blanc: Get It While It’s Hot
September – Dessert Wines (aka Stickies)
October – Zinfandel: For an All-American Tailgate
November – Pinot: Waxing Poetic with Pinot
December – Pick your Poison

Each chapter then has a “Getting to Know”, a suggested flight of wines, and food and wine pairings for that month. She also provides a “Bang for Your Buck”, a “Mona Lisa” of a super special splurge recommendation, a “Salvador Dalí” wine that is quirky and funky and less mainstream, a “Wine Trend” of gizmos and gadgets, and a “If the Glass Fits” to teach about different types of wine glasses. There is also a page called “Get Your Drink On,” explaining the color, aroma, taste, body, and finish one would expect in that month’s wine style.

Most importantly, each month there is a different “You’ll Never Forget it” and “Wine Speak.” These are the lessons about learning to appreciate wine, and are doled out slowly from month to month instead of all at once. For example, she talks about tannins, vintage, aging wines, and decanting in February, wine spoilage and wine legs in March, and Old World vs New World and terroir in April. It leaves you not so over whelmed, and you are having fun while learning.

When it comes to December, Petrosky sets you lose to host your own wine party, saying that you have the tools from the rest of her book, and that you should be confident in your wine tasting abilities. The rest of the chapter is dedicated actually to cheese and wine pairings, using the format from her other chapters now on cheese, such as “Cheese Speak”, and then talking about regional wines from around the world.

At the back of the book, there are some extra sections. The first one is on etiquette, such as avoiding lipstick to make it easier to clean glasses, don’t wear perfume, sending back bad wine at a restaurant, and more. There is also a page of recommended websites and another for recommended books. The next page is a cheat sheet of popular white grapes and red grapes, and geographical “places that make yummy wine from them.” Just before the index is the very important Tasting Notes sheet for your parties, including complete name of wine, grape variety, vintage, tasting date, price value, aroma, color, taste, body, finish, notes on food pairings, and overall thoughts.

Miracle Fruit Food Tasting

2010-07-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

I was all set up to leave the topic of miracle fruit today, but when I got home last night, we kind of had an impromptu miracle fruit food tasting dinner.

My husband broke out of his beer cellar a Dogfish Head Festina Peche sour beer and a Deschutes Black Butte Porter, both of which we have had before and are easy to find. The Festina Peche, being a sour beer, turned syrupy, much like the other sour beer did that I had before when I had miracle fruit. My husband did not like it, and I ended up drinking it. The Porter took on a creamy kind of caramel quality, of which my husband said was kind of like a milk stout. Later, I tried it again, and I could still taste the hops, but it is a lower hopped beer, and the added creamy flavors did suppress it a bit.

As for foods, I used a list provided by Miracle Fruit Man as kind of a guide. Basically, we found there to be three categories: no change, syrupy sweet, and a slight change. The foods that had no change were ones like most cheeses, olives, and semi-sweet chocolate, we found no change. The syrupy sweet foods were ones like Ikea lingonberry sauce, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice. Here is a run down of what we had, and how it changed:

Porter Beer – creamy, sort of caramel
Peche Sour Beer – syrup
Granny Smith Apple – this tart apple was now a very sweet apple
Cheddar Cheese – no difference
Unknown Soft Cheese (Havarti?) – no difference
Parmesan Cheese – this normally nutty sharp cheese got mellower
Ikea Lingonberry Sauce – syrup
Dill pickles – became kind of an interesting sweet dill taste, but not like sweet pickles since this still had dill. My husband, who gags on dill pickles, still gagged.
Tomato – this was the BEST transformation, as it went from tasting just a large salad type tomato to tasting more like a cherry tomato or the small, really ripe, sweet tomatoes.
Kiwi – very similar reaction as the tomato, where it now tasted like a sweeter, riper kiwi
Kalamata Olive – no change
Lettuce – no change
Broccoli with Lemon Juice – the lemon juice got disgustingly sweet that I couldn’t eat it. The list included suggestions of oysters in lemon juice, but I have to wonder who would want a sweet oyster? I mean, we regularly do not sweeten our veggies and meat, so trying it this way was horrible.
Semi-Sweet Chocolate – no change
Dijion Mustard – no change
Balsamic Vinegar – sweet with a little bit of pucker still
Tabasco sauce – sweet and hot. We had two drops, and while the heat had been turned down due to the sweetness, it was still there. In fact, both of us later commented that we could feel our throats burning, but not our tongues.

I was all set up to have a salad since the lettuce and olives had no change, and the tomatoes were great, but the things I usually used as a dressing were now too sweet, so I abandoned that idea. I will also note that at the end of all this, we decided we needed to have a real meal, so I made nachos because I knew they would taste the same, and it didn’t take long to whip up.

Besides being a fun experiment, I could see how may those allergic to sugar, diabetics, or those seeking to lose weight might find this useful, as one could potentially bake desserts without sugar, using lemon juice instead and becoming reduced in calories. However, it would be easy to add too much lemon juice and therefore make it too sweet. The Miracle Fruit Man does have some recipes posted. Some of them I don’t think I would try, such as the watercress and endive salad because I just don’t think I would like my watercress and endive sweet, but other things like a fruit salad with yogurt dressing made with plain unsweetened yogurt sound great!

Miracle Fruit and Beer

2010-07-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

After reading the Mad Fermentationist’s blog titled “Miracle Fruit Sour Beer Tasting”, I bought some Miracle Fruit Tablets and decided to try them out at the Portland International Beerfest 2010.

I didn’t consume a miracle fruit pill when I first got there, as there were some things I wanted to taste as is without altered tastebuds. It was when I got a Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse beer that I finally tried out one of the pills. I didn’t really make that many notes regarding this beer ahead of time, simply stating, “Eh, it is beer.” So even after five 4 oz samples of cider, mead, and fruit beers, I wasn’t really caring to drink beer. Then I took the miracle fruit pill, and then tried the Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse. It tasted better to me, and I was starting to pick up more creamy and caramel notes, which were probably already there but hidden. Since sourness was being toned down and replaced with sweetness, these characteristics were coming though stronger to me.

Since there were a lot of sour beers there, I tried New Belgium La Folie. I turned to my husband and said, “Wow, this beer must be really sour, because this is syrupy sweet to me right now!” In fact, it was almost too much so, but it was good. When we came back the next day, my husband got a sample of the La Folie again, and it was really sour, but I could still detect the syrup taste on the edges. Again, it was probably always there, but the sourness just put it into balance, and once it was stripped away and converted to sweetness, the syrup taste became dominate.

With my altered taste buds, my husband got 21^st Amendment Double Trouble Imperial IPA, which is a very hoppy beer, too hoppy for my husband. When I tried it with my altered taste buds, I pushed it away. My husband was shocked, “You can still taste that?” “Yes.” He was a little disappointed, as he hoped that with my altered taste buds that I would like it and drink it for him! Also, if I liked it, I might start drinking more beer with him. Now, everyone has different tastes, and everyone reacts differently to the miracle fruit, but this experience is why I believe the CSI: New York got it wrong when they said it makes bitter foods sweet, as the IPA was still very bitter to me.

In hind sight, I should have gone and gotten a porter, which are typically less hoppy and more creamy with chocolate or coffee notes, but I did not think of it at the time. I’ll have to have a miracle fruit tasting sometime in the future, so I’ll try an remember then. I’m excited!

Miracle Fruit

2010-07-20T08:22:00.001-07:00

I remember an episode of CSI: New York titled “Forbidden Fruit” in which the murdered victim was found dead at a party in which people were eating foods that normally are avoided because they are unpleasant tasting. The detectives found out that the people at the party had consumed a Synsepalum dulcificum berry, AKA “miracle fruit” from West Africa that alters the taste buds. In this case, it allowed the victim to ingest dangerous levels of drain cleaner without knowing it due to the altered taste buds. The episode showed the head detective biting into an onion and declaring it tasted sweet.

Now, I believe the writers did twist the truth a little bit writing that episode, as Lindsey claimed that it makes bitter foods taste sweet, but most research, although not all, I have seen says that the berry makes sour foods taste sweet, not bitter foods. In my experience, I tend to agree. Another flaw with the clip is that she did not tell him not to break open the seed of the berry, as so many warn against. Still, this clip does a pretty good job explaining how it works, though I remain skeptical that one could drink drain cleaner.

Miracle Fruit recently crossed my path again when I was reading a blog by the Mad Fermentationist titled “Miracle Fruit Sour Beer Tasting.” Reading about his experience, I decided that since I was kind of talking about taste that I would get my hands on some Miracle Fruit Tablets and try it out myself because it sounded fun.

One thing I should point out that the TV clip got right is how dangerous it can be to alter your taste buds, even for a little while. Taste buds are there to protect you against potentially harmful foods, as you will not ingest something that tastes bad to you. This helps to protect you against some poisons and harmful bacteria.

Portland International Beer Fest 2010

2010-07-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, my husband and I went to the Portland International Beerfest 2010. Admittedly, this is more of my husband’s kind of thing this time around, but I had fun. It was held in the North Park Blocks of Portland near Powell’s Technical Books. The weather was pretty near perfect.

As with any beer tasting festival, we got a glass for tasting. My husband and I were expecting a larger plastic mug like we had been acquiring from so many other festivals, but this time it was a small stemmed beer glass that only really held 4 oz. I really liked it, and will probably use it as my tasting glass when I am tinkering with my own products at home.

I started off my tasting with local Wandering Aengus Ciderwork’s Cherry Anthem Cider. I like cherry, but I found this to be a tad bit on the cough syrup side taste wise.

I tried out Unibroue Éphémère Apple beer, which I really liked. It smelled like an apple crisp, where you had the apple and the oatmeal smell together.

Next, I had Mountain Meadows Agave Mead, which was kind of like drinking undistilled tequila, but it was much more complex. I think the next time I see it in a store, I’ll buy some, and I’ve been eying agave syrup maybe to try making my own.

From there, I tried out Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale, which my initial reaction was that it was very much like a raspberry Framboise, that is to say, a very syrupy fruity beer. However, when I came back the next day, one of the few drinks I consumed was a Lindemans Raspberry Framboise and then the Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale, and the Lindemans Framboise was very sweet and not a whole lot of beer flavor, and the Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale was milder in sweetness with a little bit more beer coming though. Both were very good, but I think the Lindemans Framboise is more of a special occasion and drink it with cake, where as the Samuel Smith Organic Raspberry Ale is a little more every day. However, one should not confuse this with a normal fruit berry, as it is definitely fruiter and sweeter than most fruit beers.

After having that much, I decided that my taste buds were probably numb enough to try a beer without fruit, so I went with a wheat wine at 10% alcohol called Trois Mousquetaires Imperial Weizen, imported by Shelton Brothers. It had a wheat smell to it, and my husband said he was getting a lot of esters (fruit smells) from it. However, I didn’t drink it very fast, so as it warmed up, it got worse in my opinion, and there was some banana notes coming though, indicating a warmer fermentation.

I followed that up with Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse beer, which is a Bavarian Dark Wheat. By that point, my note writing kind of trailed off, and I began conducting an experiment in which I will write about in a few days.

As I have mentioned, we did return the next day, but I had pretty much tried what I wanted to, so I just had the Framboise and Raspberry Ale back to back so that I could be sober a few hours later for driving, as we took the bus on Friday.

Book Review: Tasting Club

2010-07-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

While researching about supertasters, I called up the catalog online for my local library to see what books they had on taste. I came across a very interesting one called Tasting Club: Gathering Together to Share and Savor Your Favorite Tastes by Dina Cheney.

This book starts out covering the basics, including a brief blurb on how the tongue tastes food. This chapter is really devoted to actually having tastings, forming a tasting club, and an extensive section on how to conduct a tasting. It includes how to send an invite, and what to provide your guests to assist with the tasting, such as pens and a tasting grid found later in the book.

From there, the book has a chapter on wine, chocolate, cheese, honey, tea, extra virgin olive oil, cured meats, balsamic vinegar, apples, and beer. For example, with wine, Cheney talks about terroir, how wine is made, different types of wine, location, grape varieties including a table talking about characteristics, finding wine, shopping and storing wine, choosing food accompaniments including a menu and a few recipes, organizing the tasting, learning your palate, a tasting grid for wine, and a wine glossary of terms. This organization and detail is repeated for the other foods, with minor tweaks to better match the subject.

I was fairly impressed with this book and I may try a tasting from it, such as in the balsamic vinegar chapter. However, for something like apples where there are a lot of different varieties out there, this book oversimplified things and only stuck to the grocery store apple varieties.

IBU

2010-07-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve been writing about tasting here recently, and this weekend is the Portland International Beerfest 2010, of which my husband really wants to go. He has been on a sour beer kick recently, and I’m counting six that are going to be there.

But what would I like? Well, since I don’t like most beers because they are too bitter, I look for the IBU rating to help guide me as to what beers I might find drinkable. International Bitterness Units (IBU) is a measurement of 1 mg of isomerized hop oils per liter of beer, so beers that used a lot of hops have a high IBU. And since I don’t like beer due to bitterness, I gravitate towards really really low IBU beers, which includes wheat beers, and, apparently, sour beers. I’m guessing that the bitter hop flavor interferes too much with the sour flavor.

I should note that IBU measures how much hop oil is in beer, but it doesn’t really reflect how bitter the beer might truly be. This is because there are other things that can make the beer bitter (dandelions, orange peel), and then things like sugar or perceived sweetness can balance out the bitterness. For instance, malt is not completely fermentable, leaving a sweetness, and alcohol is also perceived as sweet. If two beers are at 50 IBU, but one is 5% and the other is 8% alcohol, the 5% alcohol is going to taste more bitter. However, usually if a beer is at 75 IBU or higher, regardless of the alcohol content, it is thought of as being a very hoppy beer.

I tire of beer at the festival, there is cider and mead! Local Wandering Aengus Ciderworks should be there with their excellent Wanderlust and Cherry Anthem Ciders, both on tap. JK Scrumpy is one of my favorites, who will be pouring their Orchard Gate Gold. And cider powerhouse Crispin Cider is suppose to be there with their Artisanal Honey Crisp and The Saint. I’m also glad that Mountain Meadows Mead will be back up from California. I’ve sampled and bought their cranberry mead, which they will have with them this time along with the agave mead.

My Results of Supertaster Tests

2010-07-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

My husband asked me what was so good about being a supertaster. Well, more things can be too sweet to them, or more things can be too bitter. Vegetables, in fact, taste bitter to a supertaster, so they avoid them, and thus are more susceptible to cancers, and it is proven that they have more cancerous colon polyps than non-tasters.

However, besides bragging rights, supertasters can be skinnier, especially women in their 40s, because they are more sensitive to sugar and dairy fats, which leads them to not crave junky foods. They also eat less, so there could be less heart disease.

But the real thing to remember about all this is that different people have different tastes, and that really matters in the wine, beer, and cider world. A supertaster and all of their ability to taste might really dislike a drink that a regular and non-taster love. Remember John Cleese’s Wine for the Confused? He had blind taste tests between six wines asking people which one was worth $5 and which one was worth $200, and the group had no consensus. So one person’s $5 bottle is another person’s $200 bottle, and vice versa. While Mike Steinberger was learning if he was a supertaster or not, he said , “I also had a conversation with Tim Hanni, a Napa-based master of wine who has done extensive research into the science of taste—research that has convinced him that wine criticism is pretty much worthless, given how much individual palates vary.”

So remember:

Everyone had different tastes.
Find out what you like.
Don’t let people push you around on what to consume.
Do use other people’s experience on what they tasted guide you.
Don’t expect your tasting experience to be same as someone else’s because you are two different people.

As for me, well, I tried the dye experiment, but found it too difficult to count as the paper was either too far away to see though the hole, or it was getting wet from my tongue. So I went to http://supertastertest.com/ and purchased a test kit. It was a little piece of paper that you put on your tongue. According to the directions, a supertaster will find it to taste very bitter, a taster will find it to taste mildly bitter, and a non-taster will find it tastes like paper.

My husband said it tasted like paper, and therefore, he said he was “bitter tolerant.” I found the paper to taste bitter, but not in such a way that I was spitting it out, so I am just a “taster.”

Are You a Supertaster? Take a Supertaster Test

2010-07-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

There are three main ways to test if one is a super taster – count taste buds or consume two products.

As I mentioned before, supertasters have more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. These taste buds can be counted by swabbing your tongue with a cotton ball with blue food coloring. The fungiform papillae will not turn blue, but instead remain pink. From there, take a piece of paper with a hole cut out of it and count how many pink spots you see in that hole. Supertasters will have more than 30 papillae in that area. BBC Science and Nature shows a good example of this demonstration.

Another easy test to conduct is a Saccharin Test. Take one packet of saccharin (Sweet’N Low) and combine it with two-thirds of a cup of water, and then taste it. For some, there will be a dominate sweet taste, indicating that they are an undertaster, while others will notice a dominate bitter taste, indicating they are a supertaster. Those who find balance between sweet and bitter are regular tasters.

The last test is to consume PROP, which will be violently bitter to supertasters, bitter to regular tasters, and tasteless to undertasters.

I highly recommend reading wine critic Mike Steinberger’s journey to find out that he was one of the 5% of nontasters (not a supertaster) who could taste PROP. This resulted in more testing.

Sources:

Supertaster

2010-07-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

Supertasters are people who have a few more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. One quarter of the population seems to be supertasters.

When I first heard of supertasters, it was in conjunction with drinking wine, and I thought, “Nope, I’m not one. I have such a hard time smelling and tasting things in wine that I can’t be.” Then I took a “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine class. They said that supertasters avoid coffee because of the bitterness, which I do, so that got me looking into supertasters a little bit more.

Here is a list of foods supertasters avoid with comments about how supertasters taste in () when available, along with my reactions:

Burssel sprouts, cabbage, and kale –not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
Coffee (too bitter) – smells nice, but I need a ton of sugar and cream to drink it. And very little coffee.
Dark chocolate – I don’t like it, and will consume only milk chocolate. I won’t touch chocolate chip cookies due to the semi-sweet chips used. And I will hardly eat baked chocolate, such as a cholocate cake or brownies, but it does help to have some milk to wash it down.
Hoppy beer (too bitter) – yup, that’s me!
Grapefruit juice – won’t touch it
Green tea – it is okay, but I would much rather have black tea
Spinach – I like it as a 50/50 mix with lettuce, but straight spinach sometimes tastes, well, dirty to me. However, there are certain lettuces I won’t eat, either, because they are too bitter. I won’t eat Iceberg lettuce because, well, I’m picky.
Soy products – not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
Carbonation – sometimes soda is overcarbonated and annoys my nose, but carbonated beer and cider doesn’t bother me
Chili peppers (burn is more intense) – I can handle them in moderate doses
Tonic water (more bitter) – I love gin, but I won’t drink it with tonic water, but 7-up instead
Olives (salt is more intense) – I like black olives, but not green
Sugary foods (sickening sweet vs no such thing as too sweet for regular tasters) – I do have issues with too sweet, but mostly too rich. So this is a toss up. I prefer fruity desserts, or even things like rolls, but not really cakes. However, I do like sweet tea.
Frosting (yucky) – don’t care for it
Saccharine (strong after taste) – I don’t remember
Alcohol (too sharp – less of a chance of being an alcoholic) – well, I don’t like my alcohol dry, but I don’t consume a drink a day.
Ginger (burn) – I like ginger
Foods should be tepid – even if I did drink coffee, it is served way too hot for me.
Different levels of milk fat (can tell) – We normally keep nonfat milk in the house, but I went to see the in-laws who had 2%, and it tasted sweeter and creamier to me. Same thing at restaurants. And I can tell the difference between goat’s milk and cow’s milk and their cheeses, and a lot of people can’t.
Broccoli (don’t like when raw because it is bitter) – I’ve always avoided raw broccoli, but I love cooked broccoli.
Fatty foods (undesirable due to texture) – okay, I like fat to a degree, but I probably don’t avoid it like they suggest supertasters do. For instance, I love cheese!
This could explain why I don’t like 90% of beers – the hops make it too bitter for me.

Supertasters are also suppose to be skinnier, which any doctor would consider me on the heavy side.

Supertasters don’t care for vegetables, either, so they are more at risk for cancers and there is a link between supertasters having a higher number of colon polyps due to vegetable avoidance. Compared to my husband, to plays with his food rather than eating, I like my vegetables more cooked than him (though not took cooked), which reduces bitterness. I eat them because I know I should.

Sources:

Cider Class: Finalizing Cider and Sensory Evaluation

2010-07-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

All the talk about apple selection, proper levels of acid, pH, and sulfites, and a healthy fermentation was leading up to making a good base cider and the final steps of blending to make a good final product that consumers will buy. Since the cider is fermented dry, many will add some sugar in some form, especially apple juice, to bring some balance to the sharp acids. Some companies, because they added sugar at the beginning to achieve a higher alcohol, will add water at this point to dilute it back down.

My class was broken into teams and handed some base cider and told to reduce the alcohol content slightly and blend it as we saw fit. We had access to a few apple juices, and cut the cider down with that to reduce the alcohol, but felt it wasn’t quite sweet enough, so we added some glucose. At the blind taste test, our cider took second. I felt it was a pretty balanced cider that was slightly sweet, but I felt it was a little watery, but that could not be helped due to the assignment.

What makes a good cider? There is no answer really to that as everybody has different tastes, so a good cider is made by tasting. The process to do a sensory evaluation (tasting) is pretty similar to tasting wine with a few exceptions. This is what our instructor Peter Mitchell had us do:

Appearance: observe color, thick or thin, ability to create “legs” on the glass, sparkling or still, if there is some foam or “mousse” on top, clear or cloudy, and how “bright” it is.
Odor: smell the cider much like you would wine and think of words to describe it.
Taste: When tasting the cider, think of it only in these four words: sweet, sour, bitter, or salty. Technically, this is all we can detect, and taste is a combination of those four. If no one word or group of words jumps out at you, then the cider is “balanced.” Swallow the cider when you are through.
Aroma: with the cider in your mouth, do you smell anything you didn’t before?
Mouth feel: how does the cider feel in your mouth? Is it silky, thick or thin, like velvet, course, tingly, etc? After you swallow, do you have the feeling of dry mouth?
After-taste: After you swallow, how long can you continue to taste the cider, and which of the four descriptions do you detect?

Cider Class: Touring Cideries

2010-07-08T08:31:00.001-07:00

As part of my cider class in Mt. Vernon, I was able to tour three different cideries.

We toured the first one on Monday in Mt. Vernon. Red Barn Cider had partnered up with Tulip Valley Vineyard, and was next door to the WSU research orchards. Years ago, Gary Moulton of WSU had some cider apples and offered them up to someone to make cider. Drew Zimmerman took him up on the offer, and traveled to England to attend Peter Mitchell’s cider making class. Two things came out of that. Peter Mitchell began traveling to Mt Vernon to teach cider making, and Zimmerman started producing cider commercially. I liked the simplicity of his operation. Zimmerman took us through his dwarf bittersweet apple orchard, and then let us taste his cider products, in which he did use Jonagold and Gravenstein dessert apples. From there, we exited out the back side of the tasting room though the laboratory, and went into a three walled open air building to look at his apple crushers and presses. Next door, he had a climate controlled container from the back of a semi truck that he used for bulk storing of cider. On the other side of the crusher/press building was a semi-cylindrical room in which he fermented and bottled his ciders.

On Wednesday, we loaded up in a bus and took a ferry from Anacortes, WA to Sidney on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.

From there, we first went to Merridale Estate Cider. Merridale was a bit different in that it had a much larger production, and it also attempted to diversify into a spa and restaurant. One owner, Rick Pipes, took us around. We started with his semi-drawf orchard, in which he said they also contracted with 3-4 other orchards for their apple needs. Their apple crushing and pressing area was under cover against the main building, in which the fermentation tanks were inside. We also toured their bottling area. Pipes also had another project going on, and briefly showed us his alcohol distiller, in which they distilled cider and other products into eau de vie. We then sat down to try some of the products with lunch, including the eau de vies, cider, ciders fortified with eau de vie, and ciders in which sugar was added at fermentation time to increase the level of alcohol. Interestingly, Merridale bottles the ciders in plastic bottles, as it is easier to recycle than glass, uses less energy, and lowers their carbon footprint. However, plastic has a shorter shelf life than glass, so they have an employee out rotating their product on store shelves, which sort of limits their ability expand their market.

Next, we went to Sea Cider, which is a smaller and newer cidery that sits on a hill looking down at the water and over their dwarf apple orchard. Christine Smart, who was a former student of Peter Mitchell’s, took us into their fermentation room, which also doubled as their bulk aging room. From there, we went out and around the building to the back side, which was an area covered with gravel that they used for crushing and pressing apples. When we were there, that same space was being used for pasteurizing cider bottles that had come out of the bottling room. Smart commented that a lot of money had gone into the planning of the building, but I felt it had a lot of wasted ceiling space and half thought out ideas such as a partial catwalk. It was also very cramped! There is a saying that vertical space is cheap and horizontal space is expensive when it comes to cider production buildings, but I have to wonder if they could have saved some costs from building up and spent it to build out. Also, Smart admitted that not a lot of thought had gone into a storage area, so they sometimes had to ship their products somewhere else for storing. At this point in the tour, we were a little pressed for time to catch our ferry, so we rushed the cider tasting more than I would have liked.

All in all, it was very good to tour all three facilities, see their operations, and get ideas for how I might build my cidery.

Cider Class: Cider Laboratory

2010-07-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

Back in May, I attended a wine conference and listened to a lecture about testing the level of acid in wine. At the end of the lecture, the presenter gave a demonstration of how to use basic laboratory equipment to do it, but I was unfortunately sitting in the back, and the demonstration was not projected nor was the presenter elevated on a stage. It was very frustrating to me.

Well, this last week at my cider class with Peter Mitchell was much much better.

Mitchell went though and talked about pH and how ciders between the pH of 3.2 to 3.8 taste better and are less likely to develop infections, with the ideal pH around 3.5. We then got to test apple juice for pH using the strips that I use and also an expensive pH meter.

From there, Mitchell talked about the total acid content in the juice, and gave a demonstration at a small laboratory station on the technique used. The idea behind it was that if the pH was too high, the acid content would be too low since the more acid there is, the lower the pH would become. By testing the total acid, one could make a calculation of how much malic acid, the primary acid found in apples, to add to lower the pH.

pH is also important when working with sulfites. Sulfites have been used since ancient times when water with sulfur was probably used for cleaning and discoveries of how little infections would set in. The thing is, the lower the pH and the more acid that is present, the less sulfite is needed to prevent infections. To add more sulfites would just be a waste of money.

So after we found out our pH, we added sulfites based on our findings. Thing is, sulfer disappates after time, and some people are allergic to it so there are government regulations of how much can be present in cider, so tests need to be run to insure the cider does not become infected while not harming people. Once again, I actually got to run this experiment in the lab. Got to love hands on experience!

Mitchell recommended using the book Chemical Analysis of Grapes and Wine: Techniques and Concepts published in 2004 as a guide to help set up a cider lab.

Cider Class: Learning About Apples

2010-07-06T09:01:00.001-07:00

The first day at my cider class up in Mt. Vernon focused a little bit on marketing and a lot on trees.

Gary Moulton of WSU Mt Vernon gave us a presentation on the care of apple trees, including nutrition, disease, grafting, and pruning of cider apple trees. It isn’t that it is really all that different between growing apples to eat and apples for cider production, but eating apples need to be symmetrical in shape and blemish free, while cider apples just need to taste good since they will be ground up. Therefore, maintenance is aimed more at tree health for taste, not looks.

Indeed, even picking cider apples is done differently than picking apples for eating. Normally, apples are picked a little green to withstand shipping and storage. However, when they are picked green, they contain more starch, which is not fermentable. If the apples are allowed to stay on the tree longer, the starch is converted to sugars, which are fermentable, and in addition the apple is much more flavorful to give a much better taste to the cider.

So what is a cider apple? I had mentioned before that they are apples in which they have been breed for the production of cider and generally don’t taste all that great when eaten. Apples varieties have been tested for their acidic and tannin components. Therefore, cider apples are classified by how much acid and tannin one has:

High tannin, low acid – bittersweet
Low tannin, low acid – sweet
High tannin, high acid – bittersharp
Low tannin, high acid – sharp

However, these descriptors do not indicate how much sugar is in the apple. In fact, most grocery store apples are low in tannin and high in acid, making them sharp, not sweet, apples. Most grocery store apples are usually refered to as “dessert” apples, and can be used to make ciders, though they are not as good and do better when blended with a higher tannin apple. Since the acid is high in dessert apples, they are usually blended with bittersweet apples, allowing the two to have a balance between acid and tannin.

In this part of the country, dessert apples are readily available and easy to buy, so all three of the cideries we visited had an acre of bittersweet apples growing, like Dabinetts and Kingston Black. They would grow the bittersweet apples and then buy the sharp dessert apples to make their product. Interestingly, both Red Barn Cider and Sea Cider went with dwarf rootstock to have about 1,000 trellised trees per acre, while Merridale Estate Cider had semi-dwarf trees. Red Barn Cider said that they used M9 and Bud 9 rootstock and planted them 6' x 12' apart, thought would probably increase to 14' in the future.These small trees allowed them to not use ladders on the trees and do all work on them from the ground.

One of the highlights of learning about apples was a taste test that Moulton brought us of cider made from a single variety of apples fermented dry as part of the WSU research. The first cider was Jonagold, which is a dessert apple, and therefore sharp tasting and thin due to low tannins. The second cider was a Brown Snout, which is a mild bittersweet apple. It had a better aroma, was darker in color, and more mouthfeel as it was thicker and creamier and very pleasant. The last cider we had was a Medaille D’Or, which was a very bitter bittersweet apple. It was very bitter, and Moulton compared it to drinking an IPA. It definitely had more tannins, as I had the dry mouth cotton feel from it. While horrible to drink alone, I could very easily imagine it blended with other apples to tone it down while it gave interest to other more bland apples. And in the cider world, blending is at the heart of cider production, just like a cook gathers together different ingredients for a sauce.

Learning About Cider with Peter Mitchell

2010-07-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

This last week, I was in Mt. Vernon, WA studying cider with Peter Mitchell. Mitchell is a cider consultant who, in addition to teaching cider classes, tastes cider for issues and helps plan or troubleshoot cider facilities. Because he is a consultant, he is very good at not making judgments about certain practices in the industry and/or even the taste of the cider as long as they do not hurt the consumer or is a waste of money. For example, when he tastes a cider that a student made, he is objective and only comments on if it is bad if he can detect some bacterial or chemical flaw with it, and comments on what he tastes reflect just that and not his opinion. Therefore, when it came to certain practices such as adding sugar or water to cider, or making cider from concentrate, he goes ahead and teaches them so that the technique is done correctly. These practices are sort of frowned upon by craft cider makers, and at first we, as craft cider maker students, kind of held our breath in resistance, unsure that it was acceptable to learn such topics. Mitchell assured us we didn’t have to use those techniques, but that we should know about them so that we could make up our own minds if we wanted to incorporate the knowledge into our own personal products or not. As I said, he was being objective and not judging us, but instead giving us the tools to decide on our own how we want to make cider, and therefore knowing correctly how to use the tools. However, Mitchell still believes in a good quality product.

The class was a five day event, which included learning about apple trees, going though the steps of making cider, starting to ferment some cider and doing some laboratory work, touring three cider production facilities, and a little bit on performing objective cider tastings. It was a very good class which I recommend to anyone interested in making cider, and I will talk more in depth about it in the coming days.

Out Studying Cider

2010-07-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

I have been in Mt. Vernon, WA at the Washington State University agriculture research facility studying cider for the past week with Peter Mitchell. I plan on telling you about this class next week.

In the meanwhile, please do look at the WSU cider website, including the annual fruit reports that I have used to help guide me in my selection of cider apple trees.

Cider Review: Red Barn Cider

2010-07-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to tour the Red Barn Cider and Tulip Valley Wines in Mt. Veron, WA earlier this week and sample their ciders.

We began our tasting with the Burro Loco, which is a sharper tasting cider due to being made from mostly crab apples. This is my husband’s favorite cider from Red Barn.

That was followed by the Fire Barrel Cider. This cider was aged in former bourbon barrels for at least 12 weeks but maybe up to one year. They said this would be most like an English Farmhouse style cider. To me, this was a bit sharper than the Burro Loco Cider.

Next was the Jonagold cider, which is a semi-dry cider and quite possibly my favorite cider that they produce. He said that when it was done fermenting, he sweetened it with Jonagold concentrate juice that he made. This was a sweeter cider than the previous two.

Last of all the ciders was the Sweetie Pie made just from Gravenstein apples, which I also find very nice. As the name says, it is a sweet cider, and probably more of a dessert cider. It was very good with cheddar cheese.

We had an opportunity to try a Perry. However, this was not a traditional perry since it was made from Comice and Tayor’s Gold pears, so malic were added to compensate for the shortcomings of the eating pears. I really liked it, but the thing I really noticed was that aroma was so vastly different than the other products.

All of Red Barn’s Ciders are slightly carbonated. Red Barn also has a line of wines. They allow three complementary tastings of either, and most all their products are priced at about $11-$12 a bottle.

Thing is, this is probably a cidery whose products I really admire and would probably use as a model for making my own cider products.

Cheese Fondue with Cider

2010-06-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

I tried a simple Google search for cheese and cider the other day. The top results of my search was a cheese fondue with cider.

I’ve made a few cheese fondues before. Most of them contain dry sherry and dry white wine with a lot of mild melting cheeses like Gruyère and Emmentaler along with a little bit of sharper flavorful cheeses like parmesan. The sherry, dry white wine, and parmesan give it a sharp flavor. So it makes sense to replace at least the dry white wine with a dry apple cider, and the parmesan with cheddar cheese. Maybe even replace the sherry with apple brandy. Hmm.

Admittedly, over the years, I quit making fondue from scratch, as it can take awhile to get the right consistency. A local German restaurant called the Rheinlander has a fondue, whose recipe is apparently not a secret as it was on the local TV in 2004, which they bottle. I find it in the cheese section of the deli in a pint sized jar. I keep one in the back of my fridge for company, in which case I take out and put in a little dipping crock pot. Easy as that. I should try that fondue with a slightly sweet cider to cut though all the sharpness.

The fondue cookbook I have had for years had a simpler recipe, so I decided to give it a try. It called for 2 TBS of lemon juice, 2 cups of hard dry cider, 1 lb 9 oz of shredded cheddar cheese, and 2 TBS of corn starch. The lemon juice and cider are heated, and the cheddar is slowly added as it melts. Cheddar is not really a melting cheese, or rather, it melts, but a lot of oil separates out. Adding corn starch at the end did away with the separating and made the whole thing consistent. It suggested using bread, apples, ham, and pineapple as dippers, all of which were very good. I tried sugar snap peas, but gave up on that. I served it with Red Barn semi-dry Jonagold Cider, but that was a bit of a mistake. Great cider, but the fondue ended up having a slightly sweet taste, and the semi-dry cider did not cut through to be refreshing, nor did it compliment the fondue as a sweet cider might have. Next time, I would go either for a dry cider, or a sweet cider.

Apple Cheesecake

2010-06-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

While I do eat about an apple a day, my husband eats more apples than I do. He is also a teacher, which usually conjures up an image of a bright red apple. I think it was his idea to have an apple themed wedding. We served a keg of Spire Apple Cider instead of champagne, and our favors were applets.

I love cheesecake, and would rather have a cheesecake than a regular cake any day. When I found Portland Style Cheesecake, a company who can make wedding cakes out of cheesecakes, I was quite happy. My father-in-law was not, as he loves a good chocolate cake, but it was my wedding and I got to choose. Besides, my mother-in-law is gluten intolerant, so she can’t eat wheat, and therefore could not eat a cake, but she can eat cheesecake as long as the crust is gluten free. We got him a Costco chocolate sheet cake to make him happy.

We went to PS Cheesecake to taste several types of cakes that they had, as they must have had a list of about 30 to choose from. We did not say to ourselves, “We really want an apple cake,” but when we tasted that one against a few others favorite flavors like black berry or peanut butter, it became clear that we really liked the apple cake. It had real apple chunks in it, too. Though, the blackberry was really good, but just not us.

From there, we saw that they had done a cake with pears on it, so we requested apples, which they got little artificial ones, as they were afraid of the heat and didn’t want the weight of real apples to slide off.

A lot of people loved the cake, as it was something different at a wedding, and most people would rate cheesecake above regular cake. Granted, it did cost more than a regular wedding cake would have.

History of Cheese

2010-06-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

The history of cheese begins with the domestication of livestock, happening 9,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Near East. Cattle, sheep, and goats were kept for meat, wool, and other supplies, but when fed well enough, they would produce a surplus of milk beyond what their young could drink. Storing milk would have been difficult, as it would have soured in a few days. This souring process probably lead to the first yogurts (still very much a part of that region’s diet) and eventually cheese.

There are no written records about the invention of cheese, but popular speculation talks about how a nomad might have put milk into a container made out of a stomach, and that the rennet from the stomach curdled the milk. However, I believe this is half of the story. While the use of rennet was probably known, it was not regularly used until Roman times in the first century AD. My own thoughts is that an acid, such as lemon juice or grape juice turned vinegar, was splashed into warm milk, which caused it to curdle, much in the way the mascarpone and queso blanco DIY kits worked for making fresh cheeses. This technique would have been easier to perform and explain how cheese was made for so many centuries without rennet.

There is evidence, though, of dairy product consumption. Shane Sokol stated in And That’s How You Make Cheese!:

Ancient records mention how cheese and butter were made thought Egypt from about 4,000 BC onward. Cheese is mentioned many times in ancient texts, including the Bible where David carried ten cheeses to the army before slaying Goliath. In fact, the stadium of Jerusalem was build in the valley called Tyropaeon, meaning the valley of the cheese makers.

Barbara Ciletti writes in Making Great Cheese at Home, “According to archaeological finds, cheese was not only made, but molded and drained, as early as 2,700-2,800 BC. We know that certain terra-cotta urns were made with cheese in mine, because before firing they were perforated with tiny holes for draining.”

Being able to make cheese out of milk was very important in ancient life. Milk did not keep for more than a few days, and the livestock would only give milk after giving birth in the spring for a few months, so there was no milk later in the winter. Cheese allowed for long term storage and actually got better with age, and it was easier to transport than milk, all of which made cheese easier to trade than milk. Also, a small chunk of cheese had plenty of nutrition to sustain a person. Ciletti writes, “Roman soldiers carried great wedges of Parmesan and percorino, sturdy cheeses easy to cart around the countryside. These dryer, hard cheeses were less apt to spoil under the hot sun and staved off hunger during months of travel.”

Since Roman times, cheesemaking has spread and grown into a major industry. While I am skipping a lot of history between then and now, I must add two new modern techniques added that have changed cheesemaking. The first was producing cheese in factories. Cheesemaking, as I talked about earlier, was originally done by those who had livestock with a surplus of milk, so it was very small scale and craft. Wikipedia states:

The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in Switzerland in 1815, but it was in the United States where large-scale production first found real success. Credit usually goes to Jesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New York, who in 1851 started making cheese in an assembly-line fashion using the milk from neighboring farms. Within decades hundreds of such dairy associations existed…. Factory-made cheese overtook traditional cheesemaking in the World War II era, and factories have been the source of most cheese in America and Europe ever since.

The second modern technique was Louis Paseur’s invention of the pasteurization process in 1850. Cheesemaking then turned away from using raw milk and allowed for large scale cheese making to begin, since the risk of losing a batch due to bacteria was greatly reduced. However, today there is an attempt at returning to raw milk cheeses as they taste better.

Sources and other readings:

“A Brief History of Cheese.”
Ciletti, Barbara. Making Great Cheese at Home: 30 Simple Recipes from Cheddar to Chevre. 2001
“Domestic sheep.” Wikipedia.
“Goat.” Wikipedia.
“History of Cheese.” Wikipedia.
“History of Cheese.” Kidipede.
Hirst, K. Kris. “Cattle (BOS spp): History of the Domestication of Cattle”
Ridgeway, Judy with updates by Hill, Sara. The Cheese Companion: a Connoisseur’s Guide. Second Edition, 2004.
Sokol, Shane. And That’s How You Make Cheese!
Stradley, Linda. “Cheesecake History.”
Werlin, Laura. “About American Cheese – A Brief History”

2010-06-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

Further readings on pairing wine, beer, and cheese:

All American Cheese and Wine Book: Pairings, Profiles, & Recipes by Laura Werlin. 2003
Werlin wrote The New American Cheese: Profiles of American’s Great Cheesemakers and Recipes for Cooking with Cheese. Her All American Cheese and Wine Book is basically the same book but with more on wine added. Werlin did extensive research on both topics, and this is a dense book with advice and recipes. After an introduction, Werlin starts talking about cheese and how it is made, how to taste cheese extensively, seven different basic styles of cheese, how to look for and buy cheese by style, and how to serve a cheese course. Next, for wines, she talks about grapes, making wine, tasting wine, types of wine, and serving wine. I’m very impressed with both sections on how much time she takes talking about the actual tastings of both cheese and wine. She then presents the ten basic guidelines of pairing cheese and wine, talks about clues for perfect pairs by cheese style, and gives a chart of cheese and wine pairings at a glance. The core of the book is cheese dish recipes by course with wine pairing, followed by a description and profile of either winery or a cheesemaker. The Appendix alone contains 60 pages, talking about cheese terms, wine terms, cheesemakers around the country, wine makers around the country, resources (information and organizations), and a bibliography.

An Appetite for Ale: Hundreds of Delicious Ways to Enjoy Beer with Food by Fiona Beckett and Will Beckett
A cookbook that either uses beer in the recipes, or has a “best beer match” to go with the recipe. It does talk about pairing, and a lot of the food seems down to earth pub fare. The chapter on cheese is weak, but does have a good page on pairings before offering only a cheese and beer fondue and a gorgonzola and pear bruschetta recipes.

The Beerbistro Cookbook by Stephen Beaumont and Brian Morin
A cookbook using beer, it has three decent pages on pairing beer and cheese, along with a large table on suggested processes for pairing the two. It has lots of recipes, including fondues, and a chapter on making ice cream with beer.

The Best of American Beer and Food: Pairing and Cooking with Craft Beer by Lucy Saunders
This book is a little bit of everything – a reader and a cook book. The first chapter is on pairing cheese and beer, and talks in great lengths about cheesemaking, planning a cheese and beer tasting, and some suggested pairings. The rest of the book goes on to talk about other pairings with beer, regional beers and their pairing trends, and lots of recipes including cheese-stuffed jumbo shrimp with bacon, using a saison-style ale.

The Cheese Companion: A Connoisseur’s Guide, by Judy Ridgway and updated by Sara Hill
This is a cheese identification book that talks only very briefly about pairing cheese with wine. However, for each cheese variety listed, it provides a recommended wine pairing. For example, it suggests pairing Chèvre to with a Sauvignon Blanc wine.

Cheese and Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing, and Enjoying by Janet Fletcher. 2007
This book goes though and briefly suggests strategies for pairing wine and cheese based on texture, intensity, acidity, sweetness, mold, and region. It then tells you how to plan a cheese course, and then how to handle and store cheese. The heart of the book is pages talking about a specific cheese style, including milk type, region, and a lengthy description. At the very end is a sentence or two about what wines would work with that cheese, so this book is about eating cheese, and the wines to enhance that experience. The appendix has two pages showing a table of wines with what cheeses to pair them to, so it is kind of a quick summary. However, there is no index to allow for the quick look up of a particular kind of cheese or wine.

He Said Beer, She Said Wine by Same Calagione and Marnie Old. 2009
This beer vs wine food pairing book does talk about how to choose wine and beer to go with cheese. Honestly, the cheeses they picked for their battles would make a very good cheese platter in my opinion, and are easy to acquire.
Mozzarella: light-bodied sparkling wine, unwooded chardonnay, Belgian White Beer, or Hefeweizen
Goat cheese: Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Nior Rosé, slightly sweet hefeweizen, or a pilsner.
Brie: Pinot Gris, French Champagne, kriek limbic, or Berliner Weisse
Sharp aged cheddar: fortified Madeira, Cabernet Sauvignon, IPA, or English Brown Ale.
Parmigiano Reggiano: Cabernet Sauvignon, Chianti, amber, or IPA.
Roquefort: Amarone, Sautenes, British Strong Ale, or Russian Imperial Stout

Laura Werlin’s Cheese Essentials: An Insider’s Guide to Buying and Serving Cheese {with 50 Recipes} by Laura Werlin. 2007
In each cheese style chapter in this book there is a small section on which kinds of wines to serve with that style and how easy it is to pair with that style. Fresh cheeses are difficult to pair, going with light white wines. Semi-soft cheese paired with fruity unoaked white wines a light red, or a light beer such as a lager. Soft-ripened cheeses, with the rinds removed, go well with sparkling wines, unoaked Chardonnay, or an earthy Pinot Nior. Surface-ripened cheeses are paired with white wines or low tannin red wines. Next, for the easiest pairing semi-hard cheeses, serve them with just about any wine. For hard cheeses, look for white wines or low tannin red wines, or even a sherry. Blue cheeses are paired with port, sweet white wines, and sparkling dry white wines. Last of all, for washed-rind cheese, Werlin pairs them with floral white wines, lighter fruitier red wines, and sweet wines. Otherwise, see Werlin’s other book, All American Cheese and Wine Book: Pairings, Profiles, & Recipes for more in-depth coverage of this topic.

Matching Food and Wine: Classic and Not So Classic Combinations by Michel Roux Jr.
A cook book which briefly talks about wines and suggests three wines to pair with that recipe. I mention this book because it has a few recipes with cheese, which he then recommends wines with.

Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager by Max McCalman and David Gibbons. 2009
Another dense book about understanding cheese, how to become a connoisseur, and talking about great artisan cheeses of the world. This book contains a chapter each on pairing cheese with wine and beer. After talking about wine in general, the book talks about complexity, sensory profiling, balance and harmony, and the finish. They offer good advice on serving the pairings, such as paying attention to serving temperatures, smell, taste, waiting for the finish, refresh your palate with water and bread, follow an order, and reflect on the pairings. They then offer suggested tasting plates of a few cheeses paired with flights of wines, along with a recommended method of scoring the pairs. Next, they talk about some general cheese-friendly wines, and what it takes to be cheese friendly. The beer chapter, although smaller, follows along the same lines, starting with talking about beer, pairing principles and guidelines, cheese friendly brews, and a suggested testing of six cheeses and three beers.

The New American Cheese: Profiles of America’s Greatest Cheesemakers and Recipes for Cooking with Cheese by Laura Werlin. 2000
More of an all around cheese book, it does have a small section on pairing cheese and wine, with an afterthought of pairing cheese with other beverages. Werlin expanded on this section with her later books.

The Cheese Plate by Max McCalman and David Gibbons. 2002
And older McCalman and Gibbons book dedicated strictly to consuming cheese, it dedicates chapter 6 to pairing cheese with food, including beverages. Again, it talks about cheese-friendly wines and wine driven plates. It briefly mentions, “Apple cider – not just the hard kind – as well as grape and berry juices are good [cheese pairing] possibilities. Coffee pairs well with many cheeses. But tea does not. Also, avoid orange and other citrus juices. In fact, I’m quite wary of even the lemon or lime wedge that goes with your sparkling water; it could easily interfere with a good cheese.” Their newer book expanded to talk about beer, which is not in this book.

Webites:

The Wisconsin Milk Marking Board has a nifty website showing what cheeses go well with what wine, food, spirits, and beers.
Cheese Cupid has an interactive website, where you pick your cheese, and it gives suggested beverages, or you pick your beverage and it suggests cheeses. It includes beer, cider in general, and some spirits.

Cheese and Beer

2010-06-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

To begin the chapter on cheese, the book The Beer Bistro Cookbook by Stephen Beaumont and Brian Morin states:

Forget all that talk you’ve heard about wine and cheese. The real partner for everything from cheddar to stilton is beer. But don’t take our word for it – as a sommelier! Any honest wine professional will admit that the motto in the grape trade is “taste with bread, sell with cheese,” primarily because the fats in cheese will help blot out the tannins and other harsh notes that may show up in youthful or aggressive wines.

Beer and cheese, on the other hand, well, that’s just a match made in gastronomic heaven. The trick, as ever, is simply picking the right style of beer for each particular kind of cheese.

The reason pairing beer with cheese is easier than pairing wine with cheese, according to Tim Smith in Making Artisan Cheese: 50 Fine Cheeses that you can Making in Your Own Kitchen, is that the carbonation of beer helps to cleans the palate.

Probably the best book I saw on this topic was Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager by Max McCalman and David Gibbons. It had an entire chapter devoted to pairing beer and cheese, talking about ingredients, mouth feel and weight, and much more, and conclude with a pairing of three beers with six cheeses. McCalman and Gibbons state the following:

The general principles of pairing beers with cheeses are pretty much the same as the wine-and-cheese guidelines. You’re looking for balance, where neither partner overwhelms the other, and you want to consider both complement and contrast. Once you’ve sussed out a beer’s profile, you can start to look for similar, overlapping, or contrasting flavors, textures, and aromas in cheese… there will be surprises – matchups that should work but don’t and vice versa… I’ve found that wines tend to rely more on finding complements to their flavor components (i.e., harmony), whereas beers seem to be looking more for balance – it is more of a seesaw effect. The beer pairing balance is more about bitterness, in that bitter (hoppy) beers tend to go well with more sour cheeses and vice versa… Cheddars, which have good acidity, are classic partners for various types of beers, from English ales to Belgian wit styles. Salt content is also of prime importance when consider cheese-and-beer pairings. Oftentimes, when you pair a cheese with beers its salt can come to dominate, even with types you don’t think of as very salty. What’s happening is the other flavor components in the two partners are balancing each other out, leaving the cheese’s salt to come too far to the fore. In a beer-and-cheese lineup, as with a tasting of wine pairings, you’ll want to proceed from the lighter, milder lager, pilsner, and pale ale styles to the deeper, richer, heavier, darker, more complex-flavored styles of the brew.

They make the following recommendations:

Traditional beers of one country pair well with the cheeses of that same country.
Bigger cheeses such as aged farmhouse-style Goudas can be good partners, but you need a big beer to stand up to them. The full long-lasting flavors of hard Alpine cheeses can work well with bigger beers.
Washed-rind cheeses often make excellent beer partners as long as the later are big and bold enough. A hoppy ale is a good choice; delicate, subtler-tasting brews likely won’t stand up.
Another strong pairing is triple-crème cheeses with stouts. Knowing as we do that Champagne and triple crèmes work well together, this might be a bit of a surprise. When you’ve got a rich, buttery cheese in your mouth, a big dark beer that is also dry, bitter, and roasty is a nice complement, forming a “desserty” combo, like ice cream and chocolate cake.
Some mellow middle-of-the road cow cheeses pair well with more acidic beers such as the Beliner Weisse style, which can be quite delicate and contain a good amount of lactic acid.
Blue cheeses pair well with stouts and barleywines, which have the heft and inherent sweetness to provide balance.
Generally speaking, sweeter blue cheeses go better with more bitter beers while more bitter blue cheese go with sweeter beers.

Smith gives the suggested pairings, including:

Fresh cheese pair well with mellow beers, such as American wheat beers, American lagers, and German lagers.
Soft-ripened cow’s-milk cheeses, such as Neufchâtel, Brie, and Camembert, are excellent companions for pilsners, porters, and pale ales.
Washed-rind cheeses, such as Muenster, are complements to English brown, amber, and Belgian pale ales.
Semi-hard cheeses, such as Cheddar, Edam, and Gouda, as well as the cooked-curd cheeses, such as Emmentaler and Gruyère, go well with pilsners, IPAs, double bocks, and Belgian ales.
Parmesans and Romanos need a heavier beer as a partner: try a strong ale, stout, or porter.
Because of their intense flavor, blue-vein cheeses require a beer that can hold its own. Try stronger porters, stouts, and heavier dark beers, such as barely wine.
Goat cheeses are usually a bit more flavorful, so consider pairing them with IPAs, ESBs, brown ales, and porters.
Pasta filata, particularly Provolone, are well matched with Bavarian whites and heavier Bavarian wheat beers (doppelweizen).

One other thing to note is that I kept coming across the “ploughman’s lunch,” which is an inexpensive British meal sent with the plough man to serve as his lunch, but can be found at pubs today. It consists mainly of bread, cheese, relish, and maybe other additions such as cold meats, apples, hard boiled egg, or other items. This meal is always washed down with beer, tying it to the cheese and beer pairings.

Cheese and Wine

2010-06-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

There are several different schools of thought about how to pair up wine and cheese. Judy Ridgway states in The Cheese Companion: a Connoisseur’s Guide, “Cheese seems to have a particular affinity with wine, and the two tastes can really complement each other. There are two schools of thought here; those who suggest that you should simply drink your favorite wine with your cheese and enjoy it, and those who believe that some wine and cheese combinations really do not work and that you should plan the match with care. In practice, the former view is more likely to dominate, but if you have the time you really can add to your enjoyment of cheese by finding the best partnership.”

When it comes to purposely selecting pairs, there are three main methods, as Ricki Carroll described in Home Cheese Making. They include:

Serve complementary flavors (a big sturdy cheese with a full-bodied wine).
Select contracting flavors, such as champagne and triple-crème cheese, to provide interest and balance.
Choose products from the same region. For example, serve a California dry Jack cheese with a spicy California Zinfandel.

In Making Artisan Cheese: 50 Fine Cheeses that You Can Making in Your Own Kitchen, Tim Smith suggests keeping this in mind when pairing:

“In general, white wines pair better with cheese than red wines. (However, do not keep from experimenting!)”
“Together, wine and cheese need to counterbalance or foiling (via acidity and tannin), or they require a matched texture and flavor profile. Rich wines should be paired with rich creamy cheeses, and sharp wines with sharper cheeses.”
“The salt in the cheese exaggerates the taste of alcohol in the wine, making them seem ‘hotter.’ A salty taste in cheese is best counterbalanced by a hint of sweetness in the wine…”
“Stronger-flavored cheeses (such as mature, washed-rind cheeses) are the most difficult to match and do not go well with strong, ample-bodied wines (especially reds). Pungent cheeses are best complemented by sweet wines. Oaky wines clash and overwhelm most cheeses, unless oak flavors are inherently associated with them.”
“You aren’t compromising aesthetics by switching back to dry white wine for your cheese course. If your cheese course follows a dish accompanied by red wine, and is being served before (or instead of) dessert, the two styles of wine can coexist.”
“When in doubt, go native. Local cheese and wines tend to work well together, and can be paired confidently.”
“When planning a cheese course, choose either the cheese or the wine first, or pick an array of both that offers a range of possibility for all palates.”
“The use of herbs, spices, and crusts in or on the cheese, as they may influence the effect of the wine. Also, don’t overlook the potential for incorporating cheese into salads and other light dishes for the complementary flavors offered.”

Some recommended pairings:

Brie and Camembert: white wines with texture, like Chardonnay or Pinot Gris. Red wines with medium body and moderate tannin, such as Syrah and Merlot. Sparkling wines do well.
Cheddar: Red wines such as Zinfandel, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Bordeaux.
Feta: white wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio, or a dry rosés
Goat’s Milk Cheeses: Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Syrah , Merlot,
Gorgonzola: Sparkling wines or sweet wines including a late-harvest Riesling
Gouda: Chardonnay, Riesling, or a light Zinfandel
Gruyère: Burgundy, Chardonnay, or Pinot Gris. A Pinot Noir can work sometimes.
Mozzerella: a light zippy wine such as a Pinot Grigio or a dry rosé
Parmigiano-Reggiano: Sparkling wine before the meal, and a full-bodied red during the meal, such as a Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Zinfandel.
Swiss: Gewürztraminer or Riesling

As far as the order in which to serve the cheese and wines, Carroll interviewed Steve Jones of Provvista Specialty Foods in Portland, Oregon, who said, “Usually, I move from lighter to heavier fare; that seems the most natural. For instance, start with a sparkling wine and fresh chèvre. Move through an Alsatian wine served with a true Muenster or Chardonnay (my least favorite wine to pair with cheese) with a rustic sheep’s-milk cheese. Then move to a heavier red with an aged hard cheese, and finish with port or sherry served with blue cheese.”

In Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager, Max McCalman and David Gibbons get a little more specific about serving the two together. In summary:

Pay Attention to Serving Temperatures: Serve cheese at room temperature, red wines slightly chilled, and white wines slightly warmer than chilled.
Smell the wine and cheese separately
Taste: Taste the wine first, clear your palate, and then the cheese. Then taste both together, allowing them to commingle.
Wait for the finish: do not rush the tastings of the wine, cheese, or the wine and cheese together.
Refresh your palate: have some water and bread
Follow the suggested order for the pairings, but don’t hesitate to go back and do them out of order
Reflect

Pairing Cheese and Alcohol

2010-06-22T08:15:00.001-07:00

First off, my instructor for “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine gave a cautionary piece of advice when pairing cheese and wine, which I think would apply to all cheese and alcohol pairings. He said that when you are trying to taste and evaluate wine, serving cheese is a bad idea because it has oil that coats the mouth and affects how you taste. However, if you are just drinking a wine, cheese is an excellent accompaniment.

That said, I came across this little bit on page 155 in the Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest by Tami Parr, and I felt like I had to share it.

For the uninitiated, pairing cheese and spirits can seem completed; novices often fear that they won’t do it right. In fact, pairing beverages and cheeses is really as simple as being present to the flavors your mouth is experiencing.

Start out with this principle: a good pairing is one where the flavors of both the beverage and the cheese are enhanced by the combination. In the best pairings, you may find that the pairing produces a remarkable transformation on your palate, and a third flavor revelation emerges. Bad pairings are easy to discern and will almost certainly cause your mouth to screw up involuntarily in an odd contortions as a result of the bitter, awkward flavors generated in your mouth. In fact, bad pairings are one easy way to start educating yourself about the ins and outs of pairing cheese and wine. Try a few pairings of wine and cheese, even random ones, and start paying attention to how combinations fit into broad categories.

Wine is the classic beverage for pairing with cheese, but that’s only the beginning. Some find that beer pairs well, if not better, than wine. Other beverages such as sake, cider, and lambic ales can also be nicely paired with cheese. More recently, people are beginning to experiment with pairing coffee and cheese, as well as whiskey and cheese.

Following are a few basic pairing principles to start you on your pairing adventures:

Trust Your Own Palate
Pairings are very subjective, and despite what anyone tells you, there are no right or wrong answers – really…

Pair Like with Like
Pay attention to the relative intensity of flavors you are pairing. Generally speaking, very strong flavored cheeses paired with light, dry libations won’t work because the cheese will overpower the wine. By the same token, a big red wine… will drown out a subtly flavored soft-ripened goat cheese. Pairing this way does neither produce a favor. That being said, see the next rule.

Be Open to the Unexpected
Whatever rules you might have learned may prove false with any given pairing at any given time. Cheese flavors vary throughout the year due to the diet of the animals and seasonal variations in butterfat content of milk; wines and beers also vary by vintage and by batch. In addition, counterintuitive pairs often work very well. For example, ports typically pair well with strongly flavored blue cheeses. You just never know.

The Wisconsin Milk Marking Board does have a nifty website showing what cheeses go well with what wine, food, spirits, and beers.

Making Wine with Whey

2010-06-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

Shallon Winery in Astoria, OR makes a cranberry whey wine that is really good. I had written before that he “touts the health benefits of adding whey to the wine… This wine is not milky colored at all, and it is another bottle we take home. He recommends adding a little bit of 7-up to it for the bubbles, which is also excellent. I’ve never eaten it with turkey, which I imagine it would be good with, but to do so would probably mean I would have to share, and I would rather horde his wines.”

This wine has been the inspiration of trying to make my own whey wine, and I have been researching and experimenting.

First off, milk sugars called lactose are not fermentable by traditional yeasts, but instead require microorganisms such as Kluveromyces lactis or Kluveromyces fragilis to convert lactose to alcohol. Therefore, powdered lactose is actually used as a sweetener in beer and wine, as the yeast will leave it alone, leaving a sweet product in the end. Lactose is not usually captured in cheese, but is left in whey. I should note, though, that it takes a lot of lactose to make it sweet.

My original theory was that a wine maker would start a batch of wine fermenting, and then add the whey later. My reasoning behind this is that the alcohol would hopefully prevent the whey from spoiling. I should admit that from my own farming days, we would keep milk for the baby calves at room temperature for a few days before it would finally start to spoil around day three. In fact, before refrigeration, people would have left it sitting out. So I know that this is possible, but I was afraid it would spoil before anything would happen. Also, would the government allow a wine maker to leave whey out at room temperature for that long? My theory was that if the whey was added in the secondary, it would possibly preserve the whey so it doesn't spoil. Another theory I had running against it was that adding acid to milk makes it curdle, and even whey curdles with acid at higher temperatures, so what would adding whey to high acid wine do to it? So many theories running though my head...

It turns out that in 1977, the Department of Food Science and Technology at the Oregon State University conducted an experiment using cheese whey to make wine. The results were published in a paper titled Utilization of Cheese Whey for Wine Production. It takes about 10 pounds of milk (1.15 gallons) to yield one pound of cheese, which means that 9 pounds is waste, or a whey by-product. The most common method used to make this whey waste profitable is to dehydrate it into powdered whey to use as a food supplement. However, the 1970s saw an energy crisis, so dehydrating whey was expensive, and they were looking for other cheaper usable methods to use whey and realized whey wine might be the answer.

So, armed with a research paper that is most definitely not a how-to, I kept some whey from three of my cheese batches, mixed it with some cranberry juice, added potassium metasulfite to get sulfur dioxide released, and some yeast. It started fermenting. Let the whey wine making experiment commence!

Book Review: Six Cheesemaking Books

2010-06-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

Wanting to expand from DIY cheesemaking kits, I checked out from the library some cheesemaking books.

The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley
This book tells you how to make fresh dairy products, such as butter, yogurt, sour cream, buttermilk, and nine fresh cheeses. It has a short introduction, and then you are making stuff. I find it a bit odd in places, as one recipe for buttermilk is to add buttermilk to skim milk. Also, I didn’t trust the feta recipe because it did not make brine or age it at all. It does have 109 pages dedicated to cooking with your freshly made dairy products, along with a small glossary and a list of sources for cheese making supplies, classes, and useful links. The book has only a few drawings, and it was the other dairy products and recipes included that held my interest with this book.

And That’s How You Make Cheese! by Shane Sokol
It is a small book with black and white photos. It gives a short history of cheese before going over ingredients, supplies and equipment, basic steps, how to start a cheese culture, and then finally cheese making recipes: 23 soft, hard, and mold and bacteria ripened cheeses. The back of the book contains a few sources for cheesemaking supplies.

Making Great Cheese At Home by Barbara Ciletti
A book very similar to And That’s How You Make Cheese! It starts off with an expanded history before going into the basic process of cheesemaking, supplies needed, and starter cultures with troubleshooting advice. It includes diagrams on cheese presses before launching into the cheese making recipes, broken down by fresh, soft and semisoft cheeses, mold- and age-ripened cheeses, and age-ripened hard cheeses. It contains 30 cheese making recipes, 18 cheese dish recipes, and numerous color pictures. However, the end of the book is just a glossary. I prefer this book over And That’s How You Make Cheese!

Making Artisan Cheese: 50 Fine Cheeses that You Can Make in Your Own Kitchen by Tim Smith
This book probably has the best organization for new cheesemakers. It goes through the history of cheese and then cheese making basics including milk types and composition, and other supplies. The thing about this book is that when it gets to making the cheeses, it is broken down into basic cheese making, intermediate cheese making, and advanced cheese making. Smith talks about how to drain the curds by hanging the cheesecloth for basic cheesemaking, but then builds on that in the intermediate cheese making by talking about with molds and presses. So instead off bombarding you with information all at once, he starts off easy and builds on the information by difficulty. This book has pictures of equipment and the finished cheeses, but illustrations of the techniques used. It does contain resources in the index, including legality by state of buying raw milk.

Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll
An excellent cheese making book with 75 cheese making recipes. Skipping history of making cheese, it provides much more information on other topics, like the composition of different types of milk. It runs through different rennet, what chlorinated water does to rennet, how to make a starter cultures and troubleshooting, other ingredients needed, different types of equipment, how to make a cheese press, a homemade cheese record form, and a 15 step picture diagram of the cheesemaking process followed by a written description. The cheese making recipes are then presented: soft, hard, Italian, Whey, Bacteria- and mold-ripened cheese, goat’s milk cheese, other dairy products. This last category covers everything found in The Home Creamery, plus a few extra like Devonshire clotted cream, though it only gives one recipe per item. The last part of the book is titled, “For the love of cheese – serving, enjoying, and cooking with cheese,” which is includes 40 pages of cooking recipes. In its appendixes there is a glossary of terms, a trouble shooting guide, resources, and other recommended cheese and cheesemaking books. One downside to this book is that has drawings instead of pictures, but it does have some personal stories from cheesemakers around the country. This is definitely the book I am going to buy when it comes to cheesemaking.

200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes by Debra Amrein-Boyes
This book begins with a short description of the different styles of cheeses there are, and then walks though, with drawings, the basic cheese making steps and techniques. It, too, talks about different kinds of milk and their natural chemical makeup before talking about other the different cultures required, equipment, and how to store the cheese. It then has different cheese style chapters with a table of contents at the beginning, a few recipes thrown in, and style troubleshooting pages at the end. After it covers cheeses, there are also chapters on yogurt and kefir and then butter, buttermilk, and crème fraîche, though most of it is for flavored butters. This book has a glossary and some sources for supplies in many countries. It has a few colored pictures in the middle of the book, but not enough to cover all the cheese or any recipes. I do like how it tells you how big of a yield to expect from each batch. I think I will eventually purchase this book, that is, if I want a cheese not found in Home Cheese Making.

Cheesemaking – Beyond Kits

2010-06-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

Admittedly, my skills making cheese has not really expanded my further than the DYI kits. I’m still making mostly fresh cheeses, though I have tried to expand into a slightly aged cheese.

As a child, we had for a short amount of time a Mexican worker. His wife would come and get raw cows milk from us and make queso, which I loved. Don’t get me wrong – the DYI queso blanco recipe is good, but it isn’t how I remembered our worker’s wife made it. Hunting online, I found this recipe, and I went and got some rennet, buttermilk, milk, and rennet to make it. Since I was already working with pasteurized milk, I just started making the cheese. The nice thing about it was that I didn’t need to heat it quite so much. However, it does require a second heating without stirring, which caused a bit of problems because I got different temperature readings from different locations in the pot. In the end, I got it to hot, but it still turned out tasting better than the DYI kit.

The other cheese I have attempted to make was a cow’s milk feta. I found some recipes online and tried twice, but they both failed to curdle. My local Clark County Goat Association had former commercial cheese maker Mary Rosenblum come give a demonstration on making feta and then ricotta from the left over whey. I learned a lot from her that day, and I went home and had my first success at making feta. Rosenblum also gives demonstrations at Kookoolan Farms in Yamhill, OR, and my regions Whole Foods Markets and Homebrew Exchange frequently give cheese making demonstrations. Look for classes in the Food Day section of the newspapers to find other classes. I highly recommend attending a cheese making class when moving beyond kits when making cheese.

How to Make Fresh Cheese Using Kits

2010-06-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up two different cheese making kits for fresh cheese.

The first one I got from The Homebrew Exchange for making mascarpone. I had never even really looked into making cheese before I bought this kit, which ended up containing enough tartaric acid to make 30 batches, some cheese cloth, and instructions. It took about an hour to make, and the batch turned out very well when I did get around to making it because we had bought fresh strawberries. The mascarpone was actually better than the early cheap strawberries.

The other kit I bought was at the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest back and Tour de Cheese back in April from Urban Cheese Craft. I paid $15 for a queso blanco and paneer DYI Cheese Kit, in which the kit contained cheese cloth, cheese salt (AKA flaked salt), citric acid, and instructions. This kit is supposedly good for 10 batches, and all I have to do is buy whole milk after buying the kit. I have also seen their kits at Whole Foods Market, where I believe they have taught some classes. I made the queso blanco the same day I did the mascarpone, and it turned out a little bland due to me going a bit easy on the salt. I will note that as part of the instructions, it does say that if you run out of the citric acid, you can use vinegar to make queso blanco, so when I run out of the citric acid, I do not have to worry about finding more or buying it from them. I looked at the difference between paneer and queso blanco, and I saw very little difference between the two recipes, so I’ve just been sticking to making the queso blanco.

Both of these kits are good beginners kits, as the cheese cloth provided is good quality cheese cloth unlike what you might find in a grocery store. However, both kits called for an accurate thermometer to get the milk up to 185⁰. I did use a digital one that had been given to us as a gift, but later I purchased a better one that had a holder on the side of the pot from the Homebrew Exchange.

How to Make Ice Cream

2010-06-15T08:29:00.001-07:00

When my mother’s family would get together for summer holidays or even Thanksgiving and Christmas, they would make ice cream. Homemade ice cream is wonderful stuff. The texture of it is more similar to soft serve ice cream unless allowed to freeze, and you can control the ingredients that went into it.

The hardest part about making ice cream is finding an ice cream maker, and maybe having to put up with the noise for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the model. I recommend getting an electric ice cream maker because making ice cream is too time consuming to have a manual crank, though there are now ice cream maker balls that you roll around.

I have made small amounts of ice cream by using a double bag method, where the ingredients are in a smaller bag placed in a larger bag with ice and mixed up. The same time I made ice cream in small bags, the organizers served us all the ingredients already mixed and then frozen. It wasn’t as good because it was missing an ingredient – air. The stirring action adds air, making it “light and fluffy,” so it tastes better. I do recommend that if you use this bag in bag method to rinse off the inner bag before opening to remove any salt and therefore prevent salt contamination inside. It happened to me.

The process, especially with a machine, is to have crushed ice and rock salt in the bucket around the canister holding the ice cream materials. The ice is to chill the ingredients, and the rock salt helps lower the temperature of the melted ice. I recommend that the churning with a machine take place with the bucket in a large sink, bath tub, or outside, as the ice will melt and make a mess. Also, secure the canister and motor in the bucket before adding ice. Adding ice before doing this will push the canister into difficult angle for securing the motor.

There are two main types of homemade ice cream – custard style, which makes a custard base by lightly cooking eggs, and American style, which is just cream and sugar.

Making Whipped Cream and Butter

2010-06-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

I like making whipped cream in the fall when there are homemade apple pies and Costco pumpkin pies. It tastes better because it is fresher, creamer, denser, and not as sweet as canned whipped cream.

To make whipped cream, you buy 1 quart of whipping cream in the milk section of the grocery store. Chill a mixing bowl and the egg beaters from your electric mixer, as this will help the process. Pour the whipping cream into the bowl and beat it until the whipping cream is the right consistency for you. You have the options of starting with a teaspoon of powdered sugar and adding more for your taste, and sometimes I add vanilla. Be careful not to over beat it, as that is how you end up with butter. Seriously.

Basically, you take heavy cream and you mix it for a long time, and you will get butter. Add a little salt, and that is all there is too it.

Making butter is very easy to do. I have memories of being a small child in pre-school and through early elementary school where my mother would come to school to talk about how good milk was for us to drink, and she would have us make butter. For the process to be a little more interesting for children, the heavy cream should be put into a large jar with something inside, and then the jar can be shook by the children or rolled across the floor. The item put inside helps add to the shaking process, and it could be marbles, a broken plastic fork, a clean plastic clothes pin, etc. This is a good hands on learning experience for children, with the added bonus of working a little extra energy off of them.

WikiHow appears to have decent pictures on this topic, but I wanted to share with you my childhood memories on making butter.

Book Review: Books on Consuming Cheeses

2010-06-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Cheese Companion: A connoisseur’s Guide, by Judy Ridgway and updated by Sara Hill. 2004
Starting off with a brief history of cheese, this book then talks about the regional developments of cheese. Next, a brief description about how cheese is made to help you understand different styles and how they might taste, which they then explain along with how to serve it. The rest of the book is about the different kinds of cheeses there are, arranged alphabetically. Each cheese is described, identified where it originated from, given variations (Mozzarella has Bocconcini, a cow’s milk variation sold in bowls of whey), and facts including milk, style, fat content, maturity, pungency, and a suggested wine. This is more of an encyclopedia style cheese book to help you get a general grasp of cheese varieties, complete with color pictures.

The Cheese Plate by Max McCalman and David Gibbons. 2002
This book starts with the history of cheese, describing what cheese is, and moves on to the art of cheesemaking. Then it moves into how to buy, store, and serve cheese, and is followed by how to taste cheese, cheese pairings, and cheese courses. The last part is favorite cheeses of the authors. This book is more of a dense reading book, kind of like a textbook. It does have some good sections, but nothing to really skim.

Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins. 1996
This is a thicker encyclopedia style cheese book, though it organizes the cheeses by region. It starts off talking about the geography of cheese, and then talks about cheese, including milk, how it is made, classifications, and how to buy, store, and serve cheese. When it comes to the cheese, the chapters are by country, further broken down by region, such as the Alsace and Lorraine region in France. It talks about the region and its affect on cheese, and then the cheeses that come from there, including how to choose and serve that cheese. There are a lot of side bars and other fun facts thrown in. For the United States, it does try to list cheesemakers. In the back , there is a section on “The Great Cheeses: Ready Reference,” which gives a small summary of the cheese in alphabetical order. It has lots of pictures, but they are unfortunately in black and white.

Laura Werlin’s Cheese Essentials: An Insider’s Guide to Buying and Serving Cheese {with 50 Recipes} by Laura Werlin. 2007
This book has a great progressiveness to it. Werlin starts you off by introducing you to cheese, trying to give you words to use to describe what kind of cheeses you might like, and therefore guide you into selecting styles to fit your tastes. From there, there is a chapter devoted to the eight styles of cheeses: fresh, semi-soft, soft-ripened, surfaced-ripened, semi-hard, hard, blue, and washed-rind. She lists different cheeses, talks about them, lists which ones melt, what to look for when buying cheese, how to store them, and a few noteworthy ones and recipes. This book gets you familiar with cheeses and teaches you how to buy what you like.

Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager by Max McCalman and David Gibbons. 2009
McCalman and David took their Cheese Plate book and expanded on it, taking it up a notch. If you ever wanted to work in a cheese shop, this is the text book to study to get you there. At the end of each section is a chapter review with bullet points, which are nice, but add to the textbook feel. The book is broken down into three sections: understanding real cheese, becoming a connoisseur, and talking about great artisan cheeses of the world. The first section has chapters on why cheese is good for you, expanded cheese history, more on cheese making, talking about cheese flavor, judging cheeses, milk animals, and raw milk. In the Connoisseur section, it has chapters on a visiting a cheese farm, everything you need to know about buying cheese, cheese in restaurants, putting together cheese tastings, wine and cheese, and beer and cheese. Finally, it has chapters on artisan cheeses from America, Switzerland, Iberia, Italy, France, stinky cheeses, Cheddars, blue cheeses, and Chèvre. The appendixes include appellations, US cheese makers, courses, conferences, conventions and organizations, and an index to cheeses of the world.

The New American Cheese: Profiles of America’s Greatest Cheesemakers and Recipes for Cooking with Cheese by Laura Werlin. 2000
This is more of an all around cheese book, covering a little bit of everything. It starts off talking about cheese, including how it is made, the benefits of eating cheese, how to taste cheese, how to buy and store cheese, how to pair cheese with wine and a little bit about other beverages, basic information about cooking with cheese. It has a quick reference guide about different styles of cheeses and varieties, mentioning which are good for cooking, eating, or melting. The book then moves on to recipes and creamery profiles. It has a glossary, list of cheesemakers with addresses including ones not profiled, and cheese retailers.

How to Taste Cheese

2010-06-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

Just like drinking wine, I get frustrated when I eat cheese that I can taste a difference, but seem to lack the vocabulary to describe what I taste. I end up describing probably a vast majority of the cheeses I taste as “nutty”, but not all cheeses taste the same, so I should be able to describe them differently. The New American Cheese: Profiles of America’s Great Cheesemakers and Recipes for Cooking with Cheese by Laura Werlin is about the only book that I’ve really seen address how to taste cheese.

When drinking wine, one talks about how a wine looks, smells, how it feels in the mouth, and how it tastes. Cheese can follow along those same lines.

Visually, one should ask a cheesemonger how a cheese should look. Different varieties will have different qualities too look for, such as a blue cheese should show mold, but a Cheddar cheese should not.

Cheese might smell pungent, strong, sweet, or other descriptors.

When it comes to mouth feel and cheese, it is usually thought of as texture. Cheese can be smooth, granular, creamy, rubbery, etc. Werlin even suggests that the average cheese consumer can realize when something is wrong with the cheese due to texture, and gives the example that a semi-soft cheese should not taste granular. In addition, a cheese labeled hard should not have a soft mouth feel, indicating it was not aged as long as it should have been.

Finally, for tasting, Werlin suggests that certain cheeses have certain characteristics:

For example, fresh goat cheese naturally has a lot of acid, resulting in a tangy flavor, while an aged sheep’s milk cheese usually has a more pronounced, earthy flavor. Aged cheeses in general, devoid of most of their moisture, are often saltier and stronger, while a young cow’s milk cheese might be a little tangy. A cheddar is often nutty, as is a Gruyère and some Goudas. As for blue cheese, the salt factor often distinguishes the style and age of the cheese.

Nothing replaces actually eating the cheese, so when looking to purchase cheese, Werlin says to ask for samples, and try several of the same kinds of cheese within a category. Consume the cheese at room temperature, and take your time. “What is the first sensation you get? Is it salty? Bitter? Strong? Sweet?… What is its texture?” When tasting at home for the sake of tasting, do not consume with other foods except bread or unflavored, low sodium crackers so that they do not taint your palate, and consume only water.

Werlin suggests the following words to use as a cheese vocabulary. Some attributes appear in both the favorable and less favorable groups, so it depends on the cheese and your senses as to which one it is:

Texture and/or Apperance, favorable: cloth-wrapped, cracked, crumbly, crystallized, firm, fresh-looking veiny, natural rind, open, plastic-wrapped, runny, silky, smooth, soft, solid, supple, vacuum-sealed, veiny, velvety, wax or paraffin rind, well-shaped

Texture, less favorable: chalky, curdy, dried out, dull, gummy, huffed, ill-shaped, lopsided, moldy, mottled, off-color, oily, open, pale, pasty, rind rot, rubbery, rust-colored, saggy, slimy, transparent, unnatural color, unappetizing

Aroma, favorable: barnyardy, earthy, floral, fresh, fresh milk, fruity, gamy, garlicy, moldlike, musty, nutty, oniony, perfumy, smoky, subtle, sweet, truffly, vegetal

Aroma, less favorable: acrid, ammoniated, barnyardy, gamy, pungent, sour, sour milk.

Mouthfeel, favorable: body, buttery, chalky, chewy, crumbly, dense, fondant-like, grainy, hard, pasty, silky, smooth, soft, toothsome, velvety, waxy

Mouthfeel, less favorable: acidic, chalky, coarse, curdy, gymmy, porous, rubbery, runny, supple, tough

Flavor, favorable: acidic, applelike, balanced (milk/acid), barnyardy, butterscotch, buttery, citrusy, clean, coffee, complex, creamy, delicate, earthy, explosive, farmlike, feed, fresh milk, fruity, grassy, hay, hazelnut, herbaceous, herb-flavored, lemony, moldy, mushroomy, nutty, peppery, piquant, rich, ripe, robust, rustic, savory, sharp, smoked, smoky, spicy, springlike, strong, sweet, tangy, tart, toffee, truffly, vegetal, wine-cured, yeasty, zesty

Flavor, less favorable: acidic, acrid, ammoniated, artificial, barnyardy, bitter, flat, garlicky, metallic, moldy, oily, one-dimensional, overpowering, overripe, plastic-wrap, pungent, rancid, soapy, sour, strong, sulfurous, watery, waxy, weedy

Most importantly, have fun. Werlin says, “Unlike wine, cheese has never been a source of intimidation for Americans, nor should it become so now.”

Additional readings: The Cheese Plate and Mastering Cheese, both by Max McCalman and David Gibbons. The later has a chapter titled, “Cheese Flavor: What it is and where it comes from.”

The Cheese Board

2010-06-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I went to a creamery in south west Sweden that had a cheese buffet. We thought it was the coolest thing ever! It wasn’t all cheese, of course, as there was bread, crackers, fruit, vegetable, and cold salads, but it was very filling.

How does one go about making a cheese board or buffet? The Cheese Companion: A Connoisseur’s Guide by Judy Ridgway and updated by Sara Hill talk about this subject. They recommend, “Rich or complex cheeses are best served after plain roasted and broiled meats where as hard goat cheese and the traditional English cheeses are a good choice to follow more opulent dishes. Young and refreshing cheeses do well after spicy food.”

They go on to talk about how cheeses of different colors, textures, pungency, and flavor create a more attractive board than if they were all the same. Ricki Carroll interviewed Steve Jones of the Provvista Specialty Foods in Portland, OR for her book, Home Cheese Making. He suggested to also mix up the type of milk used to make the cheese, so one cheese might be made of cow’s milk, while another is made of sheep’s milk.

For serving, have multiple knives around in case the cheese sticks to the knife. Do not have too big of a big of a board so that it can be passed around. If a buffet is being served, shake things up a bit by serving off of tiles, marble slabs, or wicker trays and other types of surfaces instead. Serving it on a lettuce leaf, or decorating it with fresh herbs, wild flowers, berries, vine leaves, nuts, and other safe and edible vegetation also dress up the display. Offer bread or a neutral tasting cracker.

The preparation beforehand includes covering the cheese and board with something like plastic wrap or a glass dome to help keep it fresh.

Some cheese board suggestions by country in The Cheese Companion: A Connoisseur’s Guide:

French: Comté, Brie de Meaux, Chèvre Log, Pont l’Évêque, Roquefort
Swiss: Appenzell, Emmental, Sapsago, Tête de Moine, Vacherin Mont d’Or
Italian: Fontina d’Aosta, Gorgonzola, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Robiola, Taleggio
English: Duckett’s Caerphilly, Farmhouse Lancashire, Mature Cheddar, Stilton, Wensleydale

Other cheese board recommendations in the Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins:

Italain: Mozzerella di bufala, Aged Pecorino Toscano, and Taleggio served withItalian sopresata, roasted sweet red peppers, olives, Tuscan style bread, an a Chianti riserva wine
Spanish: Cabrales, Roncal, Mahón, served with chorizo, thin-sliced smoked or serrano ham, dried or fresh figs, almonds, marinated olives with lemon zest or garlic, walnut bread, and a Spanish Rioja bread
French: Crottin de Chavignol, Fourme d’Ambert, Pyrénéss brebis served with sweet peppers, radishes, celery stalks, lightly steamed green beans, rustic farmhouse-style bread with unsalted butter, and a chilled white Sancerre wine.
American: Maytag blue, Vella Dry Jack, Grafton Cheddar served with medjool dates, honeydew melon, prosciutto, chutney, crusty sourdough bread, and a zinfandel wine.

How to Serve Cheese

2010-06-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I purchased the Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins, published in 1996. I thought I would use it to improve my cheese variety knowledge, but each place has its own kinds of milk, recipes, molds in the air, and techniques that I was overwhelmed.

One thing I did learn from this book was how to serve cheese:

In France, often one, two, or three – rarely more – cheeses are offered as a separate course at dinner. An individual serving is cut from the larger piece, and then put on the diner’s plate, and eaten with a knife and fork. This cheese course is meant to be eaten accompanied by bread and any dinner wine that remains from the main course, or perhaps with a special dessert wine.

In Italy, cheese is often eaten as part of a meal with some form of [cured pork products] and fruit or vegetables, olives, nuts, bread, and wine. It is also frequently served as an appetizer before and evening meal. However, there is an argument in favor of offering cheese after a meal rather than before, as cheese is very filling and may dissipate the enjoyment of the course or courses that follow….

Always serve cheese at room temperature, not cold from the refrigerator. In order to ensure the emergence of its full flavor, always take the cheese out of the refrigerator early enough for it to come to room temperature. Depending on the harness of the cheese, this could take about an hour in cool weather, or in hot weather, as little as 30 minutes. Hard cheeses take longer to come to room temperature than soft ones. When you take it out, leave the cheese wrapped so that the exposed surfaces don’t dry out. Just before you serve the cheese, unwrap it and throw the wrapping away. Never use the same wrapping twice – it won’t reseal properly.

Jenkins goes on to say that he uses a flat surface like a cutting board to cut cheese, as a plate is sort of wobbly. He also recommends using just a good all purpose knife, as they are study and will not flex, though unflavored dental wax might do a better job at cutting fresh cheeses, though I have problems hitting my knuckles with that technique.

Different Styles of Cheeses

2010-06-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

When it comes to classifications of cheeses, they are usually broken down into how firm they are, what kind of rind, and how they were allowed to ripen and age.

First off, the basic fundamental part of the cheese is knowing what kind of milk the cheese was made from. In Making Artisan Cheeses, Tim Smith describes cow’s milk as being the most common, with its creamy high moisture yield. Goat’s milk makes for smoother, softer cheeses than cow’s milk due to its smaller fat globules. Smith reasons that since sheep produce a smaller volume of milk than cows yet has the same total amount of solids, it makes for a denser cheese with an oil and butterfat that goes to the surface. Thing is, you can process all three milks the same way to make the same cheese, but they will all taste different.

The Cheese Companion by Judy Ridgway and updated by Sara Hill talk about cheeses in the sense of softness, rinds, cheesemaking process, and ripening process. I have supplemented some of their descriptions with information from the Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins.

Softness

Very Soft: 80% water and spoonable; includes most fresh cheeses
Soft: 50-70% water and spreadable, including Brie and Camembert.
Semi-hard: 40-50% water and sliceable with a slightly rubbery texture. Gouda is a good example.
Semi-hard blue: crumbly or springy blue cheeses including Roquefort and Stilton
Hard: 30-50% water and firm, perhaps slightly crumbly or dense cheese, including Cheddar, Gruyère, and Parmesan

Rinds

White mold rinds: Cheeses which contain an outer rind of white mold that is edible. The mold is introduced either via exposure, or being sprayed on. Examples include Brie and Camembert.
Washed rinds: a cheese that is washed in brine, wine, beer, or spirits to act as a food for bacteria, causing an orange-red rinded cheese that is soft.
Dry Natural rinds: rinds in which the outer curds dried out. They are sometimes oiled. These rinds are not eaten. Examples include Stilton, Cheddar, and Emmental
Organic Rinds: rinds of cheeses made from herbs or leaves.
Artificial rinds: rinds made of ash, wax, or plastic.

Cheesemaking Process

Fresh: Uncooked curds that are unripened or allowed to ripen only for a few days. Maybe be slightly pressed or molded, but most of the time just packed into tubs, so they are usually very moist and mild. Examples: Mascarpone and cream cheese
Unpressed ripened cheese: Curds are cut up finely to allow whey to drain naturally. They maybe be quick-ripened with surface molds or bacteria, or slow-ripened with starter cultures for one to three months. Examples: Brie, Camembert, and Stilton
Pressed ripened cheese: cheese that are lightly or heavily pressed before ripening for two to eighteen months. Example: Cheddar
Cooked, Pressed, and ripened cheese: The curds are heated in the whey before drained, molded, and heavily pressed, and possibly aged for up to four years. Examples: Gouda, Parmesan, Gruyère, and Emmental
Pasta Filata cheese: cheeses in which the curds are cooked and then kneaded and stretched before shaping. They can be eaten fresh or allowed to ripen. Examples: Mozzerella and Provolone.

Ripening Process

Soft cheeses: ripened at lower temperatures from the outside in quickly, such as mold rind. They tend to be semisoft.
Washed rind: a cheese that is washed in brine, wine, beer, or spirits to act as a food for bacteria, causing an orange-red rind cheese that is soft.
Natural-rind cheeses: self-formed rinds; no microflora or molds and no washing are used to create their thin exteriors. They are denser in texture than other cheeses and usually aged longer.
Blue cheese: a cheese that has been pierced with metal skewers to introduce oxygen into the interior of the cheese, which causes it to mold.
Hard cheeses: ripened at higher temperatures from the inside out slowly. They may be covered in oil or rapped in bandages.

Additional Readings:

Artisanal Premium cheese – Cheese Types
Laura Werling – Understanding Cheese: The Eight Basic Styles of Cheese
Laura Werling – Understanding Cheese: Cheeses by Category

Book Review: Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest

2010-06-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

Growing up, my folks would usually stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory on the way to visit my aunt further down the Oregon Coast. As I got older, my parents stopped going there as much. For starters, Tillamook Cheese Factory went from open vats that were worked by humans to a closed system done by machines. Not only did it make it less interesting to watch, but it also changed the flavor of the cheese into something blander. As the company got larger and began distributing nationwide, the practices of the company became more corporate like – they even tried to sue other companies in Tillamook for using Tillamook in their name, citing that it creates confusion between products, and if the other products are inferior, that reputation would become latched on to the cheese from there. Very un-neighborly, as some of these companies had verbal agreements with the Cheese Factory, and I believe every business should have rights to use the name of the town and county they are in (see Controversy). In fact, Tillamook is a Native American name, so the Natives should be making the Factory change its name if they are going to have that attitude. As former dairy farmers, these practices made us stop buying Tillamook Cheese.

So when I was at Powell’s Book and spotted Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest by Tami Parr, I was quite excited. Here was a book that mapped out all the little craft cheese makers in my neck of the woods! Later, after attending the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest back and Tour de Cheese back in April, I realized that most of the immediate area’s craft cheeses were represented at this festival.

Parr has a map on following the Table of Contents showing to the cheese makers in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, and then breaks the book down into sub regions such as Southwest Washington or the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Each site is then named, tells who the owners are, where it is located, visitor hours, and any contact information and then the styles of cheese they make, grouped by fresh or aged. It shows the company logo, and maybe a few pictures while it talks about the company, farm, cheese, or anything else to help establish a connection with them. At the time of publication in 2009, there were 15 cheese makers in British Columbia, 31 in Washington, 17 in Oregon, and 3 in Idaho for a total of 66 cheese makers, excluding Tillamook and any of their sub companies.

The appendixes of the book contains a glossary of cheese terms, cheese basics including an explanation of styles, how to buy, care for, store, and serve cheese, and how to pair cheese with wine, beer, and other spirits. The appendixes also contain information regarding where to buy these cheeses by region, and a small section of recipes obtained from the cheese makers and including a suggested cheese course using regional northwest cheeses. The last part of the appendix would be my favorite – a listing of northwest cheese makers by milk source, broken down by state. That allows quickly look up only cow’s milk cheese makers.

Tour de Cheese

2010-06-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

As part of the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest back in April, there was also a Tour de Cheese portion. This brought together several different northwest craft cheese makers.

Most cheese makers in the area are using goat or sheep’s milk. I don’t blame them. Both species take up less space than cows, reach maturity sooner, and require less feed to maintain, so it is an easier livestock for the backyard farmer to raise. I tried some as my first cheese, but I unfortunately got it stuck in my throat due to my dislike of this style of product. I’m sure their products are quite wonderful, but I just struggle so much with it.

However, that’s not to say that all of the cheese was goat or sheep’s milk, as there were several cow milk cheeses represented, of which I could eat. From Chehalis, WA, Rosecrest Farm was there with swiss style cheese from their milking shorthorns. I bought some of their garlic flavored swiss cheese, and thought it was delightful.

There were also a few cheese makers and distributors from outside the Pacific Northwest present at the event, such as Beehive Cheese Co from Utah. I admit, I’m a sucker for cheese curd, and my husband loves Cajun food, so I got their Ragin’ Cajun Squeaky Bee Curds.

The other interesting booth that was cheese related that I should note was Urban Cheese Craft. They are a company that puts everything you need to make a simple cheese into a box except the milk. For $15, I bought a DYI Cheese Kit to make queso blanco and paneer. I have also seen their kits at Whole Foods Market, where I believe they have taught some classes. I’ll give a review on that shortly.

Cheese and Cider

2010-06-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

I am one who loves eating cheese and apples. My favorite is to take a tart juicy apple like Pink Lady and pair it with an aged nutty cheese, like the Irish Dubliner. My grandfather loved to eat cheddar cheese with apples and with apple pie. Why would eating cheese with cider be any different than these examples?

On page 101 of Cider: Hard and Sweet, Ben Watson states that when it comes to having a cider tasting, that cheese makes for an excellent choice:

Cheese is a simple and natural accompaniment to cider, so long as it is mild-flavored; a strong-tasting variety like Stilton [blue cheese] or extra-sharp Cheddar will overwhelm the delicate taste of most ciders. But soft cheeses like Camembert and Pont l’Évêque, both of which come from Normandy, will complement cider nicely…

Speaking of cheeses, for the past several years I have had the honor of leading cider and cheese pairings along with some of the nation’s top cheese authors and cheese mongers. These tastings are rather different than those focused exclusively on cider, because the object is to find the best matches between cider and cheeses. In general, strong cheeses, especially blue types, pair well with sweeter ciders, or even fortified dessert wines like pommeau or ice cider. Otherwise, this is not an exact science, since ciders and cheeses from individual producers vary so much. You might try a fruitier cider with a fresh chevre, but a more acidic or sparkling cider with an aged goat cheese, for instance. For a party tasting, I suggest buying four or five different types of cheese (sheep, cow, or goat’s milk; young and aged styles), and then having guests try a sip of each cider with a bite of each cheese, then scoring them and seeing which make the best pairings. For a good book on American cheeses, I recommend [Jeffery] Robert’s The Atlas of American [Artisan] Cheese (Chelsea Green, 2007), which profiles cheesemakers all across the U.S. and describes the cheeses they make, as well as giving suggested pairings with cider, beer, and wine.

Based on this book review, I got my hands on The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese. It gives one page per cheesemaker talking about who they are, where they are, what they make, awards, and history about the company. The book is grouped into geographical regions, and at the top of each cheese maker’s page is icons indicating the milk used. Occasionally, there will be an extra page talking about a cheese with pictures. At the end of the description there is a “Serve with:” section, indicating a style of cider, then a style of wine followed by a style of beer to serve the cheese with. These are all generic styles, not brands, which makes a pairing a little easier to do. For example, the book highlighted Rogue River Blue from the Rogue Creamery in Central Point, OR, saying, “Serve with: Semi-sweet sparkling cider •Late-harvest Muscat or Riesling •Dry or chocolate stout”. Another cheese from this area that it highlights is Killeen, a spring cow’s milk cheese from Estrella Family Creamery in Montesano, WA. “Serve with: Still, single-variety cider •Medium –bodied Merlot or Pinot Gris •Amber or red ale”.

Crispin Cider recently had three people pair their cider with cheese. Their recommendations included:

Crispin Light: chevre with ginger-pear preserves, cheddar, and mascarpone
Brut: apple smoked cheddar or an emmentaler-style swiss cheese
Original: gouda, aged cheeses, or bucheron
Honey Crisp: blue goat cheese

June is Dairy Month

2010-06-01T08:15:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned before, I grew up on a dairy farm, and anyone in the dairy industry knows that June is Dairy Month. I tried googling it to provide more information, but what I got was a list of events and teachings from nutrition, regional councils, and even Crayola has pages to color for this year’s dairy month already up online. As a kid, I was always told that Dairy Month marked the beginning of summer, in which there is always a rise in dairy products consumed, especially cheese and ice cream. Maybe it is a great marketing ploy to kick off the summer by encouraging people to get all the recommended calcium they need via dairy products. Personally, I don’t care – I do love my dairy products.

So for the month of June, I’m going to pay homage to my roots and talk a little bit about dairy products. I’ll try to keep it somewhat pertinent to the Candle Wine Project, and talk about cheese and alcohol pairings. Actually, making cheese is fermentation, so that really isn’t that much of a stretch. However, there will be times where I’m just flat out going to talk about dairy products. Sorry.

I have to make one other note to my readers in regards to cheese – I cannot stand blue cheese or goat’s milk cheese, and sheep’s milk cheeses are hit and miss with me. Thing is, it can be a blind taste test with goat’s milk cheese, and I will know, so it isn’t in my head. Some think I’m crazy with this because they can’t tell the difference, but it is the truth. Goats and sheep smell differently than cows, and that smell is in their wool, meat, and milk, and I just have a hard time dealing with it. Last time someone talked me into trying some, it caught in my throat and I couldn’t get it down for like a good 20 swallows. And the thing is, I want to like it, as I feel I’m missing out on a great deal of cheeses, and I love cheese! I also figure that I will go to Greece some day, and it will be pretty much all goat and sheep’s milk cheeses, and I’ll miss out on some of the wonderful food because I can’t deal with this cheese. The other irony in this is that I want to smell things in wine and find that I struggle, and then I have no problems with cheese and wish I couldn’t.

Happy Memorial Day!

2010-05-31T08:53:00.001-07:00

I’m taking the day off from blogging to participate in the Memorial Weekend Wine Tasting that happens in Oregon and Southwest Washington. The Rusty Grape Vineyards has a new blackberry wine, orange Muscat, and Pinot Gris out for me to try. I’ll have new posts for up in June.

Book Review: Wine Playing Cards

2010-05-28T08:08:00.001-07:00

On the last day of the 2010 WineMaker Magazine Conference in Stevenson, WA, there was an hour between the last session and the dinner and awards ceremony. Being in the Skamania Lodge, I wandered around a little bit until I found the gift shop. There, I discovered that they were selling a red wine deck of cards and a white wine deck of cards for $8.95 each. While I found that to be a bit expensive, I figured I could use them to play solitaire with, or stop and read them and learn more about the grapes that go into wines. I also figured it could be a conversation piece sometime.

These cards were printed by Inkstone Design, Inc in 2003. The more popular varieties of wine grapes take the ace or king cards, and I was amazed that there are 52 red and 52 white grape varieties, as you only hear of a handful of breeds. Each card talks about the grape’s origins, characteristics, and gives a suggested food to pair it with.

I did find one error in them, which is amazing given my limited knowledge of grape wines. The red wine ace of hearts is the Cabernet Sauvignon, which puts its origins as, “A cross between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc grapes...” The white wine king of diamonds is the Sauvignon Blanc, which says, “In 1997 it was discovered to be a natural mutation of the Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.” This confuses me, as it sounds like “Which came first – the chicken or the egg?”

There are probably better books out there on the topic of wine grapes and the different varieties, but those would be books that I wouldn’t really be interested in. These playing cards are small, fit into your pocket, and versatile, as I could actually play games with them rather than just read them. I could also see someone using them like flashcards. Overall, I find them useful and educational.

My New Eco-Lawn

2010-05-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I read a local news story about a woman who planted an eco friendly lawn. It was a grass seed mix that was developed by the Oregon State University. “The blend requires less water consumption, no chemical fertilizers and needs less frequent mowing. This means less time and money spent on lawn care even as it stays lush and green… This summer, as her neighbor’s lawns leaned toward a brownish tint despite frequently watering, [hers] stayed green. This was due to the mixture’s variety of drought tolerant plants. She also has found less moss since using the eco-lawn mix." Unfortunately, this was news worthy because here Home Owner’s Association was making her remove it. I tell you, there is nothing that makes people want something more than telling them they can’t have it, and I wanted this lawn (luckily, there is no HOA for me). This was good advertisement for eco friendly lawns.

The mix in this story was called Fleur-de-Lawn made by Hobbs and Hopkins LTD. They used things like English Daisy and clover instead of pure grass. The clover puts nitrogen back into the soil, acting like a natural fertilizer, and is more drought resistant than grass.

While looking for this mix, I came across Earth Turf, which also uses clover to minimize fertilizer use, chemicals, and watering.

Washington State University King County Extension put out a posting about eco lawns, which also had a link to Seattle Public Utilities’s thoughts on ecoturf . Both recommended the Fleur-de-Lawn, and also suggested Albany, Oregon’s Nichols Garden Nursery (whom I like because of vegetable and herb seed varieties) and their ecology lawn mixtures. Nichol’s and Fleur-de-Lawn both use clover, wild English daisies, yarrow, and baby blue eyes.

Just for comparison, I looked up the Scotts Turf Builder Pacific Northwest Mix. For starters, I have no idea what kind of grass it was using, so that was frustrating. It also claimed to reduce moss like the Fleur-de-lawn testimony story, and it needs less water to get started due to the seeds being covered. It is much cheaper per pound, but requires more seed per square foot. In fact, for half the price of 1 lb of Fleur de Lawn, you can get three pounds of Scotts, but it only covers half as much lawn, so you end up paying the same amount as Fleur de Lawn to get the same coverage. I also figure Scotts will cost me more in the end due to water, fertilizer, gas to mow it, and my time it takes to maintain it.

Thing is, we will have a beautiful, green lawn that will be soft to walk on bare footed without all the work and money!

Ironic Lawn Care

2010-05-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

My recent newsletter from the Home Orchard Society also included a story about God and St. Francis discussing lawn care, though this conversation could be with a foreigner unfamiliar with our customs. While I’m not quit this extreme in my views about lawns, I have been arguing for some time now that I don’t need a perfect lawn, and might rip out some of it in favor of a garden instead. Also, the pollution involved in mowing and the chemicals involved is horrible. Anyway, the story goes:

GOD: Francis, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect, no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are these green rectangles.
ST. FRANCIS: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers "weeds" and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.
GOD: Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms. It's temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?
ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.
GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.
ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it-sometimes twice a week.
GOD: They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?
ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.
GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?
ST. FRANCIS: No Sir. Just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.
GOD: Now let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?
ST. FRANCIS: Yes, Sir.
GOD: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.
ST. FRANCIS: You aren't going to believe this Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.
GOD: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It's a natural circle of life.
ST. FRANCIS: You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.
GOD: No. What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and to keep the soil moist and loose?
ST. FRANCIS: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.
GOD: And where do they get this mulch?
ST. FRANCIS: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.
GOD: Enough. I don't want to think about this anymore. St. Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have they scheduled for us tonight?"
ST. CATHERINE: "Dumb and Dumber", Lord. It's a really stupid movie about.....
GOD: Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis.

Moss

2010-05-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

I’ve been gardening a lot recently, trying to get our property in tip top shape to grow a garden and plant my apple trees. This is all so that I have things to ferment.

When we bought the place, it had a moss lawn. There is no grass, just moss. Growing up on a farm, I was taught that if you have moss in the fields, something was wrong. Moss only grows where it has no competition. So if the grass dies off and moss comes in, then something needs to be done to encourage grass to grow there. Sure, the moss could be killed, but that does not mean that the grass would return, or if it is reseeded, it does not mean it will grow. So the key is really finding out why the grass died out.

With my new house, the back yard was completely moss. How it got to be that way is pretty simple: there were a lot of evergreen that blocked out the sunlight, killing the grass. Since then, we have cut down a few trees, and we thought that the moss would die back with that much sunlight on it now, but it isn’t really.

Thing is, we didn’t use moss killer on our lawn because we want to plant apple trees and a garden, so we don’t want chemicals like that entering our food. We ended up sort of kind of removing it with lime and hard work. The lime will also hopefully bring the soil back a little more basic after having acidic pine needles everywhere.

We didn’t toss the moss out, either, but put it in a raised bed that only contained berries. If it composts down, great. If it starts growing, no worries. I like reusing things.

2010 WineMaker Magazine Conference

2010-05-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

This last Friday and Saturday, I attended the 2010 WineMaker Magazine Conference in Stevenson, WA. I attended for several reasons. I make fruit wine, making cider is very similar to making fruit wine, and it was so close I felt I shouldn’t pass it up.

Admittedly, I was a little out of place. Most of the people there were in there 50s or older, and probably two thirds of the attendants were male. However, these people had a wealth of experience, and I did go there to learn.

The group of people was a mixture – some were hobbyists like me, and some actually had their winery license. Though, when asked how long they had been making wine, most respond in seasons rather than years. After a bit, I got used to responding that I make cider, and that I had never fermented a grape in my life. After some of the classes, like making sparkling wine from wine kits, I might actually try now.

I attended classes on malolatic fermentation, troubleshooting wine problems, and yeast health. They had two tasting sessions, where the first one served us the same wine fermented with different yeasts to see how the yeast affects flavor. The second session was about the sensory of tasting.

Most of the speakers submitted their power point presentations a head of time, allowing the Conference to print them out and put them in a binder for us. That allowed us just to scribble notes rather than try to jot down everything. In addition, every presentation was projected though a PA system, which allows the organizers to record each session and then sell the entire conference recordings for $20, which is a good price if you could not attend the session and you wanted to make more sense out of the presentation power point print offs.

During lunch, they had signs on the tables like Northwest, Merlot, kit wines, and more. The idea was that if you sat at that table, then you were interested in that topic, possibly making the conversation flow easier. I sat at the Fruit Wine Maker table both days, and I met some brew supply store owners, one guy who allowed us to try his peach/plum wine, and a fellow guy interested in cider making.

Next year, the conference is moving to Santa Barbara, CA, so I will not be attending next year. However, if it came back around to this region, I would go back.

Book Review: He Said Beer, She Said Wine

2010-05-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

Granted, I’m not fond of any beer that has hops, though I’m not really a grape wine drinker, either, but He Said Beer, She Said Wine by Sam Calagione and Marine Old has given my husband lots of amusement. It was given to us as a Christmas present, and we use it to try and develop our palattes, especially for wine.

Calagione is actually the founder of Dogfish Head Brewing in Delaware, and Old is a wine sommelier friend of his. They would get into debates about what drink pairs better with a given food, which went from their own little private competitions to using the Dogfish Head Pub to host tastings with secret ballots. To their surprise, they got about a 50/50 vote, and it wasn’t based on gender.

The book goes though some basic principles on tasting wine and beer before it gets to the food pairings. About six foods from cheese, vegetables, sandwiches, pizza and pasta, spicy food, shellfish, poultry, meat, fruit desserts, and other desserts are presented. Old goes though and talks about them before offering her suggested wine pairing for that particular dish, and then Calagione has the same opportunity with beer for the same dish.

Most of these dishes are fairly common, which makes it much easier to concentrate on the alcohol rather than worrying about finding that particular food. For example, she recommends a Cave Spring Riesling paired with Kung Pao Chicken, while he recommends an Austrian Doppelbock such as Schloss Eggenberg Urbock 23⁰. Thing is, while the Kung Pao Chicken might be easy to find, rationality makes it a little harder to find the alcohol, so my husband and I would find another Riesling and Doppelbock that might be close to what they are describing.

At the back of the book, they do provide a few recipes to help you have your own beer vs wine tasting parties. While we have not had the parties, we have cooked up a few of the dishes.

In our experience with this book, the wine pairings always seem to work with each dish even though we made substitutions. The beer aspect of this seems to be a bit trickier, as sometimes it is better than the wine pairing, sometimes it ties with the wine pairing, and sometimes it just doesn’t go with the food it was paired with, leaving wine as the clear winner. In fact, my husband recently made the spicy Gulf Shrimp recipe again, which pairs with a Domaine Longval Tavel Rosé wine and a Moortgat Duvel beer. This time, he didn’t even want to bother with the beer, and instead just stick to the regional Chateau Ste. Michelle Dry Rosé we had found. But our previous cooking of the Classic Beer Tenderloin paired with Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon wine and Chimay Preière beer left us at a draw.

Cider Review by Gary Vaynerchuk: Farnum Hill

2010-05-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

Normally, I like to give my opinion and maybe I will link to others at the end, but I try not to let others sway my opinions. However, while I do follow Farnum Hill Cider in cyber world in which they have a large presence as an American cider producer, I am unable to acquire and taste their product on the West Coast. Therefore, when a video blog by Gary Vaynerchuk reviewing Farnum Hill Cider resurfaced, I thought I would make an exception and post it.

I hope you enjoy it.

Gary Vaynerchuk reviews Farnum Hill Kingston Black Cider Reserve, Farmhouse Cider, and Extra-Dry Cider on March 10, 2008 on Wine Library.

2010-05-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I talked about cider black and tans. Today, I will turn my attention to some of the cider cocktail recipes I have managed to collect.

JB Worcester UK posted on the Cider Workshop a calvados brandy and hard cider drink which he called “frogs nose,” and claimed it is better than pommeau.

Crispin Cider, always looking to promote their product, has posted several recipes.

They have a section called the Lazy Bartender, which are basic drinks in which cider replaced an ingredient.
They have another section called Creative Cocktails, including an area to submit your own cocktail made with cider.
On their blog, they posted the Kesler Ginger Crisp, made with gin, Crispin, ginger, ice, and lemon. The blog also is where the recipe for the Eastern Saint Cocktail Recipe, which is ginger flavored vodka, St. Germain, and their artisanal reserve Crispin Cider Saint.

Other sources of cider, both sweet or hard, drink recipes include:

http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/recipes/a/aaciderdrinks.htm, which includes some non-alcoholic recipes
Martha Stewart’s Pear and Sparkling Cider Cocktails, made with whiskey
http://www.sheckys.com/newyorkcity/nightlife/articles/cider_in_the_house_fall_s_cider_cocktails_6567.asp
http://cocktails.about.com/od/cocktailrecipes/a/apple_cocktails.htm , which includes apple spirit cocktails such as apple brandy or apple infusions.

Cider Black and Tan

2010-05-18T08:35:00.001-07:00

In the beer world, a black and tan is two beers of different color and densities poured in such a way that they do not mix, but instead remained layered. A tan beer, such as a lager, is usually poured first, and then a dark beer such as Guinness is poured over a spoon into the glass, which causes it to sit on top of the tan beer. It is quite lovely to look at.

Recently, I have discovered that there are cider versions of black and tans, in which the cider is usually poured first. The most common is the Snakebite, which is cider and lager. The lesser known varieties include the Hummingbird, Black & Velvet, and the specialized Oregon Hop Blossom. The Hummingbird is a pear cider and stout combo. The Black & Velvet is cider with Guinness. Wandering Aengus, based out of Salem, OR, told me that the Oregon Hop Blossom is an Oregon Cider paired with an Oregon IPA. Is it just me, or is the Oregon Hop Blossom a bit of a marketing ploy?

Speaking of marketing ploys, Crispin Cider has a list of many more cider black & tans using their products. They have the 3 Velveteers, which is Crispin cider paired with either an amber, stout (usually Guinness), or cream ale. They also have Snakes & Lagers, which is again Crispin cider, the snake, paired with different beers. They have the classic Snakebite, Snakelight (light beer), Snakelight Lime (light beer with a lime wedge), Brown Adder (Brown Ale), Sidewinder (Mexican beer with a lime wedge), or a Rattlesnake (Mexican Amber with a lime wedge). Check out their blends, or at least take a look at the lovely pictures.

Cedar Apple Rust in the West

2010-05-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

I am a paying member of the Home Orchard Society, in which I get a quarterly newsletter. I recently got one the other day in the mail, and it had an article submitted by Harry Burton in Salt Spring Island, BC is about Cedar Apple Rust.

As I understand it, is a fungus that winters on cedar trees, and then transfers to apple trees, infecting the leaves and fruit. I have been very careful trying to pick out apple trees that would be immune to this, as I am planning on planting the apple trees where cedar trees used to be. Also, there are a lot of cedar trees in this climate to expose my apple trees to, which kind of makes it puzzling that this state successfully grows so many apples with so many cedar trees around.

Burton talks about how he has cedar and apple trees living next to each other, and he has absolutely no problems with cedar apple rust. He admits he has some problems with canker and bitter pit, but never any problems with cedar apple rust that he knows of. This makes me less worried.

At the end of the article, there is a small editor’s note saying, “Cedar apple rust is rare west of the Rockies. We do not have the alternate hosts unless some careless landscaper planted one.” In fact, the cedar they are referring to in “cedar apple rust” is the Eastern red cedar or the Rocky Mountain juniper, which is why it is rarely seen here.

I guess I’ll quit worrying about cedar apple rust when picking out apple trees, along with fire blight, as we don’t have long hot summers to make that an issue.

Book Review: Crush It

2010-05-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Last fall, I was watching KGW Live @ 7 when they sent their business journalist Joe Smith to Powell’s Books to cover an author’s signing of Crush It! Why NOW is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, the guy from Wine Library.

Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur who was able to “[grow] his family wine business from $4 million to $60 million in five years”, and he did most of this by “focusing on the Internet and leveraging social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter." His book gives you a little bit of his history so you can understand how he worked to earn his success.

I first checked the book out from the library, but quickly released I should buy it. It is because of that book that this blog exists today, along with my Twitter account and Facebook page. The timing of that book coming out was perfect for me – I had realized I wanted to make cider, but had not realized the potential of the Internet to help me grow though writing rather than struggle silently on my own.

I then went out and bought two more copies to give to my brother-in-law who was finishing up his graphic design degree, and for my favorite cousin in college for interior design. I think this is a great book for people coming out of college, people looking for a career change, people who want to grow their business, and most importantly, people have a job or hobby they love to talk about. What topic do you talk about that puts a twinkle in your eyes?

Gary Vaynerchuk on Noses

2010-05-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

Gary Vaynerchuk is a wine guru with a video blog called Wine Library TV. Vaynerchuk’s family immigrated from Belrus to New York, where his father operated a liquor store in which he worked as a janitor. He realized that when people came in for hard liquor, they knew exactly what they wanted, bought it, and left. However, wine drinkers would often browse the selection and ask for advice, and he saw a potential to grow his father’s business though these drinkers. Problem was, he was still underage:

As a teenager, tasting wine was legally impossible, so he set out to train his palate “backwards.” To study various flavors associated with wine, he tasted obscure fruits and vegetables, along with earthly influences, including grass, dirt, rocks, tobacco, and wood [based on a wine’s description]. “I probably consumed more New Jersey grass in my teens than any lawn mower.” By familiarizing himself with the numerous tastes that contributed to a specific wine, Vaynerchuk was able to detect subtleties that an ordinary palate wouldn’t recognize. http://crushitbook.com/about-gary-vaynerchuk/

The following is a 30 minute long Wine Library TV video blog #148, “How to Get Your Wine Palate Trained”, which shows Vaynerchuk using foods to build up a palate. It is interesting to watch, because he eats something, and it reminds him of a particular wine.

He admits early on that it cost him $180 to obtain all the foods for this segment, but a lot of what he buys are items slow to expire in multiple servings, such as jam and spices, and can be bought over a period of time to reduce the impact on your wallet. Some of these items you probably already have in your cupboard. It is the fresh things that make it more difficult.

There were a few foods he was missing that are listed in the comments, but I’ve also noticed that some are missing from his list that are on the wine wheel. I think I would use the wine wheel to help guide my grocery list of wine tasting.

Class: Le Nez du Vin Part II

2010-05-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

Last night was my second and last class for “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine, offered by my local community college “Cooking & Wine School." It is a class designed to help improve one’s ability to identify smells in wine, with last night focusing on red wines.

Our lecture for the evening was about taste. Taste and smell are different senses in the fact that our bodies are having reactions to chemicals in order to sense. Another odd thing is that 75% of tasting is actually smelling. Together, they help us identify if something is safe to consume.

Recently, there is a group of people being identified as “supertasters.” About one quarter of the population seems to have more of the smaller taste buds, making them more sensitive to tasting things. There is a simple test of consuming a harmless chemical called propylthouracil (PROP), which will taste bitter to a supertaster, while a nontaster will taste nothing. I’ve always doubted that I was a supertaster, but they said that supertasters avoid coffee because it is too bitter, which I do. Looking at the list on Wikipedia, I also avoid grapefruit juice, only consume spinach in a lettuce mixture, I don’t care for soy, and I love gin but cannot handle tonic water. Maybe supertaster explains my aversion to goat’s milk products, when others cannot tell the difference? My instructors did indicate that sometimes supertasters avoid alcohol because it “burns,” so maybe I’m not a supertaster. I’ll have to try and find PROP and find out for sure.

Back to wine – besides actually tasting wine, there is also how it feels in the mouth, which can be broken up into a few categories:

Body – sometimes thought of as thickness. Ideally, wine should be silky, not thin.
Temperature – consuming any food cold masks flavors. If a vendor is having you taste refrigerator cold wine, then there are flaws that they are hiding.
Texture
Tannin – tannins create a bit of puckering. A little bit of tannins open up the taste buds, while a lot of tannins close down the taste buds, sometimes even leaving the mouth feeling dry. Initially, tannins are short chains which are not exactly pleasant tasting. As they age, they bond to make longer chains, which taste better.
Alcohol

Somehow, I had a wine smelling reputation from the previous week, and it kind of spooked me when a clerk came in and said I was the one to beat, and I had never seen her before. Plus, I didn’t really think I was that good as I had a list go guide me before. Well, after last week’s 14/17 correct on smelling jars, it was decided not to give us a list of what smells there were to challenge me. I still ended up with a 14/17, with one very close one of being marionberry jam (a thornless blackberry hybrid developed at OSU in 1956), and I thought it was blueberry jam. I had a little harder time with the flaws, and said one was like plant rot, but more pleasant, and he said it was actually the water drained off of a can of mushrooms, so he was trying to get us to smell fungus.

When we started drinking the wines, I had a hard time, as all of them had a black pepper nose to me, and it was difficult to get past that to smell any fruit. Maybe I’m not a supertaster.

Apple Press

2010-05-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

After I figured out how I was going to crush apples this coming year, I started looking into how to press them.

There are two basic types of presses – the basket press and the cheese press. The basket press is usually a round slatted basket in which pressure is applied using a screw in the middle, and the juice runs out the side. There are already made presses out there for $250, but an overwhelming amount of people I talked to said that this design yields a poor amount of juice when working with apples. Instead, they suggested I look into the cheese press system, which tray with “cheese” and a hydraulic jack. There is a set of plans in Annie Proloux and Lew Nichol’s Cider: Making, Using, & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider, which is similar but better to one on Andrew Lea’s website. Old Time Cider just posted a video of Alan Yelvington building a cider press out of a Harbor Freight Shop Press, which is a press already mounted into a frame and would save some time and energy building (I appologize about the layout, but resizing the video is just fighting me today):

He also posted with the video his suppliers:

The press is from Harbor Freight
The tray can be found at Bel-Art
Good Nature, Day Equipment, and OESCO have a few other odds and ends, like the pressing cloth

How the press works:

Harbor Freight recently had a sale in which their 12 ton shop press, which normally runs for $120 was on sale for $80, and I got one. However, this means that the tray he used is too big because it is a narrower press. I’m currently looking into other food grade plastic or stainless steel trays that would fit.

I’m going to slowly buy up the parts I need and try to have everything ready by the end of August to make apple cider.

Apple Grinder

2010-05-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in the back of my head, a little alarm went off saying that while I have access to apples this fall to try and make apple cider from, I have no way of crushing and pressing the apples. That’s the equipment I really need to be attempting to get before this fall.

My local home brew supply store does rent crushers and presses. However, they don’t have very many, so you have to sign up months in advance to rent them and hope that your timing is right. Since my folk’s apple trees ripen at different times, I think it would be better if I spent about $400 for an initial crush and press that I would have for years to come until I upgrade.

I’ve been on the Cider Workshop for awhile now, and when it comes to apple grinders, they keep recommending garbage disposals, which costs less than $100. From there, you would need some lumber to make a frame to set it in.

This method seems pretty good to me – it is cheaper than an industrial apple grinder, and it is electric. For $150-250, I could buy a manual apple grinder, but that just seems silly compared to this.

I would need some food grade buckets to catch the crushed apples and juice with, so I went to my local grocery store bakery and I got about six free 3 gallon buckets that they had frosting in, so they are food grade. Downside is that the store didn’t keep the lids.

A few notes of caution that I have heard about using garbage disposals. First, they can overheat, especially the cheaper ones, so they need to shut down every 15 minutes or so, and having a fan run on them does help. Secondly, all the parts need to be plastic, rubber, or stainless steel, as the acid in the juice can leech other metals, which is not good.

So, I have a plan for the crusher.

Book Review: The New Book of Apples

2010-05-07T08:26:00.001-07:00

The New Book of Apples: The Definitive Guide to Apples, Including Over 2,000 Varieties by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards was first published in 1993 and revised in 2002.

It starts off with a long history of the apple which is several chapters long with historical drawings of apples in culture.

Skipping to the Directory of Apple Varieties, it starts out talking about different flavor descriptors, culinary apples, and then tree habits like flowering, bud types, tree vigor, time to pick, and apple shapes to give you guides to help identify apple breeds. When it gets to the actual breeds, it looks very much like a dictionary with its short descriptions and column like format. It splits the apples into two sections. The first is for “dessert, fresh eating”, “culinary”, or both, and the second smaller section is for cider only apples. My Ashmead’s Kernel is in the book and has a slightly bigger than average entry, but there is a lot of short hand and other things that cause me to keep referencing what it means. My Dabinett, on the other hand, is a small entry. They read:

ASHEMEAD’S KERNEL 8 L D [8 = russeted, usually sweet, dessert varieties, L = late use, D = dessert, fresh eating]
UK; according to Hogg raise in C 18^th by physician Dr Ashmead but local historians now believe this to be an error. It is more likely that William Ashmead (d 1782), Clerk of Gloucester City, raised this variety in garden of house, which became Ashmead House, Gloucester. Ronalds records in 1831 that tree was then 100 years’ old. RHS FCC 1981; AGM 1993
Strong, sweet-sharp intense flavor reminiscent of fruit or acid drops and of Nonpareil, but sweeter than its probable parent; firm, white flesh. Long esteemed by connoisseurs; widely planted from mid-C19th and recently regain popularity in England and North America.
Grown commercially on small scale in England, but dull colour, poor crops weight against it.
Frt Col grnish yell/yell, some frt flushed in diffuse brownish rd/orng rd; many russet patches, netting, dots. Size med. Shape fltrnd [flat-round]; sltly flt sides; sltly ribbed. Basin [opposite of the stem] brd, shal [broad shallow]; sltly ribbed; russet lined. Eye [in the basin where the flower petals would have been] hlf open; sepals med to lng, v downy. Cavity [where the stem attaches] med dpth, wdth; russet lined. Stalk shrt, qte thck. Flesh wht.
F* [attractive blossom] 14 [optimum pollination time]. T² [medium vigior]. C [crop] gd but erratic poss due to cold springs; prn bitter pit. P [pick] e/m-Oct. S [storage] Dec-Feb.
DABINETT full bittersweet, vintage [referring to the acid and tannin classification, age]
Found prob early 1900s, in a hedge in Middle Lambrook, Somerset, by Mr William Dabinett. Believed Chisel Jersey seedling.
Small, greenish yellow, flushed and striped in red; strong aroma when ripe. Produces sweet, astringent juice and bittersweet cider with ‘soft, full bodied, astringency’. Grown all cider countrids and widely planted intensive orchards.
F m [mid season flowering]; slf fertile. T¹ [weak vigior]; prec, gd crops. H [harvest] Nov.

This book has beautiful paintings of apples by Elisabeth Dowle, but there are only 32 paintings in a book that boasts talking about 2,000 apples.

This book contains three major appendices – cooking with apples (5 pages long), growing apples (8 pages long), and further information. I find it a pity that growing apples, which includes soil, climate, rootstock, pruning, grafting, training, diseases, and pests are given so little thought after so much is given to the history in 164 pages and cataloging 2,000 varieties of apples in 103 pages. This kind of shows me that this is not an apple orchardist book, and would even be difficult to use to identify apples with so few pictures. This is a book for historians. At £35.00 (approximately $50), I will not be buying this book and instead check it out from the library should I want it.

Speaking of apple history books, The Story of the Apple by Barrie B Juniper and David J Mabberley is exclusively one, and has an impressive reference section. It does have a section on cyder, but I’m currently too busy to read a history book.

Class: Le Nez du Vin Part I

2010-05-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

My local community college offers workshops in their “Cooking & Wine School,” in which I just took the first off a two series class titled “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine. It is a class designed to help improve one’s ability to identify smells in wine.

They started us off talking about how sight affects our perception of wine, as it gives the first impression based on color and haze. For instance, age changes the color of the wine, which we then perceive and it sets up expectations on our part. They also gave a 5 minute talk regarding the science of seeing.

From there, they gave us a grape wine aroma wheel designed for Washington State wines. It was a copy of what was originally a small flip book, where the wheel was limited just to smells common to this state, and then each page talked about a specific wine style. It gave a brief description, an ideal food pairing, indicated the usual flavor characteristics, and then indicated where they were on the wine wheel.

They then took us into another room where there were 17 foil covered jars with lids. Each jar contained either a mashed up food in it covered with tissue paper so you couldn’t see it, or cotton balls dipped in a liquid. We were to smell these jars and identify what they were, such as honey, pineapple, orange, apple, hazelnut, vanilla, etc. These smells were characteristics of white wines. They had briefly flashed a list of what the options where, so I got 14/17 correct, messing up three of the citrus and mixing up pear and apple. However, if I hadn’t seen the list, I’m not sure I would have gotten that many. They also included four “flaws” for us to smell – acetone (nail polish remover), vinegar, pickle juice, and sulfites.

They explained that if you google for “Le Nez du Vin,” you would find a kit of 12, 14, or 54 vials representing wine smells. These kits cost between $120-500, so this class’s “kitchen approach” method of jars was much cheaper, though not as long lasting since the items would parish.

They brought us back to other room and talked a little bit about smell. They said that the average person can smell 20,000 smells, and wine typically has 200 or more (cider has about 163 aromas determined by Long Aston Research Station in 1975). In order to smell something, the “smell” has to be able to evaporate, and it has to be able to dissolve in oil. This is part of the reason wine drinkers swirl their wine – it increases the ability to evaporate and therefore be smelled. Again, they talked a little bit about the science regarding how we smell.

We then went and tasted seven known white wines and just tried to identify smells in them. There were no right or wrong answers, just what you perceive. Unfortunately, our culture does not really encourage the development of a vocabulary for smell, so sometimes it would be frustrating that I might know a smell but would be unable to give it a name.

Next week’s class will talk about red wines.

Reflection Yields a Plan

2010-05-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Writing this blog has been therapeutic for me the last couple of days. It started with my husband asking a simple enough question of what would it take more me to make larger batches of wine and cider. This lead to a good analysis, but also revealed some hesitation due to liquor licensing laws and money fears. This has lead me to today’s plan.

I had a thought that I would buy one carboy a month.

My husband loves the idea, which he does benefit from, though he suggested thinking about alternatives buy using plastic Better Bottles instead of glass carboys. For instance, 5 gallon glass carboys can be obtained for about $35, while a 5 gallon plastic Better Bottle would cost about $25.

But my husband and I are both a bit twitchy about plastic. It does give off flavors after awhile, where glass does not. However, I currently use a plastic bucket as a primary fermenter if I am working with solid material such as fruit or vegetables. Therefore, I think I would be okay to have a few of these plastic Better Bottles around for the batch to be in for a week or two, but long term aging would have me rack the batch into glass.

I’m feeling pretty good about this plan and feel like I’m moving forward.

What it would take to be a winery

2010-05-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking how yesterday, I was sort of resistant to making bigger batches of wine and cider, yet my goal is to open a cidery and perhaps sell country wine. So why the hesitation?

It is true that I would need to build up in equipment in order to start being a producer. In fact, I have heard of a winery out of Texas called Cork This! that uses carboys to make their batches. Clear Creek Distillery puts all of their batches into 5 gallon carboys so that they can taste test each one for quality control to determine if they want that particular carboy to be part of the final batch. So to the “young and broke” argument against saving money and not getting carboys, this rebukes it. Carboys are very essential.

No, my biggest issue is licensing. Originally, I thought I could make a batch of cider in my home very much like I hear how people make jam in their homes to sell. Then I found out that since wine and cider are controlled by the government, I have to have an exclusive kitchen for the making of wine and cider, and it has to be separate from one that makes beer. In an email to a follow beginner wine maker, he was provided the following information from the TTB:

Winery in a residence - Segregation of Operations Required

A winery must be totally segregated from any living space. TTB must be able to directly access the winery without going through personal space and you must be able to directly access your personal living space without going through the winery. The winery premises should be business use only so you cannot be storing bikes, doing laundry etc. on winery premises nor can you cross winery premises to get to an area where you store bikes, do laundry etc. The winery premises must be secure which includes a lock on any door providing direct access from the residence to the winery.

So I guess while I do need the carboys to help start up my business, not having a space in which I can make wine and cider has me hesitant to make investments.