hood harvest

Despite the lack of posting, activity around the monkey ranch has continued.

Back near the beginnings of September I went out and harvested some elderberries. Not wanting to repeat my recent bout with poison oak I opted to collect the berries along a well traveled paved road in the Oaktown Hills not far from my house. A gallon of them to be exact. They were easy pickings and just loaded with yeast. Mead was on my mind. I had near a gallon of local honey. Visualize mashing, mixing and much dissolving. Now, after a good month and a half of fermenting, it is reaching the teens in alcohol and tasting much like a big rich port. Patience, is a blessing.

My local hop obsession continues. This year's harvest sure looked good. Not quite as prolific as last year, but better quality and way less bugs. (Although, in this picture there is at least a noticeable spider web lower right, a ladybug lava mid level, and multiple small white fly-ish things near the top of the hop cones.) The cascade variety (pictured) made it from the plant to the kettle in less than an hour. Now in a bottle, carbonation is the operative word. Once again, this involves much patience.

I was riding my truck to the market. It had rained a few days earlier and the first true fall leaves had collected here and there. Brown and crisp, they went crunch under the tires. Paying attention to the road, I looked down and saw a bright green leaf. As my brain registered "not a leaf" I swerved. Keeping my eyes on a spot a few inches to the side, I missed the mantid. Circling back, I fished out a food container and put my friend in the safety of my keeping. Beat up ever so slightly by the monkeys until being let loose in the garden, he made it out there at least 10 days before "moving on." I look forward to "harvesting" more mantids in the future. With patience I'm sure.

Two years ago, I gave my neighbor a hop rhizome. Now, healthy and two stories tall, they required a big ladder and teamwork to pick. While harvesting, another neighbor a few doors further down walks buy and says "dude, you harvesting your hops, you gotta come pick mine." Less than half an hour later I had at least a few ounces. Not knowing what variety I was dealing with, I cracked open a homebrew for some inspiration on how to proceed. The unknowns were somewhat garlicky smelling with red vines. I brewed up a small batch of beer, keeping it firmly on the red side of things to stay with the color scheme and used the house yeast for keeping it local. The patience pays off now, as the carbonation is good. More importantly, the garlic smell is gone and the beer is good. It's all good. Apparently my neighbor four doors down was this year's hop angel.

After dealing with various harvestables, it was time for another kind of food collection. I'd been hearing much about a famed fried chicken sandwich here in the hood that causes folks to form a long line every day come lunchtime. Being a local with a flexible schedule, I made sure to be early. Little monkey and I snarfed down some pumpkin bread on the way and opened this bad boy at home. One glance and shit damn, was I happy. Two honking bigtastic deep fried chicken breasts served on a sweet roll with some screaming yummylicious slaw. People weren't kidding when they said it was good.

The harvest is not over. Squash are still coming in. The tomatillos are still giving fruit. More beers with more hops are on the way. It keeps me busy with all the harvesting and fermenting, but I just love it when the picking is easy.

sourdough blonde

(Note: Since we are in the month of Fermentuary, I thought I would keep blabbing on about some fermented drink experiments I've been up to. Now, you may be thinking: what about the bread? Well, read on.)

If I could write the sound of the most diabolical laugh you can imagine, it would go right here: ______

Then I would tell you that I made a beer with my sourdough starter. Yup, beer. Sourdough beer. Mind you, it doesn't taste sour, and there was no flour involved, but the yeast came from the starter. Sourdough can do anything.

A few months back I brewed a 1 and 1/2 gallon batch of beer and put about 1/3 of it into a sterilized glass milk bottle. (The rest of the beer went into the fruity dregs of the wild mead and became something else entirely, but I'll get there another day.) I added a few tablespoons of the clear hooch from the top of my starter. I'd read there should be plenty of yeast in this. I went for the clearest stuff, hoping to minimize adding any flour component and making it too cloudy. I shook everything rather crazily for a few minutes to aerate it, then put an airlock on the bottle and kept it in a warmish place. It bubbled gently for near a month or so, and when I finally saw no more activity, I bottled it, adding a pinch of sugar for carbonation. It was only 4 - 12 ounce bottles when all was done, of a beer that must be somewhere around 5% alcohol. It looked real promising and smelled even better.

The other day, I cracked one open. (Again, please, insert diabolical laugh here.) Oh my lord, this came from sourdough? It made me wonder. Why does this remind me of Anchor Steam? I took another sip. Not nearly as hoppy. In fact, definitely a different kind of hop. But still. I had used a pilsner base malt, in extract form, with no caramelized grains to give it that malty backbone. Basically, my recipe should not give me anything like Anchor. But still.

A few more sips later, it hit me. It was the yeast. In beer, yeast is king. Use a bad one, and it will taste like crap. (Okay, so this is a hugely subjective statement, but you get my drift.) Yeast imparts enormous flavor to a beer, and this one tastes a lot like a Cal Common should. Huh. Then I wondered. Is there a yeasty lineage between bay area sourdough and this local brewing yeast? Well, my beer tells me so. I know, not a huge stretch of the imagination there if you have ever heard about the relationship between breweries and bakeries that have existed for umpteen thousand years. But still. Could Anchor have a unique taste just like bay area sourdoughs do, and for the same reason?

Would you ever have guessed that you could brew a beer with the yeast from a sourdough starter? How about that it might actually taste good? Well, then help me out here. Got any friends with the means to start looking at individual strains of yeast? Let's talk.

Well, after I finish my beer.