Misha, Author at Misha's Brewing

January 14, 2019January 13, 2019

Beekeeping Hardware: Building Hives

As I mentioned last week, some of my shop time has been spent getting things ready for spring. In particular, this has meant making sure I have enough, and the right kind, of “additional housing” (hives and frames) for the bees.

Langstroth’s Hives

While I’ve got a top-bar hive box built, I don’t have any bees in it yet. I’m waiting to see if I can catch a swarm to fill it. The main portion of my gear is the so-called “Langstroth Hive” system. It’s named for Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth (1810-1895), who discovered a peculiar notion called the “bee space,” which I’ll describe in a bit.

Langstroth’s system involves the use of boxes (“hive bodies”) filled with removable frames, on which the bees build their comb. The boxes mimic the hollows of trees, which the bees would use “in the wild.” The frames provide guidelines of a sort for the comb, otherwise it would be all swirly and convoluted. Pretty, but of no use to the beekeeper, because we can’t remove it intact.

Box with frames — Deep hive body with ten frames. The green tape is holding the last portion of each frame.

The hive bodies come basically in three sizes: deep, medium, and shallow. (We’re nothing if not inconsistent…) The deep is a bit over nine and a half inches tall; the medium is a little more than six and a half inches, and the shallow is about five and three-quarter inches. The length and width of all the boxes in a hive is the same, but they come in two “sizes”: eight-frame, and ten-frame. This, obviously, describes the number of frames in a box.

The three sizes are used for different purposes: deeps are primarily brood boxes, where the queen will lay her eggs. Mediums are sometimes used as brood boxes, but more often they’re placed atop the deeps, for the bees to store honey. And shallow boxes are almost exclusively used for honey.

Bee Space

The main innovation introduced by Langstroth was the concept of “bee space.” Bees are notorious for two types of “building”: comb, and propolis. Comb is, well, comb–where they lay eggs, or store pollen, or put honey. They’ll build it off the tops, sides, or bottoms of things–basically, if they think they’ve got room to put in a bit of honeycomb, they’ll try to build some.

Propolis, on the other hand, is sort of a combination bee-glue, paint, and spackle. In essence, it’s plant resins that they’ve collected, but can’t turn into pollen or honey. It tends to be quite sticky. The bees use it to cover the inside of the hive (it may have some antibacterial properties), to plug “leaks” (if there’s a crack in a hive body, or between two hive bodies), and to make things inside the hive immobile. I generally can’t do a hive inspection without scraping off enough propolis to make a decent-sized ball of the stuff.

The deal is, if there’s more than about a bee’s thickness of space, the bees will build some comb. If there’s less than a bee’s thickness of room, they’ll try to fill it with propolis. But if the spacing is just right, they pretty much leave it be.

Beehive frame — One deep frame, without foundation.

Langstroth observed that “just right” is between 1/4 and 3/8 inch, and sized his boxes and frames to leave just that amount between everything. The boxes and the frames (to guide the bees in making comb) are sized just so, and they maintain the bee space.

But Why?

The reason we’re concerned with keeping excess comb and propolis out of the hive is so that we beekeepers can do our regular inspections. If the bees have built “burr comb,” which juts out from an existing frame, they may stick multiple frames (or boxes!) together. So-called “cross comb” is when they build their comb “sideways,” across multiple frames. This makes it impossible to remove the frames neatly, and generally results in ticked-off bees.

The propolis is less of an issue in that sense, but it has the tendency to glue the frames down inside the boxes, making them difficult to remove. Occasionally, something will get into the hive that the bees don’t want, but can’t remove themselves (the occasional mouse, that sort of thing). In those instances, they’ll propolize the entire thing, also making it difficult to remove–and making quite the mess.

The hive inspections are for multiple purposes. First and foremost, it’s to check on the health of the hive–is the queen healthy and laying lots of eggs? Is there a disease issue to be dealt with? Are there parasites that need to be treated for? Second, we’re looking at how well the hive is working–whether they’re bringing in sufficient pollen and nectar, building enough comb in the right places, and such. Third, we’re looking to see if the bees are preparing to swarm or to replace their queen–sometimes this is good, sometimes not so much. There are things the beekeeper needs to do, in either situation.

Lastly, and certainly not least important, is we’re checking on the honey stores. This is both for ourselves, as the beekeepers, but also to see that the bees have enough to get themselves through any dearths or through the winter (when there is no nectar flow).

Building Boxes

All of this is a long-winded way of saying I spent the better part of a couple of days making new boxes and frames. My “active supplies” included six deeps in use (three per hive–this will probably decrease to two each, by the end of the year), plus two mediums with drawn frames, two mediums with partly-drawn foundation, two shallows with drawn frames, and two more mediums and a deep with empty frames.

Hive Bodies and Frames — Hive Bodies and frames. The rear stack has three medium and two deep boxes.

After a weekend building stuff, I’m up to ten deeps total, eight mediums, and two shallows. There are frames for everything, plus enough foundation to go around. (Foundation is a thin sheet of wax for the bees to use as a starter.) I’ll have to spend a snow day or two installing all of the foundation, but that’s a task for later.

Curiously, of all the things that could happen while building the boxes and frames (which involves time on the table saw, plus hammering in hundreds of nails), the most serious injury I got while doing all of this was a fairly minor cut, from my own knife, while undoing the strapping holding a bunch of frame pieces together. (Hitting my thumb with the hammer a few times doesn’t count. The nails are pretty small, after all.) But then, if you don’t bleed on it, it’s not a real project, right?

Status of the Bees

Of my two hives, as of mid-January both are still alive and kicking. One of them is definitely stronger than the other–on the warmer days over the last few weeks, they’ve been out and flying en masse. The weaker hive is still there, for now, but may not have enough bees to maintain warmth in their cluster. I’m not concerned about them starving, but they might freeze to death. It would suck, but that’s the nature of things.

Still, even if only one hive makes it, come springtime it’ll be off to the races. I’m certain that the stronger hive, should it make it that far, will be looking to swarm; if I play my cards right, I can make a split from it. That involves finding the prospective queen bees (the brood cells holding queen eggs are distinctive). Then I move those frames, together with a bunch of nurse bees, into a new box, and wait.

If I should make it to spring with both hives alive, I can probably get a split off of each. And if the spring nectar flow is good, I may be able to do that multiple times. My end goal is four to five hives by the end of the season–and at least one honey harvest!

I’m also considering setting up a sponsorship program for the hives–kind of like a CSA for the beehives, or “adopt-a-hive,” if you will. Something on the order of a donation of $X per season, and you’ll get email updates and photos of the hive, plus maybe a few pounds of honey, when it comes time for that. If you’re local to me (in the MD/NoVA area) and interested, please email me and we can discuss it!

January 6, 2019February 17, 2019

Making Cups – Quality Time in the Shop

I took advantage of the decent weather over the holidays to spend a bit of time in the shop. There was some re-organization, a little of which happens every time I go out there (and a lot of which still needs to happen). Some was getting a few things ready for spring. The really interesting stuff, though, was playing on the lathe a bit, and doing a little experimentation.

Cups and Goblets

My “lathe activities” tend to focus on drinkware, as befits my passion for brewing. Historically, leaving aside glassware, bowls were used by the majority of people–ale-bowls for, well, ale, and mazers for mead. The archaeological record, however, also shows a large number of what can only be classified as “cups,” with a somewhat smaller number of “goblets.”

(A quick diversion here to note that glass drinking vessels, made of clear glass, appear to have been relatively common. Certainly, they were more common than most folks tend to think. They had some value–they were buried along with their owners–and probably not accessible to the serfs and peasantry. But we’ve found quite a large number of them. This helps, in my opinion, put the lie to the myth that “all beers were dark and cloudy, but they couldn’t see it, so it didn’t matter.” And none of the below even touches on pottery/ceramic/stoneware vessels…)

One of my favorite period examples by style is a silver vessel called the “Jelling Cup.” It’s small, only 4.5cm (less than two inches) tall, and about the same diameter. It’s footed, and intricately carved around the outside in the namesake Jellinge style (S-shaped dragons and such).

Something that I’ve been fascinated by, as I’ve researched period cup shapes, is the size of the cups. Almost without exception, they’re tiny–the Jelling Cup is absolutely not exceptional, in this regard. Robin Wood, in his book The Wooden Bowl, has images of lots of different drinking vessels. A number of them, particularly the “globular cups” from Viking-era Coppergate, show gloved hands, holding the some of the cups.

Doing a little side-by-side comparison, either the person holding the cups has enormous hands, or the cups are quite small… Only maybe three inches across at the most, and certainly all less than five inches tall. (The scale drawings from the archaeological digs, found in another book, indicate the same.)

Cross section — Russian cup in cross section

Things turn a little larger when you start talking turned goblets from medieval Novgorod–but then, the Russians have always been of the “bigger is better” persuasion. The finds from Novgorod include several goblets of the type shown here; they had heights up to about seven inches, and ran to as much as five and a half inches in diameter.

Turning the cups

Most cups are “spindle-turned,” or turned into the end-grain, meaning the grain of the wood runs vertically through the cup as it stands on the table. (By comparison, most bowls and plates are “face-turned,” with the wood grain running horizontally.) While that is a small difference, it significantly affects the wood properties, and thus how the turning is performed.

Significantly, I find it difficult, especially with “green” or slightly wet wood, to

turn deep bowls in end-grain, particularly with my current set-up. (With a pole lathe, using hook tools, I can see it being somewhat easier in some respects.) Also, I find that I have to be much more diligent about keeping the tools sharp when turning the end-grain. I mean, I have to keep things sharp anyway, but I probably hit the sharpener twice as often with end-grain.

All that said, I do enjoy making the cups–especially when I can get a matched pair out of a single wood blank. I like using 3″x3″x12″ billets for most cups; I can get two to three from a single billet without much difficulty. A single cup would have to be pretty eccentric for the lines to work right, in my opinion; given the narrow bowl, the stem would have to be long and quite slender. While I’ve seen modern goblets turned like that, I’ve never seen anything similar in period.

While I have made Russian-style goblets, as I said, I really like the Jelling style, for some reason. So, I’ve been turning out a number of cups and goblets in that style–both short ones, similar to the Jelling Cup, and taller ones with similar lines.

Finishes – Beeswax or Nothing

How and whether to finish the cups is something I’ve been playing with for almost as long as I’ve been turning them. The originals in period would have probably been left unfinished, or (at most) rubbed down with beeswax, and possibly buffed. Either way, they would have been left susceptible to damage from the liquids they held, or to rotting, if left damp and unused. That said, it’s really an experience to quaff your beverage from an unfinished wood cup, as your ancestors would have; it really changes the experience of the drink.

Another point, particularly for unfinished cups, is that the wood grain would act like a bundle of straws, and eventually whatever liquid the vessels held would find its way through to the bottom. (This is probably one reason that the Coppergate cups were thick-bottomed–to slow the penetration of the liquids.) In the interest of preventing this, I began playing with various oil finishes, such as walnut, linseed, and mineral oils.

Finishes – Oil and Wax

I used a mineral oil/beeswax mix for a long time; the two combine to form a soft paste, which applies nicely, buffs down well, and is food-safe. Any of those need multiple coats, though, to really provide protection to the wood. They also benefit from re-application after using the vessel, for at least the first couple of years. Time-consuming, and not much fun.

Finishes – Pitch

The next step was to use an oil or oil-and-wax finish on the outside, but line the inside of the cup with brewer’s pitch. This provided both the tactile sensation of the wood on the outside, while keeping it completely protected on the inside. Getting the pitch just right can be difficult–it’s a resin, which has to be melted, then poured into the cup and swirled around to coat, then the excess poured back out. When done well, it can be quite beautiful, almost jewel-like on the inside. When done not so well, it’s functional, but not as pretty.

Either way it’s done, the pitch lining is somewhat fragile. It can be scratched with a fingernail, and if (gods forbid) the cup flexes somewhat, it will crack, which creates a whole new set of problems. Adding a bit of beeswax to the pitch gives it more flex, but makes it even softer, and very susceptible to “slumping” into the bottom of the cup on hot days.

Finishes – Modern

Lately, I’ve moved even further from period methods, and taken a cue from the pen-turners: the outside is finished to a high gloss, using an acrylate finish. (Yes, I’m using super-glue to finish the outsides of the cups.) I’m finding that the wood-grain really “pops,” and any unique features in the wood (figuring, or interesting color) show through nicely.

For the insides of the cups, I’ve got an epoxy that I’ll be giving a shot in the next few days. It’s a clear two-part, and is used for bartops and such; when cured, it’s alcohol- and water-proof, and quite food safe (as is the acrylate finish, when cured).

The jury is out on whether the epoxy will prove as subject to breakage as the pitch. I’m certain that the cups will be longer-lasting for modern usage–I have noted that we tend to be pretty rough on the cups. But with the acrylic and the epoxy, they should be much more washable, and (I think) quite a bit sturdier for use.

And for the curious, yes, I’ll have the cups up in my Etsy shop and my standalone shop, as soon as I can get doing the lining worked out, and turn a few more. In the meantime, look for me (and them!) at any event I’m at. I’ll try to have a couple of them on-hand, and I’m happy to let folks try them out!

December 4, 2018December 25, 2019

The Little Things – Bone Nalbinding Needle

I really love making things. Among my favorite things to make are the tools used to make other things. There’s just something satisfying about being able to take something you’ve produced and put it to use, making another thing. This weekend, it was time for a batch of bone nalbinding needles.

Nalbinding?

Nalbinding, for those who don’t know, is a fiber arts technique that creates generally thick, warm items. Most common are mittens, socks, and hats, but I’ve seen things ranging from scarfs to sweaters and more.

Nalbinding Hat and Scarf The technique is usually glossed as “Viking knitting,” but that’s very much over-simplifying things. The earliest known pieces are from Israel (scraps of fabric), while the Coptic Egyptians produced socks. Structurally, while there can be a visual resemblance to knitting, it’s closer to crochet–and closer still to net-making.

I’ll save a description of the technique for a separate post; suffice to say, it uses a single needle, similar to but typically larger than a tapestry or yarn needle. Traditionally, these are made of wood, antler, or bone–I prefer bone.

Bonecutting

I make the needles from the leg bones (the ‘cannon-bones’) of elk. I could use deer (whitetail or mule), but I don’t get as many needles from one of those; also, my supplier (Moscow Hide and Fur) tends to have lots of elk bones in stock.

I begin by cutting off the ends–the physical structure of the bone in the ends is unsuitable–and cut the “barrel” of the bone in half lengthwise. I then section the halves into roughly needle-length portions, and cut the needle blanks from those. From one elk cannon-bone, I normally get eight to ten nalbinding needles, plus a few other odds and sods that I can use for sewing needles, shuttles, or tabletweaving tablets. The ends can be made into things like beads or rings; I’m experimenting with spindle whorls, for handspinning drop spindles.

Sanding and drilling

What you’ve got at this point is a handful of rectangular bone pieces, about three inches long, a quarter inch wide, and an eighth of an inch thick. You could carve them down with a knife, but since I make these for my Etsy shop, I’d rather build my inventory a little more quickly.

For our purposes, abrasives are faster than whittling–and safer, too, when it comes down to it. I could sand them all down manually with loose sandpaper, but we’re trying for quickly! So in the interest of speed, I use a benchtop belt sander. After getting my technique down, I can sand a half dozen blanks down into rough needles in under fifteen minutes

Once I have the needles rough-shaped, they go over to the drill press, where I put the preliminary hole for the eye. Then, depending on whether I’m really in a hurry, I will either shape the eye with a rat-tail needle file, or I’ll use a grinding attachment on a rotary tool. The end result is a nice, oval eye, rounded around all of the edges.

The final sanding is a manual process–I haven’t found a way, yet, to get a good finish mechanically. Fortunately, it’s a fairly mindless, Zen sort of thing. I’ve got scraps of sandpaper, about three inches square, in 120, 220, 320, and 400 grits, and a wad of “000” steel wool. Roughed Nalbinding Needles Fold the sandpaper in half, and plunge the needle between the paper, rotating with successive “stabs”, then flip to do the end you’ve been holding.

In the photo on the right are some roughed out nalbinding needles. If you look closely at the uppermost, you can see that it is “faceted,” and has several sharp-ish edges.

After a pass with the 120 and 220 grits, it looks like the one below: the edges are softened, and it’s rounder and beginning to smooth out.

Nalbinding needle, mostly sanded And finally, having gone through the 400 grit, and finishing the process out with the steel wool, the needle is smooth, with almost the feel of a hard plastic. There may be some remnant scratches in the larger faces from the coarser sandpaper, but I don’t worry about those much; after a few hats or mittens worth of use, the scratches tend to buff out. Finished Nalbinding needle

The whole finish-sanding process takes maybe 5 minutes per needle. I like to put on some music, or maybe pop a movie on the laptop, and kind of zone out while sanding.

The needle to the right is basically done. I’ll probably touch up the eye with a file, to “even out” the one side, but it’s not horrible.

Safety First

One word of advice: when you’re cutting or sanding bone or antler, you’ll want to add a face mask to your safety equipment, if not a full respirator. You’ll be sending fine particles of bone into the air; they’re organic particles, potentially with a bacterial load, and you really don’t want them in your lungs.

And while we’re on the topic, safety glass are your friend, especially during the sawing and belt-sanding portions of the event.

A Little Shop Production

That’s pretty much it! These nalbinding needles (and some shorter ones) seem to have been pretty popular. I’m experimenting with a few new items, as well: I’ve put up some nalbound hats, and will be offering up a leather needle-case (will hold probably four or five of these needles) and a couple of other items, once I work out a couple of bits in the designs. All this, of course, in addition to the turned bowls I’ve mentioned elsewhere.

Also mentioned elsewhere, I’m also in the process of building a “not-Etsy” site. I haven’t decided yet if I want to fully move off of Etsy, as it’s much easier to be “found” there. At least for the foreseeable future, I’ll probably just duplicate my inventory, with a few additional (fancier) items on the standalone site. I’ll be sure, of course, to link to it here, once it’s up.

If there are any small things that my re-enactor readers would like to see me make, I’m certainly open to suggestions in the comments! Let me know what you think!

November 25, 2018

November Brew Day, and Holiday Meals

Another brew day has passed, and the Thanksgiving holiday has come and gone. Things have been quietly busy around the homestead, as the weather has finally turned towards winter.

Brew Day

The brew went fairly seamlessly. I decided, at almost the last minute, to ditch my planned brews for the rest of the year, and instead of doing a Helles Lager this month, I brewed an all-grain version of the English Pale.

The change to the recipe from the extract version involved little more than swapping out the malt extract for eight pounds of Maris Otter malt. The net effect was, as I anticipated, to lighten the color slightly, and (I anticipate) to give an extra fullness to the batch when it’s done.

Now, rather than doing a Samichlaus clone in December, I’m considering brewing up a Kolsch-style lager. If pressed, I’d have to say that a well-done Kolsch is my favorite beer style; if I get it done now, along with maybe another batch in January or February, I’ll have a good start on summer drinking.

Thanksgiving

My wife did her usual astounding job whipping up a feast for us this year. I was pleased at the number of things that came from the homestead, this time around. Not only things grown ourselves (every onion that went into something was from our garden), but things that most folks would buy, that we made from scratch.

Among the snacks while waiting for things to finish baking, we had the smoked cheese from a few weeks back. That went over quite well–it’s always fun to introduce a cheese-lover to a smoked version of their favorite cheese.

Another thing that I threw together was a small batch, about a pound, of gravlax–cured salmon. Normally, the salmon is cured in salt and sugar between layers of fresh dill; lacking that, I used powdered dill from the spice cabinet. Otherwise, it went quite well. (I also got to use a new knife that I picked up, just for doing cured meats–a nice sashimi knife, with a single bevel; after a little practice, I should be able to get those nice paper-thin slices of bresaola…)

For the meal itself, I baked a batch of sourdough, which I’ll have to go into in another post. And we finished off the sauerkraut that had been fermenting on the counter, both as a straight dish, and fried with some shredded apple and a little caraway. And my wife added some of the homemade bacon off-cuts to the roasted brussels sprouts, which really bumped them up a notch.

Homestead

Otherwise, things on the homestead are slowing down for the winter. We’ve had our first snowfall, followed by a few temperature swings, and finally some icy rain. The chicken coop has been almost completely buttoned down for the winter, with the doors closed, insulation put in the eaves, and heat lamps warming the roosting bars. Still, with the cold and the clouds, their production is down from over twenty eggs a day to three or four.

The bees have been hunkered down in their hives for a bit over a month. I’m pleased just in the fact that they’re still there (this is something of a record for me). When last I checked, about two weeks ago, they were still slowly working the candy blocks they had. I’ll pick a warm-ish day in a couple of weeks, pop the tops, and give them more, if they need it.

The garden has gone dormant, as it should. I’m hopeful that the asparagus crowns did well enough this year to survive the winter, and start producing in the spring. And the garlic, which didn’t produce anything to speak of over the summer (as expected), sprang back to life as September rolled through, and it appears to be going into the winter with a vengeance–come spring, we should have a decent harvest there, I hope!

Lastly, I placed an order for two more apple trees: a Black Oxford, and a Golden Russet. I’m trying to decide where to place them; the problem is an excess of good places for them. I’m thinking across the field, near the tilled area for grains; I’ve got a few months to consider the problem, though.

Etsy and My Shop

If you carefully read the “about me” page, you’ll have noticed mention of a shop on Etsy. It’s called the Holmgard Trading Company, and I’ve had it up for over three years; I started with some wooden cups and bowls, adding them as I got time to make new ones. I have, lately, been branching out a bit–particularly since the shop is “climate controlled,” and very cold at present–and adding things I could work on while inside, being warm near the stove.

While I’ll keep the Etsy shop up (it’s certainly good for publicity, and it’s pulling its weight in sales), I’m in the process of getting an independent site set up for Holmgard Trading. The plan is for it to have a wider array of goods, plus better pictures, and some stories about the things. Stay tuned for further updates!

November 10, 2018November 10, 2018

Cheese Smoking in the Fall

In addition to all of the various cured meats I’ve been doing lately–I’ve added a pork shoulder into the mix–I’m smoking a bit of cheese, in anticipation of Thanksgiving.

Making smoked cheese is one of the simplest, tastiest, and most under-appreciated ways to really bump up an appetizer tray. I suppose the cheeses would go great in a dish, but mine have never actually lasted long enough to cook with them.

Picking Ingredients

The process couldn’t be simpler: buy some cheese from the grocery store. Big blocks of cheese, about a pound apiece, work best, but I’ve also used cheese sticks. My favorite types for smoking are Monterey Jack, Pepper Jack, and sharp Cheddar, but you can use whatever you like.

Second in importance only to the cheese would be the type of smoke. As with the cheese, let taste be your guide. I would stay away from any of the heavier smokes, though–mesquite, oak, hickory–unless you’re really certain that’s what you want. (And even then, I’d start small, and check the results.) I really like fruitwoods; with most cheeses, apple is a good match. Maple, beech, or pear work well, too, but cherry might clash a little with the cheese.

The Process

Chop the blocks of cheese into moderate-sized blocks, trying to keep things under an inch in thickness. I usually halve the blocks, then halve the halves, then halve those bits; I end up with pieces about 2″ x 4″ x 1/2″, give or take. This lets the smoke reach all the sides, and penetrate into the cheese, so it’s not just a “surface-taste” event. Cheese on the Smoker

Once that’s done, arrange the cheese in your smoker, and fire it up!

Cold-smoking is definitely the way to go, for cheeses. We’re not worried about bacterial contamination, so there’s no need to really heat things up; in fact, you need to keep things cool enough that the cheese doesn’t melt. That would cause a big mess in your smoker. It’s for this reason that I really like fall. Things outside have cooled down to where I don’t generally have to worry about the temperature. Preparing to smoke some cheese

How long to smoke? To taste. I like to let things go for at least six hours; longer if it’s a stronger-flavored cheese. I also like to flip the blocks a couple of times, just to ensure even coverage of smoke.

It’s okay if the cheese sweats just a little, but if things start getting soft and runny, pull them out! It’s a really short step from “soft” to “melted,” and once melted, the cheese is difficult to rescue from the inside of the smoker…

Let it Cure

Far and away the most difficult part of the process is waiting for things to be just right after the smoke. Ideally, you should seal the cheese blocks up in plastic, then let them sit in the fridge for a week or so. (I use a vacuum sealer; this keeps the inside of the refrigerator from smelling like a smokehouse.) The smoke needs time to really, thoroughly penetrate into the cheese, and to mellow a bit. Don’t be afraid to let it sit longer than a week, but much past two and you’re really reaching diminishing returns. Time to eat!

Uses for Smoked Cheese

Beyond the obvious sliced-on-a-tray-with-crackers-and-apples, I would imagine that just about any savory dish involving cheese would be improved with a little smoke. Smoked cheese toast? Sure! Some smoke in a fondue? Why not! Chicken cordon smoked bleu? Yep! The sky’s the limit, really. (I’m wide open to suggestions in the comments!)

October 30, 2018October 30, 2018

Bees and Bresaola

The Great Honeybee Project of 2017 ended in early October, with the final disappearance of the bees of the West Hive. (The East Hive was gone by mid-September.) 2016 was done by mid-October, although I didn’t find out about it until late October.

Bees But apparently, the Great Honeybee Project of 2018 remains successful! The bees are still there, still numerous, and still doing their thing! I attribute their success this year to genetics from the Russian strain. I believe I can say I’m cautiously optimistic, but not out of the woods yet!

Feeding the Bees

The trick now will be to get them through the winter! Russian hives are supposed to go more slowly through their stores–but these ladies don’t have much in the way of stores put up. So it’ll be lots of feeding!

To do that, I’ve been making “sugar bricks” (also called candy boards, candy blocks, etc.). In essence, I put a bunch of sugar, a very little water, and a few drops of lemongrass oil (the bees’ favorite!) into a mixer, spin it up a little, divide it around some trays or plastic containers, and let it dry overnight (or over two nights, depending). Five pounds of sugar, a half cup of water, and about four drops of the essential oil will give me four blocks.

How fast the hives eat them will be an “it depends” sort of thing, and I’ll have to keep an eye on it. We’re supposed to have a few days of warm weather, so they’ll probably go through them more quickly. Once things cool off, they’ll slow down; I don’t know what the average will be, though.

How to Feed a Bee

So, the sugar blocks aren’t just shoved into the front of the hive; the feeding is a bit more complicated than that.

When things get cold, the bees form a cluster–they ball up around the queen and a bunch of brood, and shiver. This ideally keeps the center of the cluster at about 95 degrees, if I’m remembering my numbers correctly. But doing all of that shivering takes energy, which takes food–honey! Or, when they run out, sugar.

And where do the bees store honey, when they have it? At the top of the hive. So, over the course of the winter, the cluster moves its way up towards the top of the hive. And when they’re out of honey, they’re at the very top–so putting sugar down at the bottom doesn’t help them.

The remedy is to build a “feeder shim” to go on the top of the hive. Basically, it’s a short (about 2 or 3 inches) almost-hive-box–really, just a “rim” of wood–that has some half-inch mesh attached to the inside. This shim becomes the “top box” of the hive; you put your sugar blocks on the mesh, directly above the bee cluster. The bees generate moisture (rather like fogging the inside of a car window), which rises (due to the warmth) and softens the sugar, which they can then distribute amongst themselves.

The part that makes me nervous is that I’ll have to go into the hives during the cold. I mean, obviously, it’s been done–I’m not making the system up out of whole cloth–but the notion of exposing them to the cold unsettles me. (I’m told that if the wind is still, and you’re quick, it’s not too bad.) So we’ll see.

Bresaola – More Charcuterie

Also as promised, I started another cure over the weekend. This time, Bresaola: dry-cured beef. Specifically, eye-of-round, which is plied with cure for two weeks in the fridge, then trussed, hung, and left to air-dry for a time.

The recipe for this one is a little more complex than for bacon. In part, this is due to the air-drying portion of the event; instead of cure #1 (nitrite), it requires cure #2 (nitrate), for reasons I’ll get into below. And rather than set amounts, it goes by percentages.

I got my eye-of-round, which had already conveniently been cut into two more-or-less equal pieces, and I trimmed all of the visible fat, gristle, and silverskin off of it. Then a little tidying, to ensure no rogue flaps of meat, and I weighed the pieces: mine came to about 1400 grams and about 1250 grams. They went into individual ziplock bags.

Then I measured out the cure: 2% kosher salt, 2.5% sugar, 0.3% cure #2, 0.4% black pepper, 0.4% rosemary, 0.4% thyme, and (lacking the traditional juniper) a pinch of powdered ginger, and some cumin.

What this means is that for the 1400-gram piece, I used 28 grams (2% of 1400 grams) of salt, 35 grams (2.5% of 1400) of sugar, and so on. Yes, it’s difficult to measure the smaller amounts; I have a gram scale for just such occasions, and you should, too.

Why cure #2, instead of #1? It’s all to do with the length of time required for the cure. Either one of the cures will stop botulinum in its tracks, which is a good thing… But #1, sodium nitrite, only works for a short while–fine for bacon, which only takes a week. Cure #2, or sodium nitrate (note the “a,” there), actually has some nitrite in it, to start things off. The sodium nitrate, though, degrades over an extended time (weeks to months) into sodium nitrite, as well, giving you months of protection. Again, this is a good thing.

Having measured out the cure for each piece of meat, I then divided them in half: one half went into the ziplock bags with the bresaola, and the other half into another ziplock, to be reserved for later.

Bresaola, curing in bags I massaged the cure into the meat, going as best I could for even coverage, and popped them into the fridge, where they are being re-massaged and turned daily. After a week, I’ll dump out the liquid that has accumulated, add the rest of the cure, then repeat the process for another week.

And once I get to there, it’ll be time to truss and hang the bresaola. It’ll also be time for another post!

October 22, 2018

Brew Day, October 2018 – Irish Red Ale

My latest brew day was a bit of a departure for me in a number of ways. First, it’s first Irish Red Ale I’ve brewed in over a decade–April 2008 was my last one. Second, I went with a partial-mash kit, done as a brew-in-a-bag (BIAB), which I’ve never done before. Third, due to high winds, I had to brew inside, which I’ve done before, but generally dislike. And lastly, this is my first time using yeast from Omega Labs.

Irish Red Partial-Mash Kit

Keeping with the “start from the basics” progression I’ve been doing the last few brews, I went “intermediate” with this batch, and used a partial-mash kit from MoreBeer. If you’ll recall, the “beginner” process was using extract kits, which took the majority of their maltiness from cans (or, in this case, pouches) of liquid malt extract, getting stylistic accents from a small handful of grains to be steeped.

So-called “partial-mashing” is in between extract brewing and all-grain brewing, in that about half of the fermentables come from extract, while the other half come from grains that have to be “mashed”. The process is simpler than it sounds. In essence, it’s the same thing as steeping the grains in an extract batch, except there are more of them–instead of the 8 ounces or so, I used 5-1/4 pounds of grains. They need to steep for longer, too, and at a slightly more particular temperature: an hour, at about 152 degrees.

Since I moved inside, which complicates using my all-grain equipment (an igloo cooler to hold the steeping grains, mostly), I decided to try the “brew-in-a-bag” method. This is a variation on the partial mashing technique, and with the right setup can be used for all-grain. Like it sounds, I put the crushed grains for this batch in a bag; I then heated up my full volume of liquid in my pot to about 160 degrees, turned off the heat, and added the bag of grains. Then, they steeped.

Another complication with being inside on the stove is that full-volume boils are difficult; compared to my 150,000 BTU burner outside, I’ve got access to something shy of 90,000 BTUs across the three biggest burners of the stove. But I made it work. Irish Red Ale on the Stovetop

Grain Tea

Had this been outside, I would have been more concerned with temperature loss through the kettle. As it was, the temp tried to drop quickly enough that I turned one burner on low, just to maintain things for the hour. Once that finished, I removed the bag, put a cooling rack across the top of the pot, and set the bag of grains on that to drain. Irish Red Ale grains steeping

About twenty minutes later, I added the remaining malt (about 4 pounds of extract, in this case), stirred it up to mix it, and turned the burners up to full again. As before, coming up to temperature (a full boil, in this case) took some time, but we got there. Well, let’s call it a “vigorous simmer,” at the least. Eight gallons of liquid is a lot of mass to heat.

Once boiling, the brew proceeded as typical, adding hops at various intervals, stirring things now and again, and keeping an eye out to watch for boilovers, which is particularly important when brewing inside. With the smaller burners of the stove and a full-volume boil, it’s not usually an issue–but in this case, an unwatched pot always boils over.

Finishing Things Up

Having completed the hour-long boil, I gave everything a thorough stir, to get any trub (the “gunk” that forms in the liquid, comprised mostly of coagulated proteins) to pile in the center of the pot, then drained the finished wort into a fermenting bucket. I managed to get 5 gallons of wort at a gravity of 1.059, which was a higher efficiency than I was expecting, but that’s fine. Irish Red Ale Wort Collection Here again, I was left with a digression from how I like to do things: being indoors, I don’t have access to hoses, which means no wort chillers. So, I did things the old-fashioned way, and put the lid (loosely) on the bucket, set it in the utility room, and left it overnight.

Come the next morning, it had cooled sufficiently, and I was able to pitch the yeast. I’ve not used Omega Yeast Labs in the past; they have liquid yeast in large pouches similar to Wyeast, but without the “smack pack”. Given that the wort wasn’t really high gravity, and it’s “only” 5 gallons, I felt safe enough just using the one packet. If things stall out, or otherwise don’t go well, I’ve got a packet of dry Nottingham yeast to use as a backup.

In all, I’ll probably get about 4.5 gallons of beer, with between 5.75-6% ABV. That’s stronger than I was aiming for, but not by too much. It’s looking like about 47 IBUs, and if my nose is a guide, it’ll be a nicely dry, roasty brew. I think the color of this one is a bit darker than I’d maybe hope for. It’s shaping up to be a deep garnet red, verging towards brown. The grain bill had both black roasted barley and Special B, as well as 120L (dark) crystal malt. Were I building this from scratch, I’d maybe keep the crystal, or more likely use 90L. I’d also use either the black roast or the Special B, but not both. (Most likely, I’d go with the Special B; it gives a nice red color, and has just enough of the roasty coffee-like bitterness, without being overwhelming.) In all, I think it’ll be lovely when it’s done.

For those keeping track, the Irish Red Ale is Batch #171 in my Little Black Book of Brews.

Previous Brews

I keep sipping on the Best Bitter and the English Pale from last month. They’ve been steadily improving, both due to the simple time factor, and from getting a little bit of chill on. Three weeks was a little young to be serving them. Now that they’re going on six weeks, they’re really hitting their stride. And since the kegs have been living on my back patio, and it’s been getting into the 30’s at night, they’ve cold-crashed down to a much better clarity.

That said, I still much prefer the English Pale. The Best Bitter, while better than it was, is still a little too estery for my taste. The English Pale, on the other hand, has developed into something very reminiscent of some of the draughts I had while in England and Scotland. In fact, it puts me in mind of a Fuller’s I once had on cask, and is quite yummy and quaffable.

That’s about it for this time around. I hope to get to more charcuterie in the near future. I also have to wrap up my thoughts on what’s happened with the bees this year, but I’d like to address them soon. As always, if you have any questions, commentary, or suggestions, I’d love to hear them in the comments!

October 14, 2018October 29, 2018

First Bacon of the Season

As I mentioned in my last post, I had some bacon curing in the fridge. I took it out of the cure last night so it could air dry, and today it got smoked. Let’s take a look at the process.

Procuring a Pork Belly

I’ve often said that this is the hardest part of the whole process. If you’re a farmer raising pigs, you’re set. The rest of us, however, face the challenge of finding a good butcher who’s willing to part with a precious belly, before making bacon of his own. (They’re “precious” because there’s only one per pig; maybe 15-20 pounds for a good-sized full belly.)

I’ve had luck in the past at my local Costco; they occasionally have raw pork belly out (sold in half-bellies, typically 8-10 pounds each). But more often, and much more reliably, I head to my local ethnic grocery. In my local area, we have G-Mart and H-Mart; both are full-sized grocery stores, catering to Latin American and Oriental cuisines. Since pork belly is fairly common in Chinese cooking (as a soup flavoring), they typically have it in stock. If you don’t see it out front, ask the butcher behind the counter.

Preparation

Preparing the belly is optional, and will partly depend on how you get it. I like boneless, skinless bellies, because most of the work has been done for me, and I’m left paying for just the “bacon part,” by weight.

If you got it skin-on, don’t worry; you can leave it on, and remove it after smoking. (Save it for cracklings, or soup additives.) If you got bone-in pork belly, you’ll want to remove the bones (ribs) with as little mangling as possible.

After that, I generally cut the belly into two parts, across the center of the belly to give me two rough squares to work with. This isn’t absolutely necessary, but it makes the meat easier to handle. They also fit nicely into extra-large (~2.5 gallon) Ziploc bags.

Into the Cure

I use a variation of the basic bacon cure from Ruhlman and Polcyn’s book Charcuterie: for about every 5 pounds of pork, use 2 ounces (50g) kosher salt, 12g pink salt, 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, 1/4 cup maple syrup, and a healthy dash of fresh, coarsely ground black pepper.

(I apologize for the mixture of measures; between cooking, brewing, and various other hobbies, I move back and forth between systems pretty smoothly. Generally, if it’s important that I get a specific amount by weight or volume, I’ll go metric; if it’s safe to fly by the seat of your pants, I’m fine with Imperial measures.)

Some folks take issue with the use of “pink salt” (AKA “Prague Powder” or “curing salt”, and which adds sodium nitrite to the mix) for health reasons. I counter with the fact that the human body produces sodium nitrite as part of the digestive process, anyway. And besides, if I was being that health-conscious, I wouldn’t be making and eating bacon, right?

Anyway, I put each of the chunks of pork belly into a Ziploc bag, and add a dose of the cure to each bag. Then I zip the bags shut, squeezing out as much air as possible. Then I massage the cure components as thoroughly as I can, over the entirety of the pieces of meat. then, into the refrigerator they go!

Waiting Game

The curing bellies sit in the refrigerator for 5-7 days. (The original recipe calls for a week, but I find that the meat cures faster without the skin, so I lean more towards 5 days.) Flip them over at least daily, and make sure to re-distribute the brine which forms in the bags across the meat.

By the end of the curing process, the meat will be significantly firmer than when you started. The “lean” parts will have darkened somewhat, and the whole thing should look something like this: Cured bacon, before smoking

Smoke, but no Fire

At this point, the bacon is technically ready to cook and eat. Just heat it in the oven, with as low a heat as you can get, until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees; let it cool a bit, and slice off the skin with a sharp knife.

Or, you can go the route I much prefer, and smoke it. Ruhlman and Polcyn call for a hot-smoke, about 3 hours, ending the same as with the oven method. I like to cold-smoke it, though.

Until I get a full smoker built (a project for another time), I use my grill, and a nifty pellet smoking tube I found. Pellet tube, with pellets lit It uses pellets for the smoke, which is convenient: you can find dozens of types of pellets online for use in smoking, and they’re inexpensive, take up less room than chunks of wood, and work extremely well. I find that with the tube, I can easily get six to eight hours of consistent smoke.

This batch of bacon is getting an apple-maple mix that I’ve found to be quite lovely. Other good choices for this bacon would have been oak or maybe cherry; I wouldn’t go for anything heavier like hickory or mesquite, though, as they’d be a bit much for the cure.

It’s Bacon!

Here’s the slabs before and after smoking:

The last step in the process, unless you’re going to immediately fry it all up and eat it, is to separate it into “single-meal portions,” then wrap it and freeze it (I like vacuum-sealing it). For slabs like this (about 4.5 pounds each), I’ll cut each into rough thirds. Make sure to cut across the grain of the meat, otherwise the bacon can be stringy.

I’ll probably do another couple of slabs of bacon over the fall and winter; I’d also like to do some bigger “whole-muscle” cured bits, like bresaola, lonzo, and maybe a dry-cured pork shoulder (“almost” prosciutto). Heck, I’d like to do a prosciutto, as well as a country-style ham. But before I do either of those, I’ll need to work on that smokehouse project, to say nothing of becoming good friends with one of the local butchers.

What do you think, readers? Do you have suggestions for other curing mixes, or for other things to cure? (I often put some cheese on the top rack in the grill and smoke it, when I’m doing something like this.) Let us know in the comments!

October 8, 2018

Best Bitter Tasting

As promised last week, this time around I’m tasting the Best Bitter I brewed up on the last Brew Day.

Best Bitter I’m not as happy with the Bitter as I was with the Pale Ale. A fair amount of it can be chalked up to the yeast, I think (Burton Ale Yeast, WLP-023). It’s just not settling out like it should, leaving the beer hazy. Also, it doesn’t seem to ferment out nearly as dry as the London Ale Yeast (WLP-013); at least, not in this iteration.

Between the yeast still in suspension, and the relative warmth of the fermentation putting out lots of esters, I’m getting a bunch of fruit in this one, mostly in the nose–almost like peaches, if you can believe that. Despite being more aggressively hopped than the Pale (3.5 ounces, versus 2 in the Pale), I’m not getting that as much; it’s not coming across with as much bitterness. Some of that is probably due to the roasted grains in the Pale, which were absent from the Bitter, but I’d expect some of the “greener” bittering from the hops.

It throws a lovely, thick white head, which quickly falls to an eighth of an inch that sticks with the beer for the rest of the glass. It’s not highly carbonated, by design; I wanted it to resemble something from a cask, so I was aiming for about 1.5 volumes. Despite that, it’s pressurizing itself in the keg to about 8 PSI, which is making for an aggressive head when I pour it.

In all, it’s a solid beer, just not exactly to my taste. If I do it again, it’ll have to be in steps, to see how various “improvements” change it. First, I’d have to do it with the WLP-013, then maybe try an all-grain version of it. Fermenting it cooler than I did (about 70 degrees) would probably help with the esters, but I’d probably have to shake it up a bit during fermentation, to rouse the yeast. I’ll admit to also being curious about the Extra Special Bitter, which is a slightly different recipe than this one. It might be worth trying it out on a future Brew Day.

My next Brew Day, on the 21st of October, will feature a mini-mash Irish Red Ale, again from a MoreBeer kit. Being a more “complex” brewing style, I’ll only be doing the one beer; it’ll probably take me a fair part of the afternoon. I plan on using the WLP-013 again, because I think it will really play nicely with the style: rich, lightly roasty, and nicely dry on the palate.

In non-brewing news, with the turn of the seasons, it’s time to get into curing meats again. I’ve already got about 9.5 pounds of pork belly curing in the fridge, a week or two from being delicious homemade bacon. Also, I’ve been eyeing the recipe for bresaola, and I think that once things cool off a little more, I’ll be able to pull that one off in the cellar. I’ll go more in-depth into procedure and recipes and such in a future post.

What sort of autumn deliciousness have you been up to, readers? Let us know in the comments!

September 30, 2018October 1, 2018

English Pale Ale Tasting

My English Pale Ale from the last brew day has been kegged up, carbed, and made its debut at a party we held last night, not quite two weeks after brewing. I’ve got the Special Bitter in a keg, as well, but we didn’t quite get to that one, so I can’t speak to it just yet.

In all, I’m really quite pleased with the Pale. It’s got the characteristic toasty, biscuity notes that I associate with brews from the British isles. There’s an assertive bitterness to it, but it’s neither over-the-top (as an IPA would be, even an English one), nor does it really come through in either aroma or flavor.

English Pale Ale The color is a deep amber, and it throws a fine, off-white head. I’ve got the carbonation set pretty low; I was aiming for about 1.5 volumes of CO2. The bubbles you can see in the photo are due to a less-than-perfectly-clean glass; it’s certainly not aggressively fizzy.

There’s still a bit of a haze to it, but I’m sure that will drop out, if the keg survives long enough. The beer came in at about 4% ABV, which is about what I was hoping for. I adjusted my water a little, adding some gypsum (calcium sulfate), which helped give it a drier finish than it might otherwise have. It definitely leaves you wanting another!

I’ll have to see about doing this one up as an all-grain recipe, so that I can fully implement the single tweak I might make. As mentioned when I brewed it, I’m surprised by the (relative) darkness of the beer, and would like to back it up a few points to a lighter amber. I mean, it’s not a stout or porter, by any means, but it’s a good deal darker than I think of when I think “pale ale”.

I will be curious to compare this with the bitter. Not only was it lighter in color, it had a bigger hop profile. Not IPA big, but more than the pale. I’m also curious to see what differences I get from the yeast. The Pale used the London Ale strain, while the Bitter used the Burton strain (WLP-013 and WLP-023, respectively). It might be a worthwhile experiment to re-brew these beers, but swap the yeast strains out, just to see how they do.

The WLP-013 is, at least until I try the bitter, my new favorite English Ale strain. It definitely eclipses the WLP-002 strain, in my experience. The 013 seems a good deal cleaner, and really accentuates the malt, where the 002 has always given me a really fruity, ester-y beer.

For my next post, I’ll be going over the Special Bitter, and doing a closer comparison of the two beers. Also, since it’s fall, I’m beginning to think cider!

What have you been drinking lately? Let us know in the comments section!