Thoughts: Ginger Beer

Like all my culinary habits, the frequency of my fermentation projects come in waves. After a fairly lengthly dry spell from fermentation I am back fermenting with a vengeance. I've started a batch of kimchi and made borscht with fermented beets. I have made yet another attempt at a fermented ginger beer.

Homemade soda was one of the first culinary projects I undertook. I was living in my horrible basement apartment in Saskatoon while I attended university. I read about a soda equivalent that was fermented in a 2 L plastic bottle and used bread yeast so I decided to give it a try. It was unsuccessful but that did not stop me from being terrified that the bottle would explode. To combat my fear I lined a cardboard box with a trash bag and stored the supposedly fermenting bottle in there. Nothing happened. 

(Bottled plain and grapefruit/rosemary ginger beer)

Years later, with multiple successful fermentation projects to my name I attempted a ginger-beer made with a ginger bug. The ginger bug never achieved 'active' status due, perhaps, to imported ginger. A few weeks ago, I decided to give home brewed ginger-beer another go. This time, due to organic ginger, the ginger bug was soon bubbling away. I managed to make a gingery and sweet beverage but it did not carbonate in the bottles the way I wanted. This could be due to my extreme fear of bottle bombs and/or I may have rushed the process a bit and should have let my active ginger bug get slightly more active. 

(In addition to failing to carbonate, I had severe problems capping my bottles!) 

(Tasted delightlful but sadly no carbonation.)

I have high hopes for the next attempt!

I've been really enjoying the tactile nature of fermentation. I loved getting my hands in that kimchi and mixing it up! But fermentation projects have the potential to remind us of several important aspects of the food industry. While we, as city dwellers, may not have much opportunity to interact with our food in the ground or even with the farmers that grow it – we do have the opportunity to interact with our food before we consume it. Fermentation and other food projects also allow us, as individuals, to quietly and in a small way, resist corporate domination and offers us an activity in which to produce more than we consume.  

Why do you ferment?

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Thoughts: Creating Community at Food Events

    The primary reason that Steamwhistle's Craft Beer festivals are so successful in my mind is that the festival both respects and creates a sense of community. This event feels more like a group of like-minded individuals drinking together in a backyard than a traditional beer festival filled with drunken strangers. The relaxed feeling of community that results is the consequence (intended or not) of several decisions made by the organizers.

    The festival is not solely economically motivated as you can return excess tokens, buy them in various amounts, and use the summer tokens at the winter event. This creates an environment where the customers are participants in the event in rather than walking dollar signs. As an individual, feeling like a participant in an event creates a sense of ownership over that event – which in turn creates a sense of community.

      The event is small with 'true' craft beer and independent food trucks in attendance. (The semantics of what is a 'true' craft beer to be debated at a later time.) This helps to create a sense of community between the vendors as mutual respect, friendship and admiration are evident between the various craft beer companies. When vendors respect and admire each other capitalist competition is not the predominant emotion available to individuals. This changes the interaction between vendor and consumer from one dominated by aggression to one dominated by passion. Positive passion filled interactions create community.

    The ways in which community is respected and created at this particular beer festival can be extrapolated to other food communities. Other food communities, such as farmers markets, are frequent sites of positive passion filled interactions but seem to lack the notion that customers are participants rather than solely economic exchanges. Large food exhibitions lack the focus on immediate economic gain and also lack the positive passion interactions and consequently create no sense of community.

What do you think of my expose on community within Steamwhistle's Craft Beer Festival?

How do your favorite food events create community?

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Review: Winter Craft Beer Festival

Steamwhistle's summer craft beer festival was very well organized and respected (and added to) the craft beer community in Toronto. So when the press release regarding their Winter Craft Beer Festival landed in my inbox I immediately added it to my calendar. I have been excited about this beer festival for literally months unfortunately my husband (who never has to work weekends) had to work the weekend of the beer festival but I managed to find a pretty good replacement in the form of a food-centric friend. There isn't much better than craft beer and food related conversation!

It was a pretty chilly Canadian winter day but the beer flowed freely (well most of it! There are a couple of frozen keg lines) and the hot cider (discovered via bathroom line gossip) really hit the spot. I also drunk bought a charred 8 dollar grilled cheese. (#noregrets) The festival was well organized once again! Tokens were pre-sold (in dime bags) in the line. Bathrooms were very nice. Water coolers abounded. Heaters and wood fires helped warm people up. Everything was where you would expect it and all needs were anticipated. There was apparently also indoor warming stations/bathrooms but I am too Canadian to require that!

My favorite beer was Neustadt's Everard Dark Mild. The nuttiness was really apparent, even through the chilly weather. I'll have to give it another – room temperature – go to offer any more insights into the taste. 

 

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Clean Start...

There is nothing quite like a clean fridge. My fridge is currently a beacon of light - that's how clean it is. I got rid of several failed fermentation experiments and several (dozen) jars of jam - apparently I make jam but we don't eat it. Also beer. Lots of beer. 

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Beer and Kombucha: Kombeercha

As this interview states... "There's a lot of similarity between kombucha tea and beer. Fundamentally, as brewers, our job is to provide a suitable home for our yeast. We make sure the temperature is right, everything is clean, there's both the right type and quantity of food available and there aren't any waste products building up."

Due to this similarity some adventurous beer brewers have included kombucha as an ingredient in their beer. 

For example, this Lambrucha combines a lambic beer with an organic green tea Kombucha.

This Mava Roka sounds amazing! It's a Maple Vanilla Rooibos Kombucha ale which begins as vanilla roobios kombucha brewed in oak casks. Maple syrup is added at the second fermentation. All of the Kombucha brews at BeyondKombucha.com sound amazing!
 

 Commercial Kombucha brewed with beer is excellent but in the spirit of experimentation... try it yourself!!

This post on a homebrewing forum seems like it would result in some interesting things! 

 "Just bottled some kombucha today. I have been thinking about trying it to sour beer. I was going to use it to sour a small unhopped portion of wort, achieve nice sourness, halt the bacteria by either boiling or campden tablets. Then add that back to the main batch." 

This post on Flander's Red Beer is very interesting. 


If beer brewers can co-opt the principles of kombucha brewing us kombucha brewers can co-op their techniques and strategies as well!

This two part series on making malt kombucha is basic but very interesting. 

 

(Part One)

 

  (Part Two)

It's easy to flavor kombucha with hops in the secondary ferment. I used 2 tablespoons of hops for a 500 mL bottle which resulted in a pleasant lightly hopped flavor. Check out my posts on flavoring kombucha with hops here and the tasting notes here. 

I couldn't end this post without mentioning my previous experiment with kombucha wine! 

   Kombucha Wine

 
If all that experimentation simply sounds like too much work. Try mixing kombucha and beer as this blogger did.

 Her description (found here) of this beverage is beautiful! 

"[Mixing Kombucha and beer is] an especially good way to use kombucha that has fermented too long and gotten too sour. The malty body of the beer cuts the sourness of the kombucha. By the same token, it’s a great way to add something extra to a can of cheap beer left over after a party."

Would you ever mix the brewing techniques of beer and kombucha?

If you liked the experimental nature of this post you'll love my free kombucha brewing course!  

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My job/internship at the local brewery has been sporadic lately - which translates into less beer in ma belly! I've also been meaning to try a few recipes, pairings, and specific beer for Taste Bud so we hit the LCBO for some brews!

I've already drank the banana bread beer - YUM!

Yes, that is the Alexander Keith's hop series. Don't judge me! :) 

Stay tuned for a Kombucha Themed Month of Food! 

 

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Review: Toronto's Festival of Beer

I received free entry into last weekend's Toronto Festival of Beer as part of their Social Media campaign. This allowed me to skip the entry line and have access to an exclusive Social Media Tent (ohhh fancy lady!) The event was heavy on the pilsners and lagers, wildly disorganized, and only really worth it because of the free entry. (Entry tickets were prohibitively expensive!) 

 

While there was 'an app for that' there were no printed maps for us non-smart phone people (or even worse – us Blackberry people!) The individuals working the 'exclusive' Social Media Tent had absolutely no information regarding locations and after several questions (and helpers) I was sent off with a 'good luck with that'. The worst part is that I remain worried that I missed an entire aspect of the event because I did not have a printed map!

The confusion continued as I discovered that the coupons handed to me at the Social Media Tent were not, in fact, the drink tokens required for beer. I stood in line to purchase the correct drink tokens only to discover that drink tokens were only sold in quantities of twenty – encouraging and ensuring maximum drunkenness! (God forbid that we actually savor the beer at a beer festival!) After the right amount of cash was procured I stood in line again to purchase the drink tokens, after leaving the window I realized that I still had no idea how many drink tokens were required for a drink!

The ratio of beer to token was one of the only satisfactory aspects of the event (although I think this was mostly a consequence of a small tasting glass!) Oh and the beer was okay too! The twenty drink tokens allowed me to sample any and all beers of interest to me and even left a few extras to return to the favorites.

Overall this event was more satisfactory than Cask Days – but only because last year's Cask Day ran out of beer by Sunday!

The Small Print: I received free entry into this event. I did not promise a positive review. The opinions presented are my own.  

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New Project: Taste Bud

Check out the new beer and cheese project I am involved in called Taste Bud. 
First event pairing Muskoka beer and cheese is tonight at Tall Boys (838 Bloor St W) at 7:30.

Have any ideas for the new blog? I'd love to hear them! 
What's your favourite beer and cheese pairing? What other related topics should I cover?    

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Drinking: Beer - and a lot of it.

We are a beer family. This holiday we, a family of two, consumed three @Junction_Craft
Growlers (2 red, 1 winter warmer), 2 Mill Street Cobblestone Stout in canes, Trafalgar Cognac Aged Porter, Garrison Ol' Fog Burner Barley Ale and a few other assorted beers.  The Junction Craft Brewery is close walking distance to our place so we have been back more than a few times in recent days!

Of course, this list doesn't include the many delicious pints we had at our favourite local establishments! Hello again @3030DundasWest!

Skinny Dipping with Friends (by Sawdust City) - was a cinnamon loaded beer that made me dream of sugar plums!

Black Coal Stout (by Railway City) has got to be the most aptly named Christmas beer on the market and a delicious one at that! Iron Spike's Honey Elixir is delicious and comes with some amazing advertising!
 
Moroccan Brown Ale (by Spearhead) is my overall favourite beer consumed this Christmas holiday. It reminds me of fruitcake (but in a good way!) 
  

We even purchased a Junction Craft class so that we can consume our delicious beer - poured from the cutest shaped growler I have ever seen -  into a label appropriate vessel!

We have been on a beer kick for months now. However, I keep coming back to Frog Pond Winery's amazing, mature ice wine - which I only had once, four years ago. How's that for a memory?  

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Eating the Web: Celebrations (left overs and recovery)

1. Have you ever experienced the rare phenomenon of left over champagne? It's easy to make vinegar with your boozy leftovers!

2. While too late for this holiday season, check out this beer advent calender for next year's celebrations! 

3. Make a shopping list. Mix up a batch of this. You won't regret it. Aged Eggnog.

4. There is leftovers and then there are LEFTOVERS. I think feces fermented into alcohol counts as the latter. 

5. "Out with the old - and empty"

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Drinking: Equipment

1. Mason Jar to-go Cup
2. Turn a bookcase into a bar. 

3. Homemade drink umbrellas. 
4. Make your own cool (and functional) glassware!

5. Need to make beer labels? We are toying with the idea of using a Chalk maker but these 'Hello my name is' labels are very cute! 

 









  

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Eating the Web: Beer

1. Weight in on (or discover) the debate regarding buying/selling beer in growlers.
2. Can you brew beer from sourdough starter? The answer is YES! (reminds me of my kvass adventures!) 
3. Ale to the Chief! The Obamas homebrew recipe released!
4. I always vote for draught beer, but is that the best choice?
5. And of course, pairing beer with personal failure.  

 

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Dough: Spent Grain Sourdough Bread

I have been playing with homebrew as of late and by 'playing' I mean failing at making beer! It's because I started with an all grain invented recipe but, I swear, the next time it will work out. I am learning a ton about beer though so that's a plus. Another plus is that I have had a lot of spent grains to deal with as of late. I made my standard multigrain sourdough bread but used spent grains exclusivly. It worked fantastically! 

Submitted to Yeastspotting

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Cask Days

We are headed to the 8th Annual Cask-Conditioned Beer Festival tomorrow. I am excited and worried at the same time! We have built this festival up to be the mecca of cask beer but I am worried that it will be too crowded, too expensive, too annoying, and too loud. We are kind old people, after all! I've been reading several Guides to the festival so I'll leave you with those!

The Obligatory Cask Days Guide Post 
A Guide to Cask Beer 
10 Tips to Maximize Cask Days 
Cask Beers: Five Beers to Try 

We are planning on making a short list of beers we want to try - but we prolly won't plan that much. Everything is better on Cask and these are good beers to start with - so it will be prolly hard to find a truly crappy beer! On tip said to not think too hard about the first beer - I agree. Get in there and wet your whistle! 
    

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