Fermented Eats: Easy Sauerkraut

So far this blog has focused on beverages, and admittedly will probably continue to do so. That is because I am just beginning to venture into making my own fermented foods, and have a long road of experimentation ahead of me. I do love fermented food of all sorts, and am looking forward to my adventures in this realm as our garden beds start producing some fresh veggies to experiment with. In the meantime I thought I'd get started by making a basic sauerkraut.

In this post I will walk you through the very basic process I followed to make sauerkraut, show you a (very) few pictures of the process, and then link to a video by the king of all foods that are fermented, Sandor Katz. Again, this was my first time making sauerkraut so I am no expert (and Sandor really is!), but I am very pleased with the results, even though it is not as pretty as some of the store-bought stuff.

NHC 2013: The Great Berliner

This post reflects upon my Berliner Weisse that made it into the second round of the National Homebrewers Competition (NHC). I've entered the NHC the past 3 years, and this is the first year that I have advanced any beers to the second round, so I must be either becoming a better to-style brewer (or I'm beginning to game the system in some fashion). I hope my reflections and the scans of the score-sheets I received from the competition are helpful to others interested in doing a quick Berliner.

All hail our kombucha overlords!

Kombucha is pretty easy and inexpensive to make, and is supposedly pretty dang healthy. I prefer my homemade kombucha to any of the commercial examples that I have tasted -- it just seems much more flavorful and tart. There are a lot of different recipes and ratios out there in internet land to match different preferences in intensity and balance of flavor. I like mine with a nice acidic tang, and slight carbonation to add a bit of a bittering sensation to the sweeter backdrop of sugars. It can certainly put a pep in my step, even when coffee won't do the trick.