See One, Do One, Teach One

If you have read here for any period of time, then you know since we moved to the homestead we have dappled in many forms of ferments.  We have lacto-fermented a plethora of vegetables, fed sourdough starters, made wine and mead, fallen in love with shrubs, and made beautiful red wine vinegar.  So when I was invited to spend an evening learning how to make kombucha I jumped on the opportunity.  Fermented foods including kombucha, are wonderful for your body by replenishing much needed probiotics.   Our gut needs these good bacteria to metabolize food appropriately and has lost that ability in large part due to how highly processed so many of our foods are now.

There are many flavors and additions (like chia seeds) that can be added to kombucha, yet what I learned last evening, was making a basic green tea kombucha.  I have never been a big fan of green tea, so when I was handed the sample cup was a bit skeptical.  I must say, that THIS is the way for me to enjoy green tea, it was wonderful!  As I wrote this I was patiently waiting for a gallon of distilled water to come to a boil.  Once it reached a boil, I added 1 cup of pure cane sugar.    When the sugar had dissolved, I removed it from the heat, add 6-8 organic green tea bags and let steep for 30 minutes.  Then removed the tea bags, and let the tea come to room temperature, this takes a few hours so be prepared to walk away.  It is strongly recommended not to leave it overnight to cool.

I had hoped that I could substitute some of the lovely honey that we harvested a few weeks ago, but I learned that raw honey having its own good bacterias and yeasts will not compliment, but compete with the scoby.  So what is a scoby anyway?  A scoby is the jellyfish like starter, much like a mother of vinegar, that allows the green tea to ferment into the finished product over 7-10 days.  A scoby can be used multiple times, and also grows a 'baby' that you separate from its mother to add to other jars.  This way you can have different stages of brewing happening at any given time, giving you a continuous supply.

Once the tea has completely cooled divide between two clean half gallon jars to about the shoulders, as with canning you want to leave about an inch of head space, and you need to have room to put the scoby in.  Then with clean hands gently place the scoby slimy side down along with 1/2-1 cup of liquid from the previous batch, into the tea.  Using a piece of cheese cloth or a paper towel and either a rubber band or a mason jar ring, cover the lid while allowing it to breath and ferment. Wrapping the jars in towels assists in both keeping them at a warmer temperature and in a dark place.  Put them in a warm place out of the way, but not in a cupboard, and do not touch them for 7-14 days.  Recommendations from the group last night was that 10 days was the preferred waiting time for many of them.  A great suggested place to put them would be on top of the refrigerator, our refrigerator is built in but we have a giant hutch in our kitchen and I put them up there.

After ten days your kombucha is complete.  Once again, with clean hands, remove the scoby and place it in its own jar to store it, or put it right into another batch.  Cover the scoby with 1/2-1 cup of the kombucha in the jar so that it is covered.  Strain the kombucha from your two half-gallon jars, return the finished product to the jar, place a lid on it and refrigerate.

That is the basic kombucha tea!  Not difficult at all!  There are many other things that you can try from making a scoby hotel, to a second fermentation with fruits or fermenting to carbonation.  Those trials will be for a future post.  So while mine goes into hibernation for the next ten days, I have one question...do you kombucha??  The best way to start is to see one, do one, then teach one!

Bringing Our Farm to the Table

Our long weekend was equal parts farm work, research and relaxation.  We are hit with the bulk of our harvest and trying to find innovative ways to preserve it.  The nice thing about canning, is that after the upfront work, the canning process takes anywhere from 40 minutes to 90 or more minutes.  That leaves a little bit of down time to take a breath, read a book, cultivate new ideas and implement wild hairs....like my sudden desire to re-arrange the family room!

We have been fortunate in our tomato harvest this year and so far harvested 80 lbs of tomatoes which have been eaten fresh and put in farm bags, but mostly gone into 17 quarts of roasted tomatoes in our pantry.  I think that we will have one more round of paste tomatoes to can, and then onto making green tomato relish!  This is a favorite of ours and this year we are going to crock ferment it!  Excitingly enough B and I will be speaking about crock fermenting at an event on September 12th, so this crock may just find its way into our demonstration.

We have tried to grow leeks a few times over the years, with varying success.  This year was a bumper year for them.  So in our search for ways to preserve them B pulled out Julia's Vichyssoise recipe and we found it a perfect match for pressure canning.  We pulled a few potatoes out, a very small portion of another crop doing very well, and put up 7 quarts of lovely soup.   In addition to what we canned, we had a large pot left over ready for an alfresco supper last night.

We also got our seventh farm bag of the season out yesterday!  As each year goes by we get a little bit better at planning and implementing our farm bags.  We have averaged five a season up until this year.  We may get one final bag out, but the plants are all slowing down and showing signs of finishing.  This weeks bags included Kale, Potatoes, Garlic, Cherry Tomatoes, Green Beans, a Bell Pepper, Eggplant, and leeks.

Even with warm days still hanging on, we are winding toward fall.  I love this season, it is comprised of lots of enjoying the outside time to its fullest, as well as an inner pulling toward preparing the nest.

Remember when I mentioned that we had a blogger for the Boston Store at our Chili Cook-off?  Well, we are almost famous in this little write up!

Hello Mother

This year has been the year of ferments and cures.  We fermented pickles, squash, dilly beans, mead, wine, and now we are vinegar making.  After several weeks of feeding, B now has an established and happy vinegar mother.  Our goal is to utilize our wild grape wine, and age it into something similar to a balsamic vinegar.  The flavor of the starter is already both sweet and rich.  We may even get a small oak barrel to age it in.

I love that B is fearless and willing to try anything.  Foremost he is an information junkie, and researches thoroughly to find the best ways to tackle new adventures.  An important thing when homesteading, is trial and error.  I have to say the process is a lot of fun!

I think the vinegar might just be a great accompaniment to our home-cured meat project.  After a few days of using it, our pancetta turned out delightful.  It has a sweet, salty and peppery taste on its own, then becomes quite salty when cooked.  It is perfect for soup or pasta bases.  We are in the process of getting a whole pig for the freezer from a local farm.  B plans on expanding our charcuterie, a term he has grown quite fond of saying, into other areas; coppa, prosciutto etc :)  The more we find that we can do, and what we will utilize will aid us in decisions as to what animal expansions we may do in future.  I think that the most surprising thing that we have found out is really how easy so many of these things are.  Similar to cooking, creating anything from scratch is not necessarily hard to do, it merely takes time and patience.  A great lesson; good things come to those who wait.

Homemade Hooch

The last couple of days have been all things fermented.  We did our final racking of the 9 gallons of wine we put down last fall.  The remnants of the wild grape wine made a fine sangria, and the little taste of the elderberry/rhubarb did not disappoint.  I cannot wait until this fall!

Last year I made homemade vanilla extract, which has a rather large vodka component.  This year in the spirit of the cordials that I have learned to love, I found a recipe on pinterest for  rhubarb gin. 

 

Well 'tis the season, rhubarb season that is.  So the rhubarb gin is steeping.  Such a simple recipe and process, I cannot wait to taste the rewards in just about a month!  By the way, I have a new favorite word....macerat.. the act of allowing the rhubarb, in its natural form, to just steep in it's juices with sugar...and get oh so happy!

I have also begun my first homemade sourdough starter, but that fermented diddy will be for it's own post once I get further into the process...and process it is!  I'm looking forward to our pending homemade hooch.  There is after all, more to come.   What do you think a good chunk of that honey is going towards in the fall???  Why mead, another little venture into homemade hooch.