My Adventure with a Piesporter Wine Kit

I was really excited to try one of our new wine kits. The problem was deciding which one to start with when there are so many great options! Initially I thought I’d try more than one kind, but I checked myself. There is only so much space in a house, right?  To make the decision easier, I thought of some questions to help.

• How do I want to enjoy the wine?
• Is there a particular type of meal I want to serve it with?
• Do I want something different or tried and true?
• Do I want to share it as gifts, or keep it all to myself?
• Where will I be brewing?  What is the environment like in my brewing space?

I finally chose the Piesporter because it’s a light wine and fairly easy to make. Piesporter comes from the Piesport region of Germany. According to QbA (a certification that declares a food made in accordance to local governing boards) this isn’t a true Piesporter, since it’s fermenting happily in Oregon. However, it meets my criteria for a mild, white wine. It pairs very easily with almost any food. Seafood for dinner? Check! Takeout Thai food? Check! Leftover kids Halloween candy? Sure, why not!

A mild wine also means that it’s easy to gift. Bold red wines are very famous and preferred in my area, but not everyone likes the strong flavors. This is a fun, easy-to-drink accompaniment to your kids’ candy evening snack.

The Piesporter does not need extra, special ingredients or temperature acrobatics. I did use bottled spring water to avoid any off flavors from my city tap water, and I have found it necessary to insulate the wine with a box to make up a couple of degrees. Other than that, it looks like a winner!

I started my wine in early October, so it won’t be ready to taste for some time yet. Naturally, I have had samples though. Each time I take a hydrometer reading, I check the flavor too. There’s no sense in throwing out perfectly good fermented grape juice.  I have greatly enjoyed the process of watching the bubbles, seeing the sediment clarify, and then stirring it all up again. I’m looking forward to looking after my bottles like a mother hen.

This kit makes a full 6 gallon carboy of wine, so it’s easy to share with friends. While I love eating and drinking all the things I make, sharing with others is my favorite part. It definitely looks like a lot of wine, and even more so when I bought 30 wine bottles! I am glad that I decided to start with just one flavor. I don’t think my equipment will sit empty for long, though. With the Piesporter brewing and almost ready for bottling, I have to admit, I am eyeing the other ingredient kits. Maybe I will try a nice Pinot next. Or a Moscato. So many choices!

Wine making at home is far easier than I imagined. I think I’ll be giving wine for holiday gifts, housewarming gifts, birthday gifts, thanks for giving my kids lots of candy gifts… you get the idea! And in typical Sarah fashion, I’m already considering all the fun ways to make wine from local fruits. Stay tuned! But grab a wine kit while you wait.

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A Closer Look: Salad Sprouts Seed Mix

Today we are going to take a closer look at the Salad Sprouts Seed Mix.  This seed mix is just one of the many sprouting supplies available on the Cultures for Health website.

Product Details

3-Part Salad Sprout Seed Mix is a tasty blend of alfalfa, broccoli, and radish, which adds a little kick to your salad bowl.

• Certified Organic
• High germination rate
• Fast and easy to grow
• Perfect for planting, gardens, cooking, or food storage
• High in Vitamins A, B-1, B-6 and C, Folic and Pantothenic Acids, Niacin, Potassium, Iron and Phosphorous & Chlorophyll.
• All seeds grown in North America

3-Part Salad Sprout Seed Instructions:

• General information and step-by-step instructions for sprouting seeds can be found here.
• Use 2 tablespoons seeds per quart jar.  Soak in water 10-12 hours, then drain. Rinse seeds 2-3 times a day until ready to use (approximately 5 days).

Ingredients: Organic alfalfa seeds, organic broccoli seeds, organic radish seeds

This product contains no GMO ingredients.

3-Part Salad Sprout Seed Storage Information and Shelf Life:

Store in a sealed container in a cool dry place.  Shelf life is 6 months to 1 year although they may keep longer (germination rate will drop over time).

Explore all of the Cultures for Health sprouting seeds and supplies here!

 

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Weekly Recap – November 14th Edition

It’s time for the weekly recap.  Leave your favorite links or ideas in the comments below!

This Past Week on the Blog

In case you missed them, here are a few highlights from this past week:

Homebrewing Books: The Beer Edition – A Good Place to Start

Tempeh Soy Curls – Join Eve as she ventures where perhaps no one has gone before… and ends up with something tasty.

Warm Blue Cheese Dip – This warm dip is amazing with natural baked corn chips or still-sizzling, coarsely-salted sunchoke or potato chips. You can also spice this recipe up by adding freshly chopped basil or rosemary. It is a great appetizer idea…

Home Dairying: Raw Feta Cheese – From the moment I ate my first hunk of mediocre store-bought feta, I was hooked on this tangy, salty cheese. So you can imagine that once I tasted small-batch feta from a local farmer, I was sold for life.

What’s New: Delicious Gluten-free Sourdough “Flour” Tortillas – Thin and flexible with a slight chew and enough surface area to let the fillings shine, these little tortillas are good enough to never miss wheat tortillas again come taco night. The key to soft, pliable tortillas is to place the hot tortillas into a sealable container to “steam” before serving

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What’s New: Delicious Gluten-free Sourdough “Flour” Tortillas

Thin and flexible with a slight chew and enough surface area to let the fillings shine, these little tortillas are good enough to never miss wheat tortillas again come taco night. The key to soft, pliable tortillas is to place the hot tortillas into a sealable container to “steam” before serving.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sorghum flour
• ½ cup sweet rice flour
• ½ cup tapioca flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
• ¼ cup palm shortening or cold butter
• 1 cup gluten-free sourdough starter
• ¼ – 1/3 cup milk, depending on the hydration of the starter and the humidity of your environment

Instructions:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, salt, baking soda, and xanthan gum. Cut the palm shortening or cold butter into the flour mixture. Pour in the gluten-free sourdough starter and ¼ cup of milk and stir to combine. Mix together with clean hands. If the dough is still crumbly or does not completely come together, add additional milk, one Tablespoon at a time, up to 1/3 cup total.
2. Moisten hands with water and knead dough for 2-4 minutes or until it is well-mixed and smooth. At this point the dough can be made into tortillas straight away or it can be fermented for 6-24 hours, depending on your preference.
3. To prepare tortillas, heat a large griddle or skillet over medium heat. Pull off ping pong ball-sized pieces of dough to roll or press. Dust with sorghum flour if sticky.
4. If rolling, flour a clean work surface with sorghum flour and roll out carefully using a floured rolling pin.
5. Tortillas can also be pressed in a corn tortilla press. To do so, line the tortilla press with wax paper or a freezer bag cut on three sides to fit the tortilla press. Place dough balls between the wax paper or plastic sheets, dusting the dough with sorghum flour if it is sticky. Press the dough gently until thin.
6. Transfer rolled or pressed tortillas carefully to preheated griddle. Cook on the first side for 2-3 minutes or until brown and set. Flip and cook two more minutes or until brown spots begin to appear.
7. Transfer tortillas to a bowl and cover bowl with a lid or tight-fitting plate. This will continue to steam the tortillas and make them flexible and tender when served. Continue with remaining tortillas until all of the dough has been cooked.

Serve with favorite taco or other fillings. Best eaten directly after cooking.

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Home Dairying: Raw Feta Cheese

From the moment I ate my first hunk of mediocre store-bought feta, I was hooked on this tangy, salty cheese. So you can imagine that once I tasted small-batch feta from a local farmer, I was sold for life. It’s one of my favorite additions to salads and is great in omelets or atop pizza.

I also recently discovered, in my quest to find cheeses easy enough that even I can make them, that feta is another fairly simple cheese that can be made at home using raw milk. Once I found that out, I decided to move past yogurt, kefir, and chevre and give this personal favorite a try. It really is easy and our whole family is really excited about the results, so much so that I think it will become a regular staple so long as we have milk.

Here are the photos to prove that if I can make it, anyone can… it really is that simple and tasty.

To get started, all you need is the feta cheese culture, rennet, and milk. I used a gallon of raw goat milk.

After heating the milk briefly until it hit 86 degrees, I sprinkled over the feta cheese culture, which has an orange hue to it. Then I whisked it in and let it sit for an hour.

Next I added rennet. The recipe in the culture calls for ½ teaspoon so I diluted that in ¼ cup filtered water and gently mixed it in. Then I covered the pot and let it sit on my counter for hours.

After 6-8 hours I checked and noticed the curd separating from the whey. I put the lid back on the pot and let it sit for about six more hours.

That night, after the children were safely tucked in, I cut the curd into 1/2″ pieces. This is very approximate. Then I stirred the curds off and on for 20 minutes while piddling around in the kitchen with other things. I rebooted my water kefir, washed the milking pail, and helped my husband chase a stray pig out of our yard, all between stirring the curd about a half a dozen times.

I then scooped the curd into the Greek Yogurt Strainer. I really like this guy a lot more than butter muslin, for cleaning purposes. It holds exactly the amount of curd I have when making cheese from a gallon of milk. One tip I have is to pour boiling water from a tea kettle over it just before adding the curd. This kills off any stray yeasts that might infest your cheese while it is straining.

I left the curds to drain overnight, though the recipe says four hours will do the trick. In the morning they were firm enough to remove from the strainer, though still a little softer than what finished feta might look like.

So I put it into a tupperware container to age for a few days. I find that after 3-5 days the feta is firmer in texture and has a more pronounced feta flavor.

This batch, which I made last week, is delicious. It is dry and crumbly, like feta, though I didn’t brine it. I find the curd just a bit too soft to brine so I may do some troubleshooting to firm it up a bit after the initial draining period.

Overall, I find this cheese super easy to make and really tasty when salted generously for that distinctive tangy-salty feta flavor.

Have you tried making feta?

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Warm Blue Cheese Dip

This warm dip is amazing with natural baked corn chips or still-sizzling, coarsely-salted sunchoke or potato chips. You can also spice this recipe up by adding freshly chopped basil or rosemary. It is a great appetizer idea and can be made with sour cream instead of yogurt, for a sharper cultured taste and a richer flavor.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup plain Greek-style yogurt
• 5 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 chives, chopped finely

Instructions:

1. Warm yogurt in a small pan over low heat.
2. Add blue cheese and stir gently, keeping the mixture moving to prevent scorching. Keep the heat low while warming.
3. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring and watching carefully for scorching.
4. Add pepper and turn off heat.
5. Garnish with chives and serve immediately.

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Tempeh Soy Curls

If you’ve never experienced the delicacy that is Soy Curls™ , you’re missing out. Quite often I avoid soy that has not been fermented, but the taste and texture of well prepared Soy Curls™ can be exquisite. Created in Oregon, Soy Curls™ are great in many recipes and according to their website they are:

• 100% Natural
• Contain the whole soybean
• High in protein
• High in fiber
• Gluten-free
• Vegan
• Non-GMO – no chemical pesticides
• Grown & made in the USA
• 0 trans fats
• No sodium
• No cholesterol
• CHIP approved

If done right, Soy Curls™ can have the same texture and taste as chicken!

Recently I’ve become rather hooked on Soy Curls™, but lamented that they were not fermented. Then a devious thought crept into my mind: Tempeh Soy Curls™!

Is the world ready for this?! Only time will tell. As far as I know I’m treading into uncharted territory. I expect that more experimentation is needed.

I’ve made tempeh using soybeans and tofu, but using Soy Curls™ has been my easiest attempt so far. My batch did over-culture and the ammonia smell was pungent, but once cooked the tempeh Soy Curls™ were delicious. With the Tempeh Soy Curls™, I made fajitas and brought them to a Vegan potluck. Both Vegans and non-Vegans gave their seal of approval.

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