Your Hobbies & Interests?

[Alan]

Share your hobbies and interests outside Tiny Homes Forum. It could be anything you find interesting.

 

[eDJ_]

I've been enamored with brewing my own wines & beer for some time. I'm not so much into sitting around drinking but I like having some of it around for cooking & dining. I generally consume a couple of ounces at bedtime and it helps with sleep
and digestion.

I use 64 oz bottles of 100% concord grape juice from the grocery store with some added sugar and wine yeast to ferment the wine. It's a simple process that takes about a month to produce something worthwhile and much less expensive than something from the store.

I also enjoy making Ice Cream, often using the fruit juices which make sorbet or sherbet as a by-product of the wine making.

The white container in the purple box goes into the freezer overnight. The fluid in it freezes eliminating the need the ice and salt. I can have better Ice Cream than I can buy at the stores an some Ice Cream Parlor with their 30+ flavors.

or

 

[eDJ_]

You can use this simple 8 minute Youtube video to get started making your own wine. Bread yeast may make a 7% alcohol wine but it will be primitive and taste a bit like bread. Wine yeast will ferment to 18% which would be 36 proof.

Save the juice you pour into a jar in the fridge until the fermenting is done. It can be added back in later when the ferment has finished and the wine is racked (meaning the wine is siphoned off to leave the yeast residue in the bottom of the plastic fruit juice bottle) Just add it in a little at a time to taste.

Something that isn't mentioned is adding a couple of ounces of food grade glycerine. (a lot of wines have this which is called a "glycerine finish") It make for a smoother more mellow feel in the mouth when you drink it.

There are lots of different wine making yeast by different companies. Lalvin 1118 and North Star Premier Classique are two of the best for this kind of wine making.

For the Beer making I like the German Vierka Lager & Munich (dark) beer yeast.

You don't have to have a bunch of expensive equipment and there are simple tutorials on the net that explain how to get decent results with minimal effort. Beer making is a bit more complicated. I like dark beer myself and the head on a beer that I pour is as dense as the meringue on a pie. It is real beer
that conforms to the 1500 ad German purity law where the beer has to be made only of four ingredients....water, malt, hops, and yeast. Called the "Reinheitsgebot" Law. Not like the stuff you get in a can or bottle at the store. People ask if I can make anything as good as "Bud Lite", I tell them I don't make anything that bad.

The 100% Grape wine I make taste much like Mogen David or Manischewitz Concord Grape wine.

 

[Alan]

I've been enamored with brewing my own wines & beer for some time. I'm not so much into sitting around drinking but I like having some of it around for cooking & dining. I generally consume a couple of ounces at bedtime and it helps with sleep
and digestion.

I use 64 oz bottles of 100% concord grape juice from the grocery store with some added sugar and wine yeast to ferment the wine. It's a simple process that takes about a month to produce something worthwhile and much less expensive than something from the store.

I also enjoy making Ice Cream, often using the fruit juices which make sorbet or sherbet as a by-product of the wine making.

The white container in the purple box goes into the freezer overnight. The fluid in it freezes eliminating the need the ice and salt. I can have better Ice Cream than I can buy at the stores an some Ice Cream Parlor with their 30+ flavors.

or

Kids love this! Instant ice cream at home!

 

[Alan]

You can use this simple 8 minute Youtube video to get started making your own wine. Bread yeast may make a 7% alcohol wine but it will be primitive and taste a bit like bread. Wine yeast will ferment to 18% which would be 36 proof.

Save the juice you pour into a jar in the fridge until the fermenting is done. It can be added back in later when the ferment has finished and the wine is racked (meaning the wine is siphoned off to leave the yeast residue in the bottom of the plastic fruit juice bottle) Just add it in a little at a time to taste.

Something that isn't mentioned is adding a couple of ounces of food grade glycerine. (a lot of wines have this which is called a "glycerine finish") It make for a smoother more mellow feel in the mouth when you drink it.

There are lots of different wine making yeast by different companies. Lalvin 1118 and North Star Premier Classique are two of the best for this kind of wine making.

For the Beer making I like the German Vierka Lager & Munich (dark) beer yeast.

You don't have to have a bunch of expensive equipment and there are simple tutorials on the net that explain how to get decent results with minimal effort. Beer making is a bit more complicated. I like dark beer myself and the head on a beer that I pour is as dense as the meringue on a pie. It is real beer
that conforms to the 1500 ad German purity law where the beer has to be made only of four ingredients....water, malt, hops, and yeast. Called the "Reinheitsgebot" Law. Not like the stuff you get in a can or bottle at the store. People ask if I can make anything as good as "Bud Lite", I tell them I don't make anything that bad.

The 100% Grape wine I make taste much like Mogen David or Manischewitz Concord Grape wine.

I was once reading a wine making forum but never got into it. This looks easier.

 

[eDJ_]

With the Ice Cream the recipe I use is:

2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
1 cup regular milk
1 cup sugar
(flavoring you want to add)
1/4 tsp Xanitan Gum
1/3 Cup water

Process:

In a sauce pan place the sugar and Xanatan Gum (which is a stabilizer that will make a creamy product....but don't use too much of it or it will be slimy) Mix the sugar and gum powder together well before adding the water. Then heat until you have a simple syrup. You may need a little exta water.

Mix the cream and milk together and then add the syrup once cooled a bit. Stir well.

Flavoring can be from a variety of sources. Vanilla is easy. You can get those bottles of coffee flavorings such as Butter Pecan, Mocha, Peach, etc or syrups such as chocolate or strawberry etc.

The freezing takes about a half hour to get a soft serve consistency. If you want to add nuts or chopped fruits that can be added in the last five to ten minutes when the mix has thickened.

Once you have the mix made place it in the refrigerator overnight so it is cold. Set up the churn, install the frozen container, then the dasher into it, an finally the clear plastic lid which holds the dasher in place. Only the frozen container turns. The motor in the bottom of the box is what turns it when the black knob is turned to the on position.

Once the Ice cream is finished you can eat some of it as soft serve and then scoop out the rest into a container to place it into the freezer for later.

The trick most people don't understand with home made is to get the ice crystals to be very fine. So the product will be like a cream and not grainy with large ice crystals.

This type of Ice Cream is known as Philadelphia Style. If you use eggs in the mix it becomes Frozen Custard.

 

[eDJ_]

As for the wine making, the #1 issue is keeping your mouth away from any of the fruit juice or container (like to take a sip) The bacteria of the mouth can quickly ruin the wine and turn it to vinegar.

Generally let the wine ferment for a month. The yeast will die when the alcohol becomes great enough to kill it. (it will then settle to the bottom as "lees") If you buy chemicals from a wine making supplier two handy items to have are Potassium Sorbate and Sodium Metabisulfite . The Sorbate will keep the yeast from reproducing....where they will die and settle out to lees. The Metabisulfite will sanitize & preserve the wine and help to assure it doesn't turn into vinegar. How much to use in batches that are less than a gallon ? Just a pinch of both. A five gallon batch would require 1/4 tsp of each.

The glycerine is important to make a smooth drinkable wine. If using a wine yeast that ferments 18% or 36 proof it will be too strong for many to enjoy. This is where adding the juice that is saved at the beginning......added back to the wine can help to make a delicious product.

I sterilize my siphon hose and bottles with a mix of water and bleach. Usually a teaspoon of bleach to a quart of water. (and that's strong)

 

[eDJ_]

Any Bird Watchers here ?

Here is an article I saw in Audubon Magazine that speaks of prehistoric birds whose descendants we can still see flying around today. They have changed some but it may still be fun to look for them. The graphics of the prehistoric birds will help in identifying their modern kinfolks.

Birding in the Age of Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte

Brusatte is a Paleontologist and Evolutionary Biologist at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

[B33s knees]

I really like sketching now, and my techniques are getting better. Anyway, winemaking seems like an interesting new hobby for me