Green Gal

Last Saturday, we brewed our second homebrew, a red ale using all organic ingredients from Seven Bridges Organic Brewing Supply in Santa Cruz. This time, we are fermenting it in a 6-gallon glass carboy instead of plastic fermenting bucket, and the results are way more fun because we can see the activity! To go along with our all-organic ingredients, I also began reading Sustainable Homebrewing: An All-Organic Approach to Crafting Great Beer by Amelia Slayton Loftus. You'll notice that the individually wrapped packages on the table aren't the most sustainable, so as we get better at this and begin designing our own recipes, we can begin buying in bulk and reduce waste. Maybe someday we'll even grow our own hops!  The malted barley grains after steeping.  The red ale brewing on the stove!  The view of our backyard orange tree through the backdoor while brewing. Shortly after this photo was taken on Saturday, the gardener came and pruned the tree, so the...

Today we bottled our first batch of homebrewed beer, an American Pale Ale. You can read about our experience brewing it a few weeks ago here . The first thing we did was read the directions that came with our kit from Brewer's Best, which told us to boil two cups of water and then add the 5 oz of priming sugar that came with our kit. We boiled the sugar water for five minutes, and then added it to our bottling bucket, which we had sanitized with StarSan earlier. Everything has to be sanitary for brewing beer to go well, so we had Star San on hand throughout the entire bottling process. Priming sugar is used when bottling beer to create some fermentation to occur inside the capped bottle which causes the beer to become carbonated. Then we popped the lid off of our fermenting bucket. The smell of beer emanated from this dark liquid--our beer! First we siphoned the beer from this fermenting bucket into our bottling bucket.    We left behind the trub, or nasty hops and ...

"We can become creators of a better world, of better and more sustainable food choices, of greater awareness of resources, and of community based upon sharing. For culture to be strong and resilient, it must be a creative realm in which skills, information, and values are engaged and transmitted; culture cannot thrive as a consumer paradise or a spectator sport. Daily life offers constant opportunities for participatory action. Seize them." - Sandor Katz, The Art of Fermentation Last Monday evening, I combined equal parts flour and water into a bowl and mixed them into a thick paste. I knew they were equal parts because I weighed them on a small digital scale I recently purchased specifically for that purpose. I set the bowl's lid on top of its rim, slightly ajar so that air could get through, and placed it on the table near our home's central heater. The next evening, around the same time, I weighed out equal parts water and flour, added them to the mixture, a...

Yesterday, Green Guy and I embarked on a new adventure full of malted barley, gallons of water, hops, and yeast. We had our first beer brewing day and brewed up the ingredients to make an American Pale Ale from a Brewer's Best kit . I'd say the day was a success given that we did what we needed to do without too many egregious errors to create a wort and put it in a fermenter with yeast. It's sitting in the kitchen now, and I'm eagerly awaiting the first signs of fermentation in the airlock. Our beer is inside this bucket, and carbon dioxide should begin bubbling through the airlock on top by tonight. We'll bottle the final product in 2-3 weeks. We'll probably do a bit more research before determining which week to bottle it. After it's bottled, it has to sit for at least two weeks to carbonate, which will happen because we'll add priming sugar. Of course, success can be measured numerous ways, and we won't really know if our method created ...

We've been getting delightful rain lately, and it's led to a really lush green garden out back! Here are some photos from yesterday morning: Those tall sunflowers have gotten droopy! Their vibrant petals surround an enormous sunflower face.  So much green!  Nasturtiums have really taken over!  The younger sunflower finally bloomed.  Broccoli   Kale, green onion, and chard. The worms have also been doing well, eating through apple cores and other food waste slowly as the weather has gotten colder. I'm looking forward to January, when I can begin planting some new seeds again. Right now, I've just been tending what we have growing. The arugula on the living room window is super bitter, but I hope to mix it with other lettuce from the store sometime soon for a salad, or add it to pasta. A new project that Green Guy and I will be tackling in the new year is beer making! In celebration of our three year anniversary, I got us a beer ...