Jakoberfest - A Brew How-To

Our move to Syracuse has given me the chance to play at quasi-homesteading. We've been having fun taking on some culinary experiments, including:

Quick pickles (quickles!?)

Bread made from spent grains leftover from home-brewing

Roasting our own coffee beans

New pizza dough recipe (revolutionized our pizza nights!)

Creative uses for our newly-started CSA from Early Morning Farms, including kohlrabi coleslaw (eh), biscuits with dill, and lots of salsa, omelets, and salads.

Since moving to Syracuse, Jacob has gotten back to one of his favorite hobbies: home brewing. So far, we (I use 'we' loosely - I help, but he is the brewmeister!) have made an American Pale Ale, a Saison, and a Gingerbeer. We also had the pleasure of touring a brewery in Utica and doing some beer tasting around the Finger Lakes with Siri & Ben Baker. I've been learning a lot about how beer is made and how you can get different flavors, and thought it'd be fun to show you how we're brewing it up in Syracuse.

Last Saturday we brewed our next batch of beer - an Octoberfest-style Ale, dubbed DaLager's Jakoberfest.

Here is a basic how-to brew:
Probably one of the most important brewing rules is that you have to keep things clean. Yeast is what makes beer beer, but there are all kinds of bacteria that would also enjoy growing in warm, sugary water - you want to make sure only the yeast you add survive! Most steps involve sterilizing buckets and utensils - so assume that was happening too!

The process actually began Thursday, when we boiled and froze about 2 gallons of water. Saturday afternoon, the brewing began in earnest.

We heated about 2.5 gallons of water to 170 degrees, then let it cool to about 150. 

We then added several pounds of barley grain (different types and roasts of malt can be used to achieve various flavors) and soaked the grains for about 45 minutes. This draws the sugars out of the grains. This process is called the 'mash', and it produces a brown malty liquid called 'wort.' We kept the wort warm in the oven, since our stove is too hot for the job. 

 

Next, we dumped the wort and grains through a mesh bag into our very classy brewing buckets - basically just 5- or 6-gallon plastic buckets with spigots.

Once we drained as much wort out as we could, we 'sparged' the grains (now called 'spent grains') with clean warm water to get out any remaining sugars. Then the wort went back into the rinsed out brewing pot and onto the stove, where we brought it to a boil.

Traditionally, the three basic beer ingredients are barley, yeast, and hops. Hops are a cone shaped flower that give beers some of their distinctive aromas and bitterness. If you've ever had an IPA, that bitterness is from hops. We buy pressed hops, so they just look like pellets. Once the wort was boiling, we added some of the hops - we also added more later, which has a slightly different effect on the flavor. 

We then added malt extract. This is basically the powder form of what we got from mashing the grain. You don't need to use malt, but then you need to mash more than twice as much grain and we just don't have a big enough pot! You could also use only malt, but the flavor is much better when you use actual grain too.
You can also use other sugars - honey, cane sugar, etc. - as well as other flavorings. When we made ginger beer, we added honey, ginger, lemons, and cinnamon.
Jakoberfest didn't need anything fancy though.

Adding the hops momentarily turns the wort green, but it goes away.

 

We also used some products to make the beer clearer (I don't know how they work). Because home brewing uses live yeast through the whole process, including carbonation, the yeast can make beer a bit cloudy. Commercial brewing usually pasteurizes the beer, killing the yeast, and then carbonates it more like soda.

But we didn't add the yeast yet - adding yeast to boiling water would kill them!

After the wort boiled enough (maybe around an hour? I lost track), we needed to cool it off. We have a copper coil device that can connect to a faucet and run cold water through the coils, then empty out another tube. In addition the the coils, we got out the giant ice cubes we'd made and put them in the bucket as well.

Then we poured in the wort - and tried not to spill too much! The ice melted fairly quickly, and we hooked up the copper coil cooler and let it run for awhile until the beer temperature fell to around 70 (or a bit below). At that point, we 'pitched' the yeast, put on the cover, and waited. 

The yeast starts to go nuts eating the grain sugars, producing gases, and turning the sugars into alcohol. The airlock, shown in this picture, has water in the two little tubes, which allows air to bubble out but keeps anything from going in.

So then you wait.

And wait.

Until the water in the airlock starts bubbling, and then you know that the yeast are doing their job.

We will let the beer ferment for a week or two, then transfer it to a secondary fermentation bucket. This transfer allows us to remove some of the sludgy solids that sink to the bottom during fermentation. (Kind of gross, so good to get them out of the beer!)

After another couple weeks, we'll prime the beer with a little more sugar (the yeast will have eaten most of the sugars available, so this will get them going again) and bottle the beers. Another week or so and the beer will be carbonated and ready to drink! 

In the meantime, we'll enjoy the bread I made using the spent grains from the mashing process - healthy recycling! (Well, sort of healthy...until you eat 5 slices in a sitting...)

Caveat: this is not a recipe. I wrote this from my memory, and I'm not the one who really knows how to make beer. If you want to home brew, look up real instructions - or talk to Jacob! OR come visit and join us for a drink!

Camping!

Hey friends!
So we've been a bit busy. We moved from Singapore to Syracuse, NY, got an apartment, bought a car, I started grad school and now have two classes under my belt and am gearing up for Fall semester, and Jacob has been practicing, working on finding students, and working 2 jobs. And brewing beer. In the midst of that, we welcomed Ari Henrik Lippert, our nephew, to the world on June 27th, celebrated our 3rd anniversary in July, and had a visit from my sister Heather! Lots of joy. Busy joy!

Amid all this, we got to escape for a few days of camping, and since pictures are the best part of most blogs...

We camped in site 100 at Delta Lake State Park, a little ways from Utica, NY. We arrived in time to eat our take-away burritos and then hurriedly set up our tent as it began to rain. And then it rained...and rained, and rained all night. We could have gotten wetter, but it was not a great night. Fortunately, the sun came out in the morning, our neighbors loaned us some rope for a clothesline, and we managed to get everything dried out. Plus we had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, which revived us.

 We drove to Pixney Falls and took a short hike, crossing many footbridges, to the falls. Beautiful! 

 We then picnicked before making our way to Boonville. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to check out the Lumberjack Competition (we'd only just heard about it). BUT we weren't too late to go to the Boonville Black River Canal Museum. Yeah, that's right.

 I'm fairly certain we now understand how locks work.

The " 's " on this sign appears to have been an afterthought - an important one.

Our bikes fit weird on our bike rack, which means I spend 50% of drive time looking back and hoping they haven't fallen off yet. 

Our first night fire proved challenging. We tried the log cabin and the teepee method, but try as we may, the wood was damp and would not consent to burn. Finally, we tried the 'go buy newspaper and lighter fluid' method, which proved successful. And we made pie-iron pizzas (in the dark).

One of the best parts about camping is eating - with impunity. Here, a pensive Jacob fries up some bacon. It occurs to me that Jacob and Bacon are composed of almost the same letters...

I took a LOT of pictures of leaves and the forest. So much green!! And it was so nice to be outside in cool weather (or, at times, COLD weather)!

I want to blow this picture up really big and hang it on my ceiling!

We shared our site with a little red squirrel.

We drove over to Utica and got to go on a fantastic tour of Matt Brewery, which brews Saranac and Lake Placid Beers, and was where Blue Moon and Sam Adams really got their start. Our favorite part was definitely the bottling floor, which we got to see in operation from the observation deck. SO MUCH BEER! I could have watched for hours. We thoroughly enjoyed the tasting room, and then made our way back to our campground where we laid on the beach for a good hour, doing absolutely nothing. Good vacation.

Our second fire attempts were much better, and we got to experience the magic of 'Mystical Fire,' a packet of powder that you drop in your fire and the chemicals make the flames turn all different colors. It. Was. Awesome. Very mystical. We tried to take lots of picture. 

Then, as we were enjoying our Mystic Fire, Jacob says, "Hey, what's that over there?" and shines the flash light on a raccoon size creature. Only this creature had a big white stripe down its back! I realized I had no idea how to deal with a skunk walking into your campsite...so I decided the best thing to do was to vacate the campsite. We just ran straight to the neighbor's fire. They were so nice, and pulled up some chairs and invited us to wait while the skunk passed through. Fortunately, the skunk moved on and left the air fresh and clear - and now as I unpack the camping gear, I can be thankful that I'm just unpacking regular camping gear, and not skunky camping gear. I'll drink to that!

WHOA!!! TOTALLY MYSTICAL!!

So that's what we've been up to. I hope to get back to blogging more, but with classes and a research assistant position, we'll see what happens. Please let us know if you're passing through Upstate NY - we'd love to catch up!

Vesak's Day Pilgrimage

We were in Myanmar for Vesak's Day, also known as Buddha's Birthday! I'm sure it is celebrated in many different ways across the world, but from what we saw, people celebrated by going to pray and give offerings at the temples, spreading out picnics, and spending time with family. Sounds good!

Myo Chit agreed to drive us again, this time to Yele Pagoda, a floating temple in Kyauktan. The drive there took much longer than usual because there was heavy traffic - turns out, everyone wanted to go there! As we neared the temple, the roads were just streaming with people, dressed in their Vesak's Day best and carrying flowers and other offerings. We finally got near enough to the ferry point and Myo Chit helped us through the crush of people to buy the foreigner's boat tickets. Foreigners are not allowed on the smaller boats - apparently they are too dangerous - and must pay a little more for the (purportedly) less dangerous boats. Fortunately, this meant we got to avoid the thickest parts of the crowd at the waters edge.

Once aboard the marginally safer boat, and after Jacob and I located the nearest life jackets that we could grab in an emergency, we set off for the short trip across to the island. Fortunately, it was uneventful!


Once on the island, the view of the coast was pretty cool - so many people!

One of the popular things to do is buy little packets of puffed rice to feed the hungry catfish. By this time in the morning, however, all the catfish seemed to have gorged themselves and were probably floating several feet lower than usual, ignoring all subsequent offers of food. Unfortunately, people still seemed to think that throwing the plastic bags in the water was a good idea - yuck!

The temple was composed of several smaller shrines, golden payas, and public areas where people were enjoying leisurely picnics.

Tradition and modernity!

Beautiful lotus flowers.

More rainbow chaos trying to get boats back to the shore!

View from atop of tower in the park

After this, we drove through the town of Thanlyin, stopping at another large seated Buddha (or two?) before Myo Chit took us to the National Races Village. The large park included reconstructed examples of traditional houses from the different groups that make up Myanmar. Inside, you could see tools and furniture, and in some cases you could dress up in traditional dress - a popular activity for the bands of teenagers. The park was quiet crowded and I'll be honest: much of the time, we felt like the attraction, as we were pretty much the only white people there. Lots of people took not-so-surreptitious photos of us. Which is probably fair, but felt a bit strange! 

Dress up time!

Egg person!?

Love this sign.

We headed back to Yangon and ate at 999 Shan Noodles for lunch - yum. Get the Shan Tofu - yumy deep-fried tofu.

Sometimes traveling feels like we just go on one date after another! After lunch, we decided to stop for coffee and donuts. It is very common to serve tea with any order there - food or drink. We thought it was pretty funny to be given tea with our coffee though!
We cooled off and napped back at the hotel, then headed out to see the small night market nearby. It mostly offered food, and while the veggies looks great, the meat was worrisome. Food safety actually is a major issue in Myanmar - understandably so!

No thanks. Seeing this fairly common sight made it a bit harder to eat chicken at our meals.

Someone was SICK and TIRED
of having people dent their car!

We took a long walk through the city, to a street known for vendors selling grilled meet and veg.

After seeing the food market, we were not sure about these places, but we gave it a shot. We selected the most identifiable skewers and handed them off to the cook.

And then we received this delightful plate of food! We went back for seconds. After dinner, we attempted to take a cab ride to a bar with live music - only to find that the bar had moved (or closed completely? Not sure). Two cab rides later, we aborted our mission and returned to the hotel to play cards and watch Batman (the George Clooney one with Arnold & Uma - I think I've seen this on 3 trips now!)

Chicken AND duck bike!

Next morning we took the ferry across the river to Dalah, an area the becomes very rural despite being so close to Yangon. On the boat ride over, we were approached by JoJo, a teenager offering to be our tour guide. We were non-committal and tried to brush him off, attempting to figure out what we wanted to do on our own - before realizing that we really didn't have a plan. So we agreed to have him show us around via pedicab. It ended up being one of the best parts of our trip - at once beautiful, informative, and challenging.

We stopped by a local temple - temples were clearly
the theme on this trip!

Some kiddos playing at the temple were pretty eager
to get their picture taken with Jacob :)

The main source of employment is fishing, but during low tide and the heat of the day, most people are sleeping - they'll go out in the evening.
JoJo told us about some of the difficulties people face - like what happens when their boats need repairs, or when a bad typhoon swept through several years ago and flattened the area. They are still recovering.

(L to R) JoJo our tour guide, Jacob, and Tani, our driver.
Our cab even had flowers!

What really struck me was when he pointed out a house, similar to this one, and said, 'Oh the people there are very rich. These are such nice houses.' When I look, I see a rickety, run-down home - but he points out that it is made of wood, not just bamboo, and that it has a tin roof, not thatch. He said when it rains where he lives, they always get wet. It was staggering to realize just how rich we are in comparison. 
JoJo also told us about how he started out - before he was a tour guide, he left school a 9 years old and sold cigarettes and postcards in Yangon, moving up to working on the ferry boats. This kid was clearly smart and hard-working, and it is sad that he has not had the chance to finish school. Given the chance, who knows where he could go? 
We also stopped briefly at a snack stand, and suddenly a line of kids appeared. JoJo said that sometimes tourists buy a packs of snacks to give to the kids - we took the hint, and bought a pack of animal cracker snacks (for all of $3). It was uncomfortable, though, feeling like we could just roll in and act like beneficent do-gooders, giving biscuits to half-clothed children. We declined to pose in pictures with them - it felt sort of coercive or voyeuristic. BUT at the same time, there is no denying that the kids could use those snacks. Tourism is an important and growing part of the economy there, and the local people should benefit in some way from tourists like us getting to look at and enjoy (and photograph) their country and way of life. We were really glad we had the chance to see Dalah and meet JoJo and Tani. Even after we had paid them, Tani insisted on buying us some fruits for the ferry ride and refreshing moist towelettes - just to be nice, to be generous. I think it would be hard to feel as if you could never give to others, never extend hospitality because you didn't have much - but you can see that people here still find ways to give. Everyone we met was unfailingly friendly and generous, which was pretty incredible.
We ferried back to Yangon, checked out a craft market, and then bid goodbye to our lovely hotel and headed to the airport. A fantastic final trip - we hope we get to go back to Myanmar someday!