Wowza! That was interesting! Thought my ass was numb! End of the world? Welcome G20!
Update: appearently that was Quebec trying to seperate!
toronto earthquake
Written by Zac on June 23rd, 2010I mead you.
Written by Zac on March 22nd, 2010Well, we’ve finally done it. The remaining 20 liters of mead are bottled, and it’s pretty damned tasty. Eva and I slurped down some leftovers last night, and tonight we cracked a bottle.
Smooth and very similar to a full bodied white wine – a little less crisp than most whites, but with a rustic essence to it, or in Eva’s words ‘tasty’. It’s got a hint note of honey to it and all of the tartness and unpleasant flavors are gone.
The mead continued to ‘fizz’, or bubble until recently (months after kicking off the initial fermentation), and it certainly had some residual carbonation upon bottling. I primed a few liters of the stuff to make a sparkling mead after sampling some of the perviously bottled and primed mead which was pretty damned good.
Anyhow, just wanted to give an update. Great experiment, some lessons learned, and a splendid end result well worth the efforts.
Z
Soda
Written by Zac on February 11th, 2010
A while back, I realized a strange predicament.. I like to serve nice cocktails, and soda water is a key contributor, but I always run out and can’t really justify buying a case of it for some unknown reason (the hauling, the storing, the fact that it goes flat so fast…). For awhile, I bought bottled soda, and I did pick up a great little device called the Soda Saver; for about $4 this little screw-on hand pump does wonders for keeping bottled soda and soft drinks from going flat by pressurizing the bottle and preventing CO2 from escaping the liquid, though in the end it still does go flat eventually. One day it hit me: ‘What’s Soda Water but CO2 and water?” I began looking into what I could do to fill plain water with bubbles (aside from farting in the tub of course).
It began with Soda Siphons (aka Seltzer bottles)– a classy old world bar essential that runs on single-use CO2 cartridges (food grade intended for Soda or Seltzer, NOT ones made for paintball or pellet guns as those contain oil). You will find these things kicking around in hotel bars and cocktail lounges, and it does seem that they do the trick . After doing some research, I found a great deal on Mosa soda siphons: $50 CDN on ebay compared to $120 in a local restaurant supply store who claimed to be selling them like wildfire, having delivered 4 to a local Four Seasons (ironic?) moments before my arrival. That said, it’s worth shopping around. After checking out Mosa’s website and skimming their patchwork mastery of English, finding nearly no details on the product, I started looking into ISI siphons (about $80-100 CDN), and a few other competing brands (Mr. fizz etc), all the while keeping my eye on periodic glass siphons on eBay selling pretty cheap and reportedly in working condition…
I read that any of the new age (i.e. made in the last few years) aluminum ones with plastic heads (ISI, Mosa, Liss, Mr. Fizz, etc) had overly protective safety valves that wouldn’t allow the water to get heavily carbonated; it might work for soda, but it’s probably not the best for mixing. The plastic heads ran the risk of breakage, and the protective coating on the aluminum would eventually wear out, rendering it unusable (unless you like sparkling bog-water). Stainless steel versions with metal heads were an improvement, and old world glass bottles are reportedly some of the best options (depending on age and whether the head would work with modern CO2 cartridges.. oh, and then there’s the risk of explosion). Lots of people are satisfied with their siphons, but that just wasn’t enough for me!
While reading up on siphons, I saw that plenty of people were singing the praises of the Soda Stream system (there are notably a number of nearly identical systems made in china, but not readily available in Canada). These are in principal the same thing as a soda siphon, but come with a few twists… You’ve got to invest in the basic equipment, which is more expensive, bulkier, and less attractive than a Soda siphon. The CO2 canisters and distributors have custom fittings, so you can’t refill them just anywhere – you’ve got to go back to your Soda Stream dealer for refills (I need my fix, cracker! I’ll do anything!), and they’re overpriced for what you get (the same stuff you’re breathing out as you read this – CO2). The non-premium setups also come with plastic bottles, and no glass bottle option. That said, this system allows you to add as much or as little carbonation as you want, and the sodastream products do have a professional look to them. I would have further considered this option if their prices in Canada were as reasonable as those down south – sadly, this is not the case.
After pursuing the out of the box options, I stumbled across some discussions on the DIY options. Amidst all my soda siphon soul searching, there was this perpetual intuition that I could do better; if I’m carbonating water to add some sparkle to other things, and not for the sake of sparkling water (nice as it is), why do I have to water them down? Both of the above optionsonly allow you to make soda water, but what if I want to make soda milk? How about soda wine (champagne)? Why can’t I carbonate whatever the heck I want, and why do I have to be locked into these single-use cartridges or proprietary CO2 tanks with pricey refills when CO2 isn’t really a hot commodity these days (with all the talk of carbon caps, you’d think they’d be PAYING me to take their CO2!)?
Thanks to the wonderful world of home brewing , salvation arrived. One option is to buy a ‘keg charger’ that runs on single use food grade CO2 cartridges (i.e. Cornelius Keg Portable Co2 Charge) and can be ‘shut off without using the full charge, a fitting for a Cornelius or Firestone keg, and a fitting for a 2L bottle (such as the one sold by liquid bread). This would be a bit dangerous as your plastic bottle would be liable to explode if overcharged, but it would be a fairly inexpensive solution (about $40) that would allow you to carbonate more than just water.
If you can get your hands on a proper CO2 tank, a regulator, the right hosing, and a fitting for a 2L bottle cap (Liquid bread), you can carbonate just about anything water based with little risk of explosion so long as you stick to a few basic rules. You can look into the details further, though the gist of the story is that you fill a 2L bottle with whatever you want to carbonate making sure it’s cold and leaving some air space, screw on the liquid bread adapter, plug your tank in with your regulator on minimum, open the tank’s valve, attach the tubing to your liquid bread adapter, pressurize to about 30 PSI, turn off the tank, give your bottle a vigorous shake, and you’ve got bubbles!
A CO2 tank might seem a little bulky, especially when looking at YouTube videos and DIY instructions where they’ve got massive 20LB tanks to play with, though it doesn’t have to be any bulkier than what the Soda Stream uses! With the right adapter you can use a 12oz or 20oz Paintball CO2 tank (not the cartridges, but a refillable canister)! Your CO2 tank can be refilled at a local welding shop, a fire extinguisher refilling shop, or potentially a paintball place (from what I’ve read there’s no oil in actual tank filling stations as it would ruin the tanks). As all of these locations are reportedly supplied by major industrial companies that distribute industrial grade CO2 that’s 99.999% pure, and most home brewers use these kinds of shops for their CO2 supply. From what I’ve read, the risk of contamination should be negligible at best due to the standards that CO2 tanks are required to meet, though if a tank has been poorly maintained, that could be another story.
The best deal I could find on an all-inclusive CO2 tank and keg system (28L keg for homebrew or soda) was from KegWorks.com; considering the prices, their packages are a great solution for someone who may also consider making homebrew for parties someday! They have a store on eBay, and shipping to Canada is very reasonable (though I would talk to them before ordering). Don’t forget that you would want to order the LiquidBread bottle fitting for bubble-making purposes..
Some other sites that discuss and compare Soda Siphons:
http://cocktailnerd.com/2007/06/fight-night-soda-siphons/
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/gadgets/good-product-soda-siphon-for-homemade-fizzy-water-053653
What do you know?
Written by Zac on February 6th, 2010“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” – Donald Rumsfeld
Life, Part I
Written by Zac on February 6th, 2010I have previously posted on the distinction between Life and Nature (at least as it exists for the purposes of this discourse), as well as provided an elaboration on Nature and the Universe, but it is prudent to continue this series by exploring the subject of Life.
Life – a word that we pretend to know, using it in everyday speech, but yet when probed we find ourselves incapable of making the distinction between what is alive and what is not. Is a cut flower still alive, and if so, at what point does it die? If a man’s brain is removed while his body is kept functioning we might call him dead, though his body lives on, does it not? If a mountain could feel pain, could we consider it a living thing? Is an amoeba any less alive than a plant, or a plant less alive than a hog? Perhaps we could contextualize life based on the degree of environmental and self-awareness that a thing possesses, but we don’t tend to say that a man is more alive than a duck, for being alive is not a thing of degrees so much as it is a state that either is or is not.
What is it that makes the distinction alive between alive, dead, and nonliving? What is life and where does it come from? I shall make a vain attempt to answer these questions. To begin, let’s summarize the closest thing that we have to an agreed upon definition of Life: life is capable of self-regulation through some sort of metabolism, is structurally organized, grows, adapts, responds to its environment, and reproduces or self perpetuates. This definition would see self-replicating robots as living and viruses as nonliving as they cannot self replicate, and piggyback reproduction on the structures of living things (like a sand castle that gets rebuilt after the tide comes in – it doesn’t reproduce, something reproduces it). I am lead to wonder: do viruses not seem to operate with a sense of purpose? Is it strictly a chaotically random happenstance that they exist, thrive, self-replicate, and adapt, or might there be some driving force behind these seemingly purposeful actions? If there is no driving force, and the existence of viruses is strictly chance, what are the odds that they would come to exist, continue to exist for more than a few moments, and come thrive as they do?
This all begs the question ‘How did life begin?’ One theory is that a mishmash of the components of life just happened to be hanging around a few billion years ago. These bubbles of lipids and random RNA chains got together and somehow lucked out (or figured out) on ways of seemingly intentional movement, ways to find and use energy sources, and the capacity to make complete copies of themselves. A few billion years of totally random screw-ups in self replication guided by a harsh environment shaped the cells from a mishmash of ingredients that randomly got together into every form of life we see today, and every one that preceded and will proceed them.
Though this is an interesting theory that certainly bears some rationality, it seems a little far fetched to think that random events and mutations guided only by the environment (that being comprised of both the ‘natural’ environment and the ecosystem) was all that was needed for a beast such as Humankind to arise from a smattering of chemicals. There is also the question of that initial spark; at what point did the randomly organized cluster of compounds become a ‘living thing’, and how? What could possibly turn a lifeless pool of chemicals into something intentional, something self-organizing, something driven to adapt and survive? These are not properties that we tend to see in nature, yet we believe them to have risen up from nature; furthermore, we have made little effort to explain how mater came to acquire properties so divergent from its nature.
This change in the nature of nature from wholly lifeless to what we might consider life is by many attributed to a divine being; while this is not quite my sentiment, it is neither incompatible with my thoughts on the subject. Live is intentional; this is not an intrinsic property of matter, and so I believe that intentionality works to distinguish nonliving matter from life. Life searches out food and intentionally turns this food into energy and new life. Not only does it reuse the bio-friendly matter left behind by other life, but is also gradually “incorporates” nonliving matter into part of a greater living system, slowly but surely converting ‘nature’ into ‘life’.
Are we to say that intentionality evolved unintentionally, and that the precursor to life as we know it survived and reproduced strictly as a result of random events? That it made no efforts of any sort to survive, and did so solely by chance? The odds of this seem unfathomably small; it seems more reasonable to assume that life persisted by virtue its disposition to survive, for how could life persist long enough to develop a survival instinct if it wasn’t in the least bit motivated towards survival? Was it was purely by chance that the components of life got together, chanced upon energy sources and just happened to reproduce? If not, what was the driving force behind the development and perseverance of life? This I shall explore in ‘Life, Part II’.
Quick Mead update
Written by Zac on January 10th, 2010Well, it would appear that I was hasty in souring my assessment! The mead is smoothing out quite nicely; the tart acidic taste must have been either the result of a second fermentation or it could have been from sediment / the lees getting mixed up with the mead during racking. Either way, it’s been quite drinkable over the holidays!
I primed two bottles with some honey and am leaving them to undergo another fermentation in the bottle, hoping for something along the lines of a Champagne mead, though I’m somewhat worried about sediment staying in the bottle, and after reading up on how this is removed from champagne, I don’t think I’m going to other removing it.
I bottled 8 Liters of mead and nearly all of that is gone, leaving me with another 20 litters ( I had a 20L carboy, so this worked out). When racking for this ’sample’ batch, I initially filled the 20L carboy so that no sediment would get passed on to it, then I bottled what remained (a fair bit of sediment ended up in the bottled, causing me to later re-pour them into other bottled using a funnel and a turkey baster to minimize oxidation). Still working out some best practices in racking, as it seems that I’m consistently mixing in some sediment towards the end of the process. I used a special attachment for bottling which was supposed to make life easier by preventing overfilling etc, though I found that it kept losing pressure, causing me to get high on booze fumes from constantly having to restart the siphon, and causing a lot of extra sediment to get mixed into the remaining mead. The bottled I used were mostly empty liquor bottled with screw caps, though I had a few 500ml beer bottles and a ceramic bottle with an old school built-in stopper.. I quickly learned that not all beer bottled can be crowned using a conventional manual crowning device.. Had the neck of a bottle shatter while attempting to force it! Only bottles with an extra-thick fluted (bell-shaped) inch of glass at the top of the neck will do! I decided to forego corks, as they seemed over complicated and I already had the crowning gear.
The mead is still sitting in the laundry room, which is cooler than the rest of the house during winter (hopefully this will slow the fermentation of the Champagne mead, giving it nicer bubbling, and help any remaining sediment settle in the remaining 20L). All things considered, this whole process seems to have been a success, though I fear that 20 liters of mead won’t last as I previously anticipated.
Sorry for such a quick, semi-disjointed update on this! I hope to add some photos later and further detail, though with a recent addition to our family (my darling daughter Gabriella), I’m somewhat strapped for time! Also working on an addition to the mini-series of blogs that I was working on discussing Life, Nature and the universe. We’ll see when that gets finished!
Cheers! -Zac
Mead gone wrong?
Written by Zac on November 13th, 2009Perhaps it is a direct result of my neglect to keep posting, but things have turned foul! A little over a week after my last post I did a tasting and found the mead to be well on its way. The flavour was smoothing out and fermentation had stopped; hydrometer read 0.990- the density of water. A friend came over and we sampled it, great feedback- we could have polished off a pint for sure.
The level of the mead has been dropping, and ut needed topping up to avoid oxidization. Esther than dilute the mead, I chose to mix in some sugar to kick off another fermentation to keep it at about 10%. Even during that fermentation, the mead was nice. I’d been watching sediment build up for some weeks, and knew that a racking was in order.. I put it off as long as I could bear, but last week I could take it no longer. I used boiling water to sterilize.the initial fermentation bucket and the siphon, then started racking. That’s when the problems began. The bucket couldn’t hold all of the carboys contents, so I scrambled to get another smaller bucket for the rest. I also realized that I hadn’t sterilized the lid of the main bucket, the mead sat there. In open air!! I gave the lid and the mini bucket a rinse and finished racking the mead. After a rinse of the carboy, I racked the mead back into it, using a funnel to pour the contents of the mini bucket. I had also pouired the sediment into a couple of jars to let it settle again and recover as much mead as I could. These sat in the fridge for an hour or so, at which point I also poured them in by funnel. Now I had to top up again, and mixed in some more honey-water with a couple table spoons of honey (pasturized it). Fermentation kicked off and all seemed well, until I tasted it this past Saturday; things had done awry. It was tart! SOUR! Unpleasent, harsh.
What happened? The main possibilities were that the additional fermentation had left some unpleasentness that would settle out, though the astringent element seemed somewhat excessive considering for this possibility considering the nominal amount of honey I had used. Another possibility was oxidization: exposure to oxygen that results in a tart, cardboardy flavour.. Now I didn’t taste cardboard, though oxidation is a distinct possibility, and one that doesn’t she out – this is what makes sherry taste like sherry. Finally, there is bacterial contamination. At 9% alcohol this risk is reduced, but risk exists until about 12%, and I had just added a bunch of oxygen to the mix before diluting it.. Danger ville. Bacterial contamination is perhaps the worst one could imagine- those little fuckers take my previous and supple mead, the use oxygen to convert ethyl alcohol into acedic acid, leaving me with sour wine, which translates to french as vin aigre- better known as vinegar.
At this point I’m still not sure whether my mead is suffering from fermentation, oxidation, or contamination, and desperately hope that a second fermentation (which would likley be rather intense considering the extra oxygen in the mead resulting from a double racking). Perhaps my yeast is just stressed, producing more unfavorable waste than usual. Now that I think of it, the added oxygen would result in some aerobic energy production in the yeast, which converts sugar not to alcohol and CO2, but H2O and CO2, meaning the added sugar will probably result in a slightly more watered down end product (especially considering the water I added).. I suppose that this is no surprise, as when I tasted it last night, the real flavor of the mead seemed somewhat muted, though the tartness does seem to be subsiding somewhat.
A few notes for next time:
- need ph testing strips.
- get a proper santitzing solution.
- get some campden tablets so that I can fight contamination If it happens.
- consider avoiding bee pollen in the must (though it works as a yeast nutrient, it leaves the mead cloudy from what ive read.)
- consider adding Irish moss to the must (a kind of seaweed, natural clearing agent)
- have more patience! Rack less frequently and never twice in a row.
the holy babble
Written by Zac on November 3rd, 2009I sincerely hope that the bible thumbers are wrong; the Ultimatum of Catholicism or Hell seems like the kind of lose-lose scenario that only a Catholic would willfully entertain.
Weak Sex… Err – Week Six!
Written by Zac on October 21st, 2009Mead Week #6
When taking this weeks sample, I noticed that there’s quite a bit of lees at the bottom of the carboy, leading me to wonder whether I racked it too early, and if I should be racking it again soon.. The sample read an SG of 1000, with a temperature of 22 degrees.. It’s notable that I added 1L of water to the mead earlier this week to top up the carboy, minimizing exposure to oxygen.
Quite drinkable now, smoothing out even more – tastes much like the last time, but with the negative edges taken off. The smell is no prize winner, but the flavor is growing on me. Slightly tart tasting, though the taste of spice is actually intensifying somewhat. Given a few months, it should be quite delicious.
It continues to clear, but it still very cloudy..
Other recent initiatives:
- fermentation of bread yeast, brown sugar and raisins (waiting to see)
- Infusion of vodka with raisins, pecans and walnuts (dry tasting, unpleasent.. Raisin flavor was nice though)
- Infusion of vodka with cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, cardamom (Astringent, implantable. Lovely smell)
My battle to quench sobriety continues.
Mead Week 5 – Coming into its own
Written by Zac on October 13th, 2009S.G. is 1009 at 20 degrees, meaning that fermentation is crawling (which is probably not helped by the cool nights and our absence over the long weekend – meaning little heat). A little yeasty foam has popped up in a few spots on the top of the mead and a dark yellow ring shows the ‘high water mark’.
The mead still has a cloudy appearance, though the colour has paled and it seems to be starting to clear a little. The smell is unmistakably yeasty, though has not for the most part changed.. it seems to be getting more ‘buttery’, or smoother in its odor. It smells something like flowery champagne, or a strong while ale (blanche) with very light scents of honey and spices. There doesn’t seem to be much carbonation in it now, and the flavor is slightly tart at first, much less sweet than before. It tastes slightly like a sweet white beer minus the hops. It certainly has some citrus notes as well as a bit of caramel, it has a sweet aftertaste like a flowery honey. It’s smooth, fairly well rounded, and .. It’s something between a sweet, yeasty, flowery, young white wine and a sweet hop-less white beer.
Eva’s scenting notes: “It doesn’t smell too good…….. Honey…. Apples maybe…… Cinnamon? Some kind of spices…. there’s a bit of a rancid smell to it.” – the bad smell would simply be the yeast.
actually getting to be quite nice.
