Climate change has wreaked such havoc on the planet that it rained here on the first day of Summer.
The forecast is mucho street tacos.
My guess is this has a snowball’s chance in Gaza.
No food dates until they put out, or invite them over for dinner.
Mmmmm, meat.
So, it’s Saturday. Definitely been a week. We went up to the cabin, so that I could finally mow the two foot tall lawn. Yeah, the lawn mower committed seppuku about 10% into the job. Now I have to buy another one and hall it up there. I’m on a four day mowing cycle at home, and I got all the shrubs pruned for summer. The garden is all in and cruising along nicely.
As for the rock we call home? We could really benefit from Yellowstone going all Krakatoa right about now.
Something, something, birthdays, something.
Archbishop dons Holy Hard Hat of Notre Dame.
Seriously, what could go wrong?
Online hookups? Totes okay.
Hong Kong leader brinks.
I’m sure she’s just a lovely girl.
Head on the desk, Darwin moment. Seriously, you can’t trust the minibar in your hotel, but “hey, can you do something about these love handles?”.
A tune and off into the booze soaked evening.
Who doesn’t like a traditional multi-course, Italian dinner?
It’s Saturday, we’ve just spent a week sifting through the events of the day, many links posted, and now to glean something from the headlines worth discussing.
And then along comes OMWC, acting like he’s friggin’ Matt Drudge, and posts three dozen links per post. And it’s intentional. I know it’s intentional. And I also think he won’t be back in time to defend himself before this is a dead post.
As a result, you’re left with the leftovers nobody else wanted.
There were birthdays, alrighty. Birthdays.
Not to be outdone, Florida man.
The lengths people will go to get their precious fungi.
Totally, a stable genius.
AOC, makes new friends.
The floor is yours, Glibs! Snark away. It’s Saturday!
So here’s a fun story. My effing hunting dog will eat pretty much anything. So what is he eating lately? The decomposing chunks of grass from the deck of my lawn tractor. The grass grows fast and moist this time of year, so there’s a lot of fodder available. He went outside a couple of days ago and puked his guts out. I had to hose down the patio.
What did he do Thursday, when we went to get a bag of dog food? He puked his guts out in his crate. I felt bad for him because he had to spend 20-30 minutes stuffed up against one end of his crate.
Did I mention that the two things that gave me the most problems during my career were puke and shit? Bleed on me all you want, but that stuff is kryptonite. We got home and I let the dogs out. There was dog puke and puke juice all over the back of the Tahoe. God bless WeatherTec. I started the “harrup, harrup” thing when I smelled it. I asked my wife to take the pad out of his crate, so that I could take everything else out and hose it down. I then found myself running through the house, trying to get to the bathroom before I had another mess to clean up.
After depositing a piece of quality New York style pie in the oblong repository, I made my way back to the driveway. The pad was still in the crate. I was able to direct from a distance, tossing out a couple of unproductive, “harrup, harrups” in the process. Everything got hosed off and laid out in the sun.
But wait! It gets better. Fast forward to Friday morning. He wouldn’t eat breakfast, couldn’t get comfortable and was groaning. Hunting dogs don’t show distress unless something is seriously going on. A quick call and off to the vet we go. Yay! He’s got a rock stuck in his intestines! Surgery time! He’s puked up rocks before. He’ll grab one from the garden and run around the yard playing catch with himself and his new buddy, the rock. Every so often, it goes straight down the throat. Usually, there’s a 4am, “harrup, harrup” coming from the hallway, followed by a clunk as the rock hits the floor. Not this time. It was small enough that it went the other direction.
Fortunately, the rock had moved down far enough that the vet was able to work it down the colon towards the back end. He pooped it out this morning. He has a zipper from exploratory surgery, but they didn’t have to cut into the intestines. I call that a win. And now he’s bashing us in the back of our legs with the cone of shame after paying $2,000 for the privilege.
Yeah, links.
Srsly, what could possibly go wrong?
“Drought in California is the new normal.”
No, not really.
Upper 80s last weekend, and now three days of showers with four more on the way. Welcome to May in Idaho.
Guess what! There were birthdays today. I have no idea who.
I’ll bet he cut the feet off of diabetics too.
Apparently, lawyers in the military have no more integrity than Michael Cohen.
Colbert is a cunt. I can’t imagine why late night ratings are dropping faster than OMWC’s turkey neck.
So The Powers That Be are apparently all job slaves. You would think that when you spend the week slaving for The Man, that the easiest links to post would be Saturday night, when they’re not answering to their Overlords.
Guess what? I was completely wrong. By 4PM Manly Time, they’re all drunk as a skunk. I mean, we’re talking face down in a puddle of puke, don’t even know they’re face down drunk. I guess that’s what they have to do to face another week of slow death in the salt mines.
So. Because I have no life, and I’m not being put down by The Man, I’ve offered to step in to take over Saturday night links. The poor bastards need a little relief. But if you think I’m going to be throwing down links like the last go ’round, you are sorely mistaken. I shot my wad, blew my load, spewed forth the best I had. So lower your expectations, get ready to snark, and chill with a little Saturday song.
The Irish look at us celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and just shake their heads. And they sure don’t gorge on corned beef. Well, screw ’em.
I had a small brisket in the deep freeze, so I separated the point from the flat and cured them separately.
Corned beef did originate in Ireland but the history is complicated. “Corn” referred to the large grain salt the meat was preserved in. This was well before refrigeration and preserving meat in salt was a standard practice throughout the world. This is a pretty entertaining read on the history of salt.
Most modern corned beef is wet cured in a brine solution but having done it both ways, I like the texture that results from dry curing. It also takes much less space.
Okay, as we discussed with bacon, the amount of cure is critical to developing a safe product. I weighed out my two pieces and plugged them into the cure calculator on the Digging Dog Farm website.
Next up are the seasonings:
3tbsp black pepper
1.5tbsp ground coriander
.75tsp mustard powder
.75tbsp brown sugar
1.5tsp garlic powder
1.5tsp onion powder
Pepper and coriander were toasted and ground up. All the ingredients were combined, split in half and blended with the cure for each cut of beef. A note on quantities, this is roughly based on the weight of the meat. You can be creative here and do what you want. There are plenty of spice recipes out there on the Interwebs.
Ziplock bags will work just fine for the curing process, but I find vacuum sealing works slightly better and the vacuum gives better penetration of the cure and seasonings.
Each piece of meat is put in a bag and half the cure mixture is poured in on each side. *euphemism alert* You need to massage your meat well to get the rub evenly distributed. Seal the bag, getting as much air out as you can, if you’re using a Ziplock bag, mark with the date and toss it in the fridge. Flip it every couple of days and give it a little massage. I let mine go two weeks.
When we reach the day of reckoning, remove the meat from the bags, rinse them well, trying to get as much of the rub off as possible. There will still be some leftover. Slice off a small piece and do a fry test. You’re looking for flavor and salt level. Any off odors or flavors, out it goes. If you’re going to continue on to pastrami and the fry test is too salty, you can soak it overnight in cold water. Dry the meat and toss in the fridge on a rack overnight.
I decided to turn the flat into pastrami. After it had dried overnight, I rubbed it with a bit of whiskey, and then coated it with equal amounts of coarse ground black pepper and coriander. Then into the smoker at 240 on cherry, until it reaches an internal temperature of 200-205.
For the point on St. Patty’s Day, I like to braise in Guinness. Any dark beer will work but, hey. Time depends on the size of the cut, I believe this small piece took 2 – 2 1/2 hours.
Now the style points. You could easily pull it, let it rest why you cook your vegetables, or you could go an extra step. I like to take some of the braising liquid, add a touch of honey and mustard, and cook it down to a glaze. The meat goes into a roasting pan and gets glazed several times over 20 minutes while in a 350 degree oven while the vegetables cook. Trust me, it’s worth it. Just make sure to adjust the sweetness in the glaze, if necessary before using it.
Slice and serve with your favorite Irish beverage of the day.
Ahem.
I need a butt shine,
Right now
You are holy,
Oh, sacred Cow
I thirst for you,
Provide Milk.Buff my balls,
Love the Cow,
Good fortune for those that do.
Love me, breathe my feet,
The Cow has risen.Wax my ass,
Scrub my balls.
The Cow has risen,
Provide Milk.– Robert Francis O’Rourke
Or, “How Nephilium Popped My (beer) Cherry”.
So with all the posts by Nephilium and Kinnath, I decided to dip my toe into the beer making hobby. I don’t drink the quantities I used to (not a bad thing), so I opted to follow Nephi’s advice and go with nano brew kits from Brooklyn Brew Shop. The kit with brewing supplies was just under $60 but I will be making many batches with it. The recipe kits run about $16.
Okay, before you IPA haters jump on your soapbox(and not a peep out of you, Ted), I chose single hop IPAs for a reason. I wanted to learn about the flavor and aroma profiles of the different hops. So there.
Anyways, the kit comes with pretty much everything you need. Grains, hops, yeast, sanitizer. For the process, it has a gallon jug, an airlock, thermometer, plastic tubing, and a racking cane. Since I made this batch, I’ve added a beer hydrometer and grain bags(you’ll see why). Everything else I needed I had on hand.
First off, everything gets sanitized. The instructions direct you to mix half the sanitizer with a gallon of water, the rest will be used during the bottling process. I’ve done a couple of modifications that I think make the process easier for me. I weighed the sanitizer and now I mix up a quart and also have a small spray bottle filled with sanitizer. It really made my life easier.
After that, comes the mash in. It takes an hour, and you have to keep track of the temperature. It needs to stay between 144-152 degrees, with it being stirred every so often. You’re basically making oatmeal here. You don’t use the whole amount of water. There’s a pot of water at the right temperature waiting to be added later. You also need an extra pot because the “wort” that’s created by steeping the grains gets poured over the grains twice.
So after an hour, “mashing in” is done. You raise the temperature to 170 degrees and strain into another pot. The liquid and additional four quarts of 170-degree water get poured over the grain twice.
As you can see from the photo, this is why I went to grain bags. I made a bit of a mess.
Next, we go to the boil. For this particular kit, it’s a 60 minute boil with hops added at specific times based on the recipe. Once the boil foams, you reduce to heat to a point where it’s just boiling, and start the process. I used the digital scale I use for charcuterie for weighing out the hops.
You lose 20% of volume during the boil, which leaves you a gallon of wort. Cool it on ice to 70 degrees and into the jug. I added a hydrometer to my supplies because this is what tells you if you achieved the specific gravity(sugar content) the wort needs to ferment to the proper alcohol level. This is also where you add the yeast(“pitch”) and shake to mix and add oxygen.
The sanitized tubing is stuck through the cap about an inch, and the other end sits in a bowl of sanitizer. The first couple of days is where the most aggressive fermentation takes place, and the airlock isn’t up to the task. After a couple of days, the tubing is replaced with the airlock, and then it’s time to wait for two weeks while fermentation does its thing. I’m using the guest bedroom closet that doubles as my “root cellar”. Close the vents and it stays a consistent 60 degrees during the winter.
The other purpose for the hydrometer is the determine if the beer has reached the proper alcohol level. I didn’t have one for this batch, so I crossed my fingers and hoped the recipe was correct.
At this point, the fermented beer is siphoned out of the jug and into a pot containing a half cup of water and three tablespoons of honey. The beer is flat, so this is the sugar that will ferment and provide carbonation. The beer is siphoned into sanitized bottles and placed back into the cool, dark closet for two weeks. I screwed up and lost my prime towards the end, so I ended up with six pints, instead of seven.
After two weeks, it’s time to chill, pour, and see if I made something actually worth drinking.
Hey! That ain’t half bad. Citrus notes from the Cascade hops, creamy mouthfeel with just a little bitterness on the finish and just the slightest hint of residual sweetness that will probably go away over time.
I’m enjoying this hobby, so far. It’s not saving me any money and given that we’re in the Golden Age of craft brewing, it’s not like I can’t find dozens of awesome beers at the local grocery store. I chalk it up to my toddler “me do it!” mentality. It goes well with gardening, canning, charcuterie, etc. The second single hop IPA is in the closet and I have a Cream Ale cold fermenting in the bar refrigerator. Next up is a batch of raspberry mead from the recipe Kinnath posted. When Spring comes, other things will take place of brewing to keep me busy, but when it’s like this outside, might as well make beer!
