First steps to making beer

Today I made my first steps to actually producing something!  Well, not really, but I did get some good news for future alcohol production.  I received an email from James Robertson of the Tullibardine Distillery, and they have very kindly offered me ten kilos of malted barley that should have been destined for Scotch Whisky production, to make into beer.  As beer is (and I apologise for the crudity of this statement) a combination of malt, water, yeast and hops, the only other thing I needed were hops... and there aren't any around here to forage.  So it got me thinking, what can I use instead?

The Williams Bros brewery has been making Heather Ale, commercially, for years now, and so using this very Scottish plant instead of hops was always an option.  However, I thought I'd delve a little deeper into other possibilities and started scouring the default source of all information, the internet.  I found that plants like Milk Thistle and Wormwood were used before hops became popular, but they are not exactly easy to come by nowadays and besides, I wouldn't know a Milk Thistle if it was right in front of me.

More easy to source plants include Dandelions and Nettles, but as I am exceptionally sensitive to nettle stings I don't fancy wading into patches of the things without the levels of protection that people wear in a nuclear plant.  Another option is rosemary, and I could grow this quite merrily in pots outside my house, but the beer that interests me most is made with Spruce.

I found a website called Gourmet Underground Detroit, that has a spruce beer recipe, but most importantly, it makes it clear that no hops are needed.  The resulting beer is apparently quite citrussy and tart, so I am hoping it will be a lighter, refreshing type of beer.  I have found out that spruce beer can also have a darker, Cola like flavour and am assuming that this is due to later harvesting when the tips of the spruce are more resinous and woody.

There are quite a few spruce trees around the area I live, so the hope is that I can harvest them in a few months and start making my Tullibardine Malt Spruce Beer in the spring... 

Pre-Christmas leftovers - Christmassy Bread & Butter Slice

I love spending time in the Cotswolds, and in the bakers there you often find a bread and butter slice – essentially a tray bake that uses up leftover bread that has a few raisins added into it.  It is deliciously moist and exceptionally tasty, but for some reason, frugal Scottish bakers haven’t cottoned onto the fact that you can use wasted stock to make this delicious sweet treat.

So embracing my idea yesterday of making things with pre-Christmas leftovers, I tried to make one of these bread & butter slices and put a Christmassy twist on it so it could be eaten as a snack or even for breakfast on Christmas day.

You need

1 Loaf of stale bread (white or brown, not seeded)

Some butter to spread on the bread

3 egg yolks

500mls milk

¼ cup caster sugar

Raisins or dried fruit

Ground Nutmeg

Ground Cinnamon

Here is what to do

Preheat the oven to 180c

Firstly, cut the bread into thick slices.  Leave the crusts on, as it gives it a more rustic slant.

Lightly butter both sides of the bread

Heat the milk in a pan until it is nearly at the boil

Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and as much cinnamon and nutmeg as you desire until combined and put to one side.

When the milk is nearly boiling, pour onto the egg yolks and sugar and whisk to combine it all quickly.

Pour the mixture back into a pan and heat on a medium heat.

Stir constantly with a wooden spoon, cooking out the custard until the mixture coats the back of the spoon (I added a bit of cornflour because it was taking quite a while).

Pour the custard into a bowl and whisk to cool quickly and then transfer into a jug

Line a loaf tin with grease-proof paper and grease the inside.

Layer the bread in the bottom, add a small handful of raisins on top, and then pour some custard over the top.  Repeat until the bread & custard is all used up.

Place in the oven and cook for 35-45 minutes.

Remove from the oven and cool in the tin.

Turn out and slice and then eat.

Well – that is the theory.  Firstly, I forgot to grease the greaseproof paper, so when it came to taking the loaf out of the tin, the outer shell had welded itself to the paper and ripped off leaving the inner casing that looked as though I’d dropped it on the floor. Turning it upside down however made it look fine.

So presentation is terrible, but what does it taste like?  Well, essentially, Bread & Butter pudding, with a subtle nutmeg and cinnamon element coming through.  It was lovely and moist, with the custard flavour intensifying overnight.  Making a spiced custard works really well and I think if I’d soaked the raisins in rum and been a little more adventurous with the spices (infusing a clove in the custard would have been great), it would have made the whole thing taste much better and give a bit more of a Christmassy flavour.  I'll try this to make this again soon, and this time not muck it up.

Pre-Christmas Leftovers - Chicken stock

Using up leftovers at Christmas time is something everyone does.  The Turkey Curry/Chilli/Sandwich arrangement is something that everyone either enjoys or tolerates for the days following the big day.  After having a roast chicken on New Year’s Day, I realised that I could include things within the Christmas feast that would be utilising waste food from meals on the lead up to Christmas.  Instead of making things out of Christmas leftovers, making Christmas things from leftovers.

The most obvious starting place was stock – something I’ve never bothered making, and just bought good pre-made stuff.  Sure, a box of stock cubes don’t cost a lot, but with a £30 budget, it works out as a large percentage of my permitted money. I realised that if I have a roast chicken or beef joint in the couple of months before Christmas, I could make some stock out of the bones or carcass, and then freeze it to use at Christmas.  So, I decided to give it a shot with my roast chicken. 

I threw a the carcass, some leftover raw parsnips, some herbs (rosemary & thyme) a few cloves of garlic and a potato (I had it, and thought ‘why not’) and some peppercorns into a pan, three litres of water and turned on the heat.

I brought it to a boil, skimmed some scummy looking stuff off the top of the liquid and then turned down the heat.  Leaving it for four hours, skimming anymore scum that formed on the top when I saw it and then passed it all through a sieve. 

The stock tasted ok – it wasn’t fantastic, but I didn’t have a lot of ingredients to add flavour.  It was a bit watery and had a slightly oily element to it and I feel as though with more reduction, it certainly could be better.

So my first exploration into stock failed, but it gave me the notion that I’m going to have to explore using leftovers more.  I could confit meats that I don’t use, and if I shoot animals in the months prior to Christmas, I could preserve the meat I don't use from them.  Stuffing could be made out of leftover sausages that I’ve not eaten, and if I can master stock, it could be the basis for a soup for a starter. 

Bread is another thing that we all throw out, but I’ve discovered a fantastic way of producing a tray bake that uses old bread – sure, its not part of a Christmas feast, but with the right spices and it could be very Christmassy and be added to the festive table – maybe even as something for breakfast on Christmas morning!  I’m making it tonight and will let you know how it goes tomorrow!

A harsh reality, five pounds & poop

So, the beginning of January is here and there is nothing to forage, I haven't learnt to hunt yet and still need to figure out my menu, so I’ve been thinking about the ingredients that I may have a problem sourcing. 

My first thought went to alcohol, and what I can do to achieve my goal of having beer at my feast.  Beer is a simple theory.  You need water, a starter yeast, some malted barley and hops.  When I actually get round to making the beer, I'll deal with the hops, but my brain went into overdrive today regarding the barley.

I spoke to a work colleague who is an amateur brewer and been advised that for around 20 litres of beer, I will need 5kg of malted barley.  So, malted barley – where can I get that?  I’ve been told that buying from brewery shops, it would cost £5 for the amount that I need.  “That is very reasonable, a fiver for twenty litres of beer” thought I, and there was the temptation to reach into my wallet and haul out a crisp note.  Then the realisation of my challenge set in.  It isn’t that I can’t afford five pounds for the barley, I can, but my budget doesn’t allow me to.

A fiver is a sixth of my total budget for every consumable item on my Christmas dining table.  I figure I’m going to have to buy things like dairy products, sugar, maybe some spices and these ingredients aren't cheap.  So not to eat up all the budget, I realised I am going to have to change my mindset as I simply cannot afford to spend this money on barley to make beer.  If I want beer, I am going to have to make it for free, and I'm also going to have to find a lot of things for free.

I also need to figure out how I can bottle this beer.  I have easy access to empty beer bottles, but I can’t seal those with caps unless I spend money on them – again, something I can’t afford, so I need to find a source of swing top bottles, like the ones that are used by Grolsch.  Any ideas folks?

On a positive note, I’ve had some advice regarding veggies.  Tim Butler who runs The Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews has suggested upturned grow bags for growing all the root vegetables that I will need.  With a little lateral thinking, I realized that can make my own grow bags.  There are many farms around where I live, and they have horses.  In the next few days (once the farmer’s new year hangovers have subsided) I plan to approach a few farms with the hope that I can clear out their stables and collect the horse manure.  Sure, it means scooping a lot of poop, but it contains the nutrients that potatoes and parsnips need.  Combining this with some soil and then filling the mix into jute bags will be my first step, before leaving for a few months to compost down.  Then, come the springtime, I should have a DIY grow bag in which to plant my root veg for Christmas.  As I’m going to have to grow these at the front of my house, half way up a cliff with a public footpath running by, the jute sacks will also look much better than a plastic grow bag and stop the local preservation society moaning that I'm making my house look messy - I hope!