Recent content by kitchenboy

I know how they do this at the champagne houses, but how do you do it at home. Need Details Please: Brine? How do you chill it? What is the salt concentration? Etc.

Just finished my latest batch of rice wine. 3.5 kg (dry weight) Thai sweet glutinous rice, Angel Rice Leaven, Premier Blanc yeast. Fermented 11 days at 16 degrees C (60 F). Produced 10 litres of wine before clarification. I cheated on the above pressing method and used my cheese press. It is...

Please keep in mind that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Most of us do not have the time or the resources to pursue the perfect anything. Most of us will not win any prizes. We try to make the best we can with what we have at hand. If we can come up with a product that is enjoyed by our...

I don't know how you get away without pressing. I make cheese and have some large format ricotta cheese molds. Pull my paint strainer bag out of the fermentation bucket and drop into mold sitting in a colander over another bucket. Put a follower on top (a plate will work) and add 10 lbs of...

I have been making cider for 30 years, but I have never made perry. I want to try. We don't grow pears, here in Vermont. The pear concentrate from brewers supply outfits is really expensive. I can get Qts of baby food pear juice with only ascorbic acid added pretty cheap. Does anybody have any...

The company, Angel Yeast Co., which makes a broad range of cultured products, is a little free with the term "yeast". This confused me at first and could be just a translation problem. If you look on the Rice Leaven package, the ingredients are: rice flour, rhizopus oryzae. Rhizopus oryzae, also...

Lets keep in mind that making rice wine is a bilateral process. You need a starter culture to convert the starch to sugar and a yeast culture to convert sugars to alcohol. These work together at the same time. Chinese yeast balls have it all and they do work. The problem is that you do not know...

They aren't crab apples, but you can get a 2 lb bag of Kauffman's Fruit Farm dried granny smith apples, with no sulphur or preservatives on Amazon and elsewhere. These might provide the tartness you want.

I've gotten too damned old to be roaming Vermont back roads and pulling fruit from feral apple trees. I now buy my apple juice from the market too. If you have a COSTCO near you, see if they have Kirkland brand not-from-concentrate apple juice, with no preservatives. It comes as a two one gallon...

Let's not get down on Pasteur Champagne yeast or "Premier Blanc" as it is now called. If you want a slightly sweet commercial style cider with lots of apple flavor, then I agree, Champagne yeast is the last thing that you want to use. If, on-the-other-hand, you want a bone dry, crisp, and...

They certainly age rice wine in China, but not in the bottle. The official age of the wine is defined as the number of years that the finished wine is aged in pottery. I have found only one study of bottle aging out of the Philippines. They bottled the raw product, aged it between 1 week and 3...

I steam sticky rice, cool, and then put into a bowl and add 1.5 ltrs of non chlorinated water, if I started with 2.5 kgs of dry rice. Work the rice to separate the grains and then pitch starter. Works for me. Since I make large batches, I try to get a little more control by using Angel brand...

eigua is right, the taste profile changes considerably when you clarify it. I prefer mine clear. Have you tried "cold crashing" in the frig, then racking? Couldn't tell from posts.