Yeast Coast Lifestyle

This one turned out really nicely.  I used my super-active new sourdough culture, that I mentioned in last post-- cultivated as a sourdough starter for about a week, but then had some bottle dregs from a couple mixed-ferm beers added in.  Nice Brett character when it's at peak activity.  I can seriously feed this starter, then have it doubled in volume within a couple hours.  It's amazing! Anyway, so... the bread.  I have sort of stopped using explicit recipes in my baking, as I have the ratios memorized, and sort of know what to expect as far as time goes.  I've taken a liking to doing this short bulk ferment of about 4-5 hours, and a longer, cooler proofing in the fridge.  First of all, it' s a bit easier to manage a shorter bulk ferment, as far as my schedule goes, and then I can just pop it in the fridge for like 8-12 hours.  Secondly, some folks say that a longer slower ferment/proof will give you more complexity, as far as taste/smell goes.  Could be ester produ

Sooo sometimes you just want to bake bread, regardless of what time is, or what the schedule might entail.  So I did that.  I did some browsing in the Forkish book (I pretty much only go to that book now for inspiration), and used the 40% overnight wheat bread recipe for inspiration.  I used rye instead of wheat, and only used 20%, but followed it, as I felt it would translate alright.  I started at a weird hour, which caused me to have to shape my loaves at something dumb like 2am, but I was up late, so it was ok. Basically, I restarted my sourdough starter a week or so ago, and sort of cheated after a few days in.  I did the standard flour/water mixture in a mason jar for a few days, and fed it daily, with a moist paper towel elastic-banded across the top to keep it hydrated and filtered from anything falling in.  A few days later, I added a tiny bit of liquid from a mixed-ferm yeast starter I had going for beer, as well as some bottle dregs from a mixed-ferm beer.  The yeast start

This beer was brewed on October 21, 2017.  For my second all-grain batch, I was inspired to brew a saison in the vein of something by Jester King--  I had recently had access to a bottle that I saved dregs from, and had propped them up to a pitchable volume.  I can't recall which beer, but I know it was a saison in its base form (may've been Das Wunderkind, or one of the Provenance beers, but I can't be sure).   A beautiful pellicle formed on the starter after a few cycles of feeding I fished around online to find existing accounts of people who'd attempted something similar (any beer with a Jester King culture)-- I don't recall whether or not I found much of anything informative, but I do recall discovering that Jester King posted a handful of their recipes on their website's blog .  The one I chose to use was the recipe for Das Uberkind , from this post , which has a good amount of other recipes, as well. My derivative recipe looked like this:

I wanted to make a quick loaf yesterday, so I whipped up a recipe based on the Saturday White Bread Recipe from Ken Forkish (Flour Water Salt Yeast).  I love rye bread with caraway seeds , so I put that spin on it.  I also halved the recipe, since I don't eat a ton of bread. Ingredients : 400g all-purpose unbleached flour 100g rye flour 360g water 11g salt 2g active dry yeast (while I like the idea of sourdough better, sometimes short and simple is nice) 1tbsp caraway seeds As you can see, this is a pretty simple recipe.  The water should be fairly hot, but I didn't measure the temperature.  I usually just use hot tap-water that's hot to the touch, but not scalding.  The thermal mass of the bowl and flour usually reach equilibrium at about the right place, leaving the dough in the mid-70s. My procedure: Mix flour and water by hand in a large bowl, until everything is just incorporated. Let the dough sit for 5 minutes, then fold-- usually about 4-6 folds/

Between the time of the last partial mash beer I brewed and the first all-grain batch I brewed, I grew my knowledge of beer quite extensively.  I was regularly listening to tons of beer podcasts, buying beer books, and doing lots of research online.  I couldn't get enough-- passion was a driving force.  Unfortunately, the nature of my personality was preventing me from getting back into brewing.  I can be a bit obsessive over details (a perfectionist of sorts).  I didn't have every single piece of gear I wanted to have in order to do things the way I felt they should have been done.  I got the equipment I needed, bit by bit, but seemed to still get stuck at certain steps.  For a while, it was the fittings on a mash tun.  Then it was finding gaskets to seal the tun-- then I would learn something and new, and scrap the way I was doing it.  It was a vicious circle. A friend of mine saw that I was holding myself back, and was kind enough to let me borrow his homebrewing setup ind

I've decided to begin keeping track of things that I spend my time on, markedly those that require yeast and/or bacterial cultures.  Within the past couple years, I have grown increasingly interested in fermentation-- this interest has mostly manifested itself in the forms of bread making and brewing, but I continue to be casually interested in things like kimchi and fermented coffees (which I have yet to try).  Beer was my gateway-- I began nerding out on the details of beer, which led me to crawl down the romantic rabbit hole of mixed-fermentation, where yeast and bacteria are the stars of the show.  I then got into baking bread, where I became excited to use a sourdough culture.  I thoroughly enjoy learning the processes that govern how things come to be-- it is immanently rewarding being able to produce something with your knowledge and abilities.  Empowerment! As I've learned through work and school, it's always a good idea to ensure that everything you do is well-do