I’ve been fermenting various veggies from our CSA (Philly Food Works) for a bit, now, but we’ve also had vegetables in the garden.

Unfortunately, the tomatoes we wanted lots of didn’t have a good year…the yellow cherry tomatoes, though, have been doing well.

…as have volunteer red cherry tomatoes :)

Cucumbers and peppers have been chuggling along, too, though as with the tomatoes, our preferred peppers - Jimmy Nardellos - just didn’t have a good time of it, but the fish peppers are doing well.

So…time to harvest and ferment.

The right-most jar started out as peppers from the garden and was augmented a few days later with leftover bell peppers from PFW. The left-most jar is cucumbers from the garden with a pepper or two for fun.

The 3rd jar is whole tomatoes in a 3% brine, which is in line with everything else (though all of the veggie ferments are sliced veggies plus salt, no added water; the brine develops over a few hours or days). After reading a recipe, though, they mentioned a 5% brine, not 3%, so the 2nd jar is going with the higher percentage, see how that all goes.

There’s also an unpictured experiment: fish pepper fermentation in a vacuum seal bag. Just salt and sliced peppers with the air extracted and the bag sealed… We’ll see how that goes; the bag is supposed to keep air out but the CO2 will puff the bag up, too, so…

Thanks to these instructions I have added backlinking to the site. It’ll help tie things together more (this ties back to this related post), though there may be other ways to do it, especially if I reconsider using Obsidian as where I write everything…

But, for now, it’s something :) As long as I remember to use it…

(Uh…and I realize the backlink examples also refer back to this post…heh.)

(Test 5)

First, I got Huginn to post Hugo entries to Mastodon - I should write up the process and rethink whether it should keep looking for the ‘blog’ Category, just do everything or something different.

Yesterday, I went through the steps to have Hugo verify xooyooz.com for my account, so I have a nice green checkmark, now. Mastodon makes it easy but maybe I should write up the Hugo side.

Now…time to see if attribution is working correctly or if - likely - I didn’t successfully insert Tab A into Slot B.

Former test

(Test 4)

First, I got Huginn to post Hugo entries to Mastodon - I should write up the process and rethink whether it should keep looking for the ‘blog’ Category, just do everything or something different.

Yesterday, I went through the steps to have Hugo verify xooyooz.com for my account, so I have a nice green checkmark, now. Mastodon makes it easy but maybe I should write up the Hugo side.

Now…time to see if attribution is working correctly or if - likely - I didn’t successfully insert Tab A into Slot B.

Really, this post is a test to see if Huginn won’t cross-post this to Mastodon (which I expect it won’t) but, I figured, while I was at it, I should put some content up other than “Test”.

I’ve been trying to develop some habits to help myself out in general. Write more, nerd out more, write more about nerding out more, play more music, write about playing music, etc. but nothing sticks.

I’m getting better about documenting projects as I go. This is important in some cases like brewing for repeatability. Or, well, tech, as when I went to remove some seemingly-unnecessary containers on my unRAID server…and wound up having to start over from scratch.

But hey…now I know what access I set up in my mysql and postgres database containers, can administer them via adminer and know what containers are using which database engines with which credentials…

So…journaling and documentating the whats, whys, wheres and hows can be very useful :D

Back to the problem at hand. Developing habits around all of this.

I think I’ll start with not engaging in projects I haven’t planned - I do a lot off-the-cuff and not getting back to unfinished things in flight in a timely manner can be a thing.

So…

• Plan out daily and weekly activities
• Review daily and weekly planned activities
  • Write about anything undertaken, especially if anyone - especially myself - might benefit
  • Don’t engage in any unplanned activity taking a decent amount of time
    • …or else?
• Profit
  • …metaphysically

We’ll see how this goes.

I started using Hugo - as I’ve attempted a few blogs and sites over the years - to journal various projects and hobbies or capture thoughts and the like over the years… At the same time, I had wanted to get away from the social media behemoths and get back to using Mastodon (…or seriously ever start).

If I couldn’t keep on Hugo, though, and there wasn’t a (known) critical mass on Mastodon…well, just looking at the infrequency of my posts on either tells the story.

But if I could post to Hugo and get it to Mastodon with little to trouble…and make it a nerdy project along the way?

Enter Huginn. I had beat my head against it before by installing it as a docker container on my QNAP (which worked right out of the box) and on unRAID (which didn’t) and since I didn’t keep the QNAP around and it wasn’t working on unRAID, my ADHD brain ran off to something else it likely wouldn’t finish.

Enter Huginn again, after I decided to pin my brain still on it for a few hours and it turned out that the failure on unRAID was a permissions thing. I should figure it out properly and not just alter the permissions on the share external to the container…but here we are.

I won’t call out C directly but also Interfacing Huginn with Mastodon helped with much of the set up.

So…fingers crossed, this might work or it might not…

I forget what led me to pick up the book Fermented Vegetables but it led to such an initial success, we’re including fermented things in 2-3 meals daily.

A mess of alliums was the first batch. We had so many garlic scapes, spring onions, scallions, garlic scallions and leeks that it seemed like a good first test. If it failed, hey, we’d have another bounty, no doubt, in the next CSA delivery…but no, it was an amazing success!

So now there’s:

• two jars of a porter mustard
• a carrot and ginger crock
• cabbage

Plus the allium mix and a batch of fermented fries we ate last night. Those turned out really well; very slightly tangy, more depth than plain fries and…well, saltier than we’d have liked, but I think the recipe was for 4lbs and I only used 2. So twice as salty? I could see that. Have to try them again, maybe with some curry powder or paprike in the brine…

I’ve also made 1/2 a gallon each of cow and goat ‘Greek’ yogurt. I was worried about them both as they really didn’t seem to set fully, initially, but after straining were wonderfully thick, creamy and tangy. The goat yogurt sat for the better part of a week in the whey and I was very worried that I’d just have to toss the batch…but no, it turned out just as amazing as the other.

After we enjoyed the initial ginger beer attempt, it was going to be a staple. Figuring out a house recipe would be awesome and if we could have a custom probiotic drink on hand - especially something that could be had as-is, diluted if needed or included in mixed drinks of various sorts, hey, wins all around.

When it comes to brewing, much of the effort is going to be the same whether your batch is a quart or a gallon or 5 gallons…so why not knock out a big batch if you like the outcome? Another benefit of brewing a bigger batch is the ability to experiment: maybe try 5 different yeasts or see if you want to add additional ingredients up front (citrus juice, citrus peel, turmeric, berries, etc.) or as needed, etc. Maybe make a base recipe but add additional ginger to a few different versions?

The last batch was very active. Even burping it at least 2-3x daily, it managed to explode non-destructively during one pressure release. It expelled a cup or two of beer over its section of the kitchen, making the floor, countertop and dishwasher contents sticky. It was a decent loss of volume…so maybe less sugar is key, or a less active yeast (I used a lager yeast at room temperature, so…). Whatever the reason, one tweak is using a blowoff tube instead of trapping CO2 and burping occasionally. To carbonate, we’ll track fermentation and transfer to a keg before fermentation is complete, trapping CO2. Maybe we’ll also referigerate it to slow things down… Maybe we’ll keg the 5 gallons into two 2.5 gallon kegs and treat them differently…

I’m making ginger beer as a probiotic alternative to soda, mixer, etc. Sugar, ginger, lemon zest, lemon juice and yeast. You can keep it as a syrup or diluted like this as a ready drink. I could see the syrup being useful, too, by omitting the yeast and not adding more water… Just add to seltzer for a similar outcome, but you lose a lot of the extra benefit from the yeast.

The recipe mentioned drying the solids after straining and eating as a ginger candy but holy nuts … Going to try a pork pie with some of this in or added on top. It’s so good…

Grate a good 5-6" piece of ginger, cup of water, cup of sugar, zest a lemon and simmer for an hour. (My version was a triple batch, though I didn’t triple the lemon and should’ve at least doubled it. I can fix it in post.)

Cool, strain and either store like that or add water and optionally yeast to dilute to desired strength, to get to a liter or so (again, mine yielded more, this is a large growler). Scales up well, though you’ll want to taste for sugar and ginger levels. The yeast was very active in mine, had to burp it at least daily for a few days.

There was a medieval brew day with a few goals in mind:

1. Make ale
2. Make mead with yeast harvested from the ale barm
3. Make bread with the yeast harvested from the ale barm

OK, well, a few days; the ales were made 1 and 2 days beforehand in order to try and time things for harvesting the barm.

The mead, specifically, was the driver for all of this; the original recipe mentioned using ale barm so that led to making ale to get barm, then using the barm in the mead and, hey, why not also a bread?

The bread didn’t rise and the mead didn’t ferment.

…but the recipe also didn’t actually say to use the barm. It said to use the lees…which…yeah, that would’ve worked out much better ;)

So…hey, at least I have 10 gallons of 1503 ale kicking about. I think I’ll add some of it to some meat pies, add some to bread, etc. and get some plausibly medieval uses out of it. I can harvest the lees, too; the mead still needs to ferment, so I could see about getting the lees to the mead (2+ hours away) or start another here (which would be much easier).

Shame it didn’t all work out…but that’s the great thing about projects like this. We knew it wasn’t one-and-done but more likely the first of a series…

For the ales: the first batch - the one with the London Ale yeast - went from 1.045 to 1.013 and is done, sitting at 4.2% I’ve had a few glasses of it straight from the fermenter (no carbonation) and I like it… yes, some carbonation would work well for it, but even as-is, it’s a nice, easy drink.

The second batch - using English Ale yeast - went from 1.054 and is reading 1.017 at the moment, and might drop some more, yet. Even so, it’s 4.9%…so the yeast might have had a difference but I’d wonder if it wasn’t steeping without a cheesecloth versus with, for the above. The right answer is to redo the whole thing again, except 100% the same, side by side, changing only the steeping method… Either that or change only the yeast…

We’re still waiting for fermentation to kick off appreciably on the meads; those were 100% identical save for the barm from each ale.

Another experiment done as part of this was bread. I used a modern no-knead bread recipe which usually results in 4 loaves of great bread.

This time, I made the recipe except that I combined the dry ingredients (flour, salt) into three equal amounts. I divided the water in thirds, too, then added three different yeasts with the water into the dry ingredients.

• One third got regular (bread) yeast as a control.
• One third got yeast via harvesting barm from the ale which used the London Ale yeast (the first ale brewed, since it was further along).
• One third got yeast harvested from the lees of a stout I had made previously.

The harvested barm was what we had also used for the meads. The third portion of yeast was a “washed” yeast where you reserve trub from a beer fermentation and “wash” it a number of times (adding water and letting things settle out, with the intent of slowly winding up with 3 layers in a vessel: trub on the bottom, a bright white yeast layer and clear water on top).

This method looks a bit nicer than what I’ve been doing, so I might follow this next time for washing yeast.

As far as using the barm for yeast for subsequent use, we’ll see how the meads turn out… I thought the bread would’ve been a good test, too, buuuut, going back to the bread…

All three loaves failed.

I don’t know why, but since it was all three that failed, I won’t blame the yeast differences. Maybe they weren’t allowed to proof long enough - they were all rather dense - or maybe it’s because I added too much spent grains 1:1 in place of AP flour.

That…might’ve been it. But the weird thing was, even though all 3 were clearly 1/3 of the whole recipe, just divided (versus doing 3 separate recipes from scratch), I know the weights were all the same. The dry ingredients all weighed the same. The same amount of water was added. Only the yeast was different.

…and all 3 loaves were different up front, not just after baking. None rose sufficiently and 2 of the 3 (the 2 ale yeast loaves) were much more wet to begin with. Which…made no sense, as again, all ingredients were the same at that point.

Oh well. Twist my arm, have me brew more and do more bread experiments :D

The ales are good and here’s hoping the same is true for the meads…

Last year, a bunch of us gathered to make the mead over an open fire, etc. but using commercial yeast because of timing. We all wanted to try again with actual ale barm, but that meant scheduling the ale fermentation to line up with the mead brew day…

This week, then, I planned two batches of a 1503 Tudor Ale to coincide (hopefully) with the weekend mead brew day.

Why two? Well…I couldn’t time the krausen’s rise, necessarily, so I figured stagger a couple of brews and we should be able to hit the 8-24+ hour krausen window sufficiently.

These Tudor Ale recipes are shortcuts; I modified an all-grain recipe I’ve brewed before to be a partial mash instead, because of timing. There was no way I was going to knock out two all-grain batches on weekdays, what with work and all.

…and even in modifying them for partial mash, I screwed up and forgot an ingredient, but it just means they’ll be lower ABV than intended.

So each brew was 2 cans of pale ale liquid malt extract (LME) as the base, 1.5lbs flaked oats, 1.5lbs flaked wheat, 1lb crushed pilsner malt, 2oz of Fuggles hops. One batch would get London Ale yeast, the other would get English Ale yeast, just for a bit of difference.

They were therefore the same, save for the yeast.

…and for some reason, I steeped the grains in a bag for the first batch, then let them steep freely for the second batch, before straining them. First batch remained contained in the bag which was simply removed.

Which resulted in ~10 points difference on the original gravity…

We’ll see how it goes.

Batch #1 was 1.045 OG Batch #2 was 1.054 OG

I might hit Batch #2 with a heating belt if I don’t see krausen first thing in the morning; Batch #1 already has krausen which might collapse before we use it, but we’ll see…

(Two additional Royal Oakleaf 1/19 in between row 1 and 2)

(R) indicates raised, comparing a 4" rise above the default shelf height; the T5 lights have been great for the greens started on 12/20/24 in the iDOO tray where the light was a lot closer to the seedlings but distance on the DIY hydroponic shelves with T5 lights might be more than seedlings should get.

pH and EC (electroconductivity) should be tested next week for everything.

First, I bought an iDOO 20 pod kit. This seemed great - why go with a handful of pods if you could have a few handfuls? - but quickly proved not the best idea for what I had planned.

The lettuce I included in the first round of plantings quickly proved they would crowd out anything close to them…so I had to buy some larger containers for those.

…and some grow lights.

So 16 individual containers later and a 6 pack of T5 LEDs, I set up one wire shelf as a suitable spot to host 5 transplated greens from the initial effort and start 5 more as a staggered option as we start to harvest.

Which left 4 more grow lights (2 can fit per shelf) and 6 spare pots. So I started more greens in those (celtuce, 3x stinging nettles, endive and devil’s ear lettuce) on a second shelf.

But there’s space for at least 4 more pots on that shelf and one more shelf’s worth of grow lights…

So another 16 individual containers are showing up this weekend…

All in all, it’s a lot of fun, so far. The herbs are chugging along, but not being very impressive yet, while the original lettuce (and kale) are going pretty gangbusters.

Photos and updates to come…

Recipe

This was a cobbled-together extract brew as I thought I had an oatmeal stout kit but didn’t. I grabbed a couple cans of light LME I had on hand, added some specialty grains and oatmeal and went to town.

In secondary, I’ve added Coloma banana concentrate and some rum barrel chips (…which may be long past their peak). We’ll see how it all goes; it went from 1.019 to 1.029 so hopefully the yeast will wake up and go to town on some of the sugars, but also hopefully they won’t wreck the fruit flavor…

Characteristics

Fermentation Notes

• 12/29/24 kickoff @ 1.50
• 1/12/25 secondary: 1.019 -> 1.029 after adding banana concentrate

Notes

• Brewed on 2024-09-04

As usual with extract kits, I came in lower than expected for the OG. After reading up on it, it might’ve been that I didn’t mix the top-off water well enough. The heavier, colder wort might’ve sunk to the bottom and the lighter, warmer top-off water might’ve stayed on top.

Reading that, I sanitized a whisk and stirred for a bit which wound up equalizing the temperature a bit (some of the top-off water was hot to try and bring things up from the mid-50s from sitting outside all night). The gravity improved a couple of points, but only about that much (1.035 -> 1.037).

I’ll see how it settles out after fermentation.

I’ve wanted to ditch FB for a while, now, but couldn’t pull the trigger on it.

With their recent fact-checking changes and refusals to address clearly-hijacked accounts of some friends, I’ve decided it was as good a time as any to move along.

Not checking the Feed every hour or so is a factor, too; it’s too easy to intend a brief check on something, then see an interesting update from another friend or get caught in a Reel or whatever…before long, it’s not such a quick check-in after all…

I want to be more purposeful about interacting with technology; I want to minimize doomscrolling or whatever the version of endlessly reviewing friends’ posts is.

So. I created a LinkStack to link all of my contact methods (mostly shown on this site, too). I’m picking this Hugo site back up again (…I hope). I’m being more deliberate in my technology usage and learning; more time expanding my skills, building tools and the like… Leveraging skills I’ve half-developed, sharing what I learn.

Here’s a diagram of what I have, to date showing various services that create content that’s pushed online (like on this blog) and/or hosted wholly at home.

I’ll dig more into the technical side in other posts. Suffice to say that my digital presence will change; I’ll be as present as ever, just in different venues. Hopefully doing more tech projects - and things like music, hydroponics, brewing… - with this site and other non-FB social networks sharing progress and lessons learned…

Recipe

Official recipe - I bought this kit from Brew Your Own Beer.

Characteristics

Fermentation Notes

• 9/4 Pitched higher than I’d liked, about 80°F.
• 9/5 Tilt hydrometer reading 1.025 @ 77F
• 9/6 Tilt hydrometer reading 1.015 @ 77F

Notes

• Brewed on 2024-09-04

As usual with extract kits, I came in lower than expected for the OG. After reading up on it, it might’ve been that I didn’t mix the top-off water well enough. The heavier, colder wort might’ve sunk to the bottom and the lighter, warmer top-off water might’ve stayed on top.

Reading that, I sanitized a whisk and stirred for a bit which wound up equalizing the temperature a bit (some of the top-off water was hot to try and bring things up from the mid-50s from sitting outside all night). The gravity improved a couple of points, but only about that much (1.035 -> 1.037).

I’ll see how it settles out after fermentation.

<!- more ->

Main setup

• Ibanez 5-String Bass (signed by Victor Wooten and Steve Bailey)
• Ampeg Rocket Bass RB-108 1x8" 30W Bass Combo Amp
• Zoom B1X Four Bass Multi-Effects Processor
• Boss RC-1 Loop Station
• Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer
• Boss DR01S Rhythm Partner

Other basses

• Rogue LX200BF Fretless Series III 4-String Bass
• Hartke 4 String Bass (needs work, not sure of the model)
• Some generic 4-string bass (first bass, action’s way too high but I didn’t know any better)
• An acoustic bass guitar

Electric guitar

• SGR C-1 Electric Guitar (when I thought that’s what I was going to play)
• Line 6 Spider V 30 MkII 30W 1x8 Guitar Combo Amp

Drums

• A decent Ludwig drum set (not so much for me to play, but for others if they want to jam)

Author: Iain M. Banks

Notes: Rereading (re-listening); for some reason, it only recently appeared as an option in Audible for me, though we had a CD audiobook of it years ago. An amazing story, it’s one that almost seems like it should be set in the Culture universe, but it’s not.

• Brown Ale (extract)
• Oatmeal Stout (extract) with blueberries added in secondary

Current Proteges

• Lady Chana Freidl the Maker
• Lord Aiden Underhill
• Baroness Yasamin al-Sardinia
• Milord Anselm Höfer

Former Proteges

• Meister Matthias von Würzburg
• Noble Alana O’Keeve

I’ve got categories and tags working, so…time to just start writing.

My goal is to write something daily, preferably a few somethings. There’s plenty I should be doing in terms of content for here and, again, it’s more for accountability than external consumption… There might be things others find useful (and I’ll try and tag/categorize those appropriately) or interesting, if following any of my journeys or thought processes.

This time, I’m putting some effort into making it technically interesting (for me), leveraging some skills I’d like to improve, and using some tools I’d like to learn more about.

One of the things I want to be better about is documenting my bass-playing journey. More to make sure I am practicing regularly but also to capture some of the things I come up with, sounds I want to recreate, phrases that work well but not necessarily for what I’m currently playing, etc.

I also want to make sure I’m recording my beer brewing and coffee roasting more than I have been (which is all but not at all). Cooking, too…

Maybe also have a place for some deliberate long-form writing. I’m not sure that that’s of as much interest to others, but if it’s nothing more than a journal and essays for myself, that’s fine.

Finally, I want to document some of the technical projects I’m working on professionally and personally, in and out of the SCA. I’ve been working on a few things that I think are interesting and I want to make sure I’m capturing the process and the results.

I’ll document the technical side of this in tech and see if I can be diligent about updating something daily.

Bear’s Tavern was one of the first regular events I was able to make it to, starting out in the SCA, and the memories of being in the kitchen and the event overall really stuck with me.

I started Bhakail’s annual Tavern event in 2016 with an eye towards not only recreating the experience but also to provide an event-with-training-wheels for new(er) event stewards and cooks.

At one of the first Bhakail Taverns, we decided to start the day with a cold platter that we could easily provide as people asked for it, rather than worry about tying up the problematic kitchen preparing lunch. It was a hit, so I trotted the idea out again for Tavern 2024.

The kitchen we use at the event is…not great. We encountered issues - as always happens there - but we had plenty of food as people needed. I had been looking forward to the recipes slated for dinner and, sure enough, those were the ones that had a lot of feedback and requests for the recipes.

Recipes

Cold platter

• Crudite (carrots, celery)
• Hummus (plain)
• Olives (mixed)
• Cocktail onions
• Za’atar (roasted sesame seeds, sumac, thyme, marjoram, oregano, salt)
• Infused oilve oil (smashed olives and garlic)
• Homemade mustard (mustard seeds, salt, water)
• Sauce verte (parsley, garlic, water, vinegar, salt)
• Stuffed grape leaves
• Cheeses
• Pita wedges

The intention was for folks to dress up the hummus with the flavored oil, za’atar, etc. The infused oil was a hit, from all accounts.

Mushroom barley pottage

• 4oz of dried mushrooms (porcini, cremini, shiitake and wood ear)
• 1 package of barley (16oz)
• 1 large white onion, diced
• Quatre epices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves)
• Salt

I thought I had added too much liquid, but the dried mushrooms took in a lot of the water and the pottage thickened nicely. The spices really added a great angle to this very simple dish.

Fesenjan

• 1.5 lbs of chicken (I usually use thighs, but we used breast this time)
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 cup of pomegranate molasses
• 1 cup of walnuts, ground to a paste with water added
• 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• Basmati rice

Brown the chicken in some fat. Add the onions and cook until they’re soft. Add the walnut paste, pomegranate molasses, cinnamon and salt. Cook until the chicken is done or until you can shred it, if desired. Taste and add more pomegranate molasses if the balance is not quite right between sweet and tangy. Serve over basmati rice with pomegranate arils as colorful red jewels on what might otherwise be a very muted dish.

I maintain a linkstack which lists where else I post (and read) online.

This site

What is it for?

Accountability, mainly. Sharing, secondarily.

I’m going to try and develop and maintain habits around a number of things I enjoy doing, and part of that is tracking what I’m planning on doing, what I’ve done, how I did it, whether it succeeded or failed and what I learned from it.

Whether it’s coding, brewing, cooking, music, or whatever else I’m up to, I’m going to try and be disciplined about documenting it.

What runs it?

Hugo is a static site generator I’m using, styled via the PaperMod theme. I’m hosting it via Cloudflare and using GitHub as the code repository for the project. Read more about why and how I set it up, plus anything I’ve modified along the way.

The author

I’m Michael Broggy.

I’m a technologist, brewer, cook and on and on…

I grew up in Dublin, Ireland but have been in the US since Junior High. I’ve lived in NYC, Utah, and now the Philly suburbs.

I’ve owned computers since 1982 and taught myself a variety of skills along the way since, especially early on, reference resources weren’t readily available. I turned self-taught skills into a career and continue to do a variety of things professionally and as a hobbyist.

Brewing beer was something I started with a friend a while back; I progressed from extract to all-grain brewing, moving from stovetop to propane and from there to all-in-one systems. I personally prefer continental styles, but tend to be all over the place when it comes time to brew.

Playing bass is something I put effort into over the pandemic; I’ve owned a bass for many years but never really put the time in to learn it and couldn’t stand the lessons offered at the local music store. Learning from Paul Hutchison has been a game changer for me.

I’m Mael Eoin mac Echuid.

In the medieval recreation group Society for Creative Anachronism, I’m known as Mael Eoin mac Echuid. I intended to learn to brew, cook and do heraldry but quickly wound up fighting, dancing and holding offices… While I started out in NYC, I now live in the Barony of Bhakail (a chapter covering much of the greater Philadelphia area), which is part of the East Kingdom.

I’ll write posts and articles related to the SCA; between personal projects, events and other activities, there’s a lot going on. If you have any questions about the SCA, feel free to ask!