The Coy Pond

We love to make things that no one makes.

A perfect example? We once made pop tarts from scratch. We got a lot of reactions along the lines of, “You made pop tarts? You can make pop tarts??”

We make salad dressings, salsa, sauces for stir-fries, pie fillings, breads, pizza-from-scratch, soups not from cans, cakes not from boxes, biscotti, ice cream, and baby food, among lots of other things. I know we’re not the only people who make items from this list, some might not even be all that unusual. We just like to make things, to consume things we made from raw ingredients. No weird chemicals, no stabilizers, no preservatives beyond good old sugar and salt.

Today, Bruce made sarsaparilla soda.

Well here its been a few weeks since I posted. My first batch of beer was a mild success, completed a few weeks ago, but now that is almost gone and I was hungering for a new batch.

So two weeks ago I tried my next batch and ended up giving my outdoor plants a good soaking of really good/expensive beer. So another week went by, and I took a beer making class, and this inspired me to make my current batch, a Belgian Wit. Currently now fermenting x 1 week. This beer has combination of wheat and barley malts, and has flavoring from orange peel and Coriander seed. For any beer people, this is similar to Hoegaarden.

Anyway this batch seems to be going well, and fermenting away. But that did not satisfy my desire to brew. My mom is coming to town this weekend for Jarrod’s baptism, and she loves Ginger Ale. So why not brew Ginger Ale!
Christy picked up a book on soft brink brewing. So really I had no excuse not to brew. On Sunday evening I spent 4 hours fiddling with a less than explanatory recipe and finally brewing a pretty groovy Ginger Ale. I am really looking forward to trying this.

I should be able to refrigerate this in a day or so, after it carbonates. Of course I am a little nervous about this since it is carbonated with yeast and is in a glass bottles, which could mean a refrigerator explosion, but I have heard that this is pretty rare unless you keep it in there for a long time.

So I am hooked on brewing. I am reading all about homebrewing, great recipes, food pairings, etc. I picked up a 4 pack of beer on a homebrewer’s recommendation (yes a 4 pack since really good beer comes in 4 packs) of a fancy, and amazingly good micro brew beer. Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA is amazingly good, and surprisingly sweet, (for a beer that has so many hops that it should be barely edible). Anyway it is a lot of fun. Root beer would be my next soft drink, except that you can’t get the sassafras root except if you dig it up, and this stuff only grows on the East Coast! Booo!!! Well I will just have to live with that, and make some root beer with extract or with sassafras bark (which I hear is not as good for this).

Hope it all turns out!