Very nice, how did it taste?
It’s good. I’m going to try it over the next several days and see how the flavors develop before changing anything.
My first impression was that it could be slightly more sour, which could be a matter of time and sugars, and that it could use a bit more salt. I don’t typically add much salt to anything, so I was a bit surprised by the latter.
Overall though, very tasty.
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Great chopsticks; did you make them?
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Sounds good!
It also surprises me how much salt sour things tolerate.
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I know you asked a long time ago, but I would guess those to be black mustard seeds.
ETA: Ah, I see that you answered your own question.
I really like that set too. No, they were purchased. I can’t remember exactly where I picked them up. It was either at Mitsuwa in San Jose or 99 Ranch in Clairemont Mesa.
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I think I’m going to ferment some lemons, using his recipe:
http://phickle.com/preserved-lemons-or-other-citrus/
Should be easy, right?
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I just salt pickle lemons in lemon juice, which is how they do it in the Mediterranean and middle east. Here is my latest batch.
i cut the lemons in quarters leaving them attached in one end and stuff with salt, when the jar is full i squeeze more lemons until the juice covers the top. you do have to “burp” the jar every few days for the first few months. Traditionally they are best after a year but i find they are good to go after 3 months when the hissing release tapers off.
Please do post updates of any thing you try, i love seeing your and other users fermenting updates!
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Well, here’s my attempt!
5 meyer lemons + the juice of 2 more
2 T salt
I have a pickle pebble to keep them submerged, and there’s an airlock involved.
Boy, does my kitchen smell lovely right now… I’m congested all to heck, but I can still smell the lemony goodness. Win!
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The day began without even the slightest hint of the Clouds of Foreshadowing:Deep.fuckenSigh.
Coffee was made. Brekkie was had, and then various sounds, clanging, swearing, the slapping of hands in gestures of good fortune, a better future…
…and then there was a large pot of water heating on the stove! And that thermometer–it’s a food grade floatie!
…and what’s this? GRRRRAAAAAIIIINNNNNNSSSSSS!!!
It puts the grains in the hot water and sometimes does get the hose again…
…to then yield, pre-boil, ~6.5 gallons of beautiful brown porter wort…
…and then…at 10 minutes to end of boil…
Broken? What’s broken?
A minor mishap, a slight setback, a paltry problem. Food Grade Floatie…was no more. Half of the contents emptied into the tasty brown abyss:
No bigs. Floatie holds no mercury, just alcohol and lead(!)…balls. The lead won’t dissolve, and can easily be filtered out prior to the fermenter.
Press on with pride!
But the worst was yet to come. Doesn’t that look like a nice chilling bath? Like a great spot for cooling down that soon-to-be-delicious brew, almost ready for the yeast and the fermenter…
But then you might notice how parts of that large ceramic laundry tub are quite clean and white. Because I scrubbed that mofo for ~3 hours the other day, and nasty? Boy howdy lemme tell you how nasty it was–gunk on there from 1958, I’m sure of it! If you just look to the right side, that begrimed, nasty little tray in front of the water taps, there’s a blue scrubbie I used that really needs to be thrown away because it’s so gross. So Gross!
What do you mean you don’t see the scrubbie?
WHERE’S THE GROSS DISGUSTING SCRUBBIE
The gross, disgusting, grimy, slimy, en-filthed blue scrubbie, that was sitting on that rusted, calcified, bacteria-laden tray, was now pleasantly bathing in a ~5 gallon batch of deliciously, once-sterile, 100-110 degree brown porter wort.
Between the chemicals I’d used to clean with (lots of clorox powder bleach, some purple fabuloso) and the really quite disgusting scrubbie, I had to dump the whole batch.
The whole, damned, batch.
all of it
!! Lamentations !!
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Holy hell, that suuuuuucks.
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And all in the blink of an eye. It was there, turned away and bumped something, turned back, it was gone.
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Holy crap, that is sad.
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Gonna bounce back, though, no need for the fuck-today well, some need for it, certainly…Gonna get some more grain (sniff) and gonna brew up a better one next time! That was a porter, maybe another porter, and double up with something pils-ish.
Damn, that was a good boil.
Even got my temps right on the mash–160 on the nose. But my mash tun manifold needs work. The stainless hose mesh that makes up the manifold at the bottom of the tun has flopped around so much that it needs replacing, and I never liked that design anyway. Probably going to retrofit to something PVC, like this:
And thermometers? Specifically, non-glass thermometers…
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A worthy entry to be cross-posted to the Fuck Today thread.
I’d suggest you sit back and enjoy a nice porter ale to clear your mind, but…oops. 
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Best while you have it use your breath, There is no drinking after death. --John Fletcher...and...
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. --Sir Winston Churchill
So, with that in mind, another Porter in the proverbial pipeline, ~10.5 lbs. of mostly Maris Otter (8 lbs. of it, IIRC), with 1.5 oz. of Fuggles hops (mine are US grown, not UK) at 60 minutes in the boil, then another .5 oz at 15 minutes, and 1 oz. of East Kent Golding hops 2 minutes from flameout 
.
No dry hopping, no citrus, no perforated flugelspout from the rare Northwestern Slovania Lumpy Goat to be added (only by the half-gram every two days!), it’s just a bone stock porter that will be drunk in high fashion by People Who Appreciate Beer. 
Hooray, Beer! 
Grains in the mash tun, ~3.8 gallons of 170 (F) degree water for 60 minutes (with thermal mass of 10.5 lbs. of grain) should AND DID yield 155 (F) mass that will steep and smell ab-so-fucken-lutely delicious in about 60 minutes, if it doesn’t already. and it does
“Strike” water, or water that’s being heated to 170 (F), to be poured over the grains once they’ve steeped, during the vorlauf (YA VOL HERR BREWSKY) and then the lauter. Which…
…
is now…
EDIT: Mkay. I’m not as think as you drunk I am. There so!
~6 gallons of hotter water (So Hot! Milk = Bad Choice) than was used in the mash process is poured over the now-steeped grains to raise the grain-bed temperature from 154 (F) (having lost only 1-2 degrees over an hour in the mash tun) to ~170 (F), as we drain the mash tun into the tiny kettle, flushing the last of the sugary goodness out of our graaaaiiiinnnnsssss. We (you and me, 'cuz thass how we roll) use a highly technical solution (aka colander) to keep from disturbing our now-hot-and-messy grain bed–the seed and husks act as their own filter. 
The wort starts delightfully sweet (and so beautiful!) only to taper off (should one tarry when tapering) to an astringent nastiness–stop pulling from the mash tun when the sweetness is gone and get thee to the boileree. Perchance you have not enough for a 5-6 gallon boil? Good, clean water is your friend, friend.
Voila! Le Lauter! mein Stift ist groß und rot 
So we’ve got the wort, now we gotta boil it with the hops and the love and maybe another sniff from the Oban bottle. smells so good, maybe I should have another sniff…well I guess I will thanks
The patches will not be boiled even though the KC-10 (or 20, or 30) is a mere shadow of the more reliable, more visibly enticing, and certainly more bad-ass KC-135(R)…and the H-60? HA HA SUCK IT ROTARY WING TURD
And because it’s colder than a Male witch’s titty in a bronzed Under Armour t-shirt, I am forced to brew from Vehicle Centrale, where you may certainly gaze upon the back-end greatness of the much vaunted KLR 650:
Pelletized love:
Fuggle pellets take the dive at the beginning of our boil.
And then we’ve got East Kent Golding in whole hops (with Lavay Smith on the mic, and Lamey Joe on the tubs).
Post boil. Time for Moar Numbers:
Specifically…specific gravity. This is the second measurement, the first may or may not have been launched due to someone playing light saber with the godamn graduated cylinder. sorry bruh Calling it ~1.051-1.052, so maybe, if the sun does not explode in the next two weeks, we’ll wind up with ~6.something ABV?
ABV stands for Anecdotal Biscuit Vaporizer
Looks good now…but after this, we’re gonna yeast up the place! Smokin an Fermentin, smokin and fermentin…
Now we cap the fermenter, place an airlock in the top, mebbe another snort of Oban, ya? and in two short weeks, add some priming (bottling) sugar, bottle it, and another two weeks, and we done got ourselves some beersss.
easy peasy squeezy cheesy
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Kkakdugi update:
The flavors really started coming into their own in the 10-14 day range. I take back what I said prior about it possibly needing salt, it just needed more time. (Currently having with Teriyaki chicken and steamed rice.)
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I felt like crying (in a good way, really!), so I started an onion ferment today.
First, I smooshed a head of garlic.
Next, I chopped up a pound of onions and cried my eyes out.
Sprinkled 1 T salt over the bowl, mixed it a bit, then let it sit for 30 minutes. Then I massaged it for a few minutes, getting it to let go of some more liquid.
Into the jar it went!
Added about 1/2 T of red pepper flakes, plus 2 T of brine from the previous onion/cabbage ferment.
It smells ridiculously good in here right now. Y’know, if you like onions and garlic.
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Hi there,
sometimes I do listen to somebody 
I’ve done a batch (a batch is two 1 liter bottles over here) half/half with apple juice, and added in each bottle a cinnamon stick. (is that correct, the dried stuff, rolled). Wow, turned out great, sparkling, not that sweet (4 day’s at 18 degrees Celsius) and just a tiny hint of cinnamon.
Thanks!
Repeat, great again.
Now a batch with apple juice, some ‘star anice’ (Illicium verum) and a bit ginger. All cold, so I expect (hope also) the flavors will be just a hint. Like with the cinnamon. I like it like that.
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I just tried the onions, and boy oh boy, are they good. Crunchier than I thought they’d be, and packing a nice amount of heat from the pepper flakes. They’re still bubbling away in the jar, and I’ll try them again in a couple of days. Assuming I can keep my fork out of the jar in the meantime.
Oh, and the smell is fantastic. Why doesn’t the Yankee Candle company make fermented onion/garlic scents? I’d totally buy that.
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