Make Your Own Hot Sause!

It may be November, and the leaves may be off the trees, but there are a few vegetables in the garden that are still ripening. Hot peppers continue growing until a heavy frost, long after my other vegetables have wilted and died.
I even have some peppers that have not yet turned red.
With a handful of late season hot peppers, I decided to try my hand at making some hot sauce. I did a bunch of research and most recipes have you either chop, sauté, blend and bottle or chop, blend, sauté and bottle. I decided to blend after sautéing, because I figured sautéing the puree might volitolize some of the spicy flavor. I could be wrong on the science here, but I decided to go with my hunch.
After chopping and sautéing the peppers, along with some garlic and onions, I blended the mixture along with some white vinegar and a healthy amount of salt. And viola, homemade hot sauce!
Most recipes suggest a few months of aging. Tabasco sauce is fermented for three years in oak barrels. You can't replicate that, but after a few weeks this sauce should start to ferment, just like Tabasco sauce. It'll be interesting to see how this fermentation takes place, compared to the fermentation process of beer and wine. I did a little research, and this process is similar to other fermented foods, like sauerkraut. It'll be interesting to see how the color of the sauce changes as the fermentation takes hold.

Racking the 2009 Vintage

It's been two weeks since I started fermentation on the 2009 vintage. Sixteen gallons of barbera, sangiovese and sauvignon blanc have been bubbling away and are now ready to be racked into carboys for bulk aging. I took gravity readings and the barbera was 0.998, sangiovese was 1.000 and sauvignon blanc was 0.998. If you read my explanation of specific gravity in my last post, you may ask how gravity could end up below 1.000 if by definition once all the sugar is consumed and there are no more dissolved solids, the hydrometer should only be measuring the water in the wine. It's essentially because alcohol doesn't have exactly the same gravity as water. In fact, some higher alcohols have gravities lower than 1, which drops the gravity reading of the wine. I'm not a chemist, but this is my understanding based on what I have read on the subject. In any event, this wine has fermented to dryness and fermentation is completed!
The wine will sit in the carboys for several months to clarify and stabilize. I added some bentonite to the wine, which is refined clay. The proteins in the wine will bind with the bentonite and the haze will fall out of the wine.
With the carboys nearly filled, I sacrificed a few bottles of alicante wine from last year to top up the carboys. You don't want an air gap in the carboys, which can oxidize the wine, and you'll get the bottle back in a few months when you bottle.
A few more rackings and a few months of aging and we'll be ready for bottling!

2009 Wine Harvest

The 2009 harvest has arrived! I picked up three 5.4 gallon buckets of California grape juice this past weekend, which will make about 80 bottles of wine. I had my heart set on a petite syrah and a tempranillo, but you need to adapt to the vagaries of the harvest and delivery schedule. So I ended up with a barbera, a sangiovese and a sauvignon blanc. I've done a lot of wine making in my life, but this will actually be my first white, not counting mead!
The barbera had an original gravity of 1.092, the sangiovese 1.100 and the sauvignon blanc 1.102. Assuming these all ferment to dryness, this should yield alcohol by volume of 12.2%, 13.2% and 13.5% respectively.
How does all this abstruse alchemy work? It's not that complicated. Wine makers and beer brewers all use a tool called a hydrometer. This a weighted glass measuring tool that floats in the wine must or beer wort (or in a cylinder for ease of measuring). Depending on the specific gravity of the liquid, the hydrometer will float or sink to a measuring line on the instrument. You can thank Archimedes for this neat trick!

So what is specific gravity exactly? Well it is the ratio of the density of the liquid to the density of the water. The gravity of water on the scale is set to 1.000. The suspended substance that increases the density from 1.000 to 1.100 or 1.102 is comprised almost exclusively of sugar. The yeast will consume the sugar and as a by-product will produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. The resulting alcohol will have a gravity similar to that of the water and therefore you can take another gravity reading (the final gravity) and can calculate the amount of sugar consumed and hence the amount of alcohol produced. You can calculate this yourself, but there are lots of web calculators that do all the fancy math for you. Remember to keep track of the temperatures as well, as the gravity of the beer or wine will change as the temperature increases or decreases away from the default value of the hydrometer, usually like 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

There are several other methods of calculating sugar levels in wine. You often hear the word "Brix" used in wine making, which is similar to gravity, but more precise because it measures sugar levels by the refraction of light as it passes through the liquid, as compared to pure water. Vineyard owners like this tool because they can squish a single grape in the field to test sugar levels and determine the perfect time to harvest their grapes.

Stay tuned for more info on fermenting and aging of the 2009 vintage!

The Central Park Beam Bench: Part 2- Construction

With the sanding complete, it's time for construction of the reclaimed wood beam bench. As I discussed last time, the bench will have two legs splayed out at an angle from the top. The legs will be connected to the top with mortise and tenon joinery, which is a very strong joint. This is important, even with thick wood like this, because the legs will not be perpendicular to the top and hence will act as a lever. The joint will need to be extra strong to resist the temptation to pull out of the top. A solution to this problem would be to run a stringer (wood or metal) between the legs to hold them together. But that would distract from the look of the bench and with the thickness of this wood, I think I can get away with a mortise and tenon joint.

They aren't making any more of this reclaimed wood, so Norm Abrams' advice to measure twice and cut once is especially sagacious. I took my time calculating the angles and measuring the cuts (and double checking my calculations) to make sure everything would be perfect. All four angles of the leg cuts need to be identical, so the legs will sit at the same angle relative to the top and relative to the floor. Otherwise, the bench will not be level, it will not enter the top squarely nor will it be stable upon the floor. The cross cut jig shown below slides on the surface of the table saw and ensures a stable and precise cut.

Because of the thickness of the wood, and the fact that when cutting at an angle the width of the wood is thicker (because you're not cutting straight through) I had to make the cuts on both sides of the legs and then sand the surface. You'd need a huge saw blade to make this cut in one pass!
Although the legs would be splayed out at an angle from the top, the mortise would fit into the top at a perpendicular angle. This is for strength, but also because measuring and drilling out a mortise at an angle would be very difficult. The pieces below show the angle the legs will sit on the top and the dimension of the large tenons. They're going to be a full two inches into the top.The tenons will need to be cut mostly by hand.
Removing the top section above the tenon. Note that unlike the bottom of the legs (which I cut all the way through, above) the top of the legs need to be cut at the same angle, but the angle cut needs to stop at the tenon...
... so that the tenon emerges from the leg at a right angle to the top and that the rest of the leg, into which the tenon is a part, is parallel to the bottom cut of the leg. In other words, the leg becomes a parallelogram (or actually a rhomboid to be precise), with a tenon sticking out of the top at a right angle to the top plane. Who said geometry wouldn't ever come in handy?
To cut the mortise, I'll drill out the section to be removed with a drill press and then square it up with a chisel. I'm using a forstner bit, which is designed to make precise wood cuts, and is far preferable to the common spade bit for this type of application. I set the depth gauge of my drill press so that every hole I drill will be two inches deep, same as the length of my tenon.
The mortise completed. Notice I had to sand down the bench as the board was slightly warped, and I wanted to make sure the legs would lay flat on the bottom of the bench.
Glue applied to the tenon, ready to be inserted into the mortise. Be sure to dry fit the joint to make sure it fits snugly! I'm using Gorilla Glue which will provide a super strong bond.
And the leg, clamped in place.
Stay tuned for final sanding and finishing!

The Central Park Beam Bench: Part 1- Sanding

Last year I built a long wooden bench from a beam salvaged from the Central Park Police Precinct. I couldn't bare to cut the 12 foot long piece of wood, so I mounted it along a wall with cast iron legs. But then I saw a bench in a fancy furniture store in Soho made from a reclaimed beam (and selling for $5,000) which caught my attention. It was a massive beam of old growth pine with legs cantilevered out at a 20 degree angle, sort of like the figure for pi, with a long top. I thought to myself, "I can make that", which is how most of my projects start.

So I headed over to Build It Green, New York City's home for salvaged and one-of-a-kind building materials, for a little rummaging. If you're a do-it-yourselfer, you owe it to yourself to check out this place. They have a ton of cool stuff! I was lucky enough to find another reclaimed beam. Like the other one, this one was old growth yellow pine but this was a full 4.5 inches thick, 18 inches wide and 10 feet long. Old growth wood like this is simply not available commercially any more. This tree was probably a few hundred years old when it was cut down in the 1870s or 1880s, somewhere up the Hudson, where it was rough sawn and delivered by boat to New York City. Build It Green said the beam came from the Central Park Stables. I'm not sure if they meant the new Policy Precinct on the 96th street transverse or the Claremont Riding Academy, both of which recently underwent major rehabs. Check out some pics of the beam: I love the holes and the notches. They really give the beam character.

You can tell it's old wood because of the saw marks- and the grime! Modern saw mills do not leave blade marks like this!

Old fashion square nails. Very cool! But will have to come out so I don't damage my tools.

That's a thick piece of wood! Old growth lumber like this just isn't available commercially anymore.

The blade marks are beautiful- and very unique. I'll have to save this detail for the bottom of the bench.

To remove the rough surface wood and over a hundred years of grime, I'll be using a belt sander with a super heavy duty 40 grit belt. This will make short work of the surface wood. It may be beautiful, but even nicer wood lies underneath. And you wouldn't want to put your feet up on this dirty old piece of wood.

The wood was so impregnated with years of grime, that the sawdust actually smelled like a museum. That musty smell you get when you walk into the antiquities room at the Met. I guess that would be "patina".

Look at that beautiful wood revealing itself.

And check out that sawdust. It was everywhere, all over me and in huge piles on the ground. You better believe I used a respirator and eye protection for this job. You don't want this stuff in your lungs or your eyes.

Stay tuned as I continue this project and turn this beautiful piece of old growth yellow pine beam into a modern reclaimed wood bench.

Make your own Photo Albums

If you're like me, you come back from vacation not only with great pictures, but maps and other printed material from your travels. So why not take that road map, topo, trail map or nautical chart and make a photo album cover out of it? It's easier than you think.

Take a three ring binder and remove the three ring section by prying or drilling out the rivets. Then take an Exacto knife and cut the binder in half along the rivet line. It may take a few passes to get through the binder.
Measure out a section of map that you'd like to present on the front and back of the album. Measure about 4 or 5 inches out from there and cut the map. This extra portion will be folded over the edge of the album to the back of the cover sections. If the map is crinkled, iron it on a low setting to flatten (unless its printed on tyvek or plastic). To attach the map to the album cover, spray the map with spray adhesive, available at art stores. It's better to spray the map rather than the cover because then the cover won't be sticky from overspray.
Make sure you orient the map correctly on the cover so that the map is right side up on the covers. Then press the cover onto the map firmly. Fold the map carefully over each side of the album so that the map and the cover bond together. For a more professional look, you can cover the folded inside cover with a piece of heavy stock paper which will give a much cleaner look. Measure a piece of paper a few millimeters smaller than the cover and bond with spray adhesive.
The album covers are connected with album posts, available at art supply and craft stores. They can be expanded to make large albums with screw-in extenders. Drill three holes into the folding section of each cover (one half of the middle section you cut in the first step). Measure the holes so that they're the same distance apart as the three ring binder rings you removed earlier. This way, the album will fit standard photo album inserts which you will add later.

With the holes drilled, slide the posts through the inside of the flap so that when folded parallel to the binder, the posts stick straight up. Take another piece of map and attach to the posts. This will be the binding cover.
Then add the photo album inserts, into which you will insert your photos. It's a fun idea to add full page inserts with other items from your trip, like coasters, ticket subs, menus, etc. I'm not a big scrap-booker, but it's fun to see all the unique things people come across in their travels.

When all the pages are in the album, fold the binder section over the pages and punch holes to go over the album posts. It's a good idea not to punch these holes until after you add the pages because you never really know how thick your album will be until it's done, so you don't really know how wide your binder cover needs to be. Then add the back cover the same way you added the front. Attach the retaining bolts to the binder posts and you're done! A unique and special album cover to remind you of your amazing vacation!
And it's also fun to add flags and stickers to the album!

Canning Peaches

I've been writing recently about preserving the fall harvest by freezing and canning. Peaches are a great candidate for canning as they are amazing in-season but are available only for a very short time. Canning preserves that seasonal freshness for those cold winter months when it's impossible to find good fresh fruit, let alone fruit that didn't fly in on an airplane. But don't think of those syrupy canned peaches from the grocery store- even when canned, fresh, local peaches are incredible.

Buy peaches that are fresh and local. Peaches bruise easily so if you buy peaches from far away they will have probably been picked when unripe and rock hard. Local peaches will have been picked at the peak of freshness and are simply incredible. Many farmer's markets will also sell baking peaches, which aren't quite as pretty as eating peaches but are just as delicious- and about half the price.

Start by peeling the peaches. The skins can be peeled by dumping the peaches in boiling water and then into ice water. This abrupt temperature change will split the skins right off the peaches. This isn't a required step, but does make the peaches more enjoyable to eat later, as the skins tend to get a little slimy when canned.
You can pack the peaches in a simple syrup, made of sugar and water, but for something special, try packing with apple juice. The peaches will be extra tasty and the color is incredible. On that note, adding an acid like lemon juice will protect against browning. I make a lot of wine, so I have high grade citric acids, which I used for these peaches. Look at those colors!
Once packed in the heated and sterilized Ball jars, fill with boiling apple juice or simple syrup and a dash of acid. Then seal the jars with new lids and boil in a canner for about 20 minutes. These canned peaches should last until at least next summer!