Saturday, August 23, 2008

Still alive and twitchin'

That's right, I went deep behind the inter-dimensional shape shifting reptilian enemy lines, other wise know as cities, and have returned to the country safe and sound.

While I was away, working and visiting family, I picked up a new addiction - Archery.
Since I've been back I've tried to shoot at minimum 20 arrows a day, my groups haven't tightened up a whole lot yet, but my number of wide flyers have been greatly reduced. The majority of my arrows wind up in a circle the size of the palm of my hand with a flyer another finger length away. These groups are using a release shooting from 20 yards. The last couple of days I've started to also shoot a group or two with fingers. Using a release definitely offers instant gratification, but it's reassuring to know you can put a reasonable group up without a release if you need to.

On a stopover at a relatives on the way home, I was able to pick a grocery bag full of sour pie cherries, and a few pounds of gooseberries and raspberries. The day after returning home the berries and cherries were mashed up to make a batch of wine, which is now happily bubbling away.
I've never really followed a recipe or used one of those kits. When I started making my fruit wine I used this page http://ingeb.org/junk/wine.html to get a general mish-mash idea of what to do. Like the pages author I don't bother with pectin, clarifying agents or any other junk. Just mash the fruit, I'd guess about about 3 parts very warm water to 1 part fruit, sweeten to taste then over sweeten, let cool then add a packet of wine yeast. When it's done bubbling, I strain it out, top it up with some sugar water and let 'er go till it stops bubblin' again then your ready for bottling or another round of sugar and bubbling. Haven't had a batch I didn't like yet, but this is the first batch I've tried using regular old bread yeast.

One of the handiest things I've found for brewing your own is those Grolsche flip top bottles, no buying corks, convenient size, re-sealable if all you really wanted was a splash and they work for regular or sparkling wine and of course beer. Another tip is the 16 liter buckets with the pop up spout that some places get their fryer shortening in, the spout is a perfect fit for the cork and airlock that you get in the carboy kits, this way you don't even need to get out the hole saw kit for the lid.

Speaking of shortening, the bucket I cleaned out for this batch had 3/4 liter of oil left in the bucket, prime stuff to try out a small batch soap recipe.
While I was in town yesterday, I noticed a few crab apple trees that are overburdened with fruit, I just may have to stop in to ask if I can help reduce the mess they'll have to pick up. Any fruit I can scrounge for free is a blessing, since we don't have much growing close to us except for wild rose hips, which I'll probably throw in a batch of wine and or jam with the crab apples.

Well I guess that's all for tonight
G'night and don't let the scary scaly ones gitcha down!

2 comments:

riverwalker said...

Thought for a while there the reptiles had made a meal of ya! HaHa! Good to see you're back.

RW

Anonymous said...

I love and miss rosehip jam on pancakes. Used to pick wild blueberries, huckleberries, high bush cranberries, saskatoon's, and rosehips as a kid. (My parents were back to the landers / survivalists in the 70s)

Funny opening to the post today, keep up the good work.