Readers will get the idea this is some kind of cooking blog. I’ve just been too busy to give any time to the blog, and whatever spare time I have left after the kids go to bed has been devoted to reading about the Civil War—about which perhaps I will post a blog entry some time soon.
But I find that the blog is a convenient place to take notes on a recipe; I want to keep track of recipes anyway, so why not just post them here?
I’ve been pretty busy lately, but things have slowed down enough that I managed to brew beer a couple of weeks ago—it’s now in the keg—and to bake a couple of pecan pies for Thanksgiving.
In researching recipes for my first pecan pie a couple of Thanksgivings ago, I was dismayed to find that nearly every recipe calls for corn syrup, a detestable substance, especially in its “high fructose” version, which I find is in nearly everything. What’s more, it appears that the original recipe for pecan pie was inspired by Karo brand corn syrup.
I am probably one of the few non-restaurateurs who needs to know how to make five gallons of iced tea, but if there are any other A/C-hating, do-it-yourselfer fathers of large families out there, here’s my recipe—which you see my sons Nate and Sam and I testing out one evening here to the right.
But first, an explanation. Last week I took vacation time to build a large playhouse/fort in the backyard. I’ll post an article about that soon, once all the loose ends are tied up. But it was pretty hot last week, and it’s been hot all month. We finally got sick of making five and six pitcher of iced tea a day and decided to make a whole lot all at once.
“Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man” —A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
Last year I posted recipes for the ales I brewed for Pascha. When I needed to pick up supplies for this year’s Pascha brew, I turned to that post rather than my penciled notes (wherever those might be), which gave me the idea to “live blog” the Brew Day.
Here I am, by the way, the night before Brew Day with a mash paddle I made earlier this week out of a piece of maple bought for that purpose more than a year ago. If I look a little demented, that’s on account of the water chemistry woes described below in my notes on the preparations in advance of Brew Day.
“. . . because without beer, things do not seem to go as well.”
—Brother Epp, Kansas, 1902
This morning I kegged the second of two batches of beer I brewed a couple weeks ago. I had hoped at that time to do some “brew blogging,” but a series of brew-day crises made that impossible. (The beer pictured here is from my last beer, brewed for Thanksgiving 2004. I seem to have lost my notes for that beer; apparently it was an American ale—look at that thick, rich head!)