The belgian style golden blew up in secondary, after following a recipe's recommendation of adding more dextrose when you move it to the carboy. The airlock clogged and the stopper shot itself out of the bottle. I sanitized the stopped, put it back in, and refilled the airlock. It's still bubbling, so I think I might be in the clear. CO2 is heavier than air, and there's a pretty good chance that as a result, the beer didn't oxidize. It's also pretty high in alcohol, which reduces the chance that some bacteria got a toehold in there while it was exposed.

I kicked a "housecleaning" batch of something resembling a belgian dubbel to the yeast bed of the golden. It was partially an excuse to use up some expired liquid malt extract, including a can of Cooper's Old Ale. As well as some treacle, some table sugar, and a few ounces of honey I had lying around.

Honey quality apparently does make a big difference in mead. The half gallon batch I made using a pound of honey from the farm in Peabody, MA where I shot my friend Paul's wedding was outstanding.

Belgian White and my first wine (in a long time)

I just kegged my third or fourth Belgian style white beer, and I'm pretty happy with it and with being able to make it pretty consistent. The amount of trub I had in secondary was kind of mind boggling though, like, almost two inches.

I just pitched my first yeast starter, to a Belgian style golden ale. I've never seen an airlock spit out water like that before.

I just started up an expired red wine kit. This is going to be my first wine since the very first time I ever fermented. Hopefully it'll be a step up from EBT purchased grape juice concentrate, Poland Springs jug swiped from an office, and extra sugar from Dunkin Donuts sugar packs. I do have to thank my perennially homeless couchsurfing friend's foodstamps for my current interest in brewing, because at the time, we just thought it would be funny to sidestep that whole "you can't buy alcohol with foodstamps" thing.

A quick update

I made my first yeast starter yesterday. I've never really bothered with one before, but I'm going to make a fairly hefty belgian golden this week and decided that a recipe that calls for over a pound of priming sugar and over six pounds of liquid malt extract could probably benefit from a larger initial yeast culture. I'm going to go with the seasonal white labs offering of "Abbey Yeast IV", mostly because, well, the golden ale yeast is always available and this isn't. I did, however, learn one important lesson from this:

Don't pour boiling water directly into a growler without giving it a chance to cool first. Over your burner. So that the boiled wort goes directly into the insides of your stove.

That being said, my second attempt at making a start appears to be bubbling nicely, on what someone dubbed my "mad scientist shelf" in my pantry which also has a couple of gallon or less meads and ciders bubbling along in growlers and repurposed carlo rossi jugs. (Are you a friend of Carlo? At times, haven't we all been friends of Carlo?).

I'm also going to take my first stab at minimashing with my next dry stout. I'm going to add two pounds of flaked barley to my steep, and hold it at 155 Fahrenheit for 45-60 minutes before starting my boil.

Cheese
I've been dabbling in cheesemaking. I got a paneer recipe from a book and i've been mucking around with it. The key seems to be getting milk that hasn't been "ultrapastuerized", which apparently isn't very good for cheesemaking. The process can be as simple as heating up milk in water, and tossing in some leftover citric acid from meadmaking until the milk curdles, then stretching a grain bag over a pasta strainer, pouring the curds and whey through it, and rinsing the curds. Then you hang it to dry over your sink, and you eat it after it's dry. Or you could grab some of your roommate's "fresh herb" mix from whole foods and mix it in, with a tiny bit of salt.

You can make cheesemaking really complicated, but you don't have to.

Pickles
I've also been dabbling in pickling. I was ordering some zines to sell at the collectively run vegan pizza shop I work at, and I came across Wild Fermentation,by Sandor Katz. It's hands down one of the best two dollars minus wholesale discount plus shipping purchases I've made in a long, long time.

The pickling recipe is pretty simple, and mostly involves boiling up some salt in water to make a brine, adding some cucumbers, and adding some other spices and odds and ends for flavor and firmness.

Other Stuff
I'm going to finish and post my "Beers of Chicago" entry from January before I leave for Chaos in Tejas in Austin, and I'm going to write a "Beers of Texas" entry when I get back. I thought I was too cool for Oi! when Cocksparrer last came to the US, and I'm getting a chance to remedy that mistake. That and seeing Amebix again is going to be pretty great. I don't think I've ever seen a room of crusty kids as happy any time in my life as at their show in Providence earlier this year.

PS
It's college move-out season. You put up with them from September to June-ish. Those damn kids are wasteful. I just got myself a couple guitar stands, a gig bag, and a bunch of other odds and ends from a dumpster near a dorm. It's a free thrift store.