Tinctures. Yeah, that’s what I said.

What other concoctions do we have brewing? Tinctures of all sorts. They just sit in the dark doing their thing. What’s a tincture?

tincture is typically an alcoholic extract of plant or animal material or solution of such or of a low volatility substance (such as iodine and mercurochrome). – wikipedia

A good example of a tincture is vanilla extract. That’s in one of the jars.

If you read the label on a McCormick for example, you might just find that it also contains corn syrup. We won’t be putting that in ours. Usually you sweeten your baked goods with their own ingredients, guys. We’re not eating the extract straight up, so it doesn’t need to taste good by itself. (Who’s running these companies?) Here’s a post about it if you want to see more label voodoo.

What’s really nice about making tinctures, is 1) it’s fun to say and 2) you need Vodka on hand. If you notice in the picture, the bottles and jars are pretty small, so there’s leftover vodka.

What would you do with the leftover vodka?

Kefir Me, You Fool. Another round for the grown ups, this time.

While we’re talking about beverages, shakes, healthy food, blah, blah, there’s one more. {Just one?} Water kefir.

 ā€œIā€™m so excited about yeasty bacteria!ā€

I can’t possibly do this better than Crunchy Betty did with her post, but I do have a cool video that shows the grains dancing around in the jar.

What do we do with the water kefir grains? We make the juice kefir with 100% juice. After the first day, you get a soda. {That’s fun, but what if you keep those yeasty things in the juice longer?} 
After 2 days, you get something {hic!} a little more fun. {hic!} Friends insist we bring the juice kefir to the weekly potlucks. There was almost a riot of concern and wild speculation about what had happened to me the night I missed. {Were they concerned about my absence or just sore about not getting the juicy juice?} 
It’s becomes an adult beverage, if you needed me to spell it out a bit more. Pour the juice through a sieve to collect the grains to use on the next batch. You’ll be able to share with your friends and they’ll be able to be able to make some for themselves. 
Did you have any idea these things existed? I didn’t a few months ago.
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F Ferments and Krauts

Kraut This

“It’s a full moon, have to start the kraut.”

Those really aren’t words I thought I’d ever hear. I didn’t see them coming. I didn’t really think about sauerkraut very much. I knew that I liked it, but that was about it.

Paying attention to the moon apparently helps fermentation  As the moon is “born” or grows, you plant or start things that grow. Otherwise, it’s the opposite. Things just don’t grow as well.

This kraut is a mix of purple and green cabbage. Together it ends up being pink. The green bit at the top is just a leaf to keep actual cabbage below the water. It’s not mold.

It’s really tasty on its own or on a salad. We throw just about anything in a salad these days. Hold the sauce though, with enough wet things, you don’t really need it.

Below we have some samples of the other ferments. These are what the smaller batches of mead look like.

If you think you’re interested in fermentation, there’s a way lot of information out there. We had a link to a few sites and other books. The ladies met up with, Sandor Katz, one of the authors of these books a while back and he actually inspired our current adventures in krauting.

Ferment This