Episode 5: Vinegar and drinking Sour Wine

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Transcript

Evan 0:00

Welcome to episode five of She Brews He Brews, the Jewish fermenting podcasts. Where we hope to discuss all things, home brewing and fermenting today. We're talking about vinegars and drinking them. I'm your host, Evan Harris. And with me today as always is my co-host Alison Shay.

Alison 0:13

Hey there. How are you doing today?

Evan 0:14

I'm doing pretty well. And yourself.

Alison 0:16

I'm good. Drinking anything interesting today?

Evan 0:19

That I am continuing on my discovery of new local beers trend. I didn't manage to get any local vinegar for today's episode, but I'm drinking Baba black lager,

Alison 0:31

Ooh, that's a fun name.

Evan 0:33

which is both a fun name. the perfect one, the perfect blend for playing settlers of Catan,

Alison 0:39

Yep.

Evan 0:39

And is a very interesting beer. Refreshing, but still a nice dark malty

Alison 0:44

Nice. I am drinking water today.

Evan 0:46

Yeah. It's a little late for you tonight.

Alison 0:48

Just a little bit.

Evan 0:50

The other thing was, my dinner tonight was also very fermented. It was pizza. So fermented dough and fermented cheese.

Alison 0:55

Yeah, my dinner tonight actually included today's topic. Well I had a bunch of cheese and bread, classic,

Evan 1:03

Does that mean it's the same amount of fermentation as me?

Alison 1:06

yeah. But also I had some pickled artichokes.

Evan 1:11

Okay.

Alison 1:11

You know, it's a common pairing to be eating cheeses with some sort of pickle on the side. We were also eating figs. It's a whole series of, of fermented foods there for a fabulous dinner,

Evan 1:27

Absolutely. And so of course today's topic is.

Alison 1:31

Yup. Lots of different types of vinegar here. The basic thing you should know. The word vinegar comes from the Latin for sour wine. As you may be able to tell from the word vinegar, it does share root with other words that pertain to wine, like viniculture Is something that makes very clear sense to anybody who's ever brewed produced alcohols in general. Because if you let your brew go too far, your alcohol is going to turn to acidic acid, which is the chemical name for vinegar.

Evan 2:01

That's right. What can happened though if it's exposed to air or if you have a large, bacterial colony already in it frequently called them a vinegar mother. if you keep the air out, you managed to hold his weight, but many people have opened a bottle of wine and forgot about it in the fridge. Find a bottle of vinegar there.

Alison 2:16

The other way to produce a vinegar. The more deliberate way is to take a piece of that mother, which is basically,

Evan 2:24

It's cellulose and bacteria. Basically it is, it looks like a little cake floating in it. It's perfectly harmless. Great for producing vinegar.

Alison 2:33

And you just add a piece of that to something else, just like adding yeast to a brew. And that'll be basically a little bit of your starter to start off your fermentation intoacidic acid. Right?

Evan 2:45

That's correct.

Alison 2:46

So lots of different types of vinegars. Anything from rice to apples to wine is very common

Evan 2:57

wines

Alison 2:57

we've mentioned.

Evan 2:58

wines. Very common beer is also common, but we don't call it beer vinegar. We call it malt vinegar. So plenty of chip shops have a bottle of it on the.

Alison 3:07

Yep. Probably. The most well-known highly sought after version of vinegar is balsamic vinegar. Which has really interesting process to it. Balsamic is the type of wine vinegar specifically.

Evan 3:22

That's right. So if you're looking for a kosher one, you need to check certification, but so how, balsamic vinegar starts as they take wine. Grape must and they boil. Or simmer it, much, like I talked about my Belgium, cider, they sort of do the same. They bring the sugar content up significantly, and caramelize some of those sugars into what are actually unfermentable, which means they'd saved through the fermentation stages, and are in the final vinegar for this, the real traditional balsamic, not the balsamic of Modena, which is a lower quality. Industrial produced label. This is the real balsamic traditional method, which is subject to a DOP. We talked about those in the last episode and referred to all of the different letter combinations they could be, But so they start by that and then the standard fermentation of alcohol, then standard introduction of a mother and generation of vinegar. And then where balsamic, some really changes, compared to most is they actually use something similar to a Solara cask system. Solera casks are used in production of some Spanish fortified wine, but Sherry, So, what they do is they have multiple barrels of decreasing size. So traditional setup would look something like a 50 liter barrel, a 40, a 30th, 20, and a 15. And so every year you might take half of the vinegar out of the 15 liter barrel and top it up from the 20 and top the 20 up with, from the 30 and the 30 from the 40 and the 40 from the 50 and fill the 50 with new vinegar.

Alison 4:50

and this is something that you can do with wines too. There was a great one that I had awhile ago. It was a Solara. It's in 1927. Al LVR Solara. Here we go. LVR Solara in 1927. Pedro Ximéneza really nice one, but the reason why they say it's from 1927 is because they started it in 1927 and they keep topping it off, super, super tasty. If you get the chance to taste that particular wine would strongly recommend it, but it's a really interesting process that can produce some really nice complex flavors.

Evan 5:31

Pedro Ximénez is frequently a, the grape Houston, Sherry, I believe. But the Solera is very common in Spain. It's used in various things across the Mediterranean.

Alison 5:42

yeah. Another thing, like Evan mentioned before, if you're concerned, or if you're looking at the kashrut status, if you're vinegar or your wines, Sherry is another alcohol because it's, grape based is something that, Would receive a kosher certification. So your balsamics, which as I A lot of, kosher pallets become more refined and there's more and more, better quality kosher products out there. I've been seeing better and better kosher balsamic vinegars, which is really nice. You can now get your hands on that. I, have a really nice bottle of kosher Sherry that I keep around. Yeah, that's really,

Evan 6:24

I, I tend to prefer ports to Sherry, but I love both.

Alison 6:27

Oh, I don't, I don't like drinking it, but it's nice to add to things.

Evan 6:31

Yeah. Sherry is definitely, and Sherry vinegar is also a thing. But so part of balsamic vinegar is frequently considered kind of the gold standard of vinegar, nothing beats, a nice balsamic, a nice traditional balsamic. And that's because going through that cask system to be certified, a traditional balsamic, you have to take, you have to age it for a minimum of 12 years.

Alison 6:53

Which is a lot of time, a lot of effort to go into something that you're going to be losing a lot of it over the course of the process through

Evan 7:01

exactly. And part of the reason you have the full barrel set is to minimize evaporation by always minimizing the amount of excess air in each barrel.

Alison 7:10

So, if you're looking for that really good balsamic vinegar, don't be surprised if it's pretty pricey.

Evan 7:16

Yes.

Alison 7:16

you can go for the cheaper one, but if you really, if you want the good stuff, It's it

Evan 7:22

It's

Alison 7:23

cost a pretty penny.

Evan 7:24

I've sent Alison some photos from Zingerman's, which is in your mins mail order is a reputable source of, balsamic vinegar. But yeah, they sell, you can get like 30 mil bottles for 175 bucks and that's, I mean, it's expensive, but that's not an absurd price.

Alison 7:39

Yeah. it's just. If you have a product that takes a lot of time and effort, and it's really high quality, then you know, you see prices like that. And I mean, for me personally, so hope nobody gets mad about this. I can't stand the smell of balsamic vinegar on its own.

Evan 7:58

Interesting.

Alison 7:59

can't. It's gotta be diluted with something. I find the smell unpleasant, just on its own. If it's added to something and it's diluted a little bit, then I can. You know, tell the nice notes in it. but I personally don't go for the go for the nicer balsamics because I can't, I can't handle it. And, people have different tolerances for these things. Just like some people wouldn't want to deal with, hard liquor. You know, some people really can't stand it in the same way. Don't be surprised or, you know, It's not uncommon for people to have similar variations in tolerances for something with acidic acid, just like somebody might only like a half sour pickle. Again, this is all about personal tolerance for different strong chemicals. I suppose you could say in your food.

Evan 8:53

Absolutely. but there are also, I've seen at Zingerman's, aged similar style, apple cider vinegar, and that's something I would love to try on a smaller scale.

Alison 9:04

That would be super cool.

Evan 9:06

So doing something like my Belgian style cider, and then turning that into a vinegar. Age. And yet for years, I need to find someplace to store a barrel set for years. But,

Alison 9:16

get a unit at that point.

Evan 9:17

yeah, well, I've got some storage space here, but I need to know where I'm going to be a longer term.

Alison 9:23

Yeah.

Evan 9:24

But so one of the fun facts I'd learned about balsamic vinegar specifically, while researching for this episode is did you know the etymology of the.

Alison 9:34

I do not. I would guess something to do with Balsam.

Evan 9:38

Meaning

Alison 9:40

m is a type of word.

Evan 9:42

no. Well, so you're wrong. It is the type of balsa, the type of wood.

Alison 9:46

Oh, hang on balsa. I just looked it up. Balsam is the resonance exit date or SAP, which forms on different uncertain kinds of trees and shrubs.

Evan 9:58

Okay. But you're wrong. So balsamic comes from a. It comes into Latin from an ancient Greek word that I can't pronounce. That means a type of fragrant flower found in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term that I can't pronounce comes from the in turn from the ancient Hebrew Besam perfumed or spiced.

Alison 10:21

so it's like, when you say, havdala use the which are the spices.

Evan 10:27

exactly. The words are cognates to use a linguistic term. They come from the same route

Alison 10:32

That's a fun one.

Evan 10:34

that I did not know that was not expecting that as the secret Jewish history of balsamic vinegar

Alison 10:40

What is this? What's that what's that newspaper?

Evan 10:44

the onion.

Alison 10:46

No.

Evan 10:47

Uh, forward.

Alison 10:48

Yes. What is this off from the Jewish daily forward? An article from the Jewish daily forward, the secret Jewish history of balsamic vinegar,

Evan 11:00

must be.

Alison 11:02

they're always writing those. I mean, it's right up that alley.

Evan 11:06

They are, definitely always writing them. One of the other things I learned, especially in America, one of casks are almost always made out of Oak white American Oak. But for balsamic, you can use any wood in the cask and they can include even be a mixture of w

Alison 11:20

Don't make it out of balsa though.

Evan 11:21

You do not make it out of balsa your well, if you do, you will not have very much left.

Alison 11:27

Balsa is, a very weak porous wood

Evan 11:32

Yes, but so, this is

Alison 11:34

for ref for everybody who isn't.

Evan 11:36

So this is going to be a tangent. I'll probably keep in, in Portugal. A lot of the port casks are made out of. Which is actually a more porous wood, which means the port, even though they use larger barrels, which mean it should take longer to age ages relatively faster, but they still age it forever. So it tastes incredible.

Alison 11:56

Yeah, a good glass of port, man.

Evan 11:58

Yeah, I would love to do an episode at some point on the history of port. There's not to my knowledge, a ton of Jewish history about port itself, but to have a great history about Jews in Portugal, that we may cover someday.

Alison 12:10

We could just do an episode about a history of Portuguese Jews.

Evan 12:15

There's a lot of food there. So yes, we could. We very well may,

Alison 12:19

as you may, have figured it. We both like food.

Evan 12:22

Oh, no. This is a podcast about food, food and triaging fermentation. We hate food. We hate drinks. We hate everything.

Alison 12:30

Yes. is abstaining from all foods altogether.

Evan 12:35

Yes. You must just survive off the air.

Alison 12:37

Yes. You're attempting to have that evolve into higher beings that only consume air.

Evan 12:44

just pure matter beings, like several episodes of star Trek of involved.

Alison 12:49

Or, in Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Hulu, Hulu, I think it was a Hoover, Hulu,

Evan 12:55

think it was the Hulu

Alison 12:56

Being that is, a, super intelligent shade of the color blue.

Evan 13:03

that sounds about right. I need to reread Hitchhiker's guide because it is always

Alison 13:07

what a good series

Evan 13:08

yes.

Alison 13:09

What a good five and a half book trilogy

Evan 13:11

Five and a half book trilogy the right number of books for the trilogy.

Alison 13:15

precisely.

Evan 13:16

But so as we mentioned, you can make vinegar from basically any alcohol. One thing I learned though recently, so rice wine vinegar is very common in a lot of 13cooking especially Asian.

Alison 13:26

It's a nice one. If you like to cook and you just want to add a little splash of brightness to this and that, it's a relatively mild tasting vinegar.

Evan 13:36

Tends to be a lower percentage of acidic acid as well.

Alison 13:40

Yeah. And it also, it can have a lot of floral notes and also in. Apple cider vinegar or wine vinegar can often, overpower a lot of your flavors. Rice, wine vinegar tends to not so much, because again, it is a lower, acidic acid percentage,

Evan 13:58

So rice wine vinegar is actually relatively newer item, at least on any sort of scale. Of course everything

Alison 14:06

relatively newer item, or relatively newer Western item

Evan 14:10

Both it wasn't until the late Tokugawa period that which has been roughly American civil war era, roughly for context. What. When they figured out they could make vinegar from the Lees of Sake production. We just have rice satay, bean rice wine, or I would classify it as a beer, but it's rice wine. The leas are the leftover grain to be used to produce a strong V a much stronger vinegar than the sake would itself

Alison 14:37

that's pretty cool.

Evan 14:38

So sake has several hundred years of history, but rice wine vinegar is only about less than 300 years.

Alison 14:46

That's wild. I really would have expected it to be much older,

Evan 14:50

Precisely, especially just coming from that part of the world. You did a lot of things that are thousands of years old without a ton of change, or at least claim to be thousands of years old without a ton of change. Whereas, I mean, A lot of people will try and claim, oh, this area was greater than that in this time period or that no, it's part of, it's just the archeological record of what we've been able to find. And that things have changed more than other places for various cultural and economic and social reasons. The Romans were pretty what

Alison 15:19

food history is world history.

Evan 15:21

food histories, world history. And there are some things that we eat today that are very, like you should have found an auto Roman.

Alison 15:27

Yup.

Evan 15:28

Pompei is actually really cool. Another aside that I think is relevant, because it's similar to where balsamic has made, Pompei, there were basically roast and fried chicken stalls.

Alison 15:40

Just like a Disney, get your Turkey leg and Pompei, except they Didn't have turkeys. Get your chicken leg and pump

Evan 15:46

Get your chicken, chicken, or Guinea fowl.

Alison 15:50

Guinea fowl. Another thing that was very common for people to eat back then was, what we today call a pigeon. My, my inner birder needs to say, a rock dove. Other forms of dove would also have been common parts of the diet. Squam quail, all of those would have been common parts of the diet, but. Yeah. could have been a roast pitch

Evan 16:13

And so at these stalls, there were what appeared in Pompei. There were what appeared to be basically, dipping bowls. And so thanks to modern sort of thanks to modern chemistry. We've been able to analyze a lot of these and we've found what is, well, we need something we knew existed in Roman times that he's been at, or a type of vinegar, somewhat called Garam Not Garam Marsala, but Garam, which is honestly kind of disgusting. It's basically a rotted fish sauce. It is fish. It is very similar to what is in Southeast Asia fish sauce.

Alison 16:46

And They used to douse all of their food in it

Evan 16:49

they dust all of it and it had a lot of acidic acid in it. It had vinegar.

Alison 16:53

And there is always the question of when you see. Something like a vinegar based condiment. Are they doing it because they love the taste or did they love the taste because it helps overpower or help preserve other foods, that, you know, in a fairly hot area, they're all Mediterranean,

Evan 17:11

not exactly a cool area.

Alison 17:13

Oh, Nope. Smoking hot there. But given that they're on the, Mediterranean, You don't have AC you don't have refrigerators. You want something that's going to preserve your food, something that's, if not preserving your food, over-powering any flavors that, you know, have started popping up in your food. Cause it hasn't been refrigerated.

Evan 17:37

oh, absolutely. And the vinegar. So help disinfect any of those problems. But is a vinegar based sauce and derives itself effectively from garum and fish sauce. So kind of was the Mo the precursor to that.

Alison 17:53

Yeah,

Evan 17:53

Of course they didn't have tomato,

Alison 17:55

no tomato is for reference, a new world food. I believe it's a member of the night shade family.

Evan 18:01

tomatoes and potatoes are both new world foods and members of the nightshade family.

Alison 18:05

And Sr eggplants okra. And there's something else I'm forgetting there that usually goes on that list,

Evan 18:11

I don't recall off hand.

Alison 18:13

lots of foods, Corn

Evan 18:15

is also well towards non night chip. It's also new world food and Turkey, as we mentioned, they wouldn't have had, because it's a new world food.

Alison 18:21

Yeah. But I mean, It's basically ancient ketchup, you know,

Evan 18:27

it's a catcketchup, but so the one, there is actually another Jewish connection that is a little sadder, having to do with the destruction of Pompei. We'll do more into modern vinegar and food. So after the expulsion in 68, a lot of free Jews went to the largest, the two largest Jewish population cities in Italy, Rome, and P There's graffito being the singular of graffiti found in the ruins of Pompei in ancient Aramaic, which would have been the, the common language of Jews at the time that red Sodom and Gomorrah,

Alison 18:58

Oh,

Evan 19:00

which is to say they thought that they were experienced another act of God after having just lived through the destruction of the temple

Alison 19:07

Man.

Evan 19:08

Not as fun as all the food, but it's part of world history that people don't pay attention to. And Pompei had the largest population of jews in Italy at the time, free jews in italy at the time.

Alison 19:19

Wow. I had no idea about that.

Evan 19:21

Yeah. It's an archeological finding the size of the Jewish community has only been in the archeological record the last few years.

Alison 19:28

Oh, wow.

Evan 19:29

Yeah. So, no, another tone shift.

Alison 19:32

Yeah, what's talk about Jewish vinegar based foods.

Evan 19:36

I was talking about the foods we like now, because we've survived all of these atrocities somehow.

Alison 19:42

As, as they say, there are two ways of referring to most Jewish holidays, you know, there's one or two exceptions, but pretty much all of them can be defined in the same way. You've got, they tried to kill us. They killed a fair number of us. Let's fast and they tried to kill us. We won let's eat

Evan 20:02

That's true. No, there is a third type of Jewish holiday new year for something. And the more specific, the more interesting it

Alison 20:09

new year for something and associated with new year's. So what's the

Evan 20:14

Yes,

Alison 20:14

Yom Kippur kind of associated with those.

Evan 20:17

yes. But, I mean to reach fat. Tu'B'VAt

Alison 20:21

yes. We've got Arbor day. Yup.

Evan 20:27

But so there are a lot of foods with, with vinegar and Judaism because it's preservative. And especially if you were living in a shtetl, you needed to preserve your food as long as you could.

Alison 20:39

Yes. Everybody's had a pickle. No, not everybody likes a pickle, but they are a very traditional Jewish food and, you know, made out of vinegar, made with vinegar. They are brined in vinegar. That's a big one. There's also, if you've ever been to synagogue on a Shabbat morning and you go out to the kiddish, there will, without a doubt, be a bunch of usually older Jewish men crowded or the smelliest table in the room, and it will be covered. In a certain something called pickled herring, which I realize a lot of people like, but again, my tolerance for vinegar is not super high and I happen to think it's repulsive.

Evan 21:28

I do not mind pickled Hering. It is far from my favorite preparation of fish.

Alison 21:33

Yeah, Some people love it. I realize some people love it There are creamed versions. There are different types. Some people absolutely adore pickle hearing. You know what? Go ahead. Have a great time. I'm going to stand over by the cake.

Evan 21:49

Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, you may also find the schlivovitz at that table.

Alison 21:53

I will take a bottle of the schlivovitz and bring it to the cake table.

Evan 21:57

Makes sense.

Alison 21:58

No regrets.

Evan 21:59

another thing you might find similarly, that is, definitely also at the bagel shops is Whitefish.

Alison 22:04

Yup. Whitefish fish salad. Honestly, if you looked at it, you would not go through this as a fish, cause it's usually, kind of looks like a cream cheese. It's got stuff mashed in it. Is that like a good visual description?

Evan 22:17

that that is the description I would have said.

Alison 22:19

Yeah. if you want to try a really classic Jewish food, that's loaded with vinegar, Whitefish salad, would be a good place to start.

Evan 22:28

Yeah. I mean, some people think that some of the meats have villager in them. They don't, they are just salt.

Alison 22:35

Yeah. There's different types of pickling, some of which involve vinegar, some of which don't, corn beef happens to be one of the ones that doesn't involve vinegar. It just uses a salt. brine. similarly lox, isn't done with vinegar. It's done with also salt.

Evan 22:51

Yeah, we will probably do an episode on that because I love making and it's used to make lox.

Alison 22:56

I actually. It's been Mentioned before, but I'm mostly vegetarian. I haven't eaten fish in a very long time. I stopped eating it when I was seven. So it's always interesting to hear about these things with fish. But I mean, I really, I couldn't even tell you what fish tastes like at this point. Cause I really, I have no idea. I know what it smells like. I know how to cook it.

Evan 23:19

yeah. Well, the last time, the last time, I had lox was yesterday morning.

Alison 23:25

So I think you could describe the taste,

Evan 23:27

Yeah. It's very salt. Yeah. Yes. But there was no vinegar in that, unless you get some very interesting fermentation going on.

Alison 23:35

if somebody does do that, let us know how it goes. We're always interested in hearing about your experiments.

Evan 23:42

Exactly. But the other thing is, which is vinegar, of course, is a liquid. That means people are drinking it. And it's not just in your, not just in the people drinking their tablespoon of apple cider vinegar for health benefits, because they think they'll clear their skin. I have no idea, but there's a tradition of drinking it. You want to talk about that?

Alison 24:03

Yeah. So if you've ever heard somebody talk about a drink called a shrub, a shrub is a drinking vinegar. There's two different types. One of them is a fruit liquor, from the 17th century in Britain and that's made using rum or Brandy, and leo sacrum. So that's one day the other one is colonial era drink. And it's basically you produce a vinegar syrup, or spirit. It could be a spirit, it could be carbonated, whatever, but it's, it's loaded up with vinegar. Actually, if you want to see, a cute version that I saw recently, Eton Burnett who's. Young, Jewish, food influencer or content producers. He's on Tik TOK in YouTube and Instagram. But he recently posted a really cool one that I want to try. That was a Blackberry and herb shrub. And it's so easy. You don't need any special equipment. muddled up sugar and whole bunch of blackberries and added in white vinegar and balsamic vinegar, and a bunch of herbs. And just let it sit there for like 10 days. And then it produces the syrup that, he then added some celtzer water too, and made a really nice, refreshing beverage. So super easy to make. This is, Very much a colonial era drink, but also if you want to make something that doesn't contain alcohol, I know we talk a lot about alcohol on this podcast, but you know, a lot of people don't drink and that's fine. And a reminder that you should always be respectful of that you don't know If they just don't want to drink it. They have a reason that they don't drink. And frankly, it's none of your business,

Evan 25:49

Okay. If they choose to share it with you, that's fine, obviously, but if somebody is not drinking, it is their choice and always have other things available.

Alison 25:58

but if you want to make something fun, maybe somebody, maybe you're having people who's under who are under 21, or maybe you just want to have some non-alcoholic options, which is always a nice thing to do. You can make a shrub and then you still get the chance to show off your fermentation skills and also make something that's going to be accessible to everybody.

Evan 26:16

Absolutely. So even alcohol shrubs tend to be lower ABV. So they're frequently an aperitif, especially with the vinegar help open up the palette for more beverages or a meal. This did start as a colonial era drink, but they've really gotten popular in the last 10 years or so. Starting about the time when hipsterism was that. And shrubs, I frequently see when looking at, same advanced bartenders using them as mock tails. So cocktails with that alcohol or using the shrub, the vinegar sryup, which they're just referring to as the shrub itself, as an alternative to bitters in your cocktail.

Alison 26:53

Yeah, there's lots of fun things you can do with it. It's an unusual flavor profile that people may not have been familiar with. And it's always nice to just try out something new, know, that's what we do here.

Evan 27:04

Yeah, absolutely. It's also in general, a good alternative to soda. And vinegar drinks, not straight vinegar, but vinegar,mixed drinks also have a history in ancient Rome and ancient Persia, for various things, especially in heat where it's refreshing, in the middle of summer.

Alison 27:24

especially again, in the meditaranian climate. You don't have, AC you don't have ice cream. You're pretty much stuck with the heat and you do whatever you can to cool down. It's a great option. The ancient Romans had a drink called Paska made from vinegar, herbs in water. It was very much along these lines. I that it would be called a shrub.

Evan 27:49

Yeah. So, I mean, the only thing that's really missing from the short definition we gave earlier was sugar, but they would lack refined sugar and may have added honey.

Alison 27:59

Yeah, which also great for fermentation.

Evan 28:02

Yeah. I've not had a honey vinegar that I know of.

Alison 28:05

No, but well, I'm making, I want to try and make a vinegar with a mead sometime.

Evan 28:10

Yeah.

Alison 28:11

I have a batch brewing right now of Mead. That's a lemon and ginger, and I feel like that could make a really nice vinegar.

Evan 28:21

It could

Alison 28:22

Yes.

Evan 28:23

be very tasty.

Alison 28:24

Yup. It's a future experiment. There's lots of things on the list for future experiments.

Evan 28:29

we have more experiments than time or space to do them?

Alison 28:32

Yeah.

Evan 28:32

That's the current problem I need to. I haven't done a batch in a while. I need to make something interesting.

Alison 28:37

Yup. Next step after this, I'm gonna try and make something with blackberries and then we are on to Muscatine's and skip Bernanke's. Yes.

Evan 28:51

I've not found, any major local fruit production, but I need to look into that. Yes, I do. I also, where I would store my fermentation in this current unit, was too warm right now. So it's only just getting to a reasonable temperature down there. Just try and ferment.

Alison 29:09

Well, good luck. It goes, well,

Evan 29:11

Yeah. Which as well, I did not want to ferment at 105.

Alison 29:15

No, I have a feeling the yeast wouldn't want you to do that either.

Evan 29:19

No, but if it's survived to be very interesting.

Alison 29:21

Oh, yeah.

Evan 29:22

Probably rocket fuel, but it'd be interesting.

Alison 29:25

Oh Yeah. That'd be real cool.

Evan 29:26

Yeah. I'm trying to think if there's anything else to say on vendors or any other new fermentations you've got going.

Alison 29:33

No, that's the only one I've got now. I've got some milk waiting and ready for me to make some mozzarella with which I'm excited for.

Evan 29:42

Is it the ultra pasteurized now or

Alison 29:44

It is not ultra pasteurized. It

Evan 29:46

you get that? Today's Cosco run.

Alison 29:47

Yep.

Evan 29:48

Nice.

Alison 29:49

So ready to make a batch. My mom's going to try it for the very first time.

Evan 29:53

Ooh

Alison 29:54

And also like casually looking at the clock, it is 1156 and in four minutes I will be 27.

Evan 30:04

You'll be old like me.

Alison 30:06

Yup. In case you were wondering, I know. Well, yeah, you probably haven't seen a picture of me. unless you already know me, but I found it. Yeah. It's just my voice. I am old enough to drink. Thank you very much.

Evan 30:24

We, like following the rules.

Alison 30:26

Most of the time. And we will not say if we're not, because

Evan 30:30

We don't want to get in trouble.

Alison 30:32

thinking

Evan 30:33

No, it definitely. I made, I've made more yogurt recently.

Alison 30:37

nice.

Evan 30:38

It's delicious. I am hoping to make cheese. I've looking into trying to age cheese in the refrigerator.

Alison 30:45

Welcome to the world of dairy.

Evan 30:48

Yeah.

Alison 30:49

We have some real tasty fun.

Evan 30:51

Well, which is what I want to do is I'd like to do an aged Alpine cheese, given that I live at an elevation of 8,100 feet, so given that I live in such elevation, I feel like I should try and make an aged Alpine cheese. I do not have that much space in the refrigerator to store an aged Alpine cheese.

Alison 31:07

but still be fun.

Evan 31:08

So it'll be fun if I can do it.

Alison 31:10

You know what? It's an experiment that goes wrong. Oh, well,

Evan 31:14

Exactly. So it'll be interesting if he didn't convince my mother to let me store a large enough Tupperware to age cheese then.

Alison 31:20

Yeah. Got it. Burping vinegar here. Okay. Should we close out the recording?

Evan 31:26

I think we should, but I mean, even though it is, two minutes to ago on the podcast, that definitely let's say happy birthday now that our record is delayed long enough, thanks to technical difficulties.

Alison 31:37

Thank you.

Evan 31:39

we hope that everybody has, fun fermenting. And just to try some new things with vinegar.

Alison 31:44

Yes, Responsibly as always, but you know what? With vinegar based drinks. You're probably gonna have trouble drinking. You're probably gonna stop drinking it long before you have any problems.

Evan 31:58

that is true.

Alison 31:59

So enjoy responsibly and now as always Happy, fermenting.

Evan 32:04

Happy, fermenting.