Pumpkin Ale

Pumpkin Ale by Badger. Is it just me or is "real ale" getting crapper? This gimmicky "bitter" actually had very little bitterness and an overload of sweetness and fizziness. The flavour wasn't very complex or interesting. I could maybe detect a hint of pumpkin and clove flavours like it said on the label. But to be honest if it didn't have "pumpkin" printed on it, and a cute carved pumpkin on the cap, I don't think I would have said "ooh! tastes of pumpkin" just from drinking it.

If you like Hobgoblin by Wychwood you might like this. They're similarly sweet and fizzy. Actually Hobgoblin is rather better than this, the flavours are darker and more complex. Pumpkin Ale could be an interesting thing to serve at a Hallowe'en party where the company and the atmosphere are more important than the food and drink. I'm sure it would taste a lot better if you were wearing fancy dress and listening to "The Monster Mash". But I won't be buying it again after today.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Hedgerow Wine

Hedgerow wine, 2007 vintage. A ripe blackberry nose with overtones of elderberry and haws leaving a damson finish on the palate with just a hint of sloes. This isn't nonsense wine-journo-speak, it's because it is made from blackberries, elderberries, haws, damson and sloes. Quaffable, and outstanding in its price bracket of about 20p/bottle.

Wild Blackberry Leaf Tea

Spring is springing and new leaves are starting to grow on shrubs and trees. Some of them make tasty herbal tea, so I went out foraging with my 4-year-old niece Rebecca for wild blackberry leaves.

You don't want to accidentally pick the wrong thing, and leaves are a bit trickier to identify than berries, especially when they're young. So this is perhaps a project for experienced foragers. If you already have your favourite blackberrying spots and you are confident you can identify the correct plants then you'll be fine. But if you haven't foraged before, wait until the late summer or autumn and then go looking for blackberries. There's nothing in the UK that looks anything like a blackberry that might do you any harm, so it's a great first foraging project. Remember the locations of the plants. Have a good look at the leaves and the stems and become familiar with them. Then pick wild blackberry leaf tea next spring.

You want to pick the bunches of young leaves as they emerge. You don't need gloves - you're not going to mess around with the thorny stems. Just grasp the leaves and tug them off. Don't strip all the young leaves off a single stem. You don't want to kill the plant, although brambles (wild blackberry plants) are devilishly tough and could probably survive. But it's good foraging etiquette to just take a couple of bunches of leaves from each stem and then move along.

Rebecca and I picked maybe half-a-pint to a pint of bramble leaves before going home. Actually Rebecca only picked one leaf, then ran off and picked some daisies and dandelions for her mum, leaving me to do all the work. I didn't mind, really.

You make wild blackberry leaf tea almost the same way you make ordinary tea - pour boiling water over and steep. There are only two differences. The first difference is that you use more fresh leaves than you could fit in a tea bag. How much leaves for a cup? I'm afraid that's the same sort of question as how long is a piece of string? About yay much. If you use more it will be stronger. Less and it will be weaker. But at any rate, use a lot more than the teaspoon or so you would use of dried leaves. I usually about half fill my tea pot with leaves (not packed, just loosely dropped in) then top it up with boiling water. If you only want to make a single cup, half fill your tea cup with leaves and fill with water.

The second difference is that you steep for longer than you would steep normal tea. I'd steep blackberry leaf tea at least half an hour. I've also steeped it a lot longer than that - even a few hours. This time I steeped a jug full for about an hour or so, drank a cup, left the rest steeping overnight, then strained the cold tea into a smaller jug and put it in my fridge.

It's nice hot or cold. I like it better with honey than without. You wouldn't usually add milk, but hey, if you like it that way it's your cup of tea. If you can collect loads of leaves you can dry them and drink wild blackberry leaf tea all year long. After spring the leaves become darker and tougher and don't make such nice tea. But I enjoy it as a spring treat, a fresh taste of the first new greenness of the year.

Update: A reader has reported developing a rash after using this tea. I know that many commercially available herb teas contain blackberry leaves without bearing any warnings, and I can't find any warnings about allergic reactions to blackberry leaves on the internet or in the foraging books I have. I suppose it's possible to have a reaction to anything - I know someone who is allergic to apples but I don't post allergy warnings with apple recipes. If you've never tried blackberry tea before, don't overdo it the first time, and be on the lookout for allergic reactions. I should reemphasise that you must never eat anything you've foraged unless you are totally 100% positive you have identified it correctly.

Frugal Hot Chocolate

You know when you get to the bottom of a jar of chocolate spread, and there's not enough left for a sandwich? Don't you dread cleaning it out so you can put it in the recycling? Usually I fill the jar with hot soapy water, replace the lid and give it a good shake. But today I filled the jar with hot milk instead, gave it a really good shake, and poured the resulting hot chocolate into a cup for Sam who is off school today with a high temperature and a bad cough. Frugal hot chocolate and a pretty clean jar that just needs a quick rinse in the sink. Nice one.

2007 Retrospective

2007 was the year it rained. Non-stop. We had a lovely warm spring, but in May it began to rain and it didn't stop until August. This had a bad effect on our fruit and vegetable growing. Although some crops did well, others suffered either directly from the wet, or indirectly from the slugs and snails and our failure to go to the allotment as often as we should.

We got two colonies of bees from Ally of Ducking for Apples, but they went berserk and attacked all my neighbours, so I had to move them to an apiary a few miles away. We haven't taken any honey from them this year. Due to the weather the bees weren't able to forage as much nectar so their honey stores by the end of the season were low. But our own foraging efforts were pretty good as the weather dried up somewhat in the autumn. We made beer, which exploded, several batches of wine which aren't ready yet, and lots of different types of liqueur.

I became interested in ginger beer, and made a yeast-culture ginger beer plant from scratch. I later learned that real ginger beer is made using an authentic symbiotic culture called ginger beer plant. So I got one of those and now have my own continuous ginger beer production line. I picked wild mushrooms for the first time in my life. I cooked and ate them and didn't die. Which was nice. I haven't had any success identifying other types of mushrooms in my area, though, so I've left them alone. The ginger beer got me interested in other useful microbial cultures, and so I started making sourdough bread using wild yeast rather than packets of dried yeast from the shop. There are other types of useful culture, such as kefir and tibicos, and I'd like to try those in future.

I'll be glad when 2007 is over, just because of the ghastly weather we've had all year. The rain has been heavy again in November and December, and often when I've been out driving I've had to slow right down to go around puddles that cross both lanes of a dual carriageway. There are what look like ponds in the middle of many fields which should be dry, but they have had a standing puddle so long the grass underneath must be dead by now. I know there's no logical reason to imagine that on 1st January 2008, the sun will come out and everything will be different. But psychologically it feels like it might.

Weed of the Week - Brambles

Brambles, or wild blackberries, are obviously a very useful plant. I used to say I'd never grow cultivated blackberries, as there are plenty of wild ones to be gathered for free, and they're invasive so they can be a bother in the garden. However they're a perfect candidate for my edible vandal-proof hedge, and they were given to me free, so the one in the photo is a cultivated variety.

I don't need to list the uses of blackberry fruit do I? In the last few weeks I have used them to make jam, wine, pies and liqueur. You can make a cordial from it, you can eat them fresh with cream, make ice cream, add them to yogurt. They're a wonderfully versatile berry.

The leaves are also useful. Gather them when they're young, dry them for a week then crumble them and use exactly as tea leaves. Bramble leaf tea tastes good (you'll find it in the ingredients list of most fruit-flavoured herb teas) and is reputedly good for diarrhoea and a long list of other ailments. But I prefer to mash the berries, pour boiling water over them, steep for a few minutes, then strain and serve with a spoonful of honey for a sweet fruity drink full of vitamin C.

Brambles are also very important for wildlife. Apparently they form an important part of the diet of deer. They grow into thickets which provide protection for small animals, as Uncle Remus, traditional author of the Brer Rabbit stories, well knew. Birds eat the berries in autumn, when worms and insects are becoming scarce (then perch in the tree in my drive and crap purple all over my car, damn them). And insects such as honeybees consume the nectar from the flowers in spring, pollinating the plants in return.

They spread by seeds, but if you spot a bramble seedling early enough it's no bother to get it out. The trouble comes from the runners. Brambles put out long straight branches which grow along the ground with amazing rapidity. Where the tip touches the ground, the plant puts out roots and forms a new plant which can survive even if the runner is severed. Cutting the plants off at ground level only encourages more suckers. If you have a large area infested with a bramble thicket, as dad has in Ireland, or as Welsh Girl had when she first took over her allotment, you have a major task on your hands to clear the ground. Do wear protective clothing as the prickles are vicious and the tough stems form natural tripwires that lacerate your ankle as they knock you face-first to the ground.

Like nettles, they're such a useful plant that I'm very glad to see them growing wild where I can easily gather them. But like nettles, I don't tolerate wild ones in my allotment or garden, and I keep the cultivated ones in check.

Fred and Ginger

I've still got a little Ginger beer left (from my yeast culture), although we are moving over to Fred beer production (made with the authentic ginger beer plant). I thought I'd show you this picture of the final brews side by side. the Fred beer is on the right. You can see it has a much redder colour. Ginger on the left is very pale in comparison.

There are other differences besides the culture. Fred is fed on brown sugar whilst Ginger has white sugar. That's 8 teaspoons over a week and presumably contributes to Fred's reddish colour. In both cases the final brew is sweetened with white sugar. Ginger has the juice of a lemon in the final brew, which might bleach out a little of her natural colour.

As well as a richer colour, Fred has the better taste, too, which is why we've killed off Ginger. The latest batch of Fred beer is extremely peppery, but the kids still drink it, although Sam has taken to getting a glass of water and a glass of Fred beer. He has a drink of Fred and then takes a sip of water to cool it down a bit.

Culture Roundup

I've been making ginger beer once a week and dividing my culture each time. Today I weighed how much culture I have and it is less than 100g. I've been advised to try to maintain it at about 150g. So I haven't divided it this week, but I'll try to build it up.

It's a bit like having a pet. You can't neglect it, you have to be faithful in feeding it, and making sure it is at a reasonable temperature, and keep an eye out for its welfare.

I have three cultures at the moment that I'm maintaining - Fred, the ginger beer plant (pictured), Fizz the sourdough bread starter, and my yogurt culture who doesn't have a name.

The Pepsi Challenge

My authentic ginger beer (Fred) is ready to drink today, so I did my own version of the Pepsi challenge and poured out a glass of Fred beer and a glass of Ginger beer (the yeast-culture version) and got all the family to taste them and say which they liked best.

They didn't know which was which, but they unanimously chose the authentic Fred beer. It's hard to describe flavours in words, and I'm no Oz Clarke, but it has a fuller, more complex taste. It's certainly peppery with the ginger, but it's also fruity and tangy. The yeast culture ginger beer is peppery and sharp. It's refreshing and tasty, and the kids have been drinking it faster than I can make it. But the new one is even better.

So poor old Ginger, the yeast culture ginger beer plant, has to go. I have a batch ready to be made into beer today, but I won't keep the culture going after that. I'll use it to leaven a loaf of ginger bread or something - after all it's yeasty and gingery. But I'll certainly keep Fred going, and I'll try to build him up to make bigger batches for us.

Fred Beer

I made up the ginger beer from the authentic ginger-beer-plant culture I named "Fred". So now I have a 2 litre bottle of "Fred beer" on the kitchen windowsill, slowly carbonating. We'll be able to drink it in about a week, and compare it with the ginger beer from the home-made yeast culture we named "Ginger".

I gave "son of Fred" to my sister, Steph, who returned from Vienna last night with presents of Austrian chocolates and Himbeerlikör (raspberry liqueur). So now she has her own authentic ginger beer plant culture to make home-made ginger beer, and share the culture with her friends in Sunderland.

The original Fred has been made up again into another brew. I'll feed him a spoonful of ginger and a spoonful of sugar every day for a week, and then we'll make some more ginger beer. I was never a fizzy drink fan, but it's a thrill having home-made soft drinks on tap.

What's Sprouting?

My sister, Steph, dropped off her two kids, TJ and Rebecca, here yesterday and then swanned off to Vienna with her husband for a long weekend. It's not too bad today because my three kids are still at school, but it's going to be crazy on Monday and Tuesday with five kids in the house between ages three and nine.

Ed took our lot to school, and I cleared up the prodigious mess five children had made between getting up and leaving the house at 8:20 whilst TJ and Becca watched a Bagpuss DVD. Then the kids helped me feed Ginger and Fred ("OK Becca, you put the sugar in and then give Fred a stir", made me laugh. If you don't get it, try saying it out loud. And remember I have a slight Liverpool accent).

Then they sowed some cress seeds on kitchen paper, and made some bean sprouts. Becca chose a combination of fenugreek, black eyed peas and mung beans. TJ chose alfalfa, soya beans and green lentils. They spooned their beans into a glass and poured water over them. Then we put them on the windowsill to soak. Tomorrow we'll strain off the water and put them in the sprouter, and by the time their mummy and daddy return they should have a crop of bean sprouts.

Now they're eating yogurt for a mid-morning snack and I'm drinking reheated coffee I didn't have time to finish at breakfast and updating my blog. Expect my posting frequency to go down a little for the next few days. I've got my hands rather full.

I've Got A Real Ginger Beer Plant

I think I mentioned that the ginger beer plant I made wasn't a real ginger beer plant after all. The real deal is a complex symbiotic organism made up of a yeast and a bacillus (and a bunch of other microorganisms) all living together in a culture. You can't make one, any more than you can make a radish from scratch. You have to get a radish seed from someone who grew radishes themselves. And you have to get a ginger beer plant from someone who already has one.

Well mine arrived in the post this morning, sent by a lovely man in Ulster who I contacted via the internet. When it arrived in a ziploc bag inside a jiffy bag, it looked like pale yellow beads of jelly. It smelled fresh and slightly gingery. I made it up according to his instructions, by mixing it with water, sugar and ginger in a loosely-capped coffee jar. Since my yeast culture ginger beer plant is called Ginger, I have named this one Fred.

I will let you know how Fred progresses. I can't wait to make him into ginger beer, and I'm keen to compare ginger beer made this way, with the yeast culture I already have.

Real Ginger Beer Plant

I've lost the cable that connects the camera to the computer again, so I can't show you the cute pictures of the kids drinking ginger beer. They loved it, and I had to ration them or they would have drunk the whole lot at once.

Whilst surfing the web looking for ginger beer links, I found something very surprising. Apparently I haven't made a ginger beer plant at all. What I've made is a ginger beer yeast culture. It's very nice, but it's not the real deal.

The authentic traditional ginger beer plant (pictured) is a gelatinous symbiotic organism consisting of a yeast and a bacillus. You can't just make one, you have to get it from someone who already has one. Where did the first one come from? And who figured out that you could use it to make ginger beer?

I find myself fascinated by this weird compound organism that can make delicious spicy drinks. It's like the bit in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy where someone says that the babel fish (which can translate any language if you drop it in your ear) is proof of God, because how could anything so fantastically useful have evolved by accident? Or the Eddie Izzard sketch where he expresses amazement that bees make honey. He says "Do earwigs make chutney? Do spiders make gravy?".

I'm trying to get my hands on an authentic ginger beer plant, so I can compare the ginger beer made that way with the yeast culture method.

First Taste of Ginger Beer

I cracked open the first bottle of my home-made ginger beer. It's delicious. It's very fizzy and I had to open the bottle slowly to stop it frothing everywhere. It doesn't taste alcoholic at at all (it is very slightly alcoholic because it is fermented but the alcohol content is so low it is suitable for children). It doesn't taste too "hot". I don't like really spicy ginger beers like Fentiman's, it's too hot for me and I can't finish a whole bottle. In fact, my brew could do with being a bit spicier but I'm sure that's easy enough to fix by just adding more powdered ginger to the recipe.

I'm going to wait until the kids get home and see if they like it. They've been keen to try it whilst it's been brewing.

Meanwhile, the ginger beer plant is still going and I'll be able to make my next batch tomorrow.

Weed of the Week - Nettle

Does anyone really need a photo or a description to help them identify stinging nettles? I tell you what; if you're unsure whether a plant is a stinging nettle or not, brush up against it. If it hurts, it is one. Stop whimpering. Find yourself a dock leaf and crush the juice into the sting, it'll soon relieve the pain.

Nettles don't form such deep root systems as docks and so are easier to remove in that sense. However you have to wear gloves and a long-sleeved shirt made of fairly thick material, otherwise you'll end up with very sore hands and arms. But once you've pulled them up, you can throw them on the compost heap, make weed tea, or put them to many other uses.

I love to make them into delicious soup. I've also made them into soap. The least application of heat and their stings are totally disarmed - I saw Ray Mears on TV wilt them by holding them directly over a fire, and then he ate them. They're best in the spring; once summer gets well advanced they seem to become gritty, however well you wash them.

You can also make nettle beer, apparently, by boiling 2lb of nettles with the rind of 2 lemons and 1 gallon of water for 15 minutes. Strain into a container and add the juice of the 2 lemons, 1lb of sugar and 1oz cream of tartar. When cool, add 1oz yeast and leave in a covered container in a warm place for 3 days. Then strain into bottles, cork down and wire, and leave for 1 week before drinking. I've never tried this recipe, which comes from Marguerite Patten's out-of-print book 500 recipes for Home-Made Wines and Drinks, but next spring I'll give it a go.

There's even a website dedicated to nettle appreciation, where you can read about the importance of nettles to native British wildlife, and the uses of nettles as food, medicine, clothing (eep!) and in the garden. I wouldn't go that far, but I feel more kindly towards nettles than I do towards docks, for example. Not so kindly that I won't rip them out of my allotment when I find them. But kindly enough to appreciate the patch in the farmer's field behind our house. They're a useful resource, as long as they're growing on somebody else's land, not mine.

Ginger Beer

I'm trying to get my head round this whole ginger beer process. In the first stage you mix water, yeast, ginger and sugar to make a sort of ginger beer plant, then you feed it more sugar and ginger every day for a week.

So during that stage I guess the yeast multiplies and turns the sugar into a weak alcohol solution, and the whole liquid takes on the flavour of the ginger.

After a week you strain the solids off the liquid, then dilute the liquid with 7 pints of water, 1 1/2 lbs of sugar and the juice of 2 lemons. Then you bottle it and keep it in a warm place for another seven days.

During this stage the yeast will continue to turn some of the sugar to alcohol and liberate carbon dioxide gas. The gas can't escape because it is in sealed bottles, so will dissolve in the drink and make it fizzy. That's why I chose plastic fizzy drinks bottles to store it in (more of the glass beer bottles in the shed have exploded, by the way).

I kept the solid part after I strained the ginger beer plant, and mixed it with more water and sugar to make the next batch. It has revived very well and gets frothy when I mix it with more sugar every day. I wonder how much ginger was still present in it. Maybe the next batch will be more fiery than the first batch.

We can drink it in a week. I can't wait.

This week's cartoon is from Climate Cartoons. Click on the panel to enlarge it.

Ginger - Update

I've been feeding Ginger every day with a teaspoonful of ground ginger and a teaspoonful of white sugar. When I remove her teatowel she looks like a puddle of clear liquid, with some pale brown sediment on the bottom and a few brownish bubbles on top. After I've fed her and given her a stir, she looks more evenly golden-brown. Then half an hour or so later, she is a lively mass of froth and bubbles. You can see by the tide-mark on the side of her bowl how big she grows at her largest. Then she settles back down to quiescence again.

I'm very fond of her and I'm looking forward to turning her into ginger beer at the weekend. Meanwhile my researches into ginger beer plants have turned up some very surprising and exciting findings. More on that later.

Ginger Beer Plant

Meet Ginger, the ginger beer plant.

We made her by adding half an ounce of baking yeast to 3/4 pint of warm water, 2 tsps sugar and 2 tsps ground ginger in a roomy bowl. Then we covered her with a clean cloth. See how much she had grown half an hour later.

We'll feed her every day for a week with a teaspoonful of sugar and a teaspoonful of ground ginger, and keep her warm and covered.

After a week, we'll strain her and add the liquid to 24oz of sugar, 2 pints of water and the juice of 2 lemons. Then we'll add 5 more pints of water and mix well. Then we'll bottle her in clean screw top bottles and store her in a cool place.

I'm pretty sure this was mum's ginger beer technique. I got it from Marguerite Patten's book 500 Recipes for Home-Made Wines and Drinks, which mum had. And I remember helping mum make and feed her ginger beer plants. The "beer" is only weakly alcoholic - the main point of the yeast is to make it fizzy and extract the flavour, not to make alcohol - so this drink is perfectly suitable for children. I think there's a way of dividing the plant at the end so you make a batch of ginger beer and keep the plant going for the next batch. I need to do a bit of research and find out how to do that, because it isn't mentioned in the book.

I'll keep you posted about Ginger's progress. Watch this space.

Rhubarb Wine

The rhubarb plants on the allotment grow across the path, so when we visit we pull any stalks that are obstructing the way. Last time I went I pulled 15lb of rhubarb (about 7kg. I know - it sounds like a lot to me, too), which is enough to make 5 gallons of rhubarb wine.

The first stage of making any wine is to extract the flavour from the main ingredient. You can squeeze the juice directly from grapes, oranges etc. But some other ingredients need different treatment, often by boiling in water then straining. Rhubarb is a bit unusual - you chop it up then cover with sugar. The sugar sucks the juice out of the rhubarb and dissolves, then you strain off the syrup, dilute it with water and ferment that. I didn't believe it either, but I had a go, and it worked just as it said in the book.

New Books

I got two books through the post yesterday. One was Richard Mabey's "Food For Free" which lots of people have been telling me I must get. Thanks to my sister, Steph, for sending me that one.

The other was a copy of the now out-of-print Marguerite Patten book "500 Recipes Home-Made Wines and Drinks". I remember mum had this, and I suspect it is the source of her ginger beer recipe, so I'm going to give it a try.

The book is delightfully 1970s, with tips on throwing the perfect cocktail party (apparently Campari is becoming increasingly popular), and suggestions for dinner parties (she recomends serving creme de menthe, Drambuie or cherry brandy with after-dinner coffee). But it also has recipes for home-made wines, cider, perry, beer and mead. It also has instructions for a variety of liqueurs (like sloe gin), cordials and fruit syrups, and mulled drinks. I don't really need the cocktail recipes - I have survived this long without being able to mix the perfect Singapore sling - but there is plenty more in here I'd like to try.