A cherry update - bread beer
No, I haven't forgotten that I wrote about my cherry harvest earlier (Morello cherries, the sour cherries) and what I made out of it in addition to the fact that we ate cherry for days. I'm surprised that 'cherry connoisseurs' write on the internet that sour cherries are so inedible. I can guarantee you that it is, and we easily eat 300 grams per person per day. That being said my children do too.
Cherries are healthy and the sour cherry is certainly not inferior to the sweet one. Sour cherries are mainly used to fill pies, make syrup, marmalade and much more. Personally, I feel that sour cherries are not very susceptible to diseases and the tree does not make many demands on the soil, plus it can withstand the cold. My sweet cherry is struggling. It had cherries earlier and although they were still not ripe, they disappeared overnight. There were only stems left. So the birds have stolen them. A setback, but unfortunately it is no different.
In the meantime, I have made some pots of pickled cherries.
The easiest way is to fill the jars with cherries and boiled water over this and then close the jar. I have done this a couple of times and plan to use these cherries later or use them in something.
I have made a few jars with cherry custard filling. I am going to use this for the cake that is made in the south of our country. In contrast to a French cherry pie, the pips have been removed from these cherries. In the French recipe, this is not done because the cherry pits give the cake an almond-like flavour. Whether or not this is healthy is something I will not go into (and I am not just referring to the possibility of chipping a tooth or choking on a stone while enjoying a piece of pie).
Apart from potted cherries, and pie filling (a kind of compote), I also made syrup and cherry liqueur. That liqueur is a test and will only be ready in a few months' time, so it will be ready at the end of the festive season. By then, I'm sure I'll have a few bottles to store it in. Like syrup, the cherry liqueur is not difficult. It's really nothing more than cherries with sugar and water (fermentation is automatic if it's in the right place) or you add vodka instead of water. I have a couple of jars where I did vodka and two with water. With water, it goes just as fast, so it's a waste of vodka to waste it on this.
In two jars with vodka, I also added some cinnamon (I forgot about cloves but I can probably do that in two months' time).
What I also wanted to try is to make the old-fashioned, or should I say the very first, bread beer.
No, I did not have any rye bread (German rye bread) and used plain old bread for this. That old, dry bread that I buy at the pet shop. It is intended as animal feed but you can also make excellent breadcrumbs from it.
After watching Emmy's video, I read some other information about 'old bread' and beer brewing. On a forum of do-it-yourself brewers, I read that the experience is that crumbled bread dissolves in the beer. This is interesting because it means that you don't have to put the bread in big chunks and remove them later.
The bread beer I made is a cross between Kvass and ... well, let's say my own improvisation of the cherry beer (Belgian Kriek Lambik. For those who are not familiar with this: this is a type of beer to which sour cherries are added and the Flemish name for sour cherry is: kriek).
I boiled a pan of water and let the bread soak in it for two days.
The water looked very mushy because of the disintegrated bread. Sifting did not make it much better so I put it through a cloth (and went on to do something else because you can't wait for that) and then the liquid was a bit clearer. Not great because there was still bread in it, of course. Not nice but as I saw this as a test project I put it in a clean jar. I added sugar (white), some fresh yeast and some cherries I had left over from the pickling. Then I put the lid on the jar. Slowly, the cherries started to float, the yeast was active and the breadcrumbs sank to the bottom. The liquid looked pink. A few days later, I added some more syrup (also left over from the pickling process).
In the following days, I took the lid off the jar once every day. I don't know if this is really necessary as the jar is not full to the brim, but it is a small effort and I also find it interesting to watch the cherries ferment.
Yesterday, I tasted some of the homemade beer.
My first reaction was: it tastes like water. Now Heineken does that as well, so it's not special, but I expected a slightly fuller, more pronounced flavour. In any case, it does contain alcohol, although I cannot tell you how high the percentage is.
I have decided to leave the Kvass for a few more days and add some extra flavour. How? I put a piece of cinnamon stick in the jar and a few spoons of dark sugar. With dark sugar (syrup or caramel) you also get a darker beer. Now beer drinkers know that there are the strangest beers and brewers also come up with strange, seasonal or temporary flavours. One is tasty and the other not worth your hard-earned money, so why not try some yourself? It is certainly not difficult. If you have water and old bread, you can make a simple bread beer yourself. By the way, I added fresh yeast but that is not necessary at all.
In many recipes, you read about dried rye bread.
Some dry it in the oven, others have a toaster and toast it on the highest setting. Personally, I am not in favour of black toasted bread just to give a colour to Kvass. Black toast is unhealthy and putting it in your drink will not change that. I now have a piece of rye bread and I just let it air dry. Bread hardens by itself, so you don't need to put an oven on for an hour or toast it.
Beer, and in this case also Kvass, is brewed from wheat, barley, rye, corn or whatever else you put in it. The fermentation of grains and also any fruits, and the use of spices (cinnamon, ginger) gives the water its own specific taste.
On average, bread beer takes a week to mature. The process can be speeded up a little, but I do not see the point in that. I read that in every area, the Kvass is different as well as in every country and with every housewife. Indeed this is a drink that the average housewife can make and there are those who still make it.
Bread beer will be different from the beer you may be used to, but it is certainly worth the effort.
The alcohol percentage is generally low, so even children can safely drink this bubbly water. Keep in mind that the longer it stands, the more alcohol it contains.
When you think the beer is good, you can strain it and put it in bottles. I am going to use a plastic bottle that has carbonated water in it and then I am going to try something new with the rye bread just because it is fun to make your own simple beer without all the expensive aids that are sold in shops. Just like with cooking and baking, I try to make what I make as easy as possible. Bread beer has been made for centuries and it would be a shame if this art were to be lost because we think that only what comes from a factory is safe to eat and drink.
Use what you have, don't waste anything and remember that whoever came up with bread beer was just doing something.
