Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Imy, Now the fun starts

We made our first kabana yesterday! Well, we stuffed the sausages... smoking today.

It was heaps of fun. They are sitting in the fridge drying out.

The butcher we bought the meat from had sold his smoker not long ago (food laws got him. every batch has to have a sample sent to Melb for testing) anyway, when we got to talking, he wandered out back and gave me 1/2 a bag of chips he had left over from his smoking days. I owe him some kabana if it doesn't kill anyone here (human testing is far better than sending it to Melb )

It was easy to do up the mix, I'd recommend it to anyone to have a go. Just chunk up and weigh the portions of meat. Mince it. Add seasoning and cure. Mix by hand. Soak hog skins. Fill 'em. Dry them in the fridge overnight. Smoke.

So it cost me around $48 for the meat and I now have over 2kg of kabana, 1.5kg of home made bacon, a small pork roast (leftover, didn't need all the pork in the kabana) and extra crackling from the other bit of meat AND dog scraps. Not too shabby.

We are cutting up a full blood wagyu steer today which was given to us (too old for the feed lot to Japan) so that will be super special meat for the next kabana (and even less $$$)

Did you bottle your brew?

I guess not yet, pork flavour beer

Yep. But I got an 'old favourite' recipe from friends. I won't be messing with millions of ingredients etc from here on in!

I just use the tins

Another tip is to put some of the sanatiser solution into the airlock, if by some chance you get air going back in it has to pass through the sanitiser solution.. Only really necessary if you don't bottle straight away and get some atmospheric activity.

As for leaving beer in the fermenter, I wouldn't go past four weeks in warm weather. Never had a beer that had that vegemite taste, but you can never be too carefull.

I recently had a larger (Bohemian Pilsner) that was left in the fermenter for a good three months, this was one that had been racked to a secondary fermenter and allowed to finish the ferment then the temperture in the brew fridge was dropped to 1°C and allowed to sit until I was ready to bottle. The other way to do this is to allow the brew to ferment out then rack to a cube and store in fridge until ready to bottle. This is my preffered method for largers.

I'm really not very fussy when it comes to ales as they are a little more forgiving, specially the dark ales.

I design my own recipes and brew from scratch (full mash brewing), the kits are good and a great time saver, but don't give me the control I want.

H.

You seem to be quite an expert brewer himzol!
I go to the same length with wine........must try some of your homebrew one day......you can taste some of my wine

heka

I'm no expert, just an enthusiastic amature... happy for people to try my beers any time, also be good to try some of your wine.

H.

Just thought I would chime in, I just got done bottling my first ever batch of hard cider. I had a ton of fun making it, myself and two other friends did the whole process of picking the apples off my parents farm, hand grinding and pressing them into the cider and then brewing it.

Just had the first bottle last night and man, its just not the same as what you get in the store, I see much more of this in my future! (I have 7 more gallons of good unpasteurized cider in the freezer waiting to be done).

Cool

We do it ALL here in SW Florida! But Jim is really the expert on smoker...Usually smokes 3-5 pork butts at once! They use hickory and some mesquite;Dad was a farmer (old, old school!)so they do it all! And I eat it! We haven't tried homebrewing yet...waiting for the Tiki to be built first! lol Probably try beer first, since it pairs so nicely with BBQ!!

You'll have fun. We did 6 kg of kransky, german and ital sausage on the weekend. Gave most of it away but the big bacon smoke off is tomorrow and I've ordered enough kabana seasoning and skins to do 14kg! LOL

Will be bottling my next attempt at home brew soon too.

We had lambs fry and bacon for dinner last night... in the morning they were sheep running about... by dinner time they were different. Kinda gross but interesting to see the whole process. Its actually a bit of a shame that people don't know how it all happens (most of the time) because it demands a whole new level of respect for the food you eat. We have a beast hanging in a coolroom at a friend's house as I type. Thats a butchering job for the weekend... of course we all have to help or we don't get to eat. Oh well... I bet I get the sausage job again (tedious).

I just read this thread and thought I'd give it a bump.

Some stuff I've discovered includes this on homebrew beer...

You can bottle beer in 2L PET (softdrink) bottles. They take a little longer before they are ready to open as compared to a stubbie, but I think the beer is better.

Perhaps it's only better because you are forced to wait. If you open one before a month it will be flat, but any time after that it's great.

The big advantage is how little bottling there is to do. When I brew beer I make some 750ml glass bottles, and some 2L bottles to take to a BBQ or share at home. All my brewing and largering has been done in an old fridge. The 30L brewing container stays in the fridge section, and the top section is for largering the bottles.

The temperature in a fridge or freezer is roughly the average temperature of the time of year and remains very stable. In winter I put a glass tube aquarium heater in a 2Litre soft drink bottle in the fridge and that keeps the fridge at around 25c as long as the beer brew goes into the fridge at 25c. ie it can maintain it but not heat it from cold.


And this on smoking...

I made a tin can smoker to put into my lidded BBQ and it worked amazingly well.

Just a milo tin with some holes in the side, half an inch up from the bottom.

You put 2 heat beads in, get it alight with some fire starter or kindling, and add hickory chips. Then put the lid on with some holes in it, or in my case leave it off. You need the lid if your hickory catches fire. If it goes out and stops smoking, put more holes in the can and the lid.

I'v only used it once, but it worked realy, really well.

As I understand it, I should have brined the chicken first, but I know nothing of brining (actually after reading this thread I now know a bit)



As always, thanks people

Hey Bullwinkle, you should know the rules by now where's the photographic evidence huh?