Three weeks after we first opened the beer kit, and the first brew is ready! We invited my parents and Brig and Dale around for a Beer and Pizza evening last night and had great fun testing out the brew (and bottling the next one). Not being a big beer drinker myself, I was surprised to find that the Lager was remarkably nice and smooth. And the beer connoisseurs were most impressed. All in all a resounding success!
Wow – this beer is actually delicious! Why do they look so surprised?
Our main problem at the moment is finding enough bottles to store the Pilsener in. We collected a large number of glass beer bottles and quarts and bought a new capping machine (which is great fun) only to find that you can’t put caps on screw-cap beer bottles! And of course 90% of the bottles we had collected were screw-cap. So, while the first brew (Lager) was neatly bottled in the brown plastic bottles that came with the kit, the Pilsner (second brew) is in a motley collection of beer bottles, wine bottles, glass orange juice containers, some cider bottles and even, I think, a jam jar! Oh well – it’s all part of the fun!
Bottling the Pilsener brew. Note the assortment of wine bottles etc that the beer is being bottled into.
Thirsty (and hungry) work, this beer-making.
In a remarkable allocation of gender roles, while the boys were busy bottling (and frequently testing) the beer, us girls were rolling and making homemade pizzas from dough I had mixed up earlier that day.
Rolling pizza dough with mom and Brig
My mom eats a very low-fat diet, so this is a delicious recipe for a vitrually-no-fat pizza which I invented a little while ago which is delicious!
Vitrually-no-fat pizza recipe
– Slice some marrow vegetables very thinly (zucchini are best, in long strips, but patty pans and brinjal work quite well too)
– Place sliced vegetables in an airtight container with a generous squirt of lemon juice, one drop of olive oil and some salt pepper. Add whatever fresh herbs you can find. Rosemary is good. So is oreganum. And you can never go wrong with basil.
– Leave to “marinade” for about 30 mins.
– Roll out the pizza dough and scatter the vegetables on the pizza. Cook at 180 degrees for about 25 minutes. If you want, you can add a few shavings of Pecorino or some other hard cheese.
I suppose it’s more like an interesting Foccacia bread than a pizza, but it’s still delicious!
Virtually fat free pizza
Ginger and Cocoa 