Blueberry Bliss

If you're new to this blog, or even returning, Thanks and welcome! Normally I only get an opportunity to voice my opinions to close friends and anyone else who might have the misfortune to be stuck in the room with me when my mouth shifts into gear. I do love the sound of my own voice...so much that my wife refers to me as Mister Knowitall.

I don't want folks to get the wrong idea about me, I'm not just some braying jackass. My expositions aren't always abstract philosophical tirades: I read constantly. I love the process of learning anything with a practical purpose. The world is an amazing place, full of neat stuff to do. That said, I do not know nearly as much as I would like to learn.

What I hope to share with you is the lessons that I have learned from a life of considered frugality...or as my wife calls it "being a cheap bastard". I also hope to get some feedback from anyone who may have a little better idea on how to make a better biscuit (figuratively, though I do love biscuits).

A little bit about my background. I took up home brewing about 15 years ago, just because I had a couple of friends who did it and it sounded fun. It has become a defining characteristic of my personality. I have taught friends how to do it, gone shopping for supplies with them, and supplied them with sudsy inspiration. When my wife and I bought our house four years ago (bad timing, I know), we quickly learned that we lived right in the middle of a blueberry field. Not one to let an opportunity go to waste, or being "a cheap bastard", I scammed a blueberry wine recipe off my buddy, Walt, and made it my own. I have altered it some over the successive trials, improving my technique, and learning some hard lessons along the way. The latest incarnation of the blueberry hootch is smooth, fruity, and costs me about $15 to make a 5 gallon batch. The best part is I haven't had a single bottle explode in over two years. Yup, not a typo, explode. Near as I can tell, I didn't quite kill off all the yeast before I bottled. Late one night I responded to the sounds of, what I thought was an intruder trashing my kitchen. I found broken glass and a big maroon puddle across my kitchen floor. My white linoleum kitchen floor. Luckily, I learn quick (hence, Mister Knowitall). Adding finings produced a nice polish to the wine and kept my wife from burying my remains in a shallow grave in the back yard.

If you make your own wine already, and are familiar with the process, Here's my recipe:

3-one gallon Ziploc baggies of blueberries, pureed and strained

5 to 8and a half pounds of granulated sugar

23 grams (about 2 fluid oz.) DAP-diammonium phosphate for a vigorous ferment

A packet of Fermentis Pasteur Red or Montrachet wine yeast

1 and 1/4 teaspoons potassium sorbate

Fill the fermentation bucket the rest of the way with water (to the 5 gallon mark)

If you aren't a winemaker already, the little book that comes with the "Fine Wine" winemaking kit does a pretty good job of explaining the process.

True Recycling

This post may seem a bit bland compared to most blogs. I don't have a camera to take any pictures of the great stuff that members of our enlightened society discards because they don't look at their trash from the right angle. Take my word for it, trash is beautiful. I live in Maine in the middle of a blueberry field on a dead end road. The nice thing about living where I live is the possibilities afforded to me by what the good lord has blessed me with.
My appreciation for garbage goes back to watching my grandmother press aluminum foil flat and carefully open presents on Christmas morning to use the paper the next year. I have picked discarded gardening tools, gas grills, aluminum bowls, glass bottles, and countless other items. My wife periodically gets peaved at me: she calls it a compulsion. I refuse to admit that I have C.D.O. (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder-alphabetized to keep everything tidy.)
A lot of folks won't pick the dump out of some sort of screwed-up sense of pride. I pick with pride! My hobbies include fishing, gardening, homebrewing, winemaking and canning. I like do do all of these things with as little monetary outlay as possible. I save my seeds, compost my waste, and squeeze the nickel until the buffalo shits.
I promise that if anyone is actually reading this that my next post will be better. It's 3 A.M. in Blueberryville, which is my pumpkin time.