Accidental Homesteader
…a funny thing happened on the way to the bar
Pickles
I love pickles.
When my nephew was a baby, he could say my name, but chose not to. I tried and tried to get him to say my name.
But alas.
That is, until I had pickles on my plate at some family dinner. Then it was all KATIEEEEEEEE!
That said, I learned to make pickles, because my main goals in life are simple: Be the cool aunt, and make my friend Corrina (who is a comic) laugh on facebook.*
*this may be a lie. My real goals are to make beer from scratch from ingredients I’ve grown and drink it.
OK, so I made a batch of pickles recently.
Note the star san. This stuff is awesome. Buy it at your local brewer supply store. It’s nontoxic and sanitizes. Here’s the recipe. It’s the simple ball recipe, but with some other stuff, like coriander.
I put the spices in a tea infuser, because I couldn’t find our hop sock. But it worked. My advice is to get new pickle spices every year.
Pack them in tight, or you’ll run out of brine.
Process fifteen minutes in a water bath, and practice patience. They’ll be ready in a few weeks. I like to do a small jar so that I can test early without opening a big jar of pickles. They aren’t as good, but you get the direction the pickles are going in.
Accidental Homesteader 