Pretzels and Beer

I'm having an issue with my blog.  I know that it is more fun, for readers and myself, if I post frequently.  However, because I have chosen to write about my hobbies, I occasionally find myself with nothing to write about several days in a row.  I mean, seriously, who wants to hear, " Working on another 20 rows of an afghan.  Should be done eventually..."  So, I'm sorry to anyone who has been checking and found nothing for the last week.  But, hopefully, you will find this post worth the wait.

I have been working on a beer project for over a month now.  This week, I got to the exciting step of bottling my beer.  I couldn't be more excited.  Just a little over a week from now, we will be able to crack open the first bottles of the home brew and give it a taste.

My brother, Jake, came to town and I made him assist me with the bottling process.  We began by washing and sanitizing all of the bottles.  I used the bottom rack of my dishwasher as a drying rack for the bottles.  This worked really well.

After the bottles were clean and dry, we got to move on to the actual bottling.  You would think this step would be pretty straight forward.  But, as is par for the course, I was able to mess this step up a couple times.  There is a spigot on the front of the bucket that allows the liquid to flow into the bottle.  It is pretty simple to operate, tun to the left to open, turn to the right to close.  I managed to confuse my left and right a couple times and open the spigot all the way and overflow the bottle I was filling.  Thankfully, I did have the foresight to put a towel down under the bucket just in case.

Jake was in charge of capping the bottles.  This process is made easier by a handy little bottling contraption that squeezes the caps onto the top of the bottle with very little effort by the bottler.

As my assistant, and someone who doesn't drink beer, my brother seemed to be enjoying himself just a bit too much.

After an evening of many laughs and a couple messes, we were able to say we were done.  We successfully completed 43 bottles of beer.  I do think that my next batches will be closer to 50.  I had some issues on my first attempts to siphon and then there was the spillage during bottling.  So, I think I will be more successful, next time.

After completing the bottling, I decided that there would be nothing better to go with it than fresh, soft pretzels.  I have made them a couple times and they have turned out better each time.  I began by mixing together warm milk and yeast.  I then added butter and flour.  I kneaded the dough and let it rise for an hour.  Once the rising process was complete, I cut the dough into six sections.  I then took each section and rolled it out into a 30" rope.  Because I am so "fancy", I measured the edge of my counter and found it to be 31".  So, I rolled out the rope until it was almost as long as the edge of my counter.

Once the rope was completed, I shaped it into a pretzel.  The pretzel was then dipped into a mixture of 1/3 CUP baking soda and 3 cups of water.  (Who has ever measured baking soda by the cup?  I found that to be crazy.  But, it worked well.)  I then sprinkled the pretzels with course salt and threw them in the oven.

Dipping the pretzel in the baking soda mixture gives the pretzel its nice crunchy exterior while keeping the inside nice and soft.  Finally, after 10 long minutes of anticipation, I pulled the warm, wonderful pretzels out of the oven to enjoy.  I must say they were wonderful.  

As a side note, I think I will have to take out stock in the nacho cheese company because they are unbelievable dipped in cheese sauce!