Christmas break

At the moment I am enjoying a very welcome christmas break. And even though christmas always comes with a busier schedule than anticipated, I still got some hobby-projects done. The whole plum-project is now finished and in bottles, for instance. The two varieties of liquor/schnapps turned out to be very pleasant drinks. We made a sweeter variant where we boiled the fruit and added a bit more sugar, and that is a nice drink to sip from. The unboiled and less sweet variant turned out to be great for a shot after christmas dinner as a digestive.

The strong stuff. Left the less sweet variant, and on the right the sweeter one. Boiling the fruit resulted in a very different colour.

The plum wine project is now also finished. It was my first brewing project and it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of new things by trying this out and I will certainly keep on brewing. The wine turned out to be rich in plum taste, and on the sweet side. I have not measured the alcohol concentration in any of my brews this time, but it tastes quite strong. Certainly over 10 percent, and maybe over 12. Now I have six bottles of plum wine and six bottles of elderberry port aging in a cool dark spot. I will age them for a couple of months and pop open a bottle of each in may.

The plum wine. It has a very nice light orange colour, and it is clearer than this picture makes one think. 

I also found a few hours to sit down with a knife and some bits of wood, and whittled away at some butter spreaders that came is very handy during our christmas brunch. It is nice to see others use and appreciate your own work. Wooden spoons are not really used in the family, so finding the spreaders well recieved was nice for me.

Some spreaders. Fun to carve, and very useful. I will be making more and play around with the curves a bit. 

For good measure I`ll include a picture of the brunch-table that was a joint effort of the whole family where everyone made very nice things in abundance.

One of my guilty pleasures in this time of year is to have breakfast with the left overs of the brunch the day after. Gingerbread men, cake, a cinnamon roll and coffee from a sycamore kuksa? A proper start of any day I imagine.

The Second International Secret Spoon Swap!

It has happened! The initiative that was started on the Spooncarving Facebook Group where people from all over the world send spoons to each other happened for the second time, and this time I was a part of it. It is a very fun and exciting experience to send a spoon to a carver somewhere else in the world, and it is also very nice to receive a spoon that someone else has made. I have sent my spoon out to Ben who lives in the USA, and he received it today. Here is a picture that he took of it:

I myself received a very nice spoon and spreader from Don Nalezyty. It is very delicate and also very different from how I used to think about eating spoons. I will try to copy this spoon to gain  carving skill and insight in form and function. He also included a very nice spreader as an extra gift. Both utensils are carved from cherry, and the tooled finish on them is very good. Smooth and shiney. Needless to say I am very happy with them.

Kuksas

Last week I finished another wooden cup. The design might classify as a noggin more than a kuksa. My largest one yet. It is carved from sycamore and left at a tooled finish. Here are some pictures of the thing:

In progress. Up to this point most was done with the hatchet and the spoon knife.

Nearly done. In the picture are all the tools I used in the making. 

Done!

Swiss army knife for scale.

Hollowing this one out was a pain with just a spoon knife. It cost my a lot of time and both of my hands, but the result pleases me. I haven`t applied any finish to it just yet, but I think I know what I`ll do to seal it. I have experimented with using milk to seal a kuksa. I had a kuksa from hawthorn, but since it is a ring-porous wood the coffee seeped out through the grain. It seemed that all the walnut oil in the world could not seal the grain. I was adviced a myriad of solutions on the spooncarving facebook group where there are many experienced wise and friendly folk gathered. One of the solutions was sealing with boiling milk. The casein in the milk will seal the grain. I don't know exactly how it works but i do have a theory. Casein is a largely hydrophobic protein that is rich in proline-residues. When milk is boiled these proteins denature and can form aggregates that serve as a barrier between the wood and the outside world. I think that some proteins of the casein family can even form micels. This property could allow the formation of bilayer barriers that are rather stable. It does not really matter exactly what happens though. Bottom line is that the casein in the milk seals the grain from the outside world. The excess milk is poured away and wiped off thoroughly, removing the milk as a substrate for bacteria and preventing the kuksa to become bacteria-infested. So I went ahead and boiled said kuksa in milk:

It is important to not immediatly wash the kuksa when it is out of the milk. Wipe it down and rub it with a cloth instead. This leaves a lovey shiney finish and the cup is sealed. I have heard that this finish withstands washing in soapy water once it has had time to set. I gave it a few hours and then tested the cup with hot coffee. I`m happy to report it worked a charm. Next time I`ll finish a cup this way I`ll do it differently though. Then I`ll just pour boiling milk in the cup to the rim and leave that for a few hours. That is an easier approach that must work just as well if not better.

For the rest I am very happy that my copy of the book "Swedish Carving Techniques" arrived last week. It is indeed a wonderful book and I understand what all the fuss is about. A lot of knowledge and inspiration is gathered in these pages.

Bottling of the Elderberry port

The elderberry port is finally in bottles. The fermentation stopped a few weeks ago, and this weekend it was time to get it into bottles. I had the help of my brother, which was really nice. There are just many things to hold and and extra pair of hands is really convenient. Here are the pictures of what we did. Started by placing the demijohn on the countertop, taking care to not disturb the sediment.

 Meanwhile we boiled some corks to get them into the bottles, and cleaned out six bottles. I have tried to gather old used bottles, but couldn`t gather a sufficient amount of bottles with the right opening and size, so eventually I gave in and ordered twelve appropriate bottles for €0.80 a piece. Along with that I ordered a simple bottling-device. I had planned on using a mallet, but figured that I could just as well invest the €5,- in this device I`ll be using more often in the future.

 Above you see the bottling device that compresses a cork untill it fits the bottleneck and shoves it in. It makes life a whole lot easier. When the bottles were clean and the corks ready, we started racking the port into the bottles. In hindsight I think racking the port into another container before putting it in bottles would have reduced the sediment in the last bottle we filled, so that is something to remember for the next time we do this. The next picture is a bit messy, but getting this process on is tricky enough while holding tubes and making sure the bottle doesn`t overflow.

 For the last bit of port in the demijohn you have to tilt to get it out without sediment. When all six bottles were full we pushed in the corks. This is a matter of placing the corks into the device, placing the device on the bottle, and pushing in the plunger. Here is a shot of my brother pushing one in.

 While we were at it, we racked off the plum wine into the now available (and cleaned) demijohn. This is to clear it further. The result of the evenings work are six bottles of port, an a racked gallon of plum wine of which we got to have a little taste.

 Since we didn`t degas the port, and want to know if there is risks of the corks coming out, I sealed the corks with wax. When the wax breaches we know the cork moves, and then we have to take action.

Six bottles of port. I like the colour. I didn`t really get to taste it yet though. The small sip I got was promising, but I couldn`t really taste all that was going on. In a couple of months we can open a bottle and see what we think of it. If people like it I want to scale up and make 12 bottles next year. Then there is some to give away as well.