bottled the ginger brown

We bottled our ginger brown ale that we started back in November. The recipe is on hopville, a nice calculator tool and way to keep track of recipes.

We now have a big enough collection of flip-top bottles to fit a 5-gallon batch of beer, without needing to use wine bottles (too big) or crown-top bottles (requires borrowing the capping tool). Conveniently, all of the bottles fit (just barely) in our dishwasher for sanitizing.

For a little experiment, we used three different priming sugar recipes (priming sugar is added just before bottling to create carbonation). One gallon was primed with blackstrap molasses, one gallon was primed with cane sugar boiled with 1 oz. ginger root for extra ginger flavor, and the remaining three gallons got half molasses half cane sugar for priming.

vegetarian baked beans with cornbread

When I think of baked beans I usually think of cans, cowboys, and family gatherings. Now I also think of slow cooking at home.

Serving Size: 8

Vegetarian Baked Bean Ingredients:
2 1/2 c. navy beans, dry
4 c. water
2 c. tomato sauce
1/2 c. sorgham molasses
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 T. canola oil
1 T. liquid aminos (or tamari or soy sauce)
1 t. brown mustard seed, ground
1 t. black pepper
1 t. salt
1/4 t. cayenne pepper

Cornbread Ingredients:
1 c. cornmeal
1 c. all purpose flour
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 c. plain soy milk
1/4 c. maple syrup
1/4 c. canola oil

To start the baked beans, soak the navy beans for a few hours. Then cook the soaked beans until they are just starting to get tender. Drain and rinse the beans.

In a large pot or crock-pot, saute the onion, ground mustard seed, black pepper, salt and cayenne in canola oil until the onions are translucent. Add remaining ingredients. Cover the pot and simmer for 5 hours or until the beans are really tender and flavorful.

Mix the dry cornbread ingredients together. Mix the wet cornbread ingredient together. Stir wet and dry ingredients together. Bake in a greased cast iron skillet or a 9x9 pan for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.


Side Note:
We used sorghum molasses instead of regular molasses because for us sweet sorghum can be grown more locally than sugar cane.