h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

or, more aptly, bars, and brewrys... and beer fests... Twitter has suddenly turned into beer porn; I'm following so many local, and a few not so local (but in places I sometimes go), brewerys, pubs, bars etc... and, apparently as I retweeted a tweet from a bar not far from me, I've won a 'golden envelope', I've no idea what a golden envelope is, unless its just a regular white envelope someone has peed on Oh well... its a bar I've never been in... if its some free beer or food, I guess I'll have* to visit it

I've also been spending way* too much time reading through the list of beers for the Cambridge 40th beer festavil (happening in about a week)...

Strange thing is, I seem to be spending more time reading about beer, and pubs, than actually drinking beer, or being in pubs I might make it along to the Cambridge beer festavil, although it looks like being grotty weather for it, yet again

The onion and poppy seed bread I made, yesterday came out fabulusly... it really is the tastiest bread I've ever had, whether purchased or that I've made myself... If there was any kind of justice, I oughta be able to transform the recipe to a commercial one, and market it... but looking at the dredful statistics on peoples bread-buying, here in the UK, it seems most people have absoltely no taste wahtsoever and prefer to eat utter tasteless textureless rubbish... I mean, the little Tesco's near me, is maybe one minutes walk from a little bakery, the little bakery does fresh made bread, that is pretty good, and which is cheaper than the pre-packed, mass produced national branded bread the suppermarket sells... and they do* sell it... so, by prefernce people go to buy the tasteless rubbish, rather than the cheaper or same priced, tastier, better version... off out into town soon, with William Must figure out if there is any shopping I need

If you need a Texas agent for selling your bread here, I'm your man Plenty of people in Austin are all over that sort of thing... not to mention good beer

Interesting that there's a brewery called Bexar (pronounced bear, or possibly bayer) County in Peterborough - it's the Texas county that's mostly filled with San Antonio. No website though. When people do that they just look a homebrewer with a Facebook page, and I don't go to Facebook. I feel uncomfortable just typing the word Their Twitter page hints at Texas roots though: "So what does a Texan know about beer?”. Well, quite simply, try one of our beers and discover the answer for yourself!

And the first person they followed with their Twitter account is a brewer from San Antonio who I'm acquainted with. Curiouser and curiouser.

I think that's quite a new brewery... I could be wrong though

I'm not sure how well my bread recipie would scale up, the slightest alteration procedurally in making it, or in amounts/proportions of ingredients, can make the loaf really very differnt from one go at making it to the next (I'm guessing random oven temp for cooking, and variability in air humidity/temp during rising/resting, accounts for most of it, as I do weight stuff fairly accurately/carefully), so not sure how one could make it a more 'commercial' endevour, without just making crap commercial bread... Must be possible, though, to an extent, as even little bakerys who make decent bread, have to do so on a scaled up err scale, so they can make any money... but, I fear a move from hand to machine neading would probalby just not work... and I'm wondering just how many Kilograms of dough I could realistically make by hand ... Maybe 20 KG would be possible... and probalby result in my having massive bicepts though I think it'd be knackering to do that* much, in, say 5 KG batches.... but then again, neading 5 KG at a time, rahter than 1 KG or whatever, might not work as well evenly...
I'm kinda stuck for upping production any, on this loaf, as the only decent sized big* loaf tin I found cost a fortune as its made by some poncy fashionable brand, but all the other bread tins I've ever found are the wrong size, and particularly the wrong proportions (too shallow, longer than they should be for the width, or visa versa etc) I was looking at commercial bread tins, but I'd need a commercial oven to fit them in as they're useulaly in 'blocks' of several joined together (to make easier to take in and out of hte oven I guess)

I'm still toying with the idea of a new 'slower' baguette recipe. I figured my zen-baguettes is o only* the start, and I want to get real* slow... I'm thinking, eventually, a 100 hour baguette recipie might be possible... and with time, taste improves.... so they say... whoever they are... so a 100 hour recipie

hmm.... poolish sit for 24 hours..... 12 hour autolyse 24 hour cold ferment.... refold/second nead, second 24 hour cold ferment.... yeh... I think it might be possible

If you go, seek them out and ask how they come they know Rob Landerman from Ranger Creek Brewing

Leastways, he was at Ranger Creek until a few months ago. Hmmm... maybe he's living in Peterborough now That would just be too

I'll try remember read this conversation thread, tomorrow, and look at the beer list for the Cambridge 40th beer festavil (starts the 20th), and if they're there, I shall attmept to speak to them....

Must get to try blackbar, and the other two new (less than a couple years), brewrys that have opened up in, or near Cambridge I've yet to find them in the pubs I use Mind, I was chatting to whoever it is who tweets for greenjack brewry (lowestoft), earlier, (may well have been Tim their head brewr), and they've got four beers on, two of which I just (lurcher and ripper) and there may be a few others I have to try and get round to tasting at the festavil well, depending how much time I get to spend there, which depends a lot on if its freezing cold and raining like at the moment, when it starts its two years since we had a summer now, in the UK....