Drink: Feeling the urge to brew something other than beer? We have three ideas.
Feeling the urge to brew or ferment something, but beer’s not your thing? There are other ways to sate that urge for a new fermentation hobby. You can brew vinegar, sake or kombucha, make wine, roast coffee and more. And the equipment and ingredients you need for any of those hobbies is often carried by homebrew supply stores.
Here are three ideas to get you started.
DIY roasted coffee
Yes, Starbucks and Peet’s do a fine job of keeping us caffeinated, but if you’ve ever wanted to dabble in DIY coffee roasting, Morebeer carries a variety of kits for java hounds that range from a $90 hand-cranked, Whirley-pop roaster for the stovetop to a $450 drum-style roaster that can handle up to a pound of coffee at a time. All the kits come with an eight-cup French press, a book on coffee roasting and 3 pounds of green beans. Not, like, haricots verts — green coffee beans that need a good roasting before you go grinding and French pressing them.
DIY root beer
There’s a reason it’s called root beer: It’s made with sassafras and sarsaparilla root barks, as well as birch bark, star anise, vanilla pods and other ingredients not always found at Safeway. You can find them online, though, or you can go the easy route with a root beer kit and a bottle of root beer — or cream soda — extract.
Morebeer’s soda ingredients kits ($20), which make 5 gallons of the fizzy stuff, include honey, sugar, champagne yeast and directions. You’ll need a bottle of extract (about $8), too, plus brewing equipment, bottles and caps, all items carried by homebrewing suppliers. (If you’re an avid homebrewer, you’re already set.)
DIY wine vinegar
Sure, you can buy vinegar at the market, but when you do make your own, the flavor possibilities multiply. You control the ingredients and the acidity — and all you need for your first batch is a large glass jar or crock, cheesecloth, wine, water and a vinegar “mother,” a starter that launches the process, which can take anywhere from a few weeks to three months to complete.
The Williams-sonoma blog has an easy recipe from San Francisco food writer Karen Solomon, whose books include “Asian Pickles,” “Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It” and “Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It.” Vinegar starter can be found at some homebrewing supply stores, including Berkeley’s Oak Barrel Winecraft, which sells a 5-liter vinegar kit ($53) that includes a glass demi-john — a long-necked bottle typically encased in wicker — as well as a red or white starter culture and the book “Vinegarmaking at Home.”