The Backyard Homestead
Page 22
2¼ pounds dry amber spray malt
¾ pound 40°L British crystal malt
½ pound toasted malt
¼ pound Special B malt
1½ gallons cold water
31/3 pounds Northwest gold malt extract syrup
½ ounce Chinook hops (for bittering)
¾ ounce Cascades hops (for flavor)
3 ounces Willamette fresh hops (for aroma) Wyeast 1028 London ale or Whitbread ale yeast
2/3 cup corn sugar (for priming)
1. Crush malts and add the water. Bring to a slow boil over 30 minutes. Strain and sparge (rinse residual sugars) with ½ gallon of 170°F (77°C) water. Add extract and return to a boil. Add Chinook hops and boil for 45 minutes.
2. Add Cascades flavoring hops and boil for 5 minutes.
3. Add the fresh Willamette aroma hops and boil for a final 10 minutes.
4. Strain hot wort into a fermenter containing 1½ gallons of chilled water. Rinse hops with ½ gallon boiled water. Top up to 5 gallons.
5. Pitch yeast when cool.
6. Ferment at ale temperatures (65 to 70°F [18 to 21°C]).
7. Bottle with priming sugar when fermentation ceases (7 to 10 days). It should be ready to drink in two weeks.
Yield: 5 gallons
Dandelion Bitter
If you have a lawn, dandelions have probably given you a lot of pain over the years. Why not take revenge by using this traditional bittering herb for brewing? This ale is bright brown-orange and cloudy, with a sour piquancy unlike that of hops.
1 pound dandelion leaves, blossoms, and roots
1½ gallons cold water
½ pound toasted malt
½ pound 60°L British crystal malt
3¾ pounds Cooper’s Bitter kit
2 pounds Munton & Fison light dry malt extract
1 ounce East Kent Goldings hop plugs (for flavoring)
½ ounce homegrown
Willamette fresh hops (for aroma)
½ ounce Willamette dry hops (for flavoring)
Wyeast 1028 London ale or Whitbread ale yeast
2/3 cup corn sugar (for priming)
1. Clean the dandelions very thoroughly in several changes of water, removing any twigs or other debris.
2. Add the malts to the water and bring to a slow boil over 30 minutes. Strain and rinse with ½ gallon of 170°F (77°C) water. Add the extracts and return the mixture to a boil. Add dandelions and boil for 45 minutes.
3. Add East Kent Goldings hops for flavoring. Boil for 15 minutes. Add fresh Willamette hops for aroma during the last 2 minutes of the boil.
4. Strain hot wort into a fermenter containing 1½ gallons of chilled water. Rinse hops with ½ gallon boiled water. Top up to 5 gallons.
5. Pitch yeast when wort cools to 70°F (21°C).
6. Ferment at ale temperatures (65 to 70°F [18 to 21°C]). When primary fermentation slows, add Willamette dry hops to fermenter.
7. Bottle with priming sugar when fermentation ceases (7 to 10 days). It should be ready to drink in two weeks.
Yield: 5 gallons
Pale Horse Pale Ale
Pale ale is an amber- to copper-colored bitter, malty beer of medium body and alcoholic strength.
5 gallons brewing water (1½ gallons chilled)
31/3 pounds Black Rock East India Pale Ale kit
31/3 pounds Northwest Gold malt extract syrup
½ ounce East Kent Goldings hop plug
½ ounce Fuggles hop plug (for aroma)
1 packet Whitbread ale yeast
2/3 cup corn sugar
1. In a stockpot, bring 1½ gallons of the water to a boil. Remove from heat, add the Black Rock and Northwest Gold extracts, and return to a boil. Boil 60 minutes.
2. Add the East Kent Goldings hop plug and boil 15 minutes. Remove from heat; add the Fuggles hop plug. Steep for 5 minutes.
3. Strain hot wort into a fermenter containing the chilled water. Rinse hops with ½ gallon boiled water. Top off up to 5 gallons.
4. Add yeast to wort when cool.
5. Ferment at ale temperatures (60 to 70°F [16 to 21°C]). Bottle when fermentation ceases (7 to 10 days), using corn sugar for priming. Ale should be ready to drink in two weeks.
Yield: 5 gallons
Brown Ale
This mellow dark ale, developed by Steve Hodos of Rochester, New York, won a medal in the Brown Ale category at the 1989 Upstate New York Homebrewers Association Members Only Mini-Contest.
5½ gallons brewing water
20 ounces Russian malt beverage concentrate (contains rye and barley malt, rye flour, and clear water)
3 pounds Laaglander light dry malt extract
1½ ounces Northern Brewer hops pellets
1 packet Red Star dry ale yeast
5¼ ounces cane sugar
1. In a stockpot, bring the water, malt concentrate, and dry malt extract to a boil. Boil for 4 minutes.
2. Add the hops. Boil for 70 minutes longer. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
3. Transfer the mixture to the primary fermenter and top off up to 5½ gallons. Pitch yeast.
4. When primary fermentation subsides, rack to a secondary fermenter. Add ¾ ounce of the cane sugar.
5. When fermentation is complete, prime with the remaining cane sugar. Bottle.
Yield: 5½ gallons
Modifying Recipes for Homegrown Ingredients
Remember that the ingredients you grow and make at home can have some different characteristics from store-bought ingredients because they are so much fresher.
Hops. Homegrown hops tend to be much stronger than commercial ones because they’re not dried, so use fewer of them.
Herbs. Unlike hops, herbs become more concentrated when they’re dried. Use twice as much of a fresh herb as you would a dried herb, to allow for the concentration of flavor.
Malts. No adjustment for quantity needs to be made when using homemade malts rather than commercial ones.
CHAPTER 5
Poultry for Eggs and Meat
It’s amazing how many people have never had a truly fresh egg. Hens that live a healthy life with fresh air, good food, and clean water (not to mention access to open space and green pastures) lay eggs that are firmer, more deeply colored, harder-shelled, and, most important, more nutritious than those of their factory-farmed counterparts.
Chickens are among the easiest animals to keep in a small amount of space. On a typical quarter-acre lot, a family can keep as many as a dozen chickens (see page 14). Since a flock that size would produce as many as a dozen eggs per day, though, you might want to start with fewer (perhaps three or four hens), unless you have a ready supply of customers to buy the surplus eggs.
Another benefit of keeping chickens and letting them roam the backyard is that they can help with pest control, digging up Japanese beetle grubs from the lawn and snapping up snails and slugs in the vegetable garden (with some supervision to make sure they don’t start snacking on the strawberries). Besides — chickens are just plain fun to watch.
If you’re serious about the homestead life and want to try your hand at raising poultry — chickens, ducks, or geese — for meat, spend some time thinking about the realities of raising an animal you plan to eat. First, there are the logistics. Who will slaughter the animal? If you’re raising animals for the first time, definitely seek out a professional in your area who can either do the job for you or at least lead you through the process. And don’t underestimate how attached you can become to a chicken. You just might find yourself with a long-term pet instead of dinner.
Keep Chickens!
If you’ve never raised livestock before, keeping chickens is a great start. They’re easy to raise, they don’t need a lot of space, and they don’t cost a lot of money to buy or to feed. Everything you learn about feeding, housing, and caring for your chickens will help you later if you decide to raise some other kind of animal.
People have raised chickens for at least 5,000 years. All chickens belong to the genus
Gallus, the Latin word for rooster. The English naturalist Charles Darwin traced all chickens back tens of thousands of years to a single extant breed, the wild red jungle fowl of Southeast Asia (Gallus gallus). These fowl look like today’s brown Leghorns, only smaller.
Wild jungle fowl are home-bodies, preferring to live and forage in one place as long as possible. This trait made taming wild fowl an easy task. All people had to do was provide a suitable place for the chickens to live and make sure that the flock got plenty to eat. As a reward, they had ready access to fresh eggs and meat.
Early chickens didn’t lay many eggs, though, and they made pitifully scrawny meat birds. Over time, chicken keepers selected breeders from those that laid best, grew fastest, and developed the most muscle — and thus came about today’s domestic chickens. The Romans called household chickens Gallus domesticus, a term scientists still use.
Different people who have kept chickens over the years valued different traits, which led to the development of many different breeds. In 1868, Darwin took inventory of the world’s chicken population and found only 13 breeds. Now we have many times that number. Most of today’s breeds were developed during the twentieth century, when chickens became the most popular domestic food animal. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in heritage breeds, as well.
Getting Started
How much it costs to get started depends on such factors as the kind of chickens you want and how common they are in your area, how simple or elaborate their housing will be, and whether you already have facilities you can use or modify.
Chickens must be housed to protect them from predators and harsh weather, but the housing need not be fancy. An unused toolshed or the corner of a barn or other outbuilding can provide comfortable quarters. If your yard isn’t fenced, you’ll need to put up one. A good fence keeps dogs and other predators away from your chickens and keeps the flock from bothering your garden or your neighbors’ flower beds.
In deciding where to put your chicken yard, consider whether crowing may bother the neighbors. Male chickens — called roosters or cocks — are well known for their inclination to crow at dawn. Ancient peoples believed they crow to scare away evil spirits lurking in the dark. Cocks occasionally crow during the day, and if two cocks are within hearing distance, they will periodically engage in an impromptu crowing contest. A rooster rarely crows during the dark of night, unless he is disturbed by a sound or a light.
If the sound of crowing might cause a problem in your area, consider keeping hens without a rooster. Although the rare persnickety neighbor may complain about hen sounds, the loudest noise a hen makes is a brief cackle after she’s laid an egg. Contented hens “sing” to themselves by making a soft, pleasant sound to which only a grouch could object.
Without a rooster, hens will still lay eggs. The rooster’s function is not to make hens lay eggs but to fertilize the eggs so they can develop into chicks. Without a rooster, you won’t be able to hatch the eggs your hens lay.
Comparing Drawbacks and Benefits
Raising chickens has some downsides. One is the dust they stir up, which can get pretty unpleasant if they are housed in an outbuilding where equipment is stored. Another is their propensity to scratch, which becomes a problem if they get into a bed of newly planted seedlings. Chickens also produce plenty of droppings that, if not properly managed, will smell bad and attract flies.
Before you acquire chickens, make sure that you and your family are not allergic to them. You can find this out ahead of time by visiting a poultry show at your county fair or spending a few hours helping a friend or neighbor care for his or her chickens. If you have an allergic reaction, you will have avoided the expense and heartache of setting up a flock you immediately have to get rid of.
Until you raise your own chickens, it may be hard to believe that people become attached to their chickens and have difficulty letting them go when it’s time to butcher meat birds or replace old layers with younger, more efficient hens. The only alternative, though, is to run a retirement home for chickens, which gets pretty expensive, and the birds will still get old and die eventually. You’ll have to come to grips with the loss.
For many people, the upside of raising chickens far outweighs the downside.
• Chickens provide wholesome eggs and meat for your family, and you can take pride in knowing that the flock that puts food on your table lives under pleasant conditions.
• Raising chickens is educational. By watching chickens interact with each other, you will learn something about how all birds live and behave.
• Chickens are attractive. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. You can find a breed that appeals to your aesthetic sensibilities.
Caring for a home flock takes a few minutes each day to provide feed and water and to collect eggs. In hot or cold weather, these jobs must be done twice daily, seven days a week. If you raise chickens for meat, the project will be finished in two to three months. If you raise hens for eggs, you must care for them year-round. As long as you keep in mind that your flock relies on you for its survival, raising chickens is a breeze.
Choosing the Right Breed
No one knows for sure how many breeds of chicken may be found throughout the world. Some breeds that once existed have become extinct, new ones have been developed, and forgotten ones have been rediscovered. Only a fraction of the breeds known throughout the world are found in North America.
Egg Breeds
All hens lay eggs, but some breeds lay more eggs than others. The best laying hen will
yield about 24 dozen eggs per year. The best layers are smallish breeds that produce white-shelled eggs. These breeds originated near the Mediterranean Sea, hence their classification as Mediterranean. Examples are Minorca, Ancona, and Leg-horn, respectively named after the Spanish island of Minorca and the Italian seaport towns of Ancona and Leghorn (Livorno).
Leghorn is the breed used commercially to produce white eggs for the supermarket. Leg-horns are inherently nervous, flighty birds that are unlikely to calm down unless you spend a lot of time taming them. The most efficient layers are crosses between breeds or strains within a breed. The strains used to create commercial layers are often kept secret, but you can be sure a Leghorn is involved.
Most layers produce white eggs, but some lay brown eggs. Brown-egg layers are calmer than Leghorns and therefore more fun to raise.
After a year or two, the laying ability of hens decreases. Unless you choose to keep your spent hens as pets, the best place for them is the stew pot.
Meat Breeds
Good layers are scrawny, because they put all their energy into making eggs instead of meat. If you want to have homegrown meat, raise a meat breed.
The various terms for chicken meat depend on the stage at which the bird is butchered. Broilers and fryers weigh about 3½ pounds and are suitable for frying or barbecuing. Roasters weigh 4 to 6 pounds and are usually roasted in the oven.
For meat purposes, most people prefer to raise white-feathered breeds, because they look cleaner than dark-feathered birds after plucking. The best breeds for meat grow plump fast. The longer a chicken takes to get big enough to butcher, the more it eats. The more it eats, the more it costs to feed. A slow-growing broiler therefore costs more per pound than a fast grower.
Most meat breeds are in the English class, which includes Australorp, Orpington, and Cornish. Of these, the most popular is Cornish, which originated in Cornwall, England. The ideal Cornish hen weighs exactly 1 pound dressed. The fastest-growing broilers result from a cross between Cornish and New Hampshire or White Plymouth Rock. The Rock-Cornish cross is the most popular meat hybrid. Those 1-pound Cornish hens you see in the supermarket are actually four-week-old Rock-Cornish crosses, and they may not be hens but cockerels (young cocks).
Meat Classes
Rock-Cornish game hen: Not a game bird and not necessarily a hen, but a Cornish, Rock-Cornish, or any Cornish-cross bird, usually five to six weeks old, weighing be
tween 1 and 1½ pounds.
Broiler or fryer: A young, tender chicken, usually weighing 4 to 4½ pounds live weight, less than 13 weeks of age, with soft, pliable, smooth-textured skin and flexible breastbone; suitable for almost any kind of cooking.
Roaster: A young, tender chicken, usually weighing 6 to 8 pounds live weight, three to five months of age, with soft, pliable, smooth-textured skin and a breastbone that’s less flexible than that of a broiler or fryer. This class of chicken is suitable for roasting whole.
A Rock-Cornish eats just 2 pounds of feed for each pound of weight it gains. By comparison, a hybrid layer eats three times as much to gain the same weight. You can see, then, why it doesn’t make much sense to raise a laying breed for meat or a meat breed for eggs. If you want both eggs and meat, you could keep a flock of layers and raise occasional fryers, or you could raise a dual-purpose breed.
Egg Breeds
Minorca
Ancona
Leghorn
Meat Breeds
Australorp
Orpington
Cornish
Dual-Purpose Breeds
New Hampshire
Plymouth Rock
Rhode Island Red
Endangered Breeds
Chantecler
Dominique
Dual-Purpose Breeds
Dual-purpose breeds kept for both meat and eggs don’t lay quite as well as a laying breed and aren’t quite as fast growing as a meat breed, but they lay better than a meat breed and grow plumper faster than a laying breed. Most dual-purpose chickens are classified as American, because they originated in the United States. They have familiar names like Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Rock, Delaware, and New Hampshire. All American breeds lay brown-shelled eggs.
Some hybrids make good dual-purpose chickens. One is the Black Sex Link, a cross between a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Plymouth Rock hen. Another is the Red Sex Link, a cross between a Rhode Island cock and a White Leghorn hen. (A sex link is a hybrid whose chicks may be sexed by their color or feather growth.) Red Sex Links lay better than Black Sex Links, but their eggs are smaller and dressed birds weigh nearly 1 pound less.