Comments

Episode-284- 20 Simple Steps to More Independence — 20 Comments

  1. Great list of “simple steps”.

    I’ve initiated about a third of them over the past year, and they’ve bettered my preparedness. Now on to the remaining two thirds.

  2. Great show, one of my favourites so far.
    I maybe be missing something but I can only count 19 action items.

  3. @George: Legally, goods and rendered services on a trade or barter basis are still required to be given value and reported as income on your annual tax return.

    Granted the issue becomes how does it get policed.

    I just don\’t want anyone thinking it is perfectly okay and later getting popped with fines or jail time out of no where. \"I didn\’t know\" isn\’t an excuse the IRS takes.

    For more information: http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=187920,00.html

  4. It was encouraging to see that we are doing quite a few of these already.

    Some thoughts I wanted to add:

    Wire fencing made into a circle makes great material for a compost bin. All you have to do to turn it is pick up the fencing and put it right next to the pile and dump the pile back inside the circle.

    Freshly ground wheat smells like fresh fields of grass and tastes nothing like the rancid bags of wheat flour you get at the store. Try a homemade loaf of bread made from freshly ground flour and you will have no problem converting-it taste like heaven! Even my brother who is a whole-wheat-a-phobic asks to have my whole wheat waffles everytime he\’s in town visiting. 🙂

  5. Jack,

    Excellent show! I think it is one of your best and most important to date. I’m glad you did it on a Friday, I was able to listen twice on Friday, four times Saturday, four times Sunday and once again this morning. I’m planning to leave it in my daily playlist and start each day with it. If ever there was a show to be on CD for gorilla marketing purposes, this is it.

    Dan

  6. Haven’t listened to the whole podcast yet, but was doing my daily check of the site and reread the 20 points. Wow! Me and my wife were talking about a few of these things, like when we can make our first meal wholly from our own land, making wine and grinding weat and making bread…it’s like you read our minds Jack. As to some of these other things, I’m glad to know that I can check some of them off, as I’ve already done them! Keep up the Great Work and do get your Ham License!

  7. Hi Jack really enjoyed your last couple of weeks shows, they just get better and better.
    I havent made beer bread yet. I assumed before hearing this show that bear bread needed the yeast from a live beer. As i’ve got lots of very yeasty nettle beer to get rid of will this work oMark the Limey

  8. Hi Jack really enjoyed your last couple of weeks shows, they just get better and better.
    I havent made beer bread yet. I assumed before hearing this show that bear bread needed the yeast from a live beer. As i’ve got lots of very yeasty nettle beer to get rid of will this work OK?
    Mark the Limey

  9. @Mark,

    Nope beer bread uses the bubbles in beer not the yeast. 99% of the time there is NO LIVE YEAST in beer today. With exceptions for bottled conditioned ales such as Chimay all beers today tend to be pasteurized for your safety. Of course that is government BS because drinking unpasteurized beer is 100% safe.

  10. Jack
    i’ve got about 2 gallons left of home made nettle beer it was my first non kit attempt at brewing, it was bottle conditioned with too much sugar and a few botles have exploded, it tests very yeasty.
    What do you think i should i do witk it
    1: use it in your bread recipe
    2: use it as a base for a type of mead with honey and blackberries.
    3: Bin it and start again.
    Mark

  11. @Mark

    Over priming is something we all do sooner or later, don’t feel bad. Often it isn’t that you over prime but don’t ferment long enough before bottling and have to much sugar in left in the wert. Either way the results are the same.

    I have saved a batch before but can’t guarantee this will work.

    Step one – Chill the beer in the fridge over night

    Step two – Use an opener to vent the gas by prying just enough to let the gas out.

    Step three – Hopefully it doesn’t over flow to fast and before it does recap it.

    Step Four – back in fridge and do it again the next day.

    Step Five – Repeat one more time

    After three of those if you keep it chilled it might settle out. Depending on how bad you did it you may need to do more or less ventings. If it is real bad it may spew out so fast you can’t vent it, if so I would either give up and toss it out or two open it all and dump into a bottling bucket, afix an airlock and ferment it out for a few days at about 70F. Rack it off to a fermenter for a week then re bottle.

    That may be more work then you want to save a batch. I would NOT use it as a mead base, that is way to precious a thing to risk contamination on.

  12. Home Depot offers free workshops. You won’t learn how to build a house but its start. Also would suggest volunteering with Habitat For Humanity, if you want to learn might as well do it for a good cause.

  13. Jack,

    Excellent show! This is a top ten no doubt. The day I listened to it, I went out and bought ingredients to make beer bread. Will make it my goal to do all items on the list this month. Thanks so much.

    sylvan

  14. Jack,

    What styles of beer work best in the bread? I’ve got a porter, IPA, and an Octoberfest at my disposal.

  15. @Mike I would go with the Octoberfest or the Porter. IPA is highly hopped, a log of highly bittered beers are a bit over powering in breads.

    A natural way to use the porter would be in a half white half wheat flower batch with perhaps a hand full of walnuts and a half cup of good cheddar cheese.