Mushrooms and a celebrity

For my sins, I work for a major multinational organisation. My days are spent sat at a desk, basking under artificial lighting, tinny air conditioned oxygen pumped around me and my head buried in a computer screen. Not exactly my dream job, but it keeps a roof over my head and supports the family. It does however, occasionally have it's perks.
For the second year running, they have organized a fungi foray around the grounds with John Wright. Ok, so "celebrity" might be pushing it slightly. I should probably just say "that guy who's occasionally on the telly and has published some books".
I've had the pleasure of attending several foraging courses with John at the Kingcombe Centre, and he's an absolute pleasure to listen to. His impressive knowledge is imparted with humor and plenty of random stories, and the brief hour the foray around work allowed was much too short.
We did however find an impressive array of mushrooms on the work grounds, including several edibles: Shaggy Inkcap, Shaggy Parasol, Cep, Clouded Agaric, Honey Fungus, Beefsteak Fungus, Deceiver and Snowy Waxcap from memory. Most of these weren't new to me (only the last 2 in fact), as I regularly walk the grounds and surrounding areas looking for edibles in a lunch hour, and had even stopped doing this for a week beforehand to make sure there were mushies left for the walk. What it did provide though was an expert to confirm identification of a couple of mushrooms I'd found (and picked for this exact purpose) the day before from a new spot. It also gave me an opportunity to buy John's latest book, The River Cottage Booze Handbook, which I'll cover in another blog post once I've had a read.

Having got confirmation, I returned to the spot today to harvest a few for the pot (or should I say pan).

Please meet, for the first time for me at least.....

The Trooping Funnel 

And the Common Yellow (or Ochre) Brittlegill

I am not going to put identification guides up on this blog (at least for now), as there are much much much better sources than my random ramblings. Not only that, but I'd be worried for your safety if you relied on one blog as a mushroom guide. I've found many edible mushroom species in the 3-4 years since I started foraging. However I've eaten a lot fewer than I've found, mainly because even a 1% uncertainty is too high a risk to take.

There are old foragers, and there are bold foragers. There is no such thing as an old, bold forager.

A Ghostly Glug and a Wild Chug.......Eventually

Without so much as a fanfare or an introduction, here it begins.

Most of the home brew I have made in the last couple of years has been either country wines or infusions, with the only real dabbling in beer being from home brew kits. A few months ago however I bought a tin of malt extract from a home brew shop. I don't know why, I had no use for it back then, but I guess the "kid in a sweetshop" syndrome kicked in. And anyway, it lasts for ages.

Fast forward a few months, and the wild hops I foraged last year are completely dried and ready to use, and the pumpkins we carved for Halloween either need to be used ASAP or thrown away. As luck would have it, I found a recipe for the hops, and a separate recipe for the pumpkin, both requiring malt extract.

So tonight I got stuck in and made both together

Before I begin, here's the last pic of the pumpkins in all their ghastly, ghoulish, ghostly glory. I'm already hoping they taste as good as they look

And here they are looking less scary with the remaining ingredients required. I only had wine yeast, but what's the worst that can happen!!

I'm just going to put the recipes below and leave it at that. There is more than enough time to go through the hows, the who's, the what's and the why's when it's not half past midnight on a work day!

Ghostly Glug (Pumpkin Beer) 

• 2kg pumpkin
• 1kg malt extract
• 750g sugar
• 13 litres water
• Ale Yeast  

 

• Chop the pumpkin and roast for 20 mins at 200c/gas mark 6. Allow to cool then scoop the pulp out.
• Bring 7 litres of water to the boil, throw in the pulp and boil for 30 minutes.
• Pour the malt extract and sugar into fermentation bin and stir to mix.
• Strain the pumpkin liquid into the bin and stir to ensure sugar has dissolved.
• Pour remaining 6 litres of cold water over wort.
• When cooled to room temperature pitch the yeast.
• Seal the bin and leave for a week or until fermented.
• Siphon into bottles, leave for 10 days, then drink.

Wild Chug

• 0.5 litre hops
• 225g malt extract
• 225g sugar
• Yeast
• 4.5 litres water

• Bring 4.5 litres water to the boil, add the hops and boil for 15 minutes
• Strain into a fermentation bin and mix in the malt extract and sugar
• When cooled to room temperature pitch the yeast
• Leave for 5 days
• Siphon into bottles, leave for 10 days to 2 weeks, then drink

So hopefully by Christmas I'll be able to report back on how these brews turns out. I'll cover brewing in more detail in subsequent posts for anyone curious too.