Spalting My Own Wood

[Hukk]

Well this picture kind of shows it all. The file comment says it all, much more than you want to know I'm sure.

Anyhow since I first read about spalting your own wood I have been waiting for the weather to warm up. This is the website where I first got this VERY WEIRD idea.

http://www.woodcentral.com/russ/russ4.shtml

The ingredients are all here except the wood, white oak in this case, it's still green and that was what was purchased for firewood. I just kept it in a moist environment to keep it from drying out.This process will take about 2 months.

I will double the "recipe" because of the amount of wood I have.

2-qt water in this case the wood has soaked in the water, black with tannins now.
4-scoops Miracle grow
4-cans beer, Actually I cultured yeast from this beer in the past, I may want to try again.
2-qt horse manure, fresh from the horses hind end
2-qt dried oak leaves

Actually I could make this recipe 20 times over. The expensive part is the beer. Well, I guess we'll see what the wood looks like in 2 months. After 2 months ONE thing I know for sure is that it will stink something terrible.

[OLDSMOKE]

Man that sounds way to close to (spankin your own Monkey), I went to the other place and read what it had to say, man I did not get what it was that this is good for.
Care to enlighten those of us that are not up to par, thanks Man.
Rusty

[orvet]

Spalting occurs when a fungus grows in the wood. It leaves beautiful patterns & colors in the wood.

Check out this link & see some pretty spalted wood.
http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/ ... palted.htm

Below is a pic of a guitar made from spalted maple.

Spalted wood makes beautiful knife handles.

Dale

[Hukk]

Sure, spalted wood is wood that has markings and discolorations that make it distinctive looking and splating is just before rot. Let it go to long, you end up with rotted wood. Spalted wood brings in way more $$ than plain wood, its in high demand.

Here's a good article on spalted wood: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spalting

So all I'm doing is getting the wood set up so that it will be attacked by fungi that will leave behind nice coloration - hopefully.

Her is a picture of spalted mango. Without any spalting, this would be a a rather plain pice of wood, most all the color is due to spalting.

Here's another good one:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... n%26sa%3DN

So what I'm doing is geeting the wood so that it is an atractive place for Fungus to live and so that it colors the wood. Spalt does weaken the wood
but I send spalted wood out for stabilization.

A $5.00 block of Maple can be spalted and if the colors look good, then the price can go $30 to $40.00 and up.

[Darksev]

Hukk, is that Sierra Nevada I see peeking out of that manure? Oh the humanity, use coors for that, save the good beer for drinking!

[OLDSMOKE]

Man I got a bunch of old cord wood out by the back fence that is doing that all by itself, want some hahaha
It is very cool now that you bring it up, I think that some of it is Walnut too.
Rusty
P.S. THOUGHT breathing FUNGI (I dont mean town drunk) better wear resperator, I might even freeze it first.

[Hukk]

Well, I chose Sierra Nevada for a very specific reason. AND it is something I may try later. I used to make all my own beer and one of the yeasts I had was one that I had culured out of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. So, I'm trying to get fungus to grow to get spalting. I wonder what yeast would do and if so - what colors would I get. So, I may culture some pure yeast and play around with that. I figure I would have to add a fast fermenting sugar like corn dextrose and find a medium one because wood does have sugar in it. It is a complex sugar similar to artificial sweetners. Wood sugar is Xylitol.

So, being curious by nature, I would like to see what yeast would do. I would for old time sake culture some yeast out of the Sierra Nevada, if thats still possible.

[Darksev]

I'm interested to see what you get out of that, for sure. If it works out well, I'll have to remember to set aside some yeast starter next time I get to brewing ( like I'll remember. 3 years and I still forget to drop the Irish moss at the end of the boil almost every time )

[Hukk]

I'm interested to see what you get out of that, for sure. If it works out well, I'll have to remember to set aside some yeast starter next time I get to brewing ( like I'll remember. 3 years and I still forget to drop the Irish moss at the end of the boil almost every time )

Do we have another follower of Zymurgy in our midst? All those whine (wine) people just can't believe it's harder to make good suds than it is to make fine wine. Those that have done both know that the higher alcohol content and higher acidity help keep wine from becoming spoiled. Beer you have to have a recipe, wine - you got juice and yeast, a little more but the wine maker has an easier job than a brew master IMO anyway.

[orvet]

[quote="HukkDo we have another follower of Zymurgy in our midst? [/quote]

My best friend & I have made afew batches.
It really is a lot of fun when you don't know what you are doing.
The first beer we tried to make was a porter which we tried turn into a dopple boc.
Of course we were impatient & bottled it way too green.
We called it Black Powder Porter.
It was very tasty, but gassy. When one of us opened a bottle the other had to stand 3 feet away with a large pan to catch the fountain of beer that shot out of the bottle.

Most of the bottles exploded before we opened them.
I had to pick glass out of the ceiling of the basement.

But..................tha flavor was good!

Dale
(not to be confused with a brewmaster)

[Hukk]

I've heard of exploding bottles, but in 10 years of beer making, I never had one explode. I often made lagers in 15 gallon batches as I had a spare refrigerator in the garage. I also used champagne bottles to bottle in because you can use a bottle cap on them. I made an Octoberfest with caramel malt barley and bottled that in pepsi bottles. If no one noticed that nice thick one inch head - it would pass for pepsi.

I did make a Barley wine using Pastuer Champage yeast - man ONE bottle drunk. It was so dark that if it spilled on anything, it was stained - FOREVER! 40 proof I did win a couple competitions. In Santa Rosa The Beverage People are well known. Used to be called something else, run by Byron Burch and Nancy Vineyard. They won the National Beer Making Championships around 10 years in a row. Byron also has written many books, even a textbook that sold 250,000 copies. I had most excellent resources.

[Darksev]

Indeed sir. A few years ago, my friends dad started brewing as a hobby. One by one he pulled us all into it (Corrupted you might say. I won't say when I was corrupted, but lets just say I'm 25 and he's been doing this 8 years now ) We've got some pictures and what not of the whole crew here http://shadetreebrewing.com/. We've gotten pretty good over the years, The old man himself has a few gold and silver's from various Ohio state and PA invitational brewing competitions. His son (Johnny) and I specialize in the "Experimental" brews of the group. We have a super IPA we make on occasion that will melt your socks (until it mellows in a cask for a few months), and quite possibly the best wheat porter I've ever tasted. Gotta do something to get through the winters up here

[Hukk]

It's been a while since I had a good India Pale Ale. Check out The Beverage People, Byron Burch and Nancy Vineyard (gotta like that last name - it's real ). http://www.thebeveragepeople.com They have gone from beer, wine, and mead to cheese, vinegar, and a buch of other stuff. I stopped drink the home made stuff because my belly was getting to big and I lost the weight. Byron has quite a belly on him, guess that's what you get from drinking the best. Back when I was brewing The Beverage People was called Great Fermentations I think. It should be if they mention clubs from 1985 to 1995, that's when the club had won the National title 10 years running.