Prosciutto Tasting

Hanging after 5 months

I cured and hung half a leg of pork for prosciutto in early October last year. This has since been hanging in the room off the utility room where the dog sleeps. It was hanging over her bed which was possibly a little cruel but it was the coolest room in the house. The recipe I had used was for a full leg of pork so I had halved the salt, herbs, etc. but was unsure about halving the time for curing. The recipe said 4 - 6 months for a full leg, I left the half leg for about 5 months to be on the safe side. I have heard of prosciutto being hung for 2 years so I doubt it can be left for too long really.

The first slice

Despite everyone that saw it thinking I had wasted a leg of pork, I was hopeful that I had some good quality prosciutto. It might not look very appealing hanging up but any of the meats I had air dried before never looked much until they were sliced.


Once I had taken down the ham and untied it, I washed off the lard that I had put on the exposed flesh. Next I nervously pared off some of the rind which is inedible but apparently good to add to sauces and stews for depth of flavour.
It revealed a lovely deep red meaty interior. It was firm but with a little give, just what I had hoped for.


I then put the leg onto the meat slicer to get the wafer thin slices that are the best way to serve prosciutto. After a little tinkering with the settings I got the slices as thin as I could. This is one of the main reasons I bought the slicer and I am glad I did, the thin slices are excellent.

 I am very happy with the outcome of this. I will be keeping pigs again this year and without doubt will be doing this again. I will probably do a full leg this time around. I have probably about half of my half leg left. It should last a month in the fridge. I don't think any will last longer than that but it should also last a few months in the freezer. Maybe if I do a full leg next time around I will slice some for the freezer to make it last a bit longer.

Today I was building some more raised beds for the garden. I have also separated some chickens for breeding so I will be collecting eggs next week and probably setting the incubator next weekend. I will probably have a post about both of those in the next week.

Until Then

Porter Bottling, Tasting and Drinking

It's been a while since I have posted anything on here. Wasn't much happening in the garden over the winter. Things are starting to get going again at this time of year but first I decided to tidy up one of the loose ends from last year. I had been brewing a batch of porter for Christmas. It wasn't quite ready for Christmas but had a bottle or two around New Year's. I will get to that but first up is the bottling of the porter.

When I left off I had a batch of porter in my glass carboy. Once that had cleared I was ready to bottle it. I bought some nice dark glass old fashioned bottles which I thought would look good for the porter. I could have used some bottles that I had saved but I will probably need those for the cider in a few weeks. Also I thought these bottles really looked the part.

My new bottles

When I ordered the bottles from the homebrew shop I also added a bottling bucket. This is a large bucket which holds all the beer and has a special tap which makes it easier to fill bottles. It was cheap enough and definitely made the job a lot easier.

My new bottling bucket

Transferring to the bottling bucket

Once the bucket was filled I added some sugar so that when in the bottle the beer would ferment a little bit again creating CO2 creating some "fizz" in the beer. Porter isn't very carbonated so I only needed a small amount of sugar. There are online calculators that work out the amount needed so no need for confusing formulas. If I hadn't got the bottling bucket it would mean adding a very small amount of sugar to each bottle which gets very messy. This is a much better option. Once the sugar has been disolved in the beer its time to bottle. The tap on the bottling bucket has a valve on the bottom which only allows beer to flow when it is pushed up. So pushing a bottle up onto the tube opens the valve and the beer flows. Once the bottle is full you simply take it away on the beer stops.

Adding the priming sugar

The filled bottles

Once the bottles have been filled it's time to cap them. This is pretty straight forward. You use a special piece of equipment for it. Put the caps in it and push them on and you have sealed bottles.

The bottle capper

A capped bottle

The finished article

Once the bottles were finished I left them for two weeks, by a radiator, to ferment and carbonate the beer. I opened one and it was still flat so I left them another few weeks for aging/carbonation. After this they were ready. The finished beer had a lovely taste, some chocolate and coffee flavours but not over powering. It also had a good head on it which did tend to die off after a few minutes. This seems to be normal with a porter, so it just means not pouring it all first time and leaving a little to add half way through the pint to liven it up again. I have been doing my best not to drink it too quickly. At the time of writing I have 8 bottles left. I would definitely make this again, but definitely a bigger batch next time.




I am already thinking about my next batch of beer. It will probably be an Indian Pale Ale, something light and refreshing for the summer. That is probably a few weeks away yet. All the spare cash has gone on some timber for raised beds this week. Hopefully I should be putting them together this weekend. I also have an update on the prosciutto I started in October which I should be posting in the next few days.

Until Then.