We had yet another gorgeous weekend and nothing planned. I absolutely love it when that happens. That means breakfast in bed and a trip to the farmer's market for sure. I am lucky that most weekend mornings Dan makes me breakfast. Eggs, potatoes, bacon, and at least one pot of coffee.

After much reading about cocktails and tinctures last week I had a short list for weekend projects - peach infused rye, getting started on a batch of ginger beer, and another batch of grapefruit bitters.

I read about the peach infused rye on a blog somewhere, but couldn't find the recipe again. I do remember it being quite simple, something like rough cut peaches and rye in a jar, so I figured I'd wing it. I roughly chopped two white peaches, put them in a large jar, added about two tablespoons of sugar, and tossed. I let that macerate for 15 minutes or so, then added a 750ml bottle of Old Overholt Rye. Now I must wait. A little searching leads me to believe that 2-4 weeks will be about right, so I'll taste the mixture at 2, 3, and 4 weeks. It's certainly not going to get worse, but it may stop changing flavor after a few weeks. Peach mint juleps will have to wait till the middle of July.

Then it was on to the ginger beer. I've been wanting to make this for quite some time now and then our trip to Preston Vineyards lead us to discover this amazing book on fermentation. Ginger beer is just one of the many recipes that caught my eye. I'm quite excited to make all sorts of fermented fruit sodas now.

Anyway ginger beer starts with what's called a ginger bug. I really like saying that, ginger bug. It's grated ginger skin still on, sugar, and water in a jar. The recipe was exactly that precise. You add a little more grated ginger and sugar each day until it gets vigorously bubbly. Mine isn't quite vigorous as I write this, but it's definitely bubbly. This weekend I'll make a sweet ginger tea concoction, add the bug and let it do it's thing. Left long enough it will even get alcoholic. Yes, please!

As for the grapefruit bitters I still have to put that together. A flat worth of strawberry jam and a hangover got in the way. I'm going to make the recipe as is from Brad Thomas Parsons' book Bitters, but after a little more tincture tasting I'll start experimenting with my own recipe.