Five Gallon Carboy

SR7: Still tinkering; hops are growing

2011-07-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

That was a long stretch between batches of beer. After a four month hiatus, I've brewed another batch of Lil' Savannah. I've continued to tinker with the recipe, this time easing up on the sweetness by using a lighter crystal malt (40 instead of 60) and using less of it (1/2 lb. instead of a whole pound).
One of the comments I got from the judges was about how malty the beer was, even on the nose. Considering all the hops I used, that really surprised me. But the guy was right. Although I like a malty IPA, the amount I used in my last batch was too much.
I also changed the hops some. The homebrew store (myLHBS) was out of Warrior, which I use for bittering, so I went with Galena instead. The alpha acid level is about the same (13% instead of 15%), so it shouldn't effect the beer too much. I also finished reading Brewing Classic Styles recently and decided to take Jamil Zainasheff's advice and use two viles of yeast instead of one. Man, what a difference that made. Within 24 hours, the beer was bubbling and fermenting vigorously. It was also a good idea because of the O.G. I ended up at. Although I used roughly the same amount of malt in this batch as I did in the last batch, the gravity was a lot higher (1.092 vs. 1.080). So the extra yeast should help the beer attenuate and avoid coming out too sweet.
For Father's Day, the missus bought me a wort chiller, which cut the amount of time it usually took me to cool my wort from 6 hours to about an hour. Once I'm used to the wort chiller and have cooler ground water temperatures, my cooling time should be even shorter.

Depending on how this batch turns out, I'm entering it into the Meridian Pint/D.C. State Fair homebrew competition. If I make the top 25, I can pour the beer at Meridian Pint, which is my primary goal. Well, my primary goal is to show off my kick ass Lil' Savannah labels. I just need to make sure the beer is good enough to do that.

HOP UPDATE

I've picked my first couple batches of hops. After two years and a lot of fussing, I've harvested ... 3/4 of a pound. Not quite enough to make one batch of wet hop beer, but close. The Centennial and Columbus hops did well, and are looking like they're going to give me another batch, but the Cascade hops are taking their sweet-ass time. In just the past week or so, I've started to see some Cascade hops finally start to blossom. So between the second batch of Columbus and Centennial hops, and the first growth of the Cascade hops, I should have more than enough for a batch of wet hop IPA.

Labels: Everything is better in threes

2011-05-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

Look at those labels.
Last year, when I began working on the JD Project, I had the idea to develop a label for the beer. I knew that I was going to eventually tell my mother and JD's kids about the project, and having a label on the beer would connect with them more than all the little things I did with the JDP recipe.
And then the Sam Adams competition came along. The top eight entries would move on to the final judging at an event where the public could taste the beer, too. Although beer submitted for judging wouldn't be labeled, the beer for the public tasting could be. Since I was entering Lil' Savannah's Big I.P.A., why not take the opportunity to show off my daughter and my beer? They're nearly the same, right?
So I made a label for that beer, too. Well, I didn't. My buddy Matt did. And what a job he did. (The company, My Own Labels, which printed the labels, also did a bang up job.)
The third label, for ZEE German, was a last minute idea for my German IPA. It was less personal, but Matt did just as good a job on that one as the others.

The labels for JD and Lil' Savannah's are based on photos (ZEE German was an image pulled off the Internet). The picture of JD on the label was probably taken during World War II (as opposed to Korea), while he was serving on the carrier Shangri La. It's a great photo, because although it was taken during war time, he has such a casual air about him. That photo really sums him up.

A few weeks ago, I entered JD into a local homebrew competition sponsored by Brewers United for Real Potables (BURP), which followed the national BJCP rules and guidelines. I knew I wouldn't win, but I was looking for some objective feedback on the beer. Although JD didn't place, it did pretty well. The judges liked the beer and their negative comments were mostly what I expected (thin body, minimum head). But the Scotch ale was more or less to style, the whiskey came though (quite a lot, evidently, which did surprise me) and they liked the addition of the rye. So with the second batch of JD bottled and aging, I think I've already addressed some of their comments.

Matt actually took the photo I used for Lil' Savannah's Big I.P.A. He shot the picture during Savannah's first birthday party back in December. When I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for the label. And, of course, it's a "big" IPA because it's a 8.1% double IPA with a truckload of hops, which is acknowledged on the neck label (hop is also lil' Savannah's favorite word because it means bunny). Again, Matt did a nice job.

I also entered Lil' Savannah into the BURP competition. It didn't do as well as JD, but better than I expected. Going in, I knew its biggest problem was the over carbonation. The judges had nice things to say, most importantly that it was too style, but I was surprised when they noted the first scent they got was malt. I certainly use a lot of malt in the beer, but there are A LOT of hops. I can smell the beer from six feet away. I'm assuming that the beer's thick head smothered the hop aroma, but who knows. I've tweaked the recipe a little, but I think it's pretty close to right.
As I said, I also entered it into the Sam Adams competition. Despite Matt's efforts, the beer didn't make it past the first round. I'm still waiting on the judges' notes, so I don't know what they thought or why it didn't advance. However, a local bar, Meridian Pint, hosts a homebrew competition every few months in which the public are the sole voters. And unlike traditional competitions, these beers can include labels. So the beer and baby will have their public debut one way or another.

Finally, there's ZEE German. It's either a German IPA or a very hoppy Koelsch-style beer. I made it for the DC Homebrewers' June IPA meeting, so I guess it's a German IPA. In addition to using a good amount of hops in the German style beer, I dry hopped it. Turns out, that was a complete waste of time. German varieties of hops have very little aromatics. So I've tweaked the recipe to cut back on the hops in the beer and cut out the dry hops all together. According to Jamil Zainasheff's Brewing Classic Styles, Koelsch-style beers need only an ounce or two of hops for bittering, flavor and aroma. I used six ounces.

I also experimented with cold crashing on this beer. The beer is still a bit cloudy, but the cold crash helped remove almost all of the trub. So now I'm considering cold crashing every beer I make. Trub is my biggest frustration with my homebrew, so if I can eliminate that, I'll be a very happy guy.

Hop Update!

My hops are going crazy. I've been feeding them weekly, watering them regularly, and they're growing very well. So now I just need to see some hops.

SR6/JDP5/ZG1: Beer is bottled, beer is fermenting, beer is enrolled

2011-03-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

JDP5 in the front, ZEE German in the back.

I need to update more before the title becomes all project acronyms.
SR6, the double IPA I made for the Sam Adams competition is officially entered in the Sam Adams competition. I still have a month before I turn in my entries, which will give the beer about a month and a half in the bottle. That's more than enough time for the beer to carbonate and the flavors to come together. When I tasted it during bottling, it's was pretty damn bitter. Admittedly, there is a mess of hops in the beer (by design), but the bitterness should recede and even out with the malt.
The final gravity on the beer put it clearly in the double IPA category: 1.020, which worked out to 8.1% A.B.V. So all I know is that SR6 is a big, bitter DIPA that smells great. In another couple weeks I'll be able to sample the finished beer and find out if it tastes good, too.

As JDP4 continues to age in the bottle, I made another batch, JDP5. I liked the recipe for JDP4, so I stuck fairly close to it. However, I tweaked a few things, like using dark brown sugar instead of light, using dark malt extract instead of amber, and doing a decoction on the wort. Although all the proportions were the same, the tinkering made a difference. The original gravity of JDP4 was 1.090. For JDP5 it ticked up to 1.10. Now it's a matter of seeing how hungry the yeast are.
The yeast were another experiment. Because the JDP batches are all half size, I only used half a vile of yeast for JD4 and saved the rest of JDP5. Thankfully, the yeast were still alive after a month in the refrigerator when I pitched them for this latest batch. Homebrewers do this all the time (they even harvest yeast from finished batches and save the yeast), but because this was the first batch that I used saved yeast and I didn't relish the idea of dumping 2.5 gallons of wort down the drain, I was a bit nervous. But in a matter of days, the yeast were eating and farting away, so all is well.
This weekend, JDP5 goes in the whiskey barrel for three or four weeks and should be ready to drink by May.
The same day I brewed JDP5, I brewed up the inaugural batch of ZEE German. I made it for the DC Homebrewers' June IPA meeting so I could've waited a couple more weeks. But the missus was kind enough to give me the day to do a double batch, so I went ahead with it. ZEE German is either a hoppy imperial Koelsch or a German IPA (O.G.: 1.064). Take your pick. I made it like an IPA, but used all German hops (all of them I think) and German Koelsch yeast. The traditional Koelsch style beer uses very little hops, so the potpourri of Perle, Saphir, Tettnang, Hallertau and Spalt it a little over the top for the style. In fact, the only popular German hop I didn't use was Saaz, which is the typical hop used in Koelsch beers. However, it's not a particularly aromatic or bitter hop. And since Saphir is my primary flavoring hop, Saaz got left out.
I dry hopped the beer on Sunday, and the thing smells just like a rich lager. That shouldn't be much of a surprise given the Koelsch yeast, but it still is. Although all Koelsch beers are ales, they smell and taste like lagers. So this beer should taste quite a bit like a lager ... a hoppy, hoppy lager. To further accentuate the lager-like characteristics, I'm going to try and cold crash it next weekend. By bringing the temperature down to 40 degrees or so, a lot of the yeast and other particulate should fall out of the beer and make it nice and clear for bottling.

A passel of sprouting Cascade hops.

Finally, I have a hop update. Much to my surprise, all my hops have sprouted. After last year's anemic showing, I expected the rhizomes to die off during the winter. But a little plant food, fresh soil and a few handfulls of mulch, and the hops are going gangbusters. Hopefully that means they'll produce hop cones this year and allow me to make a couple batches of my wet hop IPA.

SR6/JDP4: Playing to the Kingfish; The Final Stretch

2011-03-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

I met Jim Koch a few years ago during the first Savor event. Unfortunately, it was toward the end of the event and I'd had too much to drink and too little to eat. Still, I was able to work out a genuine compliment for the founder of Sam Adams beer: I told him he was the kingfish of craft beer. He was the guy all the other brewers were aspiring to be. He chuckled at the comment and refilled my glass.
Good guy, that Jim Koch.
I told this story to one of his marketing reps the other night. The guy, Mike, showed up at the DC Homebrewers meeting to announce a new homebrew competition Boston Beer Company is sponsoring. Because it's the first year of the competition, the rules are a bit loose. Basically, participants can enter any style of beer they want. The top three win a prize, including a bottle of Utopias, tickets to Savor and tickets to the Great American Beer Festival.
Sounds good to me.
So I'm taking this opportunity to return to the SR series and crank out a hop heavy double IPA for the competition. Because the competition will be limited to the members of the homebrewers club, I'm fairly confident that there will be 22 Belgian-style beers and a smattering of other styles, so I'm hoping my DIPA will stand out.
For this batch, I've pushed up the original gravity up a bit (1.080 vs. 1.070 from SR4) and added more hops and a larger variety of hops. For the first four SR batches (the fifth batch was the wet hop IPA), I was going with a mix of Warrior and Simcoe hops for bittering, flavor and aroma, and Cascade for dry hoping. This time, I've added Citra for flavor and aroma, and I'm including Amarillo and Sorachi with the Cascade for dry hopping. This should produce a very honey, orange blossom floral beer.
Hopefully, it'll also produce some schwag from the Kingfish.

I also got a chance to finally bottle JDP4. After three weeks in the Early Times barrel, the Scotch ale finally took on enough of the whiskey character. It was delicious. Even through the beer still needs to age at least another month, it's already rich with slight caramel flavors and a very slight rye bite (finally!). It's taken several months and several batches, but the beer is coming together at long last.
The barrel aging also added a nice bit of color to the beer, bringing it to a warm hazelnut brown hue.
So it looks like the first batch of the JD Project is in the final stretch.

JDP4: And away we go

2011-02-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

The bourbon is out and the beer is in.
After two weeks in the fermentor, I decided the rye Scotch ale was close enough to what I was looking for to move ahead to the barrel phase of the JD Project. Although the beer was still very young, it didn't have the overwhelming rye bite that my earlier batches had. Pitching only half the amount of yeast also helped the beer retain some of the body, while still reaching a respectable 8.1 percent A.B.V. (F.G.: 1.030) The alcohol percentage will climb higher, of course, after the beer spends a couple weeks in the bourbon barrel and then a month conditioning in the bottles, but it shouldn't taste too boozy (well, except for the booze it's aging in).
I had wanted to get this project done last month so I could submit it into The Bruery's homebrew competition, but the extra time ended up working out for the best. I may have missed the competition (which I wasn't going to win), but I happened to get some good advice about barrel aging beer and maintaining the bourbon barrel at a brewing class I took yesterday.

One of the homebrew clubs in Maryland, C.R.A.B.S., holds an all-grain class at Maryland Homebrew every couple of months. I signed up to see how much work is actually involved in all-grain brewing verses extract, which is what I've been doing so far. Turns out, it's not too hard. At least it doesn't look too hard. You need some extra equipment and it takes a few more hours to brew a batch of beer, but it all looked very manageable. With any luck, I'll be all-grain brewing by the end of the year. Not only will I have more control over the brewing process and my ingredients, but my cost per batch should also drop by $20-$25.
The guy who ran the class had some experience with barrel-aging beer and told me what I needed to do to keep my barrel in good shape between batches of beer. He also advised me to make sure the barrel was still wet with bourbon when I added the beer. People, that's good advice.

What may be the best added benefit of this project is all the aged Early Times I now have. However, it's not as much as I started with. The 10 liter barrel held six large (1.75 liter) bottles of Kentucky bourbon. After seven months and two weeks, the barrel gave back roughly four and a half of those bottles. I knew I'd loose some volume to evaporation (the angel's share) and absorption into the wood (and the occasional quality-control check), but nearly three liters is a lot of loss. Ah well, I guess I'll have to make due with the eight liters I have left.
So who needs a Manhattan?

JDP4: No contest, fourth time is a charm (right?)

2011-01-31T06:05:00.000-08:00

You win some, you lose some, and sometimes you bow out of the game.
JDP3 didn't pan out how I wanted, so I didn't bother entering it into The Bruery's homebrew competition. Not that I would've won. I hear that they were getting entries from around the world (including doc from the BN), so whatever homebrew wins, it will surely be an excellent beer. The JD Project may produce an excellent beer one day, but not yet, and certainly not JDP3.
Like JDP2, there's just too much rye. Although there is plenty of malt, that rye bite is too prominent. The missus described it as medicinal. At times it was, though that seems to be fading with age. Still, it's not a scotch ale, so on to JDP4.

For this batch, I've stepped up the crystal malt and dialed back on the rye. This should be a big, malty ale, with a slight bite of rye. Of course, the last beer should've been big and malty with a slight rye bite, but what are you going to do? Considering that the original gravity was 1.090 at 74 degrees, it's certainly starting off on the right path.
In lieu of cooling the wort in the laundry tub, as I typically do, the missus suggested setting it out in the snow. Everything about this idea seemed bad. The world is full of bacteria and most of it lives outdoors. But the fermentation bucket was closed and I had an airlock and alcohol seal on it. So as much as the idea worried me, I couldn't think of why I shouldn't do it. So I did. Here's hoping the beer survives.

I'm beginning to feel the pressure to finish this project. The Early Times has been in the barrel seven months, so I don't want to push it too far and damage the whiskey (which tastes fantastic). I think for this batch, I'll let it hang out in the fermentor for about a month. If it tastes right at the end of the month, I'll go ahead and transfer it into the barrel and then into bottles for conditioning. I was hoping to produce and approve a test batch of the scotch ale before going ahead with the barrel aging, but I need to get that bourbon out of the barrel.
These are weird problems to have. I know. But they're the problems facing me.

JDP3: So far, so good

2010-12-05T17:12:00.000-08:00

I think this might just be the batch.
I bottled JDP3 this afternoon and judging by the final gravity (1.020), A.B.V. (10%), and taste, this might just be the recipe that I'll remake and stick in the bourbon barrel. The color is good, if a little lighter than I expected, and the wort tasted malty with the bite of rye clearly coming through. And there's just enough flavor from the smoked malt to let you know it's there. Once this gets a few days in the barrel, I think it'll be phenomenal.

However, now I'm working against the clock. I'll get a chance to taste the nearly finished beer on Dec. 21, the day before I fly to Florida for Christmas and New Years. I get back on Jan. 6. Realistically, I can get the next batch going on Jan. 7, and get it in the barrel by Jan. 12. The beer will then be in the barrel up to a week, which means it'll have about two weeks to bottle condition it before I ship a couple samples off to The Bruery. That's a tight time frame. Hopefully, Jan. 31 is the deadline to submit the beer, but the judges won't sample them for another week or so.
Even if I don't win -- and odds are that I won't -- I'll be happy to wrap up this project. I was hoping to have the American scotch ale recipe worked out by the time the barrel was ready and it looks like I meet that deadline. Because these batches are small, I'll probably do a second one before I stick something else in the barrel (stout?).
And a final hop update for the year: no hops. From the beginning, this year was a write off. I've heard and read that you should never expect much yield the first year you plant the hops. Well, sure enough, I didn't get a single damn hop cone this year. Not one. So, I'll take down the vines and look forward to a more robust season next spring (of course, one hop cone would constitute a more robust season). Fittingly, as my first year of hop farming comes to a close, I'm just about to finish off Digression³, my first wet hop IPA. The hop growth may have sucked, but at least the wet hop beer didn't.

JDP3: The Goldilocks batch?

2010-11-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

Grinding rye by hand is as much fun as you think it is.

My third batch of the JD Project is under way and the numbers look good so far.
The original gravity came in at 1.094, which is quite high, but no where near as high as the 1.135 the first batch started with. If the attenuation is good, I should end up with an A.B.V. of around 8 or 9 percent, perfect for a scotch ale.
For this batch, I returned the brown sugar and increased the amount of smoked malt. In the last batch, the smoked malt flavor never came through and the lack of brown sugar likely contributed to the lower A.B.V. (That said, JDP2 was a good beer, it just wasn't a scotch ale. Once I got past that, I realized it was a really good rye ale. With the lower amount of malt and no brown sugar, the rye was the predominant flavor. That wasn't what I was going for, so it took me a while to appreciate the beer I did have. Now that I'm down to a few bottles, I'm actually a little bummed. I really like it.)

I also picked up a couple hop bags for this batch. Talk about making a difference. Transferring the wort from the pot to the fermentation bucket took no time at all because I didn't have to keep cleaning hop goop off the filter. Those little nylon hop bags should mean I'll have little to no trub in the beer. Man, that'll be a nice change.
Should this batch work out the way I hope, I plan to submit it to The Bruery's Batch 300 homebrew contest. The winner gets to make a commercial batch of their beer on The Bruery's system and enter the Great American Beer Festival's Pro-Am competition. Now, I'm sure I have no chance to win, but what the hell, it never hurts to try.
Even if I don't win, even if the beer sucks, I have 10 liters of very good whiskey. Tell you what, though, that beer won't suck. Not once it's had time in my barrel of aged Early Times. I sampled some a couple weeks ago along side some regular Early Times. The difference was dramatic. The whiskey from the barrel was a rich caramel brown and was full of vanilla and brown sugar flavors. I like Early Times, but the stuff straight from the bottle paled in comparison to the 10 liters I'd aged for five months. It was nearly two different spirits entirely. If I can get the flavor of that whiskey to come through in the American scotch ale, I might just have a decent beer.

FW1/JDP2: Cafe Con Leche and the Scottish Scotch Ale

2010-11-06T07:28:00.000-07:00

It took 10 minutes to pour this beer.

So all that hand wringing I was doing over the sour flavors in the stout proved unnecessary. FW1 tastes good. By no means is it a perfect espresso milk stout, but it is more than drinkable.

The biggest problem with the beer is it's over-carbonated. I did add a bit more dry malt for bottle conditioning than I normally do, but I did so because think many of my beers have been a bit under-carbonated. Well with the stout, it takes five minutes to pour and I've already lost one to gushing and another to detonation (the bottle cap didn't pop off, the upper half of the bottle did). That said, once it's in the glass and settles, it's tart and a bit bitter from the espresso, and the creaminess of the body comes through ... once the carbonation subsides.

Since it's a espresso milk stout, I've named it Cafe Con Leche. Because I got the wort from Mike Roy at Franklin's, this batch is a one and done, but it has motivated me to tackle another stout in the next few months. I'll probably wait until I wrap up my scotch ale experiments.

JDP2 on the left and JDP1 on the right.

Speaking of JDP2, well, it's OK. It is drinkable, but the 6.4 A.B.V. and light body make it more of a Scottish ale than the intended scotch ale. And because I dialed the malt back too far and cut the brown sugar all together, the rye is too pronounced. So back to the drawing board. I think I should have the recipe pretty well dialed in by the next batch.

That said, JDP2 benefited as much from the addition of bourbon as JDP1. As you can see in the picture, JDP1 (on the right) is much darker than JDP2. It's also flat, while JDP2 has a nice amount of carbonation. JDP1 is overly sweet and overly boozy, while JDP2 is a bit thin and the rye gives it too much of a bite. Yet ... YET ... the bourbon cuts through both giving the beers a nice balance without overwhelming either. Isn't bourbon great?

I rise the tasting glasses in a small amount of bourbon to simulate what the beer will taste like after aging in the bourbon barrel.

SR5: Delicious Digression³

2010-10-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

"It tastes so fresh."
That was the best thing my wife could have possibly said to me. It tastes fresh.
It does, by the way. It really does. It's a wet hop ale. It's a single hop, wet hop ale. It's a dry hopped, single hopped, wet hop ale. It's Centennial hops from beginning to end and it is good.
I wanted to give SR5 another week to bottle condition, but I think it's ready. Tuesday is the next DC Homebrewers meeting, so I cracked open a couple to see if the beer is ready to drink. Man, is it. I really couldn't be happier with how it came out. It has a good bitterness that's well balanced by the crystal malt (20). The grassy flavor of the fresh Centennial hops comes right through, and the five ounces of dried Centennial hops make the beer stinky good.
I was worried that the wet hop flavor would be muted because of the number of days it took to get the hops from the field to me. But I hand it to Rebel Brewer, they were still fresh (it would've been nice if they remembered my SuperMoss so the beer would be more clear). It didn't help that Derek from myLHBS crapped on the idea of mail order fresh hops after I'd placed my order, but I guess he can suck it.
Nevertheless, this should be the last time I order wet hops from Rebel Brewer. With any luck, my own hops will be producing next year. If so, I can either look forward to a wet hop IPA with a combination of the Centennial, Willamette and Cascade hops I planted, or enough hops from each vine to do three single hops batches. Whatever the case, if the beers turn out as well as Digression³ did, then I'll be happy.
Digression³, by the way, is the name of the beer. Dry hopping a wet hop beer seemed like a digression from the concept (dry, wet, get it?). It's also a digression from the line of IPAs I've been working on. And I tend to digress a lot in my writing and conversations. The cubed refers to the three ways Centennial hops were used: bittering, flavor and aroma.
On a minor note, I got the carbonation right. The last couple batches, JDP1 and SR4, the beers were either under carbonated or not carbonated at all. I'd come up with all sorts of reasons why -- too much alcohol, not enough yeast, etc. -- but I started getting worried that I was screwing up something more fundamental, which would be harder to fix. So when I heard the wonderful tsst sound when I popped the cap on Digression³, I was pretty damn happy.
I also like the color. As you can see from the photo, it finished with a soft orange, brown color. That's more or less what I've been going for with the other SR beers. The difference between this beer and the other beers, in terms of malt, is the use of pale malt verses amber malt. Digression³ has no amber malt, while the other SR beers are almost all amber. I like the flavor of the amber malt, so I'll stick with it, but I'll swap out some for pale malt when I get around to making SR6.
For now, I have plenty of beer to drink.

JDP2/FW1: I have a lot of beer

2010-10-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

That's my fermentation room/basement beer closet. At present, it features five cases of beer: two cases of SR5, two cases of FW1 and one case of JDP2. It's fair to say that I'll be good for beer when all this homebrew is ready to drink come November.
On Friday, I bottled the FW1 cafe con leche stout and the JDP2 American scotch ale (which turned out to be more of a scottish ale due to the 6.4% A.B.V.). Now they'll need a few weeks in the bottle before they're ready. I'm hoping for a lot from the bottle conditioning.

I took this photo with my iPhone because my digital camera was on the fritz. Later, I went online to see if I could fix it. Most of the advice was to slap the lens. Sure enough, one good whack later and the camera was back in business.

The stout still had a sour taste, but I asked around about it and that might not mean anything. Evidently, many stouts, including Guinness, have a sour flavor (in fact, I picked up a four-pack of Guinness' new Foreign Extra Stout and sure enough there was a sour component). Still, I want the flavor tamed a bit. The additional dry malt I added for bottle fermentation and a few more weeks of aging may help.
The other issue I had with the stout was poor attenuation. After nearly two weeks of fermentation, the stout went from an original gravity of 1.072 to a final gravity of 1.042. That's only 40% apparent attenuation. I was expecting around 70%. I don't mind that the A.B.V. is 4%, but I am disappointed in how poorly the yeast performed. I do wonder whether I should have let the stout ferment even longer, and what effect the lactose had, but all that is moot now that the beer is in the bottle.
On the bright side, I did get a distinct coffee/espresso flavor from the beer. So I'm hopeful that the beer will be drinkable next month.

In terms of flavor, JDP2 came out better. It's certainly not nearly as malty as JDP1, but I think I went to far the other direction. The beer was almost too dry, and I missed the brown sugar. In fact, you can see from the light color of the beer that it's not quite right. A scotch ale should be a dark amber. This is much more of a Scottish ale in color and alcohol content.
The reduced malt did allow the flavor of the rye to come through, so that's working well, but I'm didn't get much of the smoked malt. That may change after the beer finishes bottle conditioning. For the next batch, I think I add the brown sugar back in and maybe another pound or so of pale malt. I'm getting close, but I'm not quite there.

SR5/JDP2/FW1: Three beers and one long day

2010-10-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a long day. It was a good day. A lot of beer was made and bottled on Saturday, but it was a long day.
Initially, I planned to bottle SR5 on Saturday. Just a quiet few hours sipping beer and bottling my wet hop IPA. No muss, no fuss.

Then I found out my buddy Andy got a homebrew kit, so I decided to go ahead with the next version of the JD Project and show him how to brew a batch of beer. I needed to do this anyway if I'm going to have the recipe worked out by the time the bourbon barrel is ready. Not a big deal though. Because I'm still tinkering with the American Scotch Ale recipe, I only make 2.5 gallon half batches.
A small batch of beer and then some bottling; eh, it'll be busy, but easy.

Then I got an email from my buddy Mike Roy. Turns out he's having trouble firing his kettle at the brewpub and is giving away wort before he has to dump it out. Well shit, I'm not going to turn down free wort. It's the most expensive part of the brewing process. Besides, it's for a stout, a style I enjoy, but haven't made yet. So last Thursday, Savannah and I headed over to Franklin's with my carboy. The catch was I needed to get it reboiled and fermenting as soon as possible. That meant adding it to Saturday's to-do list.
So what was to be an easy bottling day turned into a double brew day and bottling. Good thing I had an extra pair of hands. Andy was also good enough to shoot all the photos for this post. His camera is exponentially better then mine.

Let's start with JDP2. I cut 2.5 pounds of extract from the recipe, as well as the brown sugar. I kept the secret ingredient (rye), the crystal malt and added smoked malt. The subtraction of the extract made a huge difference in the O.G. JDP1 started out with a monster O.G. of 1.130, while JDP2 came in at a more manageable 1.066. Frankly, I think that might be a bit too low, so the brown sugar might return in the next batch. I'm also very curious about the smoked malt. I was concerned that it would dominate the flavor, but when I tasted the wort, I could barely detect it. As the beer ferments and the sugars are processed, the smoke flavor might come through a bit better. Otherwise, I'll increase the amount next time.
Speaking of JDP1, I entered it into a homebrew contest a few weeks ago. The contest was part of the inaugural D.C. State Fair. The whole thing felt a bit thrown together (I had to leave the competition to run and get the judges some cups to use), and I knew JDP1 was far from being perfect. Still, it was an opportunity to have a few unbiased opinions. The good news was, the judges picked up that it was a scotch ale. The bad news, they thought it was too boozy and sweet, both of which I knew. Next year, I'll be better prepared for the contest. Hopefully, the organizers will be, too.

In addition to JDP2, Andy and I worked on the wort Mike gave me (FW1: Free Wort 1). Because it was free, I screwed around a little with it. Rather than finish making a stout, which I would have done if I were starting from scratch, I decided to do an espresso milk stout, a cafe con leche stout, if you will. I also decided to punch up the alcohol percentage a bit. The wort was at 1.050 when Mike gave it to me. By the time I was done, the O.G. was up to 1.072. This was a result of adding an extra half pound of pale dry extract and reducing about a gallon of the wort by half to concentrate the flavors. I also added a quart of espresso and half a pound of lactose. All of this was on top of Mike's original grain bill of maris otter, crystal 120, roasted barley, chocolate malt, black patent and carafa III.
Generally, I feel pretty good about all of this. However, the wort had a slightly sour flavor when I was done with it. Now, I don't know if this was a result of the espresso or the lactose, neither of which I've worked with before, or reducing the wort as much as I did. As long as it's not an infection and gone by the time I bottle, I'll be happy. Still, I'm worried that the two days the wort had to sit before I could boil it again might have damaged it. We'll see.
Finally, there was the bottling of SR5, the dry hopped, wet hop, single hop IPA. That beer smelled fantastic. The color was a beautiful light orange and should be great by the time I crack into it on Halloween. I am starting to rethink the use of whole hops for dry hopping. It's a pain in the ass to scoop out the hops before bottling and I'm always concerned that I'm adding extra particulate to the beer. For my next IPA, SR6, I think I'll try using pellets and a hop bag.

Now it's back to waiting. I'll bottle JDP2 and FW1 next weekend and open them up in early November, a week or so after SR5. Hopefully, juggling so many projects in a single day didn't result in me screwing up all three of them.

SR5: Single Hop, Wet Hop

2010-09-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Well, several months after planting hop rhizomes in my backyard, I've just finished my first batch of wet hop IPA using a full pound of fresh Centennial hops.
Now if only I can get my own hop plants to produce some cones I'll be in business.
I bought the fresh hops online from Rebel Brewer. They had a nice selection and decent prices. However, they left my can of Super Moss out of my order, but they promised to fix the problem on Monday. Despite that, it was nice to come home to find all of my brewing ingredients waiting for me on the porch.

Ideally, I would've waited until this morning to brew, but with fresh hops, time is everything. They deteriorate quickly, so you have to use them as soon as possible. So despite having moved my buddy Tim in the morning and then spending four hours in a bar watching South Florida give a game away to Florida, I had to come home and brew beer. Not the worst thing, it just made for a long day.

Practically speaking, brewing with fresh hops isn't any different than brewing with pellets or dried hops. The only thing is, you can't dry hop beer using fresh hops. Because the fresh hops are straight from the field they're covered in bacteria. A few minutes in boiling wort and your bacteria problems go away, but that means fresh hops should only be used for flavor (If you grow your own hops and have a whack of them, you could use them for bittering, too. But if you're paying $15 a pound, make the most of the fresh hops and use them for flavor.).
To accentuate the Centennial hops, which have many of the same citrus flavors Cascade hops have, I used them throughout the beer. I used two ounces of Centennial pellets for bittering, a pound of fresh hops for flavor and I have five ounces of dried Centennial hops that I'll dry hop with next week.
For malt, I used eight pounds of pale and one pound of light crystal. Again, this is to help accentuate the flavor of the hops. That said, the sweet crystal malt gave the wort a nice caramel flavor and a beautiful orange color.

Once I got the wort down to 69 degrees, I pitched my London Ale III Yeast from Wyeast. It's a good yeast for hoppy beers and it has high flocculation, which should help clarify the beer (important since the Super Moss didn't show up). My original gravity came out at 1.070.
Looking at the calendar, this batch of beer should be ready to drink by Oct. 31. Happy Halloween, indeed.
As for my own hop plants, the Cascade continues to thrive, but the Willamette and Centennial vines are coming on, and none of the hops have produced cones yet. Clearly, this year is a wash, but that's typical for first-year hop plants.
And on a completely unrelated note, check out my shrimp and grits, and foie gras recipes on CraftBeer.com.

JDP1: Jeremy Clarkson and the Five Gallon Carboy

2010-08-23T15:37:00.000-07:00

The first Scotch ale test batch is in the books. Happily, it's not only drinkable (if boozy), but it tastes and looks like a Scotch ale (more or less). But given the fact that I way over shot my target alcohol range of 7.5-8.5 percent and landed at 13 percent, there is no future for this batch.
That doesn't mean it's going to waste. As with every batch of beer, I learn a little more. With this batch, I know that 7.5 pounds of malt and a half pound of honey and brown sugar is too much for a 2.5 gallon batch. Good to know. I also know now that I need to be more careful in selecting my yeast. Seeing as the beer will settle in the 7 to 10 percent A.B.V. range, I need a yeast that can deal with that much alcohol and that many sugars. And when I do my next wort, I now know not to cover the pot.
(By the way, shouldn't Charlie Papazian have pointed that out in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing? It's pretty fucking important and it took listening to hours of Brew Strong shows before I heard a passing reference to boiling the wort uncovered. It consentrates the wort, which is great, but it prevents you from infecting the beer with the condensation that can collect on the pot lid and drip back in the wort. I think not infecting the beer is a good thing to address in a homebrewing guide. After learning this tidbit of info, I had to spend a couple hours researching how to compensate for the lose of liquid during the uncovered boil. John Palmer covers the whole subject on his Website, How to Brew.)

Now that JDP1 is complete and decent, I've given it a name: Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson is the host of the British car show, Top Gear, and whose philosophy can be boiled down to "more." More horsepower, more torque, more speed, more, more. So I thought it would be fitting to name my high-alcohol malt bomb after him. I've also entered Jeremy Clarkson in the inaugural D.C. State Fair's Homebrew contest. I don't expect to win, but I am looking for feedback. Like I said, I think it tastes like a Scotch ale (more or less), but I want some unbiased feedback.
Speaking of names, I've renamed this blog. Gastronomy is now Five Gallon Carboy. It's to reflect the transition of the blog from cooking to homebrewing. (A carboy is the glass vessel that looks like a water-cooler jug that homebrewers ferment their beer in.)
Finally a hop update. The Cascade hops (right) continue to thrive, nearly reaching the end of the nine-foot line. However, the Willamette hops (center) have come on strong in the last couple weeks, overtaking the Centennial hops (left). Now, the latter two hops have a long way to go before they catch up with the Cascade hops, but it's good to see they're still growing.

This being the first year of growth, I won't get any yield to speak of, but I will be wet hopping a beer in a couple weeks. Some folks from D.C. Homebrewers sent out word that Rebel Brewer was taking orders for fresh hops. To get a feel for making a wet hop beer (meaning that I use fresh hops instead of dry hops or pellets) I ordered a pound of Centennial to make a Centennial IPA. In addition to the fresh hops, which will be used for flavor, I picked up some Centennial pellets for bittering and dried Centennial hops for dry hopping.
It should be interesting. Hopefully, it will be good.

JDP1: Yeah, it's a big beer

2010-07-18T12:26:00.001-07:00

Just bottled the case of JDP1 and as expected, it's a very big beer. The final gravity came out at 1.035, which means I got about 10 points of attenuation resulting in a 13% A.B.V. beer -- nearly three times the alcohol content of the average beer.

Despite all that alcohol (which you could smell and taste), it didn't taste that bad. Even in its raw state, the flavor was much better than I expected. I dumped a whole bunch of malt, honey and brown sugar in the wort, which resulted in the 13% alcohol content, but the beer wasn't particularly sweet and certainly not cloying. The malt flavor was there, but so was a strong bitter note and a bite, which where were due to the hops and the secret ingredient.

The flavor and final gravity also benefitted from the Scottish Ale yeast I used. Clearly, it was a good call to use twice the amount of yeast I needed for a 2.5 gallon batch, because the yeast thinned out the body of the beer fairly well, giving it a bit of a dry characteristic (well, as dry a characteristic as a 13% malt bomb can have). The color was also good, a real nice dark, dark amber.

Getting ready to bottle the beer, I was struck by the amount of trub that settled in the bottom of the carboy. I haven't produced that much gunk in the 5 gallon batches I've made, including the 7% IPA I recently finished. It just shows you how much malt and yeast went into the 2.5 gallon batch of beer.

So now it goes into the closet to bottle ferment for the next seven weeks (or so). I'll probably pop open a bottle toward the end of August to see how it tastes. Based on some recommendations I've gotten from other homebrewers, I may let a few of the bottles age for up to a year or more just to see what happens. If the beer is as good as I think it may be in a month, it will be absolutely fantastic in a year.

Regardless of how good it was, though, the alcohol level was way too high. I'll name this batch when it's ready and try again in a couple weeks. I need to get the recipe worked out by the end of the year, so I was happy to land somewhere in the ballpark of a Scotch ale. It's not perfect, but it ain't bad.

SR4: At least it's hoppier

2010-07-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

So I need to dial back on the amber malt.

One of the main things I wanted to do with SR4 was lighten the color. As you can see, though, it looks exactly like SR3 (SR3 is on the left, SR4 is on the right). In fact, when I asked my wife to pick between them based on color, she thought SR3 was the lighter one.

Well, shit.

I reduced the toast on the crystal malt to try and lighten the color some for SR4, but obviously that wasn't enough. For the next batch, SR5, I'll swap a couple pounds of amber malt for a couple pounds of plain, or light, malt. I'll also go back to the darker toast on the crystal malt. Now that I know it doesn't really effect the color of the beer (at least not much), I'll go with the darker toast because I prefer the flavor.

The dry hopping worked better this time and I like the flavor of the beer a bit better. For this batch, I dry hopped three ounces of whole Cascade hops for two weeks. The result is obvious. Close your eyes and stick your nose in the glass and you can smell the difference between SR3 and SR4. However, it could be better.

Listening to an old Brew Strong show the other day, I learned that I've been dry hopping too early. Rather than adding the hops at the start of primary fermentation, I should be adding them toward the end of primary fermentation. Apparently, I can also be even more aggressive with my hopping. Three ounces for a five gallon batch is about the minimum I should be using. So for SR5, I'll be dry hopping with at least five ounces of whole hops after about 10 days.

So SR4 isn't a bad batch, it's just not as polished as I wanted it to be. Hopefully with SR5, I'll be able to work out the color and dry hop kinks, slap a name on the beer and move on to the next recipe.

JDP1: It's a malt monster

2010-07-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

1.130.

I looked again. After all, it was 5:20 in the morning. There it was, though, 1.130 at 64 degrees. I'd made a malt monster.

To clarify, my original gravity of SR3 was 1.070, which eventually resulted in 6.7 percent alcohol by volume. So an O.G. of 1.130 puts me in double digit A.B.V. territory, when I was shooting for around 8 percent, or an O.G. of 1.075 to 1.085.

This is my first crack at making a Scotch ale, so I knew I wouldn't get everything exactly right. However, I didn't expect to produce a barleywine. The problem is, I added way too much malt, and the more malt you have the higher the gravity. So for JDP 2, I'll probably cut about two pounds of malt and see where the I end up. Hopefully at a more reasonable gravity.

As for this batch, because I'm still in the testing phase, I only made two and a half gallons, but used a full package of yeast. Given how much malt and sugars are in that carboy, those yeast have plenty to eat. And with some luck, all that yeast will help the beer attenuate down to something a bit drier and drinkable. We'll see.

Man, can you imagine the alcohol bomb this beer would be if I aged a 10 or 11 percent beer in my bourbon barrel? The guys at Brewdog might recruit me.

So that's might first obvious problem. There were some bright spots, though. The wort tasted pretty good. Understandably malty, of course, but not cloyingly sweet, and the bitterness of the hops and bite of the secret ingredient came though (a small miracle, really).

Also, the color is spot on. The dark caramel amber is exactly what I wanted. It's a result of the very dark toast on the crystal malt and probably the honey. Yeah, and the use of honey and light brown sugar seemed to go well. I expected those flavors to be too sweet in the wort, but they didn't dominate the flavor at all. And because they're fully fermentable sugars, the yeast will make short and compete work of them.

As for the yeast, I used a Scottish Ale yeast from Wyeast that came in this crazy pouch. There was a small yeast packet suspended in a solution within the pouch that I had to pop the day before. A few hours before pitching, I pulled the yeast out of the fridge, shook it and the pouch swelled until it looked like a brand new Capri Sun. Pretty cool. Bob at the homebrew store said the yeast were hearty and would attenuate well in the beer (yes, attenuation is the word of the day). I hope he's right. There's a lot of sugars to process.

Bob and the homebrew store are in Frederick. I had to run by the Flying Dog brewery on Friday to pick up some T-shirts, so I decided to hit the Flying Barrel and save myself a trip to Columbia or Falls Church (lot of flying shit in Frederick, no?). It's a nice little shop a couple blocks off Market Street, the main drag through the historic district. And when I say little shop, I mean little shop. I was standing across the street and it still took me a minute to spot the place. That said, it's probably a little bigger than myLocal-Home-Brew-Shop in Falls Church, but it just disappears in the warehouse building it's located in. Nevertheless, Bob had everything I needed, so no complaints.

JDP: Bourbon in the barrel

2010-06-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

Start the clock.

Ten liters of Early Times Kentucky bourbon are in the barrel. That whiskey won't see the light of day for the next seven months, which is a long time to wait for a drink.

Although I'm aging the Early Times in order to make a bourbon-barrel aged American Scotch ale, I'm very curious to see how the whiskey will turn out. Early Times is good as is, so seven additional months of aging should (hopefully) do good things.

It is interesting what you learn when you have your own whiskey barrel. For one, you can't fully appreciate how much of bourbon's aroma comes from the wood it's aged in until you're sniffing an empty barrel and smelling whisky. When I was prepping the barrel by filling it with hot water to swell the wood and check for leaks, the kitchen was filled with the scent of bourbon. Of course, it was filled with the scent of wet white oak, but the scent of white oak is clearly the scent of American whisky.

Also, a 10 liter barrel doesn't look that big until you set it next to the six 1.75 liter bottles you need to fill it. There's a lot of bourbon in a 1.75 liter bottle, so there's an awful lot of bourbon in a barrel that consumes five and a half of those bottles.

I don't know if it was serendipity or JD doing some work from above, but while I was out buying the bourbon, I came across a few bottles of AleSmith Wee Heavy Scotch Ale. AleSmith is a San Diego craft brewery that I've been itching to try for some time. Boston is the only place they distribute to on the East Coast, so I've been trying to talk my friend Xiaoyi into bringing me a bottle back from her trip to San Francisco. Needless to say, I was stunned to find a few bottles at my favorite D.C. liquor store. Add to that the fact that one of the bottles they had was a wee heavy -- the style of beer I'm making for the JD Project -- and you have some fantastically odd coincidences going on.

The AleSmith Wee Heavy, by the way, didn't disappoint. It's a 10 percent malt bomb, but smooth to the point of being creamy. It's a very well made beer and a good target to shoot for with my own recipe.

Next weekend I'm heading up to Frederick, Md., for some business at the Flying Dog Brewery. Afterward, I'll be picking up the ingredients for my first batch of Scotch ale and brewing during the Independence Day weekend. That means my first batch will be ready to drink in August, an odd month for malty Scotch ales. Somehow, though, I think I'll be able to choke a few down.

SR4: Bottles of bitter

2010-06-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

SR4, my tweaked version of SR3, is in the bottle. I think I'm in good shape, but I'm not certain.

After bottling and taking the final gravity measurement for SR3, I tasted the fermented wort (I'm sure there's a name for beer in this state, and it might just be beer.), and it tasted surprisingly good. That's not to say it tasted good the same way a finished beer tastes, but for a concoction that was still four weeks for being ready, it was kind of sweet and slightly bitter. Two dimensional, but it gave me enough to get me excited. Sure enough, the finished product was good.

Of course, I decided to mess with the recipe. Hoping to increase the hops flavors and aroma, I added more Simcoe and dry hopped with a lot more Cascade, but I didn't change the amount of bittering hops. And aside from going with a lighter toast on the crystal malt, I didn't change the malt bill. So when I tasted the fermented wort after taking the F.G. on SR4 (1.018 = 7.1 A.B.V.), I was surprised by how bitter it was. Not undrinkably bitter, just more bitter than SR3's fermented wort. I'm sure it's just a result of the additional Simcoe and that the beer will be fine. It actually reminded me of flavor I got from SR2, the first IPA I made, which is a good sign (the beer was pretty good). And considering the additional malt extract I added for bottle fermentation, the beer should round out nicely.

The lighter crystal malt I used this time did give me the color I was looking for. SR3 was a bit too amber, but SR4 looks like it's going to be a nice burnt orange.

I can't say that dry hopping with three times as much Cascade hops made my kitchen three times as hop stinky (still a good name) during bottling, but if I get a nice big hop aroma in the finished beer, it'll be worth it. If not, I'll dial it back to an ounce per batch.

Because of all those hops, I racked (transferred) the beer from the fermentor to the carboy a day before bottling so I could remove all the hops and let everything settle. I think that resulted in losing some of the beer. Although I always start with a five gallon batch, I seem to end up with various amounts. With SR3, I had several ounces left over after bottling 48 beers. With SR1, Sr2 and SR4, I didn't quite get two cases (47 beers with SR4). Odd, but I'll sacrifice some beer to avoid getting too much hops residue and dead yeast in my beer.

And finally, a hop update. My Cascade hops are kicking ass, having climbed up half the guide wire, while my Willamette are doing OK, and the lone Centennial hop plant in the middle is taking its sweet ass time. I'm not expecting much out of any of them this year, so the slow growth rates for the Centennial and Willamette hops isn't a big deal. It is curious, though. They were all planted in the same rich soil, and all get the same amount of light and water. But the Cascade is clearly the alpha hop. (Get it? Yeah, I'm a dork.)

The JD Project

2010-06-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

I had an idea.
A couple weeks ago, I came across Copper Fox Distillery's Website. In addition to making and selling Wasmund's whiskey, the Sperryville, Va., distillery produces whiskey barrels for enthusists who want to age their own bourbon at home. I wasn't all that interested in aging my own bourbon, but the bourbon barrel gave me an idea.
JD Hembree, my step-father, passed away last year. After fighting in the Pacific and Korea as a Marine Corps pilot, JD came home, raised a family and went into the building business. Well, that's not quite right. JD was an entrepreneur who spent most of his years in the building and land development business. He and my mother met, both divorcees, and at an age when most people begin looking at retirement, JD helped my mother raise me. Maj. JD Hembree, USMC (Ret.), was a tough man, a complicated man, but a good man.
To know JD was to know the man loved Early Times bourbon. Born and raised in North Alabama, his service in the military and his various business ventures took him around the world. Yet, his tastes never strayed from that simple Kentucy whiskey he grew up drinking. When he passed away last year, his son Stephen sent a note to the folks at the Brown-Forman Distillery to let them know their sales would be down from then on out.
So when I discovered that Copper Fox sold newly charred white oak barrels in sizes ranging from 2 liters to 194 liters, I decided to produce a tribute beer: a bourbon-barrel-aged American Scotch Ale.

I'm calling it the JD Project.

Fittingly, the 10 liter barrel I got for the project was my first Father's Day gift from Trish and Savannah. I plan to fill it with Early Times and let it age for seven months. During that time, I'll work on crafting an American Scotch Ale, a nod to the Hembree clan's roots.

When the beer is ready and the bourbon aged, I'll replace the whiskey with ale for a month or so (still figuring that out). With any luck, I'll have a finished product by next March.

We can never repay our parents for what they do for us, but we can take time to remember them when they're gone.

SR4: Dialing it in (hopefully)

2010-05-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

The new batch is started and hopefully it will be a lot like the old batch.

SR3, my unnamed original IPA, turned out really well. But there were a few things that I wanted to tweak: the hop flavor, the aroma and color. It was nearly there, but just not quite.

That said, I took SR3 to my first DC Homebrewers meeting last week and it went over well. I've been interested in joining the group for a while, but because I decided to start homebrewing as soon as the baby came along, I haven't had any extra time for it. It worked out, though, because I was able to bring my own recipe to the first meeting and compare it to what the other homebrewers produced. It stood up.

There were a variety of styles at the meeting, from double IPAs, to kolsch beers, to ESBs and Scottish ales (really, not a stinker in the bunch), but I was surprised to find that I was the only person to bring an IPA, easily the most popular style in the craft beer community. I was also surprised to run into Mike Roy, the brewer from Franklin's, and Tammy Tuck, a beer writer for the City Paper, both of whom were at my house for a beer tasting three days earlier. Small world.

If all goes well, SR4 will be a little better than its predecessor. Admittedly, I could've decided SR3 was good enough -- it does have a real nice hop flavor, a good aroma, the proper amount of bitterness and the alcohol content I was going for -- but I picked up some advice on Beer School: in order to make a beer right, you have to make it over and over again.

What a lot of homebrewers do is make a beer, decide it's good or bad and then move on to something else. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with that. It is all for fun, after all. On the other hand, if you want to create a special beer, or at least get a beer just right, you have to work at it. And that means tinkering with the recipe over the course of a few batches. I think I might have this IPA dialed in with this batch, but I won't know for sure for another six weeks.

So for this recipe, I added another ounce of Simcoe hops at the end of the boil, used a crystal malt with a lighter toast and dumped in another two ounces of whole Cascade hops for dry hopping. I'll also leave the whole hops in for the full two week fermentation, rather than pull them out after a week. I thought dry hopping with an ounce of whole hops was a lot last time, but it was a damn hop salad in that bucket tonight. This should be one hop stinky beer.

You know, that's not a bad name.

SR3: I'm going to need more hops

2010-05-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

SR3 is done. On the one hand, it's good, very drinkable. On the other hand, it's not where I want it to be.

First and foremost, it's not hoppy enough, especially on the nose, but also in terms of the flavor. The big hop aroma I got when I transferred the beer from the fermentor to the carboy after a week of dry hopping is gone, or at least greatly diminished. So for SR4, I'll be dry hopping with at least twice as many whole hops (two ounces) for twice as long (two weeks).

I was conservative with this batch because a) it was my own recipe and I didn't know what I was doing, and 2) I wanted to make sure I could drink the beer. Part of that meant I didn't want to keep the whole hops in the beer for longer than a week and risk having them rot, screwing up the beer. As it turns out, the hops were fine when I sparged the beer and could have gone another week or more.

I also think I'll add more flavor/aroma hops. I split up my simcoe hops to help with the bitterness. The bitterness seems about right, but I want more hop flavor and aroma. I need to step up the simcoe next time and I may add another hop varietal to further punch up the flavor.

As you can see, I hit the color I was going after (SR3 in the Big Boss pint, SR2 in the Dogfish Head pint). I liked the darker color of SR2 (a slight variation of Charlie Papazian's Palilalia IPA recipe) so I used amber malt and toasted crystal malt for SR3, too. I may eventually change this, but until I have the flavor dialed in I'll keep the malt as is. The flavor is good and I got the alcohol percentage I wanted (6.7% A.B.V.), so changing it is a matter of aesthetics.

So for a first batch of original homebrew, I would give myself a C+. It's a good beer, a drinkable beer, but there is still much work to be done.

HOP UPDATE!! HOP UPDATE!!

My hop rhizomes finally sprouted! I was almost certain that I'd either killed them or planted them upside down. I didn't (well, I might have planted them upside down, but nature finds a way) and they're looking good. All five hops broke ground and should be big enough to grab the guide rope in a few weeks. I don't know how much yield I'll get this year, but I'll be happy with whatever I can harvest and wet hop this fall.

SR3: Dry hopping rocks!

2010-04-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

My daughter slept though the night for the first time last night. Unfortunately, the night ended at 5:30 this morning.

So I was up bright and early to start bottling SR3. As I mentioned before, this is the first batch I dry hopped. It was completely worth the trouble. Even with the coffee pot going, my kitchen was enveloped in hop aroma. And if the aroma is any indication of the quality of this batch, I'm on to something.

For a raw beer, the flavor was pretty good, too. The ounce of Warrior hops and half ounce of Simcoe seems to have added enough bitterness to balance out the 10 pounds of malt. Beer in this state always tastes flat and weird, but this is the first batch I've sampled and kind of liked. I wouldn't order this in a bar, but it wasn't terrible by any means. That also means I didn't infect the beer when I transferred it from the fermentor to the carboy. As long as my bottles were sterile, I should be good.

Speaking of the malt, it occurred to me this morning that I might not have an IPA at all. Rather, I think I made a hoppy ale. You can see in the photos, the beer came out a nice dark orange, but it did so with an amber malt base that included toasted crystal malt. Technically, an IPA should include pale malt. I may be splitting hairs here, but that's what I do.

I also got the A.B.V. I was shooting for. According to my favorite new iPhone app, BrewMath, my projected alcohol content is 6.7 percent (F.G.: 1.020). I tell ya, that's the best $3 I've spent in a long time. I hate doing math, especially when I don't completely trust the outcome. And as influential and successful a brewer as Charlie Papazian is, his A.B.V. equation never seemed to work out quite right, even to the guy at the homebrew supply store. Well, it doesn't matter now, I have technology on my side. So screw you math, I didn't need you in college and I don't need you now!

As I did with my last batch, I'm giving SR3 four weeks to ferment in the bottle. Regardless of how it tastes, dry hopping will be a regular feature of my brewing process.

I was planning on giving a status update on my hops by now. Unfortunately, they haven't surfaced yet. Folks on the Homebrewing Facebook page say that it's not unusual for rhizomes to take a few weeks to come up. I hope that's the case, otherwise it'll confirm my suspicion that I planted all five rhizomes upside down.

SR3: It's gonna be a bigger beer

2010-04-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

SR3 is in the fermentor. There are a lot of firsts with this batch: first time I'm using live yeast (California Ale Yeast, which are good for hoppy beers), first time I did multi-stage hopping, first time I'm dry hopping, first time I'm clarifying, and the first time I'm using my own recipe.

I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I know that it will have a higher alcohol content.

As I've gone on before about Charlie Papazian's apparent penchant for lower alcohol beers (which have tasted quite good, I should add), one of the things I wanted to try was pushing the gravity of my own batch higher. Oh, it's higher.

The original gravity for Papazian's Palilalia IPA (SR2: Cabin Fever IPA) was 1.032. The O.G. for my IPA was 1.070. To put it simply, that is a huge difference.

I used the framework of Palilalia IPA for SR3, which is to say I followed the same boil time as Papazian's recipe, and added the same amount of gypsum and toasted crystal malt to the wort. Otherwise, I ventured out on my own, using an additional two pounds of dried malt extract and a few more ounces of hops I hope will play well together.

For bittering, I picked up an ounce of Warrior, a particularly bitter hop. Given the additional malt, I figured I would need to bump up the bitter to balance out the flavors. I also picked up a couple ounces of Simcoe hops, half an ounce of which were used for bittering. The rest went in at the end of the boil for flavor and aroma.

Because I couldn't just leave things at that, I added an ounce of whole Cascade hops to the fermentor. They'll dry hop in there for a week before I transfer the beer from the bucket fermentor to the carboy. The transfer should also clarify the beer a bit, which will be nice for the aesthetics.

I had an issue with the wort temperature again.

As with SR1, the wort was too hot. Even after adding three gallons of cold water, the temperature was hovering around 1oo degrees. Now that the weather is warmer, there was no way I was going to get the temperature to drop 30 degrees simply by setting it outside. Fortunately, my mother in law of all people had a great idea: setting the fermentor in the wash sink in my laundry room. I then filled the sink halfway with ice water. It took all night to bring the temperature down, but the fermentor was sealed, so the length of time didn't matter.

Now it's a waiting game. I plan to give the beer two weeks to ferment and four weeks to finish in the bottle. That works out to May 16 before it's ready to drink. Here's hoping the waiting will be worth it.

The rhizomes are in! The rhizomes are in!

2010-04-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

My mother will fall out of her chair if she ever reads the following statement:

I was stoked to do some gardening the other day.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that I owe my education and station in life to my absolute disdain for landscaping. Growing up, my folks got into the landscaping and irrigation business. That meant that for much of my teenage years I was on the working end of a shovel. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. There are few shittier jobs that weeding greenhouses, digging irrigation trenches and fitting PVC pipe in the Florida sun. In fact, the only job I can think that's worse is raising tilapia in makeshift backyard ponds. I did that, too. I hated that, too.

So the irony wasn't lost on me when I was picking up my hop rhizomes the other day from Maryland Homebrew and working out locations to plant them with the missus. Maybe if those damn plants of my youth were hops and the irrigation lines were full of beer I would've stayed in the business.

No, probably not.

Anyway, I bought five rhizomes: two Willamette, two Cascade and one Centennial. Since then, I've done a bit more research on growing hops -- including listening to an excellent Brewing Network show on the subject -- and realized I should've had at least two rhizomes of each hop in case one of the rhizomes doesn't take. Oh well, I'll keep my fingers crossed that I got a robust Centennial plant. Because hops are vines, I needed a place for them to climb. While I could have done something as simple as hang some twine from the roof, I decided to plant a post along my fence line and run some lines for the hops to climb.

All three varieties are primarily flavor and aroma hops. While I'm willing to grow my own hops, I didn't see the need to screw about with bittering hops, like Columbus, when hop pellets work just fine. With the three hop varieties I bought, I'm hoping to have enough cones this fall to wet hop a few batches of beer. We'll see.

I also picked up the ingredients for my next batch of homebrew. I've decided to do another IPA, but with an ABV in the 6 to 7 percent range. Rather than following Charlie Papazian's recipes, which seem to produce 3 to 4 percent beer, I'm going to use the recipe for his Palilalia IPA as a framework for my own IPA. Lucky for me, the folks at Maryland Homebrew are patient and knowledgeable people who looked over my recipe and stopped me from making an undrinkable toxic wash: apparently four ounces of Warrior hops is WAY too much for five gallons. We dialed it back to one ounce of Warrior and I'm going to use some of the Simcoe I picked up to help with the bittering and flavor. I was also buying too much amber and crystal malt.

So what did I learn: 1. You can't just double the amount of ingredients from one batch to another; 2. hops have different amounts of alpha acids, so they can't necessarily be treated the same; and 3. when in doubt, check with the guy at the homebrew store.

I'll provide more details when I get to brewing (hopefully this weekend). But I've had some success with my first two batches, so we'll see how I do once the training wheels are off.

SR2: Cabin Fever IPA

2010-03-10T17:18:00.000-08:00

You know it's going to be a good day when your phone reminds you to drink beer.

I got just that reminder this afternoon. It's not that I need to be reminded; rather, it was my reminder that SR2 was ready for consumption. And let me tell you, SR2, a.k.a. Cabin Fever IPA, clearly the best thing to come out of D.C.'s super shitty winter storms.

The beer pours a malty dark amber with a thick head. It's nice and hoppy on the nose, and bitter and a little bitey in the mouth. The finish could be better. I find it does linger much, but I could also describe that as "clean." When I compare it to SR1, Honkey's Pale Ale (below on the right), it's clearly a darker, yeastier beer, thanks in no small part to the toasted malt and lack of filtration (why bother filtering when the yeast bring their own flavor to the party). And the extra hops in Cabin Fever have resolved the cereal flavor issue I had with Honkey's.

All in all, not bad for a low alcohol IPA.

As I mentioned in my last post, the A.B.V. is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 percent (which really is a surprise considering how well the malt level balances out the hops). I know I said I was going to make a bitter next, but I think I'm going to take a shot at another IPA. This time, I'll use Papazian's IPA recipe as a general template, but basically double the malt a double or triple the hops.

I don't know whether that will work -- or be drinkable -- but it should result in a beer closer to the traditional A.B.V. of IPAs. If 6 pounds of malt produces a 3 percent beer, 12 to 13 pounds of malt should produce at least a 6 percent beer, right? Besides, I've looked at other brewers recipes and all of them call for at least that much malt. Hell, for things like Scotch ales, some recipes call for 24 to 28 pounds of malt in a 5 gallon batch.

So I think it's time to take off the training wheels and give a go at my own recipe. At best, it'll be a full-powered IPA. At worst, it'll taste like the stuff I brewed at Shenandoah.

One more thing; I talked to the folks at Maryland Homebrew. My hop rhizomes should be in by the end of the month. With any luck, I'll have fresh hop buds by this fall.

SR2: Blizzard bottling

2010-02-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

After a while, the novelty of being snowed in wears off. Well, it's worn off. Fortunately, I had beer to bottle.

I was planning on bottling this latest batch on Friday. That would have given it 13 days to ferment, and it's my day off. But seeing as Tuesday was the second of three (and counting) consecutive snow days, I decided the bottling could commence. Besides, there were no longer signs of fermentation in the carboy, so the beer with ready to go.

As was the case with the wort, things went very smoothly. I sanitized and dried the bottles well ahead of time, and when I was ready to do the bottling, I pulled out and sanitized only the equipment I needed. What took me several hours the first time, required only a couple hours this time.

Like the first batch, I didn't quite get two cases of beer. For this batch, I produced 46 and a half bottles. That half bottle though, is filled with the bucket dregs of leftover yeast, malt and hops. I'm curious to see how it tastes, but I'm not expecting much. I'd like to get a full 48 bottles, but I'm afraid of siphoning up any of the gunk and the bottom of the carboy, so I end up leaving about an inch of decent looking beer behind. The sacrifices we make.

The rest of the batch looks great. The Cabin Fever IPA, named for all the damn snow piled against my front door, turned out a beautiful, soft orange color (basically, it's Charlie Papazian's Palilalia IPA recipe with more malt and hops). The color will mellow some over the next four weeks during the bottle fermentation, but it should remain a nice looking beer.

Although I'm pleased with how this batch is turning out, there have been a couple issues. Once again, the alcohol percentage seems very low. And this time, I was able to get accurate original (1.032) and final (1.014) gravity readings. But if I'm following Charlie Papazian's equation correctly, the IPA is about 2.3% ABV. That's very low for this style of beer (which should be around 6% ABV), so I'm suspicious. That said, I was researching other styles, and recipes for Scottish ales and double IPAs call for twice as much malt, or more, than what I've been using. So maybe I'm just not using enough malt. I put the question out to a homebrewing group, and will continue to research this.

The other snafu I had was during bottling last night: I dumped a good few ounces of beer on the floor. The siphon isn't the easiest tool to use. It's necessary to get the beer flowing from the carboy to the bottling bucket, but it's tricky. As I was screwing around drawing beer out of the carboy, I didn't notice that the other end of the hose popped out of the bucket and was dangling over my foot. Well, I didn't notice until my foot started getting wet.

Other than that, everything seemed to go well. As with so many things, practice and repetition help tremendously. So now it's a matter of waiting another four weeks (March 10) to see if the beer is as smooth as the process.

SR2: The second batch begins

2010-01-31T11:29:00.000-08:00

(It's yeast.)

My second batch of beer is burbling away in the carboy. Taking into account what I learned from SR1, I moved right through the wort and transfer to the fermenter last night. Everything went very smoothly, so I'm nervous. Last time, I knew I was kind of screwing things up. This time, I don't think I did, which means I might have overlooked something. I guess I'll know in a month.That's one of the first things about this batch that's different from the SR1 pale ale; SR2 is an India pale ale, which requires a longer bottle fermentation. That means the beer won't be drinkable until March 12. That's a long time to keep my fingers crossed.

Anyway, things that worked really well this time included keeping all the water in the refrigerator until I needed it and having all the equipment I needed (you can make a batch of beer with the stuff from the kits, but extras like funnels, screens and hydrometer tubes are a huge help). Refrigerating the water easily saved me four hours (based on the amount of time I wasted trying to cool SR1). After sparging the boiled wort with the cold, filtered water, the wort was a perfect 68-70 degrees. No muss, no fuss. I was also more familiar with what I needed to produce the wort and get it into the carboy. So I didn't bother sanitizing every piece of brewing equipment I own, just the equipment I needed last night. In fact, I only used a few pieces (two pots, a hose, funnel, filter screen, paddle, hydrometer and thermometer). And thanks to the hydrometer tube, I was able to get a correct reading on the original gravity (1.032), which will help me determine the final alcohol content of the beer. The filter and screen, which I bought on line from Maryland HomeBrew, shaved a bunch of time off the process last night because I wasn't trying to use the small cooking strainers and one-cup funnels to sparge and transfer five gallons of wort.

For this IPA, I sort of followed Charlie Papazian's recipe for "Palilalia India Pale Ale." Sort of. When I was picking up my ingredients from m yLHBS, I had to buy two three-pound bags of malt extract, rather than just the 5.5 pounds the recipe called for. When I asked the guy how I could measure out 2.5 pounds from the 3 pound bag without a scale, he told me to just use the whole bag. I did. I also tossed in a half ounce of Cascade and half ounce of Glacier Leaf whole hops I had left over from the beer class I taught a while back. Aside from all that, though, I followed Papazian's recipe to the letter.

Last weekend, I had a few friends over to taste SR1. The reaction was excellent. With any luck, the IPA will go over just as well. However, one thing that bothers me about SR1 is the relative lack of carbonation. It's carbonated, but there's no head. I'm not sure if that's just the beer or something else. I suspect that it might be due to loosing some yeast in all the overflow I experienced when I left the cap on the bubbler. Now that I know to remove the cap, I'm curious to see if I experience an overflow problem again and if the carbonation will be better in the final product.

On a side note, I just joined the mailing list for the D C Homebrewers Club. Mike Dolan, one of the club organizers, was working the register at myLHBS when I stopped by on Friday and talked to me a bit about the club. I suspect that this might be the same Mike Dolan who writes for DC Beer, but I didn't get his last name until I got home and looked at the card he gave me. Interesting if it is him. Apparently, the club members meet once a month to do tastings of each other's beers and talk about homebrewing. I'm not sure how many of these gatherings I'll be able to make to in the near future, but we'll see.

I'll check in on SR2 in about two weeks. Hopefully by then it'll be ready to bottle. Oh, and I'm a

lready thinking of my next batch: a bitter.

SR1: It doesn't suck!

2010-01-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

It doesn't suck. That was my single biggest worry about this first batch of beer. Given all the sanitizing (and dire warnings about what would happen if I didn't keep everything absolutely sterile), screwing up the recipe by adding too much hops (I guess I did end up making Honkey's Pale Ale), and my prior experience with my batch of beer from Shenandoah, I was certain I had a solid 50/50 chance of pouring out this batch of beer.

As it turns out, the beer wasn't too bad. In fact, it's pretty good. Sure, I've had better pale ales and the malt flavor is a little too prominent (resulting in a faint cereal flavor), but overall the beer goes down easy, so I'm happy with the result.

I'm also ready to take what I've learned and move on to the next batch. But let me close the book on SR1 first.

When I finished the wort and transferred it to the carboy for fermentation, the dark color of the beer threw me off. Because I was making a pale ale, I was expecting a golden color to the wort, not the dark brown that it was. As you can see from the photo, the color lightened up nicely. Still, I did burn the malt extract a bit, so I need to watch that next time.

Another thing, I have no idea what the alcohol percentage is for the beer. Given it's final gravity, 1.022, and based on Papzain's equation for calculating ABV, I figured the beer was around 3 percent. This didn't seem right, so I did a little research and discovered that it maybe around 5 percent ABV, but I have no way of knowing. I can't trust my initial hydrometer reading because of the stupid rig I had to put together in order to take it. And then I took the final reading after I added the finishing malt, which is a no no (thanks for not pointing that out, Charlie). So the ABV on this batch will go in the books with a big question mark.

I shouldn't have that problem with the next batch thanks to the hydrometer test jar I bought from Maryland Homebrew, and the tips I've since picked up.

Speaking of Maryland Homebrew, I also just ordered five hops rhizomes from them. This spring I'll be planting Cascade, Willamette and Centennial hops in the backyard. These aromatic hops are supposed to grow well in all climates, so we'll see how they do. The best case scenario is a couple big batches of wet hop ale next fall. The worst case is five more plants die by my hand.

Alright, that's it, I gotta go drink my beer.

SR1: Bottled and capped

2010-01-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

I've decided that brewing isn't all that hard, but sanitizing everything sure is a pain in the ass.

I got started on bottling this morning around 8 a.m. By the time I cleaned up the last bit of brewing equipment it was just after 3 p.m. That's nearly a full-day's work, and only about an hour or so of that involved moving the beer from the carboy to the bucket and finally to the bottles. I know there are areas that I can save time on, like getting the bottles cleaned and dried ahead of time, but the rest of the process takes the time that it takes.

Before I finish discussing my nearly complete first batch, let me back up. Earlier I mentioned the overflow I was experiencing out of the bubbler. Well, I now know why it was happening: I kept the damn top on the bubbler. Now, this isn't as dumb as it sounds. The goddamn cap is perforated, therefore I assumed you left it on and the excess carbon dioxide would exp

el through the little holes. Nope, the foam and yeast kept getting backed up until it belched out all over my closet. Once I took the cap off the bubbler, my problem was solved. So if the cap isn't supposed to stay on the bubbler, why is it perforated? Unless it was done to befuddle and irritate novice brewers, I can see no reason for the little holes. None.

The other thing I was wondering about was the color of the beer. Early on it was looking darker than a pale ale should, and I was assuming it was a result of some caramelization that occurred when I added the malt to the wort. Well, it turns out there was nothing to worry about. The beer came out a beautiful golden yellow, just as it should.

However, the beer seems to be a bit lower in alcohol than I expected. According to my final hydrometer reading of 1.022, the alcohol content is around 3 percent. I guess I've made a session beer. Also, it's a bit more bitter than Charlie Papazian intended. Although I decided to skip the brewing kit and handle the ingredients myself, it appears

I've accidentally added three-quarters of an ounce more of hops than the recipe called for. I guess I shouldn't have just dumped the pouches of hop pellets into the wort without confirming the amounts I needed. When I tasted it, the beer seemed a little bitter, but not too bad. My first thought was that it needed more malt. Turns out, it just needed less hops. Anyway, I'll know what the final product tastes like on Jan. 21. Before bottling, I added an additional cup and a quarter of malt extract to help with bottle fermenting, so that might help the bitterness some. We'll see.

I got a bottle shy of two cases of beer from this batch, which sure beats the five cases I had to plow thought after Shenandoah. Once I finish off a case, I'll start on the next batch. Hopefully with this first batch of beer behind me, the next one will go smoother.

SR1: It's alive!

2009-12-25T07:49:00.000-08:00

Wow, yeast sure do produce a lot of carbonation. I mean a lot.

I popped my SR1 batch of Whitey's Pale Ale (if I play with the recipe, I'll rename it Honkey's) into the basement closet with an overflow hose and bucket. Following Charlie Papazian's instructions, I swapped the hose and bucket for the bubbler three days later. The yeast was a little slow to get started, but 48 hours after going into the closet, the fermenter was

belching excess foam and carbonation into the Ale Pale. So all seemed on pace when I stuck the bubbler on.

Well, sort of. As I was swapping the hose for the bubbler, I wondered how you knew whether the beer was finished foaming. Clearly there will be a lot more carbonation produced, thus the bubbler, but when will the foaming die down?

I didn't know, and still don't, so I followed Charlie's instructions. I should have gone with my gut. Although I technically didn't need to check the beer until Jan. 11, when it's due to be ready, I decided to look in on it today. Good thing I did, the foam had forced its way through the bubbler and was spitting all over the closet. So I quickly sanitized the overflow hose and stuck it back

on. I'll check it again in another 24 hours to see if the yeast are going to slow down a bit.

I think that's the lesson here: the beer will tell you when it's ready to move on to the next step. When the yeast were still dormant at 24 hours, I should have waited at least an extra day to swap the overflow hose for the bubbler. Depending on what I find in the morning, I may give it another 12 to 24 hours.

I'm sure that Papazian is generally right about the time frames. And given how precise this process seems, it pays to stick fairly close to the instructions. On the other hand, yeast is a living organism and therefore not subject to rules or instructions. They will eat and fart foam for as long as they like. I have to wait on them.

Also, my pale ale is looking a bit darker than I expected. Maybe the color will lighten as fermentation continues, but if it doesn't (and it ends up being darker than Whitey intended) I have a theory. I think a little of the malt extract caramelized on the bottom of the pot while I was making the wort. The caramelizing in turn darkened the wort, which has darkened the beer. Again, the color might lighten up and all will be well. If it doesn't, I think I know why.

Lesson of SR1? Chill the damn wort

2009-12-22T05:42:00.000-08:00

The first batch of beer is under way.

I followed Charlie Papazain's recipe for "Whitey's Gone Fishin' Pale Ale" (though it does sound a little racist), which I figured would be easy enough for a novice, but allow me to play with the ingredients. For the most part, that's about how it went, but there were some lessons learned.

First and foremost: use cold water. That alone would have saved me about four hours.

I swung by Yes Mart yesterday and picked up five gallons of Culligan filtered water. Two gallons were needed for the boiling wort, the rest went to the fermenter.

Now, if I knew what I was doing, I would've stuck those three gallons of water into the fridge while I futzed around sanitizing everything and making the wort. That way, when I added the wort to the fermenter, I would've spent a lot less time trying to get the temperature down to 75 degrees, which is about the top of the range for ale yeast. Because I kept the three gallons of water on the counter, I spent about four hours trying to drop the temperature from 110 degrees to 75 degrees (76 degrees actually, but by then I was ready to move on). After an hour in the kitchen and an hour in my cool laundry room, I finally surrendered and placed my fermenter outside where the ambient temperature was about 25 degrees. Even still, it took just over two hours to finish cooling off that five gallon container.

Sticking the fermenter outside exacerbated my other major concern: bacteria.

Everything I've read about brewing, including Papazain, has been

emphatic about the need for proper sanitation to prevent bacteria from entering the beer. Fair enough. I sanitized everything I used yesterday, and initially everything went well. But when I had to keep opening the fermenter to check the temperature (first in the kitchen and eventually in the back yard), I started thinking about all the hungry bacteria drifting in and feasting on my sweet wort.

So at this point, I have to hope that exposure was minimal and the only organism in the fermenter is the ale yeast I added around 11 p.m. last night. I'm going to check the fermenter on Thursday to see how the yeast are progressing and swap out the overflow hose for the bubbler (By the way, for all the talk about maintaining a bacteria-free environment, I didn't see anything about submerging the end of the overflow hose into water to prevent unwanted organisms from wandering up the hose and into the wort. Odd.). After that, it's a matter of being patient. The beer is scheduled to finish on Jan. 11.

The other thing I learned was that I need a beaker. To take the hydrometer reading (to determine the density and eventually the alcohol content of the beer), I had to lower the hydrometer into the fermenter (exposing it to more bacteria). The neck of the fermenter is pretty narrow, so I had to MacGyver a twist tie and rubber band contraption together to hold on to the top of the hydrometer so it wouldn't get stuck in the jug. I eventually got the reading (1.037), but a beaker would make the task a whole lot easier.

Besides, I need to pick up some corn sugar or dried malt extract for bottling. It turns out the guy at the home brew supply store didn't give me everything I needed, which just shows that I should've carefully checked my order rather than trusting that he pulled everything together for me. Live and learn.

Reset: The homebrew revolution will be broadcast

2009-12-18T19:23:00.000-08:00

It's been months since I bothered to dial into the old Gastronomy blog. Stories on DC Foodies have come and gone. I've traveled. I've cooked. I've met more brewers. Got food poisoning. Attended openings and plugged along with the food thing, all of which I chronicled on DC Foodies and to a much lesser extent, Facebook.

In the meantime, this blog sat. I started it to give me a space to add more information about the food columns I wrote for the Times-News. With DC Foodies, I didn't really need it. So posts became more and more forced.

Well, no more. No, now Gastronomy has a new purpose. This will be my new platform to share my efforts with you (and myself) to homebrew my very own beer. I'm psyched.

Once I got into craft beer, cooking and teaching beer classes, homebrewing was probably inevitable. Technically, I've already brewed one batch. One big, God damn batch at Shenandoah Brewing. Listen, I love beer, but five cases of mediocre hoppy brown ale is a lot of beer to go through. I brewed that beer in March and finally killed the last one in early December, and

that was after giving my buddy Tim a case for helping me brew.

Thanks to my lovely wife, I no longer need Shenandoah. She gave me my very own homebrew kit for Christmas. It's all the fun and excitement of a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle, without the danger of shooting my eye out. Instead of

being forced to brew several cases of beer, each batch will average about 50 beers, which is still a good amount. And smaller amounts mean I can tinker with recipes much more frequently.

I think that's going to be key to learning how to do this properly: repetition. Not only will I be able to play with recipes, but I will also gain a better idea of why the ingredients react the way they do during the various stages of the brewing process.

With any luck, I'll occasionally end up with a few beers I can and want to drink. That's my first goal. Once I get there, I'll start worrying how to make that kind of beer again and again.

Instead of starting off with a weird and tart brown ale, as I did at Shenandoah, I picked up the ingredients for a traditional American pale ale (Amarillo, Sterling and Spalt hops) at myLMBS (My Local Home Brew Supply Shop) in Falls Church. And despite the urging of the guy at the homebrew supply store,

I skipped the beer kit and purchased all the individual ingredients for the beer. Although the beer kits may be quite good these days, I need to learn how to handle the indiviudal ingredients. I may end up regretting that, but I doubt it. With my copy of Charlie Papazian's Joy of Home Brewing at the ready (which I referred to no less than 13 times while talking to the homebrew guy), I think I can handle the process.

So as I go through these recipes and figure out how to be a homebrewer, I'll maintain a running log here. It'll give those of you who are interested a sneak peak into what homebrewing involves, it'll warn my friends when I plan to foist my latest creations on them, and it will help me keep track of my efforts and experiments.

As I said, I'm psyched.

A brewer kissed me and I ate foie gras

2009-09-25T06:47:00.001-07:00

It's been a month since I updated this old blog, here. It's been a strange month.
Posts on DC Foodies have come and gone. My ongoing series about the D.C. area's best beer bars continues. The latest bar I profiled was Franklin's in Hyattsville, Md. It's a great brewpub and an interesting story about how a guy who sold toys went out on a limb and started a successful restaurant and brewery. At least that was the story I set out to tell. Judging by the comments I received on the article, the post was also an attack on Hyattsville itself. Sure I may have made a quip or two about there not being much in little Hyattsville (I believe I used the term "squat" at one point), but I meant no harm. They were throw away lines primarily meant to set up the fact that this brewery is a success despite being in a small community (no small feat). However, the proud people of Hyattsville let me know on the blog and by e-mail that they didn't think I was particularly funny. They're probably right, but I didn't see that coming.
What I did see coming was the guy who wanted to shove my next meal down my throat. After reading about a local restaurant that was repeatedly vandalized by anti-foie gras protesters, I decided it was time to talk about foie gras and the other taboo product, veal. In the animal rights world there are few food stuffs more reviled than foie gras and veal. And while I know that the members of PETA and the Humane Society know what these products are and how they're made, many of the people they're trying to reach through their protests and campaigns don't. So I figured the least I could do was talk about how these products are produced, and highlight a few of the better farms. To no surprise, the veal post and the foie gras post got a few angry comments. They also got a few comments from readers who seemed to appreciate the information. And that's all I was hoping for. As for the person who wants to force feed me, well, he/she can kiss my ass.
As part of the foie gras post, I worked with a local chef to prepare a few dishes. More specifically, I worked with a French chef. We went back and forth talking about what dishes we'd prepare. Of course, the chef wanted to focus exclusively on French preparations. Of course, I wanted to fire up the grill. This did not sit well with the chef. Grilling foie gras is not done in France, where foie gras is treated with the greatest reverence. But as I explained, I write a grilling column. It'll look more than a little odd if my grilling column doesn't include any grilling recipes. So the chef relented and agreed to try grilling ("The flavor from the grill will overwhelm the foie gras."). You know what? That piece of foie gras turned out pretty damn good. So did the cru au sel, and the seared slab of foie gras, but it was nice to win a culinary argument with a professional chef who has many, many years in the business.
To go with the grilled foie gras, we made a gastrique (sauce) with honey, balsamic and Flying Dog's Road Dog porter. It's a kick ass beer that worked perfectly in the sauce and against the foie gras. The Flying Dog folks are also good people. They're cutting me a big break on a couple cases of beer I need for a beer class I'm teaching next month.
Speaking of beer, a hairy brewer kissed me. Gotta say, I wasn't expecting it. I've been setting up beer dinners at CulinAerie, which makes me the middle man between the local brewers and the Susans. The first beer dinner I set up was with Starr Hill out of Crozet, Va., near Charlottesville. Master Brewer Mark Thompson is a great guy, if a bit eccentric (there were a lot of jokes about acid). Mark brought up three of his biggest sellers, The Love wheat beer, Jomo Lager, and Northern Lights IPA. All quality beers, which helped make for a quality night. And apparently Mark was so happy (and maybe a little drunk) with how the evening went that he felt compelled to give the guy who set it up a big hug and kiss on the cheek. It was flattering ... and a little off putting. Still, I'm looking forward to doing it again next year. Up next, we have Rich Fleicher, the founder and head brewer of Hook & Ladder, coming in for a dinner on Wednesday. Let's hope he can keep his hands to himself.
I finally got a chance to tour Cigar City Brewing in Tampa. More importantly, I finally got a chance to try the beer. Thank God it tastes good. I am happier than hell that Tampa has a budding craft brewery, but I was afraid the beer was going to suck (what can I say, I've been a Bucs fan too long). Fortunately, the beer is fantastic and the man behind Cigar City, Joey Redner, is a good guy who knew enough to bring in brewer Wayne Wambles from North Carolina's stellar brewery, Foothills. Redner was also nice enough to give me a behind-the-scenes tour while I was down. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I plan to do a profile for DC Foodies, so I'll leave the descriptions of the beer and how well one of them played in a D.C. bar.
Finally, the Top Chef pot luck dinners continue to be a great time. The missus and I really should have started this tradition a few seasons earlier.
Oh, and I'm down to my final case of home brew. Man, I am tired of that damn beer.

Old beer and new posts (sort of)

2009-08-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a helpful tip: beer doesn't age well. At least not Japanese beer.

Years ago, a friend brought me back a can of Orion beer from Japan. I thought that was pretty cool and decided to save it (I have a thing about saving booze). At the time (1998) you couldn't a find can of Orion beer in Florida, much less Tampa. Besides, it was a gift and I would've felt bad chugging the contents and ditching the can.

Well, I hung on to that can of beer for the past 11 years until the missus gave me an ultimatum: drink it or dump it. Mind you, I didn't store this beer in any refrigerators or cool, dark closets. The beer lived on shelves and tables. It got packed and unpacked during several moves, and generally spent its life at room temperature.

Of course I would drink it.

So a couple weeks ago I took the beer off the shelf and stuck it into the fridge. Every time I opened the fridge, it was sitting there, staring at me. Every time I shoved it aside to grab a drink, it reminded me of my decision. But I was scared. I mean, what was this thing going to taste like?

At best, it would be flat and sour. At worst, the aluminum would have deteriorated and mixed with the skunked alcohol, sending me to the porcelain oval of misfortune for the night. Was it worth it? Was the consternation even worth it?

As it turns out, not really. I finally cracked the beer the other night. To my great surprise, I was greeted with a resounding "keesshhh." The beer had maintained its carbonation. When I poured it into a glass, it even produced a respectable head. As for the taste, that wasn't too surprising. It wasn't skunked, but the beer was clearly past its prime. Instead of that crisp, dry, faintly sweet flavor Japanese lagers tend to have, the aged Orion was all sweet and funk. But it was drinkable. Well, drinkable in a "trapped on a desert island and I have no other options" kind of way, but there would be no harried trips to the thunder bucket.

After a few sips, I decided my curiosity was satiated and so the rest went down the drain.

My latest grilling post on DC Foodies is up. In fact, a few postings have gone up since I last updated the blog, including my second beer bar profile and my review of a two-day cooking class at CulinAerie. Obviously, it's been a while since I updated the old Gastronomy blog, but I have been super slammed with house guests and projects.

I also blame Facebook, which has allowed me to get the word out about new DC Foodies posts toute suite. That's great, but it gives me an all-too-convenient excuse to blow off posting any updates here.

Speaking of the DC Foodies posts, I've started adding a link to my new Flickr account. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but the account will allow me to post all the photos that I don't have room for on my blogs. And given all the photos I shoot, that's a lot of photos that go unseen, which feels like a waste (especially when I'm still paying to develop some of them). The first Flickr link went with my write up of the Beyond Basics cooking class at CulinAerie, but I'll pop in a slide show link whenever I have additional photos to share.

Finally, the new season of Top Chef began this week. This year, the missus and I started holding a Top Chef pot luck with a few other folks. It was a great time. We ate a bunch of food (duck sliders, sweet potato cakes, homemade cookies, a few cocktails), and watched the vegetarian get kicked off the first episode. I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner.

Breaking in the smoker with 9 pounds of butt

2009-07-22T04:06:00.000-07:00

My latest grilling, NAY!, barbecue post is up at DC Foodies.
This week, it's all about the barbecue. Nine and a half pounds of slow cooked, smoked pork butt to be exact. I've been waiting months for the time and opportunity to break in the new smoker, a Chargrill barrel grill and smoker. For the most part, things went well, but there's definitely work to be done.
For one thing, the smoker ran a little too hot, which was my fault. I've smoked with wood before, but never for this long of a time. With my old Weber bullet, I used a combination of wood chips and charcoal. I'm more comfortable with this mixture and may use more charcoal next time. It burns longer and is a little easier to control. The wood worked out OK, but it burns hotter and faster than I expected.
All this is to say, my pork was a little drier than I like. It got 23 hours in the smoker, but could have come out after 20. That said, the meat was still delicious and the sauce helped tremendously. But when I opened that smoker at 9 a.m. the morning of the barbecue gathering I was throwing for my visiting brother and niece I was scared. The bark was much more charred than I expected. Then I pealed the butt off the grill. The heat had seared some of the meat to the grate, which tore off when I pulled. What was left behind was the most beautiful of sights: succulent pork, glistening with rendered fat in the morning sun. I picked and pulled a few pieces off and popped them in my mouth to check the doneness. Immediately I realized that the outside of the pork was too done, but inside all was right. Crisis averted.
For the beer pairing this time, I went with Great Divide's incredibly good Titan IPA. I'm a big fan of a lot of IPAs, but I was forced to pick one recently for the profile Washingtonian magazine did of the DC Foodies. The more I thought about all the great IPAs out there, the more I kept coming back to Titan. Pound for pound, it really is one of the best out there. Besides, I've had a chance to talk to Bryan Baltzell, Great Divide's head brewer, a few times, and he's a great guy who knows how to brew.
As I mentioned in my last post, we just started running my new best beer bars series on the DC Foodies site. For the inaugural post, I profiled Birreria Paradiso and declared it to be the best in the city, which it is. However, it's a little weird now. I went there a few days ago with my brother, niece and the missues, and now I'm not just the beer geek customer, but the local blogger who said the place is the best in town. Everyone, including Greg the bar manager, was super nice, but it's always odd being recognized. To top it off, the Birreria is framing and mounting my review in the bar. Of course, none of this will keep me away from the place. In fact, I plan to bring Greg a bottle of Cigar City (Tampa's first microbrewery!) after I get back from Tampa in September. That will be a trip of beer and football, as the missus and I get to check out our new field level seats in the Bucs' stadium and Cigar City's beers. Can't wait.

Let the beer bar series begin!

2009-07-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

I've rolled out my first beer bar profile, Birreria Paradiso. The bar really is the best beer bar in the D.C. area. As miserable as Georgetown is -- and it is -- the basement bar's 16 taps, 200 bottles, complete lack of Bud products and the pizzeria that houses it are worth dealing with the people, traffic and the other headaches that come with that neighborhood.
As I've mentioned before, I've been itching to do this series for some time. Ever since I came across The Beer Mapping Project's beer bar listings, I figured D.C. needed someone to break down the city's great beer drinking destinations. I'll do these profiles once a month, though these places may require more than once-a-month research.
I mean, how else will I make sure my profiles and ratings are accurate?

Pizza on the grill, or how to overcomplicate things

2009-07-08T04:14:00.000-07:00

My latest piece for D.C. Foodies is all about grilled pizzas. I'd been dragging my feet on the idea for a while. For one thing, my friend Eldora makes great grilled pizza. Secondly, everyone writes about pizza on the grill, especially when summer rolls around. So I didn't want to look like I was following the herd. But with a little insistence from Jason, the guy behind D.C. Foodies, I agreed.

Man, what a pain in the ass.

Mind you, it's not the pizzas' fault. Making the dough was pretty easy, and grilling the pizzas was criminally easy. No, where it got complicated when I decided to make three different kinds of pizzas and cook several of the ingredients from scratch. As always, I am my own worst enemy.
I will say that once football season gets started (oh, football, I miss you so), I'll bust out the grilled pizzas again. I just won't go all Julia Childs on them.
Fortunately, I know how to pick beer. In this case, I grabbed a four-pack of Oscar Blues' Gordon, the Colorado brewery's double IPA in a can (God love those people). My mom and niece were with me when I bought the four-pack, which led my mother to note that I'd get more beer with a six-pack. As I told her, this was more about quality than quantity, which is all well and good. However, would it kill the breweries to just do away with the four-pack? It is kind of a bummer to either suffice with a four-pack or shell out for two of them. Is this a law? Is someone looking into this?
Speaking of beer, I'm excited about a new series coming to D.C. Foodies. I'll be profiling the D.C. area's best beer bars. I've been itching to do this series for a long time and finally got around to pitching it. I've already got one profile in the can and shot the second. I've never been big into doing restaurant reviews, but this is right in my wheelhouse. Think about it, I'm running around to some of my favorite bars and bartenders, and talking to them about beer. What a hobby.

Who needs a drink?

2009-06-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

This week's D.C. Foodies post is all about the Darby Flower. I've made a few of these since March, and man they're good. And man they're kind of a pain in the ass to make: the zesting, the muddling, the stirring, the shaking. Part of the beauty of a martini is it's such a perfect cocktail that requires little effort to make properly. The Darby Flower isn't nearly as fine a drink, and it requires a good bit more work, but it is worth it, and that's worth something.
My inaugural beer also made its debut a couple weeks ago. I took a case down to my buddy Chris' bachelor party in Savannah ... and brought half a case back to D.C. Fair enough. I was clearly dealing with a Bud Light crowd. Even the few occasions I bought Chris a Mama's Little Yella Pils or a Dogfish Head Shelter Pale Ale weren't met with much enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, Chris was always appreciative of my efforts, it's just that the craft beers were always followed by more Bud Light. Much more Bud Light.
To their credit, the guys at the bachelor party were honest about their selection in beer. We were hanging out the first day and the only thing cold to drink was Bud and Miller Lite. I cracked a couple and rediscovered why I'm not a fan (but I tried, people, I really tried). So I couldn't help but to ask everyone else what it was that kept them such loyal drinkers of Bud Light and Miller Lite.
Quantity.
Thank god they didn't say taste. Nah, they agreed the taste was mediocre at best. However, they could drink these low alcohol beers all day long and not get too drunk. They were choosing quantity over quality. I can respect that. It's not my position. I'd rather drink fewer, high quality (and higher alcohol) beers, but I could understand their reasoning.
And despite their preference for Bud, most of them gave my hoppy brown ale a shot and said nice things. Did they mean it? Maybe. But knowing where their tastes lay, I didn't worry too much about having a few leftover beers at the end of the weekend.
Oh, and I joined Facebook. It turns out everyone one else already has.

Grouper love and Sig's mug

2009-06-10T18:28:00.001-07:00

My latest grilling post for D.C. Foodies pays homage to Florida (my 32nd time and counting!) and one of my favorite foods in the whole wide world: grouper.
Fried, grilled, blackened and roasted, you just can't go wrong with that ugly fish (Seriously, try to go wrong with it. You can't do it). In this case, I tossed it on the grill whole for fish tacos, easily in my top 20 of great dishes. (Ok, don't try to screw it up. It's good fish. Don't mess it up.)
I wasn't planning on featuring a beer with this post (the missus put a temporary moratorium on beer purchases given that the fridge was full of it and I have four cases of home brew in the basement). However, I came across Rogue Brewery's new Captain Sig's Deadliest Ale, a beer inspired by the crabbers on Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch (must-see TV for the missus and me). Add in the fact that Sig Hansen's grizzled mug is embossed on the bottle and I couldn't pass it up.
I describe the beer in the D.C. Foodies post, but one thing that particularly made me chuckle was Rogue calling it an India red ale. This is a rarely used bastardization of the term India pale ale, a term with some historical basis. However, India red ale works as a descriptive term. "India" in India pale ale describes a beer that is hoppier and generally higher in alcohol than a pale ale (pale describes the malt, ale describes the fermentation). So if Rogue adds more hops to a red ale with a higher-than-normal alcohol content, why not call label it an India red ale and call it a day? Rogue isn't the first to do this, but they're one of few.
You've stopped reading, haven't you. Sorry, I'm a beer geek.
Speaking of beer, the home (sort of) brew will be ready this weekend. I'm tossing a case in the trunk and heading down to Savannah, Ga., for my buddy Chris' bachelor party. I'll try to remember to take some photos (of the beer, not much else).

Bonus Savor and a rant

2009-06-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

My Savor rant is up on D.C. Foodies. Well, it's my rant on the food. The beer and brewers were great. The food sucked, again.
I also got a chance to develop the last roll of film I had at the event. Yes, I shot with film. Yes, it's antiquated. Yes, digital is superior in many, many ways. Unfortunately, my digital camera takes horrible pictures in low light, so I had to fall back on my manual, film camera, which is actually a better -- if more inconvenient -- camera than my digital.
Anyway, the top photo gives a pretty good idea how nice the venue was. Savor was held at the National Building Museum in downtown D.C. It was a great location. If the Brewers Association is smart, they'll hold the event there every year.
Enjoy the photos. (For the record, I have no idea who the guy in the last photo is. He saw my camera and insisted I take his picture. I did. However, the guy in the first photo is Bryan Baltzell from Great Divide. Nice guy. Great beer.)

Savor, where the beer is great and the food ... hmm

2009-06-05T12:49:00.001-07:00

The Brewers Association brought Savor back for a second year. Good on them. Savor was a hell of a lot of fun last year and it was a hell of a lot of fun this year. Unfortunately, the food still sucks. Seriously, with all the work that the brewers put in the beer, is Charlie Papazian and the folks at the Brewers Association OK with the quality of the slop being dolled out at Savor? They can't be. On the bright side, due to the high quality of the crap served last year, I had a wonderful lunch beforehand at Oyamel.
Anyway, I did most of my venting in the D.C. Foodies post I co-wrote with Rob Rutledge. With all that off my chest, I'll just provide you with a few photos, including one of me chatting up Greg Koch from Stone. (OK, a quick sum up: The beer was great, but I'd like to see a few new breweries next year. The food still sucks.)

Bottle brown

2009-06-03T17:36:00.000-07:00

Bottling beer is awesome ... for about five minutes. The other two hours and twenty-five minutes kind of suck. I don't know how Laverne and Shirley did it, but now I know why they always seemed to be screwing around.
But at least it's done now and ready to drink ... in two weeks. (Parenthetical comment on the ellipses; I'll stop now.) I washed, filled and capped five cases of beer, which works out to 120 12 ounce beers. Thankfully, my buddy Tim pitched in, which allowed me to reward him with a case of beer ... whether he wanted it or not. (Second parenthetical comment; I lied about the ellipses.)
(Third parenthetical comment; I'm a big fan of Norm Chad, the Couch Slouch. Honestly, he's the main reason I read the sports page -- the one made out of real paper -- between football seasons.)
The other four cases reside in a basement closet under the stairs of my new house. Once the carbonation settles down, they'll be ready to drink. However, a preliminary taste at the brewery and the next day during a lunch the missus and I had with Mr. and Mrs. Peter Falk, revealed that the beer ain't half bad. In fact, it's pretty damn solid. And considering that I have 95 bottles of the stuff waiting for me, that's quite a relief.
After I got all 120 beers bottled last weekend, I had to hustle home because it was only my first beer event of the day. Last Saturday was also Savor ...

Lamb on the spit, beer on my mind

2009-05-26T17:23:00.001-07:00

For my latest D.C. Foodies piece, I broke in my new rotisserie with a leg of lamb. I also baked my first cobbler on the grill (However, I have no idea what it tastes like as it ran out before I got to it.). But as great as the meal was and as well as the rotisserie performed, it's that vat of beer fermenting at Shenandoah Brewing that I'm most excited about.
Three days and counting.
Saturday is going to be a big beer day. At noon, Tim and I will be bottling five cases of hoppy brown ale and carting them back to my basement. Then I'll change into something a bit more dandy and head off to Savor, the Brewers Association's big to do in D.C. Peter Falk and I went to the inaugural event last year and reportedly had one hell of a time.
In the meantime, I scratched the beer itch with a six pack of Duck-Rabbit's Imperial Russian Stout. Holy crap, it's a big, rich, black beer. It's good though. Duck-Rabbit is the latest North Carolina beer to show up in the D.C. area, behind Highland Brewing Compan y and Carolina Beer Company. Hopefully, the other Tar Heel breweries will follow suit.

Grilling chops, breaking in the new grill

2009-05-11T15:27:00.001-07:00

For this latest grilling post on D.C. Foodies, the missus and I tracked down our new local farmer's market. It may well have been the smallest market I've seen, tucked between a couple store fronts along H Street in D.C. rapidly gentrifying -- but not there yet -- Atlas District. With five vendors and 10 customers on a Saturday morning, I was stunned to learn the market has been around five years.
I should note that last weekend was the first market of the season and not all the vendors were in attendance. And the vendors who did show up brought some quality products, including David Ober, a West Virginia farmer who had every cut of pork the pig has to offer.
So we picked up some smoked chops, fresh vegetables and handmade booze-laden sorbet (mojito, strawberry tequila, Meyer lemon vodka, ect.).
Afterward, we swung by Schneider's of Capitol Hill to pick up beer to go with lunch. Despite my reservations, I grabbed Brooklyn Brewery's new Local 2. I was hesitant to try the Local 2 because of the honey and orange peel the Belgian-style ale is brewed with. I realize that it's possible to produce good beer with fruit in it, but in my experience few brewers do little more than muck up their product. Brooklyn didn't.
Cooking and shooting the post also gave me a chance to break in the new charcoal grill. It's an upgrade from my old Weber, which not only gives me a larger cooking surface, but also has a firebox that converts the grill into a smoker. The grill worked like a charm, and I should have time to get the smoker rolling next month.
Two weeks until the beer is ready.

I brew beer

2009-05-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

Yeah I do.

At long last, I've gotten around to brewing. Thanks to a new house and the space that comes with it, I have room to brew. However, my first batch wasn't done in the house. I did it at Shenandoah Brewing in Alexandria, Va.

The idea was to get a batch under my belt before heading to the brewery supply store. That way, hopefully, I'll have a better idea of what I need and what I don't. Now that the first batch is behind me, is that the case? Probably not due to the professional equipment I used at Shenandoah, but I do have first-hand knowledge of the process.

For the inaugural brew, I followed Shenandoah's recipe for Hoppy Brown Ale. Brown ales are pretty straightforward beers, so I thought it would be a good place to begin. The beer used typical brewer's yeast, dark malted barley and two types of hops: Chinook and East Kent Golding.

Once the brewing is done, Shenandoah holds onto the vat of beer until it's ready to bottle. In my case, that's May 30. My buddy Tim, who pitched in on the brewing, will make a return appearance to help me bottle five cases of beer. That works out to 120 beers. That works out to a lot of beer.

As you might expect with a 2,000 year old process, brewing beer is fairly simple. The trick is in the combination of hops, malt, yeast and water. Each of these ingredients has many, many varieties, which can be combined in various ways and amounts. Throw in the fact that yeast is a living organism that sometimes does what it wants, and you have the potential for quite a few outcomes, i.e. beers.

Anyway, for as nice as Shenandoah's facility is, this batch will probably be the only one I'll brew there. The next step is to move the brewing from the brewery to my basement.

Scallops and schooling

2009-04-29T04:29:00.001-07:00

After a brief layoff due to moving and the trip to Copenhagen, my grilling column is back on D.C. Foodies. It's the first one I shot in the backyard of my new house. Although I've upgraded my grills, I had to use my tiny grill for this one, but the new equipment will make an appearance soon enough. I also got a chance to try out Abita's latest beers, both were good, one was great.
So I ran my first beer class at CulinAerie last night. I've been volunteering at the D.C. cooking school for the past few months, mostly helping the chef instructors set up, break down and run the class. But thanks to a scheduling conflict with a guy from Dogfish Head, one of the owners, Susan, needed a beer guy to fill in. I'm a beer guy.
For the class, a private event for members of the National Potato Council, Susan taught the attendees how to grill salmon, bison and lamb sliders, and make homemade potato chips (they are the Potato Council after all), and I got to talk about beer. More importantly, I had an audience that seemingly enwrapped by what I had to say about beer. Well they were enwrapped or stuck because they'd paid for the course.
It wasn't such a bad night for the potato folks, though. I brought props and good beer, and Susan gave them the tools to cook some pretty solid burgers. I opened the class talking about the basics of beer, and passed around some fresh Silver Leaf hops and malted barley to give them a better idea of what goes into beer. Then there was the beer. We did a tasting of three beers: Oscar Blues' Mama's Little Yella Pils, Dogfish Head's Indian Brown Ale and Stone's IPA. Not everyone liked all three beers, but everyone liked at least one and most liked a couple. The Dogfish Head just wasn't working for them. However, we blew through Oscar Blues' pilsner.
The lecture portion of the class didn't last too long, maybe about 20 minutes. Then Susan took over with the cooking instruction and I spent the rest of the evening going around the room filling glasses and chatting about beer. Man, if only I could get paid for a gig like that.
Fortunately, Susan was happy with my performance, so I'll get to prattle on about beer again. Can't wait.

Mikkeller is a phantom brewery. I'm scared.

2009-04-23T17:59:00.001-07:00

This brewery doesn't exist.
Well, clearly Mikkeller exists. I'm drinking the beer after all. But when I went to find the Danish microbrewery, all I found was a tiny apartment on a tiny street. No mash tun, no bottling line and definitely no brewery.
As I was getting ready for my trip to Copenhagen, I stuck Mikkeller on my list of places to visit. The beer has garnered a lot of positive attention during the past few years and I figured it would be an interesting contract to the Carlsberg tour I also had on my schedule. Besides, I'd discovered that Mikkeller was in the very shadow of the mega brewery.
Yeah, there's no brewery in Carlsberg's shadow. Just elephants that hate Jews.

I was explaining my trouble finding Mikkeller to my new friends at Den Tatoverede Enke, one of the few bars in Copenhagen that doesn't pour Carlsberg, when it was explained to me that I never had a chance.
"It's a phantom brewery."
Mikkeller is run solely by self-described gypsy-brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø. Rather than maintain a permanent location, Bjergsø rents space around Denmark, Europe and the U.S. ... and periodically shuffles on to a new location. He also partners with a number of craft breweries, including Three Floyds, De Struise Brouwers and Stone, for specialty collaboration beers.
This is all well and good. Interesting, in fact. But consider that this dude produces more than a dozen beers in multiple countries and continents. That's amazing. Imagine how productive this guy could be if he'd stay in one place.
And Bjergsø isn't just displaying a feat of productivity that's clearly of a higher order, he's brewing award winning beer. Although these beers aren't widely available, I was able to pick up a couple at The Wine Specialist. The Stateside IPA is delicious, hoppy without too much of a bite, rich without being too sweet. Santa's Little Helper 2008 is a fantastically made Christmas ale that's just as good in April as it is in December.
The woman at Den Tatoverede Enke said Bjergsø rents space to avoid paying business taxes. I don't know whether that's true or not. Maybe all the wandering keeps Bjergsø's creative juices flowing. Maybe without a staff and plant to look after, Bjergsø can focus on his beer. Who knows? Who cares?
The guy's making quality beer. He's just not offering tours.

Days in the Danes' land

2009-04-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

Copenhagen was not on my short list of places to visit. But thanks to a bit of serendipity, I got the chance to spend a week there, so I tried to make the most of the time. I saw the sights, I ate the food, I drank the beer. Then I came back and wrote a travel piece for D.C. Foodies.
Of course, I didn't get everything in the travel post, and so I've been chronicling a few of the items here that I either glazed over in the D.C. Foodies piece or simply skipped all together.
One thing I didn't bother mentioning at all was Christiania, a commune of hippies, kids, garbage and graffiti in the Christianshaven quarter of Copenhagen.
I love the story of Christiania: a bunch of hippies taking over an abandoned military base a couple decades ago. When land prices began to rise 10 to 15 years ago, city leaders tried to eject the squatters from the land. To date, however, the residents of Christiania (and their legal team) have fought and won the right to stay.
As a free-spirit commune, prohibitions on drug use is pretty lax. Apparently there was a time where there were really no restrictions at all. But the rise of hard narcotics and the problems that often accompany such pharmaceuticals brought an end to that era. Now, it's down to the Deadhead staples of marijuana and like botanicals, which seems to suit the original Christianians fine.
All this is well and good of the community. In fact, it's that story that led me to wandering though. What I found, however, was a neighborhood that graffiti threw up on.
Dirty, tagged and in seeming disarray, Christiania looks far from the utopia the original community surely envisioned. Oddly enough, I place part of the blame on the youth who are drawn to this head shop of a neighborhood. Streaming in before and after me was a swath of teens and young twenty-somethings. Certainly some were tourists looking to discover the place. Many others were kids looking to score a bag and hang out. Frankly, the place was simply a mess.
Honestly, I'm neither trying to judge or be a prude. I simply didn't get the point. The commune the original Christiania settlers were trying to create was now a dingy, graffitied neighborhood. If that was the goal all along, they didn't need a legal team.
I will say there were bright spots. Amid the clutter were homes that displayed their owners' imagination. There was art. And the idea of a group of people living in a community of their own making was evident, if not ideal.

The other destination I'll mention here is the royal gardens. Surrounding Rosenborg Castle, these lush grounds flecked with flowers and Danes made for a beautiful spot to picnic, which the missus and I did with a few of her coworkers.

The rest of the places I visited are covered in the D.C. Foodies piece or will be in an upcoming post here.

Beers, bars and Denmark

2009-04-16T07:34:00.001-07:00

You go on vacation, you check out the tourist sites, right? The historic this, the cultural that. Sure.
During my recent trip to Copenhagen, I saw Rosenborg Castle, the Danish Design Center, the Viking Ship Museum, which were all great. But these places can only teach you so much about Copenhagen and the Danish people.
Visit a few bars and restaurants frequented by locals, and you'll get a better idea of what the locals eat, drink and think. Besides, I like bars and restaurants.
However, I've written about the bars and restaurants I visited for my travel piece on D.C. Foodies, so I'm not going to dwell too much on them. One of the bars I visited that I didn't give nearly enough time to in my D.C. Foodies post was Charlie's Bar, a great British pub in the heart of the Danish capital.

Two things about this. I love British bitters and the place had free wi-fi. I never thought I'd care about this (the wi-fi, not the beer). But it is a pain in the ass to find a place in Copenhagen that doesn't bleed you for a few desperate minutes of Internet access. Even the hotel we were staying at charged a kroner a minute to get online.
So when I found a place that pumped bitter from beer engines and allowed my to check my e-mail for free, I was ecstatic.

It shouldn't have been as much of a surprise to me as it was, but I was really taken aback by the Danish craft beer scene. Carlsberg is the king hell beer in Denmark and Copenhagen. The beer's sold in every store and nearly every bar. Given this, I should've expected that a group of people would begin to push against Carlsberg's dominance.
Fortunately, the bars I sought out (thank you Beer Mapping Project) specialized in the other Danish beers. In fact, they specialized in craft beers from around Europe and the United States. One of these places, Den Tatoverede Enke, had Flying Dog's Snake Dog IPA on draft and tipped me off to Charlie's Bar, and you gotta like a bar that will recommend another bar.
As solid a selection of European and American craft beers as Den Tatoverede Enke had, Ørsted Ølbar was better.

Double digit taps, including one with Great Divide's Yeti, a refrigerator case full of beers I've never heard of and a Danish bartender with an American girlfriend. I was so enamored with the place and enjoyed talking beer with the bartender that I'm pretty sure I walked out without paying my bill.
Just to be safe, I swung back by the bar later that night, bringing a group in tow. And here's another reason Ørsted Ølbar is a good bar: the bartender I was talking too was no longer there and the one on duty wasn't concerned about my fiscal lapse. Nice, huh?
The group of us responded to the hospitality by staying for a couple rounds. One of the folks who joined the missus and I was Rob, a U.N. consultant and Dutch beer geek. I don't know much about Rob or what he does professionally, but I do know he was president of his college beer club, a member of the European beer union, PINT, and grew up with the guys who launched the De Dolle Brouwers brewery. Once the mutual appreciation of craft beer was discovered, Rob and I began to swap stories, tips and information on all things beer. This back and forth happened time and again in the beer bars I passed though in Copenhagen. It's like we share a secret beer geek code that works just as well overseas as it does here at home. I'm sure we'd have our own handshake as well, if our hands weren't already occupied.
Finally, here are a few beers I tried and liked. Don't worry, I can’t pronounce most of these either.

Mikkeller's DSB
Mikkeller's Drikkeriget
Bøgedal #78
De Struise Brouwers
Bryggerier
Amager Bryghus' Festival IPA
Herslev Hvede
De Dolle Brouwers
Carlsberg

The Spaniard and the Dane

2009-04-15T06:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a lucky man, twice over.
I landed reservations at Minibar, Jose Andres’ six-seat restaurant/chemistry demonstration. Two weeks later, I found myself in Noma, Denmark’s den of molecular gastronomy.
In many ways, both restaurants are quite similar. Both are headed by a chef known for pushing the traditional understanding of food -- the way it's prepared and the way it's consumed. Both earned their chops working for Ferran Adria, the king fish of molecular gastronomy and chef/proprietor of Spain’s El Bulli.
That’s about where the similarities end. Sure René Redzepi has a few clever dishes on his menu at Noma, but nothing to match the unending assault on the senses Andres throws at his Minibar patrons. I don’t know if it’s Redzepi or a Danish thing, but for all the imagination at work in Noma’s kitchen, the restaurant (i.e. service) is quite staid. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. Staid is the standard for the high-end restaurant industry.
Restraint is the other difference. Of the seven courses and four amuse-bouches the missus and I had at Noma, half were playful creations meant to surprise as much as please. The smoked quail egg served in a smoking ceramic egg, the carrots planted in a tiny pot filled with edible dirt, the razor clams sheathed in asparagus skin, served with shaved frozen horseradish root and a warm broth of dill and mussel juice, and the “snowman” made from carrot sorbet and strawberry meringue cookie. The other dishes were much more straightforward: marrow with pickled vegetables, black radishes served with seaweed and egg yolk, short ribs with beets. Although all of Redzepi’s dishes utilize Danish ingredients, the less theatrical ones in particular seem designed to showcase the products. This local focus may have been something Redzepi picked up from his other famous former boss, Thomas Keller.
The restaurant, itself, looks like a polished ski lodge. Although situated on the water, there are few seats that can appreciate the view.
Minibar, on the other hand, knows no restraint. For two and a half hours, a pair of Andres’ chefs stands before you serving up whatever his and their imaginations could come up with. The food is delicious, but you’re there for the ride. Maybe it’s Andres’ Spanish influence or the fact that the group I was with that night took up all six seats at the sushi bar-like restaurant -- or the ass jokes Peter Falk and I were making -- but the evening and the restaurant was much more lively than Noma. Our group was talking and laughing. The chefs were talking and laughing. It was hardly a staid evening.
Whether it’s my taste in restaurants or the experiences I had, but it’s only Minibar that I’m eager to return to. Noma was nice, but Minibar was an experience.
Now, I took no pictures of the food. I’m uncomfortable doing so, particularly at Minibar when the chefs are four feet from you, but after watching a discussion between Tony Bourdain and David Chang on the subject, I decided it’s best to enjoy the food and tell the story.
I will, however, share the menus:

Minibar:
Munchies: Pisco Sour; Beet “Tumbleweed”; Olive Oil “Bon-Bon”; “Mojito”; “Bagels and Lox”; Blue Cheese and Almond; “Dragon’s Breath” Popcorn; “Cornbread”; Boneless Chicken Wing; Steamed Brioche Bun with Caviar; Cotton Candy Eel.

Flavors & Textures: “Sun Dried” Tomato Salad; Zucchini in Textures; “Caesar Salad”; Parmesan “Egg” with Migas; “Guacamole”; Salmon Pineapple “Ravioli” with Crispy Quinoa; Smoked Oysters with Apples and Juniper; New England Clam Chowder; Breaded Cigala with Sea Salad; “Philly Cheesesteak.”

Pre-Dessert: Kumquats & Pumpkin Seed Oil

Dessert: Frozen Yogurt and Honey; Thai Dessert.

Sweet Endings: Chocolate Covered Corn Nuts; Mango Box; Saffron Gumdrop with Edible Wrapper.

Noma:
Amuse-Bouche: Smoked Quail Egg; Rye Bread, Chicken Skin and Smoked Cheese; Carrots, Soil and Herbs; Toast, Herbs, Cod Fish Roe and Apple Vinegar.

Main Courses: Razor Clams and Parsley, Dill and Mussel Juice; Cauliflower and Elderberry Capers, Fresh Cheese and Brown Butter Sauce; Radishes from Lammefjorden, Sea Weed and Egg Yolk; Marrow and Pickled Vegetables, Herbs and Bouillon; Short Rib of Beef and Roses, Beets and Malt; Snowman from Lammefjorden; Caramelized Milk and Yogurt, Golden Sorrel and Rape Seed Oil.

It's a war people. Pick a side.

2009-03-27T15:59:00.001-07:00

A new cocktail ... probably!

2009-03-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

So I took a couple bartending classes to keep busy while the missus is off saving the world (Doing a bang-up job of it, I may add). The classes wrapped up last night with a build-your-own cocktail competition. Yeah, I won. Hell, I won using kumquats.
Kumquats, people. The horrible little citrus fruit we grow in Dade City and sell to the world. Now, no one I grew up with -- including the missus -- eats and enjoys kumquats. Despite looking like miniature oranges, these things are far from sweet. You try one as a kid, make that weird pucker face, get laughed at by your friends who know better, and never do it again. Yet, I've found them in every grocery store I've shopped in since I left Florida. Apparently you can also find them in bartending courses.
For whatever reason I decided it would be a good idea to include the kumquats in my cocktail. I also gave elderflower cordial a try. Never had it before. Had no idea what it tasted like. Turns out, it's not bad in small amounts.
Add a couple kumquats to an ounce of the cordial (as well as some gin and bitters) and you end up with a bright, sweet cocktail that's just a little tart thanks to the addition of bitters and, of course, the kumquats. The drink was good last night, but it will be great this summer.
I ended up naming the drink after the part of Pasco County where I first lived when we moved to the area, Darby.
Like I said, I made this drink up on the spot. However, people have been creating cocktails for a long time so it's entirely possible this drink existed long before last night. But until I stumble across it, I'm going to take credit for it.

The Darby Flower

2 oz. of gin
1 oz. of elderflower cordial
1/4 oz. of honey simple syrup
zest of 1 kumquat
juice of 2 kumquats
3 dashes of Angostura bitters

Combine ingredients, stir and serve neat with an orange twist.

Holy mackerel, I might be in love

2009-03-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

The first time I visited the local Asian markets in D.C. I was struck by how many great cuts of meat they carried. Not as surprising, but equally impressive, was the selection of fish and other seafood. So while I remained mystified by the isles of Asian products, I was right at home with the animal proteins.
When I lived in Chapel Hill, the best lamb was to be had at a bodega in Carrboro. In D.C., the Korean grocery H Mart reminds me of all the great animal products Harris Teeter and Safeway do not and will not carry. This includes pig's ears.
Lest I'm accused of issuing a dining dare to my readers, I should note that offal is the hottest meat in the dining scene. For good reason, I may add. The rich, deep flavors of liver, heart, gizzards and other bits and pieces maybe new to our American palates, but they're familiar as morning to the rest of the world. During a recent trip to Chicago -- a city I could love if it weren't for the brutal winters -- I got the opportunity to swing by The Publican, a new gastro-pub from Paul Kahan, the restaurateur behind the popular eateries Blackbird and Avec.
One of my favorite dishes at The Publican, a beautiful space nestled in Chicago's industrial neighborhood, was the little gem salad. Rather than finish the salad with lardons or bacon bits, Kahan used crispy pig's ear. Kick ass. The rest of The Publican menu is a exploration of all things swine and oyster.
Speaking of swine, I also swung by The Silver Palm, a diner Tony Bourdain featured on his Chicago show. Following Bourdain's lead, I had a "Three Little Pigs" sandwich: pork tenderloin, twice-smoked ham and bacon, topped with cheese, an onion ring and a fried egg. That sandwich was the reason I went with a seafood dish for my latest D.C. Foodies recipe.
I wrapped up my time in Chicago with a visit to Mercat a la Planxa, a Spanish restaurant that was one of Esquire's top restaurants for 2008. It was good, but I have too much access to Jose Andres. Mercat was a fine restaurant -- maybe even the best Spanish restaurant in Chicago -- but no better than Andres' Jaleo. I should note, however, that Mercat offers a full roasted suckling pig to any party of four or more who call 72 hours ahead. That might put Mercat over the top. I gotta try that pig.
After my dining tour of Chicago (I was technically there for other business), I'll be eating soup and seafood for the foreseeable future. But it was worth it. Totally worth it.

Blood, spuds and fire

2009-02-22T17:28:00.000-08:00

I really do love British cuisine, but it can be a bit like eating things on a dare. Case in point, blood sausages. They're a fantastic delicacy that strike many people as completely disgusting, understandably. I don't know how I ever ended up on this unusual food jag, and I'm not sorry to be on it, but I do understand the reaction I occasionally get when I describe what I'm cooking or eating.
All that being said, I decided to combine my love of blood sausages with my love of the grill. The Brits aren't known for grilling (too much rain, probably), but these sausages work great over hot coals. Throw in a few English bitters -- another British staple under appreciated in the old colony -- and you got yourself one hell of a meal. Check it out at D.C. Foodies.
The Washingtonian just released their list of the best bars in the city. I grabbed a copy while picking up a pound of coffee and some chocolate covered bacon (see above). I haven't cracked the issue yet, but I'm ready to be disappointed. I've become such an opinionated ass about such things that I fear I'll nit pick all their selections. On the other hand, the bars and restaurants I like, I really like. So maybe I'm right after all.
The reason I haven't gone through The Washingtonian is I'm trying to finish Brewing Up A Business, the book written by Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione. I'm pitching in at a beer dinner he's hosting this week and want him to sign my book. So I figured I should be able to say something about it if he asks. It's an interesting book, particularly it you're thinking about opening your own brewery or brewpub.

Volunteering rebuttle

2009-02-17T16:26:00.001-08:00

After a couple recent attacks on the dry martini, a top three greatest cocktail, I had to weigh in. Hey, if you want to ruin your martini by pouring a bunch of vermouth in it, be my guest. But the dry martini is hardly a trend that is on the way out. Check out my screed at D.C. Foodies.
I've also started volunteering at a D.C. cooking school, CulinAerie (if it sounds familiar, I recently took a knife skills class at the school). Saturday, Valentine's Day, was my first night. Five hours on my feet making sure a room full of couples were happy and following the chef's instructions. I'm sure it was because it was my first night, but I felt completely inept. I wasn't sure what I needed to do and I didn't know where things were. Chef Holt and the other volunteers were happy with my efforts, but it was a C+ night at best. Afterward, I was wiped out. It's been a long time since I spent that much time on my feet. Despite how tired I was, I struggled to fall asleep that night because my calves and feet were just aching. Man, God bless professional servers.

Smoke, oysters and homage to Jose

2009-02-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Washington's own Spanish chef Jose Andres, I rediscovered my love of shucking oysters. OK, so I never actually had a love of shucking oysters. My first outing a year or so ago didn't go too well. But thanks to Jose, I've found a way to unlock that terribly obstinate shell and learn to enjoy the experience. Check out my latest efforts at D.C. Foodies.

Knife Class or Frenching the Julianne

2009-02-03T19:13:00.000-08:00

So I took a knife skills class over the weekend at D.C.'s newest cooking school, CulinAerie. It's great set up and I had a hell of a lot of fun playing around in a kitchen filled with professional equipment. Not only that, but it turns out there's a lot I don't know about kitchen knives. I hold them wrong, I use small cutting motions on occasion, I slice tomatoes with a bread knife; my screw ups go on and on. Well, no more. Well, maybe some more. I really don't mind cutting tomatoes with a bread knife. It does an awful nice job. Anyway, I did a write up of the class for D.C. Foodies.

Glory and the tacos

2009-01-24T17:54:00.001-08:00

Just because your favorite team blew their last four games and missed the playoffs doesn't mean you can't enjoy the Super Bowl (Well maybe it does, but get over it). So reflect on past glories and enjoy the biggest game on its biggest stage. And do so with tacos. Find out how to make some at D.C. Foodies.

Don't judge a beer by its label

2009-01-23T15:43:00.001-08:00

The logo was good, the beer was bad.

Cheers, Mr. President

2009-01-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to rename this blog "Red-Headed Step Child."

It's been much too long since I posted any original content, so let me do a bit of catching up here.
The missus and I headed over to Peter Falk's place to watch the inauguration. His place off Pennsylvania Avenue got us close enough to experience the masses and then be able to retreat into the toasty warm comfort of the condo.

For the event, I picked up a few bottles of Avery's Ale to the Chief, a high gravity IPA the brewery initially whipped up during the primaries to "bid a fond farewell to our current Commander in Chief and welcome a new administration." When Obama won the election, Avery brewed an additional batch for a few bars and shops in D.C. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on four bottles thanks to my buddy Rob.

Back in October, I attended my first investors' party for a start-up brewery in Durham, North Carolina. It was quite an event and I learned many things like:

How not to run an investor's party.
How to dissuade people from investing in a brewery.
What raw dough tastes like.

The list goes on and on. Some time ago, I got wind of the fact that the guy behind North Carolina's successful Pop the Cap movement, Sean Wilson, was launching a brewery and looking for investors. Well, hot damn. The missus and I had a couple nickels to rub together and thought Wilson's Fullsteam brewery and brewpub would be a good investment.

After all, the guy was well connected in the North Carolina beer scene, had an MBA from Duke and seemed pretty damn affable in all his communications with us.

In person, however, Wilson proved curt, defensive and unable to discuss his project in any detail. My questions about his plans twice resulted in him questioning whether I actually planned to invest in his pub and brewery. The investors' party was mostly his friends and acquaintances. And the bullies (meat-stuffed pastries Wilson plans to serve in his brewpub) were cold and undercooked.

Oh, and the beers were mediocre at best. At best. The best thing about the event was the tap box Wilson's brewer Chris hand built.

So no, Mr. Wilson, I do not plan to invest.

A couple weeks later, the missus and I joined Falk and his missus at their beach condo in Ocean City, Md., for Thanksgiving. While there, we paid a visit to the Dogfish Head brewery in nearby Milton, Del.

Man, what a difference. Sam Calagione launched Dogfish Head initially as a brewpub in Rehoboth Beach. Eventually, Calagione made enough money through the brewpub to launch the brewery -- a path Wilson hopes to follow in Durham.

However, Dogfish Head Brewings and Eats in Rehoboth Beach serves a full menu (Wilson plans to serve only bullies) and the beer is quality.

Does this mean Fullsteam will flop? I don't know. I wish Mr. Wilson and his investors all the luck in the world. It's just that I won't be a part of his endeavor.

As an aside, The New Yorker wrote a great article about Calagione and the craft beer scene in America. It's a long article, but well worth your time.

Happy New Year, Rabbie Burns!

2008-12-29T04:43:00.000-08:00

In honor of the man who gave us Auld Lang Syne, I put together a Scottish menu of lamb, neeps and tatties. Oh, and Scotch. Gotta have Scotch. Check it out at D.C. Foodies.

Welcoming Jesus with beef

2008-12-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

Nothing says Christmas like fire. If you agree with that, check out my latest post on DC Foodies. I offer a little advice on buying for the griller and wanna-be griller in your life, and show y'all how to cook the perfect porterhouse steak. Keep the frankincense and myrrh, I want beef.

Egg nog and the power of the bird

2008-12-12T17:23:00.000-08:00

Columbo gave me the recipe for the greatest egg nog and I give it to the world. There's not much hyperbole in that last statement. This stuff is really good and really adult: there's a cup and a half of booze. Check out the recipe at DC Foodies.

So I shot the photos for the egg nog over Thanksgiving. That was two weeks ago. Clearly I'm a bit behind on my own blog.

Anyway, the long and short of Thanksgiving was the missus and I spent it in Ocean City, Md., at the Falks' condo. Instead of turkey, we grilled steaks along the bay. The food and company were great, but it didn't feel like Thanksgiving until we roasted a turkey breast for sandwiches. The Macy's parade might have been on TV (beating the Lions 24-3), but the holiday didn't feel right until I had a mouthful of that bird.

It just goes to show you, when it comes to the holidays, tradition matters.

A dragon in winter

2008-11-30T18:27:00.000-08:00

Hey, here's a great idea: see if you can slow smoke meat in freezing temperatures. Well, it turns out you can. Quite well, actually. The key was the larger smoker a couple friends (Kansas!) let me use in return for a crack at the finished results. Seriously, this thing was a fire-breathing beast. But while the meat was cooking (three hours), my ass was freezing. Check out the goods at DCFoodies.

Eatin' and Cookin' in 3/4 Time

2008-11-20T18:30:00.001-08:00

Look at that. That's why where I come from is better than where you come from. Unless you come from where I come from and then it's just as good as where you come from.

Anyway, I haven't lived in the great state of Florida in a decade, but a few times a year, I'm lucky enough to get down there for a few days. My recent trip was an early Thanksgiving excursion for the missus and me. We visited with her family, had lunch with mine, saw a few friends and attended a football game (OK, we attended two, but the first one will not be spoken of ... ever. Stupid college football team.).

And, of course, we ate. Most of us love the food and flavors of our youths (although not everyone - you know who you are). The mere thought of fried grouper sandwiches, gumbo, pressed Cubans, raw oysters and deep fried fritters can elicit a Pavlovian response from me. I imagine that if I'd remained in Florida, I would've grown tired of many of these things by now, or at least indifferent, but the distance causes them to loom large in my memory.

So meals weren't just meals. They were reunions. Touchstones. The best of performances of everything good about Florida cuisine.

Lunch at the Waterfront on Pine Island included fried grouper sandwiches, raw oysters, just-in-season stone crab claws and thick-cut onion rings. We washed it all down with a beer the restaurant just got in on tap, Hook & Ladder. That night, we found a small ice cream shop serving fresh key lime pie. The next day I was lounging in a pool while it was snowing in D.C.

Back in Tampa, we spent the weekend tailgating with my old college friends, their spouses and their friends and their friends' friends and on and on. Before Saturday's cluster fuck of a football game (God damn South Florida), my buddy Carl cranked out egg and sausage breakfast sandwiches like a short-order cook. The ladies had them with mimosas and pomegranate champagne cocktails. The guys drank beer (Don't know how alcoholics and the Germans do it. Beer at 10 a.m. is just plain odd).

That night, the missus and I spent the evening with Red, Veggie and their kid, Uma. They were thrilled to have us for the night.

Uma's a beautiful child, but always seems to have a vaguely stern look on her face. Cute nevertheless.

In exchange for putting us up for the night (and what I would later do to their bathroom ... y'all need a fan), I whipped up grilled bone-on pork chops stuffed with smoked mozzarella, fresh basil and sun dried tomatoes for Red, the missus and me. For Veggie, the missus put together roasted acorn squash stuffed with a savory mixture of goat cheese, fresh basil and sun dried tomatoes. All of it turned out pretty good, which just goes to show that a few quality ingredients are all you really need.

Sunday's Bucs game was my turn at the tailgate grill. In honor of my hometown's most famous sandwich, I made Cuban burgers and grilled potato wedges.

I've seen Bobby Flay do these burgers a couple times and decided to throw them together from memory. Now looking over Flay's recipe after the fact, it appears I was pretty damn spot on. The only ingredient I missed was roasted garlic in the mayo (that's just gilding the Lilly) and I didn't use any heavy objects to press the burgers.

The only other time I made these burgers, I busted out my heavy cast iron pan to play sandwich press. The result was crushed burgers. They were good, but awfully beaten up.

This time, I pressed down a bit on the burgers with the lid of the portable camping grill, but generally left them alone. And while the sandwich tastes great with the ham, Swiss cheese, pickles, mayo and mustard, the genius of it is the aluminum foil. After the burgers are built, they're wrapped in foil before being pressed. The foil holds the heat and steam in, warming the bun and reducing the cheese to a melty, stringy state of perfection.

Red's wife, Veggie, baked a hummingbird cake for dessert. I've never heard of the cake before, but it tastes like what banana bread must evolve into. It was good cake.

There were other meals after that. Steak on the grill. Pork tenderloin on the grill (see a trend?). Mexican burritos and a chicken wrap at a restaurant where I once got food poisoning. The missus and I even got a chance to check out Tampa's newest beer bar, World of Beer. It's a great joint that the city's beer scene sorely needs.

Now we're back, it's cold and there's a chance of snow flurries tomorrow. I miss Florida.

Samuari Burgers ... HIYAH!

2008-11-10T20:41:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about a burger for three years. It was strange. It was delicious. It was from Pittsburgh. I recreated this Asian burger from the steel city. Then I ate it. Check it out at DCFoodies.

Oysters in Urbanna

2008-11-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

I drove 134 miles to eat cheap and delicious oysters in southern Virgina. Good times. Check out the shuckin' and eatin' at DCFoodies.

Steak off!

2008-11-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

For no other reason than to eat steak au poivre and surf and turf, I pitted my filet mignon recipe against chef Bill Rodgers. The only loser was the cow. Check it out at DC Foodies.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

Wedged between the Oktoberfest and pumpkin ales of fall and the Christmas ales of, well, Christmas are the Halloween beers, including Rogue's Dead Guy Ale and Wychwood's Hobgoblin. And the great thing about these beers is most will be around long after the jack-o-lanterns have rotted.
So skip the candy (or not) and grab a cold one. They're spooky good.

El Leviathan, esse!!

2008-10-18T19:08:00.000-07:00

Tired of fish tacos? Want to eat something that'll put up a fight? Check out my latest post on D.C. Foodies.

It's not pumpkin. It's Scottish!

2008-10-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

In a season of pumpkin ales, Duck-Rabbit’s Wee Heavy Scotch Style Ale is a nice change of pace.
The six-pack was a blind grab at Sam’s Quik Shop as the missus and I headed home from Durham, N.C., after the World Beer Festival. The carton merely said the beer was a seasonal, but I’ve sampled Duck-Rabbit enough times to trust that whatever the seasonal was would be decent. Besides, I’m always attracted to limited edition beers.
Because it’s fall, I assumed I was buying a six-pack of pumpkin ale, but was tickled to see the plaid Balmoral cap perched atop the duck-rabbit.
The dark, amber colored ale is somewhat sweet (thanks to the 8 percent alcohol content) with a rich, slightly spicy finish.
The wee heavy is a great strong ale to sip on the air gets crisp and the temperature starts to fall. But if you don't live in North Carolina, you're out of luck. In that case, consider other Scottish ales like Skull Splitter, Belhaven's Wee Heavy or Old Chub Scottish Style Ale from Oskar Blues, any of which will do just as well.
Still want pumpkin? Bake a pie.

Who's the Big Boss?

2008-10-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

I know. I know. It's a terrible pun. But it illustrates my point: too many people know too little about North Carolina's craft brewing scene.

That scene includes Big Boss, one of the best breweries in North Carolina, if not the East Coast.

I've been a beer fan for years, but it wasn't until I moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., that I became a craft beer enthusiast. It was breweries like Foothills, Carolina Brewing Company, Duck-Rabbit and Big Boss that showed me why craft brewing is such a special endeavor.

Think about it like this: Anheuser-Busch brews millions of gallons of Budweiser in a state-of-the-art plant in St. Louis, Mo. Basically, it's beer by HAL. Big Boss Brewing Company is a group of guys brewing beer in a warehouse in Raleigh.

The warehouse is also home to Big Boss' brewpub, Horniblows Tavern (admit it, you love the name).

Despite being located in an industrial park in north Raleigh, Horniblows is one of the best bars in the city. It better be, it's a pain in the ass to get to.

Earlier this year, the missus and I swung by Horniblows with our friend Val. After a couple wrong turns, we pulled into Horniblows' parking lot, a bar closer to a tire store than another watering hole. If it weren't for a trailer parked out front with the Big Boss logo painted on the side, we would've driven right by the place.

It's a good thing we didn't. Inside, the industrial park gives way to a dimly lit, dark wood bar. And as you'd expect at a brewpub, where the mash tun is churning away in the next room, the selection of beer is tempting and unique.

In addition to Big Boss' popular Bad Penny Brown, Hell's Belle and Angry Angel lines, Horniblows had a Holly Roller II IPA and its Belgian style Surrender Monkey Farm House Ale on draft.

They also had Galaga.

Last weekend, Big Boss brought its seasonal creation -- Black Diamond Express -- to the World Beer Festival in Durham.

Black Diamond is an IPA infused with blackberries. As horrible as that sounds to someone who hates fruit-flavored beers (me), Black Diamond is a solid beer. The blackberries are a subtle compliment to the hoppy flavor of the IPA. If more breweries would take such a restrained approach to fruit flavors, their fruity beers might turn out better (looking at you, Abita).

Toss in the quality beers, a great bar, and friendly staff eager to show off their beers, and it's easy to like Big Boss and the craft beer scene.

But here's the rub: unless you live in North Carolina, Hell's Belle, Angry Angel and the rest of the craft beers brewed in North Carolina are out of your reach. Hopefully, as the craft beer scene continues to grow and evolve, more great beers become more widely available.

In the meantime, I'll be loading the trunk every time I visit the Tar Heel state.

Fat Tire rolls into Durham

2008-10-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

So that’s what all the fuss is about.
Fat Tire, the beloved beer of so many and the long-for beer of so many others, was one of the new beers at this year’s World Beer Festival in Durham, N.C.

And you know, it ain’t too bad.
For years I’ve read about the beer brewed in Ft. Collins, Colo. On message boards, those who've had it swear by it and lament the fact that they can’t get it once they move east. For folks like me who have never traveled to Colorado, such talk creates curiosity. What is it about this beer that makes so many people long for it? There are a lot of beers brewed in Colorado that are available nationally, so why all the fuss over Fat Tire?
During the Brewers Association’s Savor event in D.C. last February, I asked Kim Jordan, the head of New Belgium Brewing, if she planned to distribute Fat Tire any further east than Tennessee. Not at the moment, she said. If I was that interested, she invited me to visit the brewery.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to travel that far (though a trip to Colorado wouldn’t be a bad thing). New Belgium set up a booth at the Durham festival and brought its famous beer. Though the brewery was at the back of the festival site, it was my first stop. And the charming couple working the booth was more than happy to put up with my picture taking and questions.
Like I said, Fat Tire is a pretty solid ale. And as a former North Carolina resident and fan of the many breweries in the Triangle and across the Tar Heel state, I understand where Fat Tire’s fans are coming from.

If I could get sixers of Foothills and Big Boss here in D.C., maybe I wouldn't be as enamored with them. After all, we tend to want what we can’t have. Or maybe they're really as good as I think they are. Of course, taste is relative.
During the festival I heard rumors that New Belgium is considering making Fat Tire and its other beers available on the East Coast. I’d be tickled if they did. But I also wonder whether doing so would deflate Fat Tire’s mystique.
Now, New Belgium wasn’t the only new face at the festival. One of Utah’s very few breweries, Uinta Brewing Company, showed up with a half dozen offerings from its product line, including its Angler Pale Ale. Despite coming from a state known more for Mormons and teetotaling, Uinta produces a quality beer. And unlike New Belgium, I’ve already seen Uinta’s beers show up around D.C.

And now, the rest of the rest from the festival. Normally, there would be more photos, but my battery died and using my camera phone got old fast.

(Thomas Creek Brewery)

(Foothills Brewing)

(Big Boss Brewing Company)

(Wedge Brewing Company)

(Rogue Brewing)

(Hook and Ladder Brewing Company)

(Ft. Collins Brewery)

Of honeymoon and murder

2008-10-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

Cute, huh? They're dead now. I killed them. I grilled them. Then I ate them and fed 13 of their friends to my friends and loved ones. Strangely enough, the whole experience reminded me of my honeymoon. Check it out at D.C. Foodies.

Der Godzilla!! ... killer potato salad ... and beer

2008-09-21T16:21:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest grilling post on D.C. Foodies. I grilled a 5-foot bratwurst, made the best potato salad you've never had and cracked open a couple of excellent Oktoberfest beers. Enjoy (I did).

A helping hand and a bowl of gumbo

2008-09-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

Regretfully, this is my final food column for the Times-News. Due to budget constraints, the newspaper was forced to drop my column. So it goes in the newspaper industry these days.

Gulf Coast gave us gumbo, now we can return the favor

Talk about timing.
Weeks ago, I decided to do this month’s column on gumbo. Not only was I going to extol the many virtues of the classic bayou dish, but I would use the column to remind people about the difficulties the folks down on the Gulf Coast still face three years after Hurricane Katrina.
Gustav and Ike took care of that for me.
As if to mark Katrina’s three-year anniversary, Gustav rolled over the Louisiana coast reminding residents and the rest of us that life on the Gulf Coast can get pretty rough. Last week, Hurricane Ike pounded Texas.
To heck with the gators and snakes, it’s Mother Nature that you have to watch out for down there.
Fortunately, generations of immigrants, Indians, slaves, settlers and a few pirates weathered the storms and cultivated a culture as uniquely American as it is unique. And from that culture, gumbo was born – a savory soup of ingredients and influences that is the mother dish of the American Gulf Coast.
Louisiana and the city of New Orleans may be the birthplace of gumbo, but pots of that delicious dark concoction can be found bubbling away in homes and restaurants from Pensacola, Fla., to Port Arthur, Texas.
But New Orleans is the epicenter. The French influenced, former Spanish port town attracted people from all over the world. Thankfully, these people brought with them a myriad of tastes and cooking techniques, and deposited them in the Big Easy. From the roux that forms the base of the gumbo (a French technique), to the filé powder that seasons it at the end (thanks to the Choctaw Indians), gumbo is the result of this conflagration of influences.
Oh, and let's not forget about the hot sauce. We can thank the Africans, Caribbean islanders and, of course, Edmund McIlhenny, inventer of Tabasco sauce, for that.
Aside from the roux and the "trinity" (onion, celery and green bell pepper), which make up the base of all gumbos, there are a number of ways to make the dark, rich soup. More often than not, I make a seafood gumbo using a dark roux made from flour and bacon fat. Right before I ladel the gumbo into waiting bowls of steaming rice, I load the pot with fresh crab meat, oysters, shrimp, and if I can find them, mudbugs (crawfish).
Technically, I should use a light roux with seafood (and a dark roux with meat), but no one seems to complain. I think it's because of the bacon.
If seafood isn’t your thing, consider making an andouille sausage and chicken gumbo, or gumbo ya-ya with hard-boiled or poached eggs.
Of all the meals that I’ve made and received – and there have been a lot of them – gumbo is by far my favorite. No dish is as unique and few as delicious. Every bowl reminds me of the last one I ate and makes me look forward to the next.
There is no other dish like it and there is no culture like the one that gave it to us.
So when Hurricane Katrina buried New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast in debris and flood water, my heart went out to the millions of victims. Here at The Times-News, we launched Operation Gulfport to support the people of Gulfport, Miss., who were as affected by Katrina as anyone. Many of us also dug deeper to help other communities, including New Orleans, which became the face of the storm’s aftermath.
In time, the flood waters receded and life slowly moved toward normalcy. However, life on the Gulf Coast hasn't reached normal yet. National Guard troops still patrol New Orleans' empty neighborhoods and the rebuilding – and repopulation – is far from complete.
Thanks to Gustav and Ike, there’s even more work to do – in Louisiana and Texas.
As before, our attention will soon turn back to the presidential election and the odds and ends that make up every day life. But before we completely forget about the folks on the Gulf Coast, consider supporting one of the many charities helping residents rebuild their communities and their lives.
The following are just a few aid organizations helping folks in Louisiana and Texas:

Alabama Seafood Gumbo
(Adapted from Jessie Tirsch's "A Taste of the Gulf Coast")
(Makes 12 generous servings)

I've made this recipe more times than I can count. There are other ways to make gumbo, but this is a good one. For this batch, I threw in one soft shell crab per serving and added a whack of Tabasco sauce, as always.

8 strips of bacon, diced
¼ cup all-purpose flour
4 cups finely chopped onions (about 4 large)
1 cup finely chopped green bell peppers (about 1 large)
1 tbs. minced garlic (6 medium cloves)
3 cups chopped okra (about ¾ pounds)
5 cups peeled, chopped plum tomatoes
4 bay leaves
1 tbs. salt
5 turns freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp. cayenne pepper

1 1/2 quarts chicken stock
2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 pound lump crab meat
1 pound freshly shucked oysters, with their liquor
Tabasco to taste (optional)
12 soft shell crabs (optional)
12 cups hot cooked long-grain white rice (3 cups uncooked)

Place a large, heavy pot, preferably cast iron, over medium-low heat until hot. Add the bacon, stirring constantly, until the bacon is crisp and the fat is rendered, 5 to 6 minutes.

Discard the bacon. Add the flour and cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot constantly, until the roux is a deep cocoa color, 7 to 8 minutes. (Be careful not to splatter yourself with the hot roux.)

Stir in the onions, bell peppers, celery and garlic – the mixture will get clumpy as the roux suddenly cools. Increase the heat to medium and cook, stirring and scraping frequently to keep the flour from sticking, until the onions are tender and golden, about 15 to 20 minutes.
Increase the heat to medium-high. Stir in the okra and cook, stirring frequently, until the liquid from the okra stops oozing, about 2 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, bay leaves, salt, black pepper and cayenne (and Tabasco if you like).
Stir in the stock and bring to a boil. Cover partially and reduce the heat to low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the soup is thickened and the vegetables are tender, about 1 hour.

Increase the heat to medium-high. (If you're including the soft shell crabs, add them in and cook for 5 minutes.) Add the shrimp and crabmeat, being careful not to break up the crabmeat as you stir it into the gumbo, and simmer just until the shrimp turn pink, about 1 minute. Right before serving, stir in the oysters and their liquor, and cook just until the edges curl, about 1 to 2 minutes.
Serve in shallow bowls over rice.

Brunch with the Foodies

2008-09-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

Hey, do you like brunch? Yeah, I thought so. Check out my latest post on D.C. Foodies.

Great shrimp, so-so recipe

2008-09-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

I am about to complain about a meal I thoroughly enjoyed.

Does that mean I've reached a higher level of bitching? Am I a philosopher king of whining?

Don't know, but I do wish I liked my meal more than I did.

The other day, the missus spotted head-on Gulf shrimp at the grocery store. Although I didn't know what to do with them at that moment, we bought a pound with the understanding that they'd end up on the grill.

We settled on a recipe from "Grilled to Perfection," the cookbook from the folks behind License to Grill, one of the best grilling shows on TV.

So far so good, right?

Not wanting to work too hard, we went with the gin-marinated grilled shrimp recipe. I substituted mint for cilantro and kept the heads and shells on the shrimp, but otherwise followed the recipe.

The result: great grilled shrimp ... that tasted nothing like gin. It didn't taste like any of the other marinade ingredients either.

Like I said, though, the shrimp were great. Of course, they would've been great without the marinade and I wouldn't be out a 1/2 cup of my favorite gin.

I appreciate subtle flavors as much, if not more, than the next guy. But in this case, the marinade's flavors weren't subtle, they were lost.

Gin-marinaded grilled shrimp

(From "Grilled to Perfection" by Chris Knight and Tyler J. Smith)

20 medium-sized shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup gin

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

1/3 cup chopped onion

1 tbsp. garlic, minced

Place the shrimp in a large sealable plastic bag. Mix together the remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour into the bag over the shrimp. Toss to coat well and refrigerate for no more than 30 minutes.

Preheat the grill to high -- 400F.

Remove the shrimp from the marinade. Season with salt to taste. Place the shrimp on the grill and cook until they are no longer translucent on one side, approximately 1-2 minutes.

Turn and continue to cook for another minute or two until slightly golden brown and cooked through.

Crappy drink or complete abomination?

2008-09-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past week working on other projects, so Gastronomy has languished.

However, I was shaken into action (too much?).

Wandering through the grocery store the other day I came across the most horrible of sights: a sixer of mojitos.

Not since discovering premade rum and coke in a can have I seen such a grotesque intersection of American ingenuity and laziness. The Captain Morgan rum and cola can got a pass because soda already comes in can, so the addition of rum wasn't that big of a deal or that far of a stretch.

But the mojito is different. Not only is the mojito a classic summer beverage, but it's a four-ingredient cocktail that's dead simple to make.

Apparently, though, the fine folks at Captain Morgan decided combining rum, mint, sugar and lime is too complicated for the gap-mouthed American public. So they did it for us.

You know, it's not even the crappy drink that makes me angry. It's the fact that I know thousands upon thousands of Americans will buy it. And why not? We already buy gallons of margarita mixers and vats of premade bloody mary mix, why wouldn't we buy the whole cocktail premade?

After all, we're the country that invented fast food and microwave dinners. We've cut so many culinary corners that we're in danger of forgetting what we were working with in the first place.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting that you gotta slave over every meal you cook and every cocktail you mix. But when something is already simple, why screw with it?

Case in point: the other night a few "friends" picked up a six pack of Bud Light with lime knowing the mere sight of it would send me into a frothing rant (note to friends: you can't complain about the rants if you instigate them). As if on cue, I started ranting as soon as I spotted the "beer."

Trying the beer didn't help. Now, I like a slice of lime in my Mexican beer as much as the next guy, but this crap tasted like a chemistry accident. Suffice it to say that Bud Lite with lime won't cure scurvy.

So please people, stop supporting these ideas. Just because something is easy doesn't mean it's good.

A real mojito

2 tbs. simple syrup

4 sprigs of fresh mint

1 lime halved

3 oz. of rum

Drop three sprigs of mint into the bottom of a glass, squeeze half the lime and muddle until the mint is throughly bruised. Add the simple syrup, rum, juice from the other half of the lime and fill the glass half full of ice. Mix the ingredients throughly. Place the final mint sprig in the glass and top off with ice.

Salud!

Joining the Foodies

2008-08-24T17:55:00.000-07:00

Hey, I've started writing about grilling for a D.C. area blog site, DCFoodies.com. Check out my inaugural post on grilled Cornish hens and spicy corn salad at D.C. Foodies.

Gin vs. Vodka: The grudge match

2008-08-24T16:38:00.000-07:00

I'm a gin guy.

It's flavorful. It's clean. Churchill liked it. It's a quality liquor.

My buddy Tim is a vodka guy (closet communist).

It's flavorless. It's boring. It's the liquor of choice for brutal Soviet dictators and the cast of "Sex and the City."

But who am I to criticize another man's liquor? When that "man" insists on ordering vodka martinis.

The martini is my drink. Ice cold with a lemon twist, it just doesn't get any better.

It does, however, get much worse when you insist on subing out the gin for vodka. That's effectively saying, "Hey, I hate flavor!"

So, after going around and around about the merits of the true martini verses the vodka martini, Tim and I agreed to hold a tasting. My favorite gin verses his favorite vodka. The goal being to convince each other of the virtues of our spirits.

Well, it worked.

I really am surprised. I've had my fair share of vodka and never really thought much of it. Tim's had gin. Good gin. Hendrick's gin. And yet, he's not thought much of it.

To change his mind, I brought a bottle of Plymouth gin. Distilled and bottled in the English port town the pilgrims launched from lo those many years ago. It's the best gin I've ever had.

Tim brought Tito's Handmade Vodka, produced in of all places Austin, Texas.

Yee haw.

He also offered up a bottle of Chopin Polish vodka. He should have gone solo with Tito.

To show off the qualities of the gin and vodka, we did a straight tasting and made a couple cocktails. Tim made a caipiroska. I made a martini and a gin and bitters.

I gotta admit, Tito makes a quality vodka. It's smooth and rich. I enjoyed it as much straight as I did in the caipiroska.

The Chopin tasted like alcohol.

In turn, Tim really digged the Plymouth gin (no surprise there).

The tasting availed him to the slightly sweet, herbal qualities that make gin such a pleasant spirit. The gin and bitters (made with Regan's Orange Bitters) was just a popular.

The martini, however, wasn't to his taste.

Commie.

Martini

3 oz. of Plymouth gin

1 tsp. dry vermouth

lemon twist

Fill a shaker half full with ice and add the dry vermouth. Stir and vermouth to coat the ice cubes and strain the excess. Add the gin, stir and pour into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with the lemon twist.

Gin and bitters

3 oz. of Plymouth gin

4 shakes of bitters (preferably, Regan's Orange Bitters)

Add the bitters to the cocktail glass. Swirl the bitters to coat the sides of the glass and pour out the excess. Pour the gin and enjoy.

Caipiroska

1 lime

1 tsp. sugar

2 oz. Tito's Handmade Vodka

Wash the lime and cut it into quarters. Muddle the sugar and limes in the glass. Add ice and vodka, stir and serve.

Exploring the wonderously versatile wok

2008-08-19T17:15:00.000-07:00

My latest column in Wednesday's Times-News.

From frying and steaming to boiling, the versatile wok can do it all

Drew Long

A few months ago, a reader e-mailed me and asked if I planned to write a column on wok cooking.
The thought had crossed my mind. I like woks and my wife is fascinated by them. The iconic Asian cooking tool is as simple as it is versatile.
When most of us think about the wok, we think about stir-frying. However, the wok can do much more than that. Think boiling, poaching, steaming, deep-frying and smoking.
Six cooking techniques with one pan. Now that's versatility.
So with Michael Phelps and the U.S. Olympic team amassing medals in Beijing, I figured now is the perfect time to break out my wok.
The big drawback to wok cooking is our stoves are not set up for it. Our flat stove tops don't heat woks all that well. Asian restaurants use wok stoves, which have wok-shaped holes in the stove tops that snugly fit the pan's conical shape and heat more of its surface area. Home cooks in Asia who don't have a wok stove use a wok ring that fits over electric and gas burners to accommodate the pan.
In her excellent book on wok cooking, "The Breath of a Wok,'' author Grace Young offers a few tips on cooking with a wok on a typical American stove. When stir-frying, Young advises cooking with high heat -- an unusual and unsettling method for American cooks -- and preparing the meat and vegetable separately.
Beginning with the meat, make sure not to crowd the wok. Doing so, Young warns, will drop the temperature of the wok and prevent searing. Also, don't cook more than 12 ounces of meat at a time.
With vegetables, Young limits portions to 4 cups at a time.
The idea behind stir-frying in a wok is speed. Meat and vegetables are cut into small portions so they cook fast over a very high heat.
Because everything is quick, you have to be ready to cook. That means the vegetables are cut up, the seasoning is on the counter and preferably portioned out, the meat has been prepped and you have dishes waiting to receive the food as soon as it's done -- all this before you begin heating the wok.
As I said, woks aren't limited to stir-frying. When I mentioned to my friend Xiaoyi (sh-OW-yee) that I was writing a column on wok cooking, she told me about saltwater chicken, a steamed dish her mom taught her.
Steaming, as it turns out, is as common in Chinese cooking as frying. Xiaoyi, who grew up in Shanghai before moving with her family to Boston, said cooking oil was expensive, so home cooks often steamed their meals. Although cooking oil is no longer a luxury, steaming remains a staple in her family's home.
The technique is quite a bit different than stir-frying, but just as efficient. When steaming, the meat and vegetables are cooked in a bowl set inside a covered wok. Saltwater chicken, one of many Chinese recipes that utilize steaming, is a one-pot dish that can be done in 45 minutes.
Admittedly, when Xiaoyi told me about the recipe, I was worried that at best it would be wet and bland. At worst, it would be undercooked.
Luckily I was bright enough to trust Xiaoyi.

The chicken comes out perfectly moist and subtly flavored by the salt, ginger and scallions. It's a delicate dish that proves limited means don't limit culinary ingenuity.
Behind my kitchen cabinet doors is a battery of frying pans, stock pots, sauce pots, grill pans, roasting pans and one wok -- which can do the work of all of them.

Xiaoyi's Saltwater Chicken

4 pieces of chicken (2 legs, 2 thighs)
6 scallions, diced
1 piece of ginger (at least 2 inches long), julienned (cut into match sticks)
Salt to taste
1 tablespoon rice wine (dry sherry and sake can be used as substitutes)

The day before, dice the scallions, peel and julienne the ginger, and season the chicken with the salt. Combine the chicken, scallions and ginger in a Zip-lock bag and put in the refrigerator to marinate over night.

Remove the chicken from the refrigerator 30 minutes before you begin cooking so it can lose some of its chill. Place the steaming rack in the wok and fill the bottom with water, but not enough to touch the rack. Place the chicken and half the scallions and ginger into a bowl and place on the steaming rack.

Cover the wok with a lid (I used aluminum foil) and turn the stove on high. When the water is boiling, reduce to simmer and cook for 45 minutes. To make sure the chicken is fully cooked, use a meat thermometer (180 degrees F.) or pierce the meat and see if the juices run clear. If they do, the chicken is ready.

Remove the chicken from the wok, discard the skin and strip the meat off the bone. Serve the chicken, scallions and ginger over rice, ladling on top some of the rich juice that collected in the bowl the chicken cooked in.
Makes 2 servings.

Jean Yueh's Shanghai-Style Shrimp
(Source: From Grace Young's "The Breath of a Wok'')

1 pound large shrimp
3½ tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 slices ginger
2 scallions cut into 2-inch pieces
1 tablespoon dry sherry
3 tablespoons sugar or to taste
1 tablespoon sesame oil (optional)

Using kitchen shears, cut through the shrimp shells two-thirds of the length down the back of the shrimp. Remove the legs and devein the shrimp, leaving the shells and tails on. Rinse the unpeeled shrimp, drain and set on several sheets of paper towels. With more paper towels, pat the shrimp dry. In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce and vinegar.

Heat a 14-inch, flat-bottomed wok over high heat until a bead of water vaporizes within 1 to 2 seconds of contact. Swirl in the vegetable oil, add the ginger and scallions, and stir-fry 30 seconds or until aromatic.
Add the shrimp and stir-fry 30 seconds. Add the sherry and stir-fry a few seconds. Swirl in the soy sauce mixture and sprinkle in the sugar. Stir-fry the shrimp 1 to 2 minutes or until the sauce is distributed and the shrimp are just cooked. Remove from the heat.

Stir in the sesame oil, if desired. Serve immediately or at room temperature. Makes 4 servings as part of a multicourse meal.

On the lamb

2008-08-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

There's a layer of fat between the meat and the bone.

After an hour on the grill, that layer of fat becomes soft and succulent, keeping the meat on the lamb rib incredibly moist. When your teeth bite into the rib, separating meat from bone, your mouth is the first to discover the delicious fatty secret. You pause -- briefly -- to figure out this unctuous find. You stare at it hungrily and it winks back.

Oh my God, those were good ribs.

It's rare that I have one of those surprise moments with food. Sure, I've had great meals in great restaurants and at friends' homes. But this wasn't a matter of manipulation. This wasn't a great recipe (though the marinade I put on the ribs was pretty good), it was completely natural.

That layer of fat is between the meat and bone of every rack of lamb ribs that ever was and will ever be.

So why was this the first time I've had lamb ribs? Before I bought them on sale a while back, I didn't know there was any such thing as lamb ribs. I figured I'd get a bit of meat off them, but little else. But what the hell, they were on sale.

On Saturday, the missus and I threw a little welcome home party for a friend and I decided to chuck the ribs on the grill with a butterflied lamb leg.

It was a good party.

For the lamb leg, I used a South African recipe from Steven Raichlen's opus, The Barbecue! Bible. (If you own a grill, you should own this book. I own a few grilling and barbecuing cookbooks. I use Raichlen's all the time.)

For the ribs -- oh, those ribs -- I did a slight variation on the traditional rosemary and garlic recipe by adding crushed red pepper flakes to the marinade.

Judging by the sounds coming from around the table, both dishes turned out well, but the lamb ribs were a fantastic surprise.

To be sure, the pig remains the undisputed king of animals when it comes to most quality cuts from a single animal. But after Saturday's rib revelation, the lamb is making a mighty strong push for the title.

Lamb ribs

2 racks of lamb ribs

1 tbs. garlic powder (or 4 garlic cloves, minced)

1 tbs. crushed red pepper flakes

2 tbs. rosemary
3 tbs. olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Capetown Lamb
(From Steven Raichlen's The Barbecue! Bible)

For the lamb

1 bone-in leg of lamb (6 to 8 lbs), trimmed of papery skin

6 cloves of garlic, cut into thin slivers

6 thin slices fresh ginger, cut into thin slivers

For the glaze

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

3 tbs. Dijon mustard

2 tbs. hot Chinese-style mustard or 1 tbs. dry mustard

3 tbs. fresh lemon juice

3 tbs. vegetable oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbs. minced fresh ginger

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Lamb ribs:

The night before cover the ribs with olive oil and add the seasoning, making sure to rub it into the meat. The next day, pull the ribs out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before you're ready to grill.

Put the ribs on the grill directly over the heat, meat side down. Cook for 8 minutes, watching for flare ups. Turn the ribs over and cook for another 8 minutes. Move to a cooler side of the grill and cook for another 30 minutes.

Remove from the grill and let rest for 5 minutes before eating. I served the ribs with tzatziki sauce for dipping, but it wasn't really necessary.

Capetown Lamb:

Using the tip of a sharp paring knife, make slits about an inch deep all over the surface of the lamb, spacing them about an inch apart. Insert a sliver each of garlic and ginger into each slit. Place the lamb in a non-reactive roasting pan and set aside while you prepare the glaze.

Combine the Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, sugar, both the mustards, lemon juice, oil, garlic and ginger in a small heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Cook until thick and syrupy, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as necessary. Let cool to room temperature. Pour half the cooled glaze over the lamb in the roasting pan, brushing to coat on all sides. Cover and let marinate, in the refrigerator, for 3 to 8 hours (the longer the better).

Set up the grill for indirect grilling, placing a large drip pan in the center and preheat to medium. When ready to cook, place the lamb on the hot grate over the drip pan and brush with more glaze. Cover the grill and cook the lamb until done to taste, 2 to 2-1/2 hours; an instant-read meat thermometer inserted n the thickest part of the leg (but not touching the bone) will register 160°F for medium. Brush the leg with glaze two or three times during cooking. If using a charcoal grill, add 10 to 12 fresh coals per side every hour.

Transfer the lamb to a cutting board and brush one last time with glaze, then let stand for 10 minutes before carving. While the lamb stands, heat any remaining glaze to serve as a sauce with the lamb.

Rantings and Ravings

2008-08-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

First, the ranting.

Last week, the gift shop at the distillery George Washington built at Mt. Vernon started selling whisky.
At last, a bit of Americana I can get behind.
I read about the plan to begin producing whisky for retail sale a while back in the Washington Post when the Mt. Vernon folks decided to reconstruct the old cherry chopper's grist mill and distillery. I assumed (only made an ass out of me this time!) that because they had a working distillery on their hands, they'd make some of the historical hooch available to the rest rest of us. Since Washington didn’t age his whisky (few did at the time), I was looking forward to a few slugs of presidential moonshine.
White lightning or not, I was eager and interested. So when the mini bottles finally …
Wait, mini bottles?!
Ugh. So when the mini bottles filled with a blend of commercial whiskies went on …
Commercial whiskies? Isn’t there a working distillery on site? It's brand new, right?!!
God damn it! Only the government could screw up whisky.
So instead of producing small batch, unaged whisky on site, those willing to pay $25 for a mini bottle, shot glass and a blue box (wee!) can get a taste of a blended whisky they can buy at any liquor store or lounge.
Awesome. I think I'll pass.

Now the raving.

In a move that was both flattering and a little insulting, my buddy Bill put together a tribute to my recipe blogs. Do enjoy the hamster boy’s handiwork. He makes a pretty mean sandwich.
Another blog that’s worth a look is the one from Cigar City Brewing. Never heard of it? That’s because the brewery doesn’t exist. Not yet, anyway.
The folks behind Cigar City (Wayne Wambles and Joey Redner) are building a brewery in Tampa (God bless them). Having grown up in Tampa, I can assure you there are very few local breweries. Sadly, the King of Beers reigns over my hometown.
As a result, there are only a hand full of local breweries and brewpubs in the area, so Cigar City will be a very welcome addition.
Cigar City's blog about the experience of building a brewery from the ground up and launching a product line is fantastic. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to start your own brewery (talking to myself here), then check out their blog.
It doesn't look easy (or cheap), but it sure as hell looks rewarding.

Hot wings, baby!

2008-08-04T17:45:00.000-07:00

It's the season of the pigskin and I'm jonesing for chicken.

Last night's Hall of Fame game between the Colts and the Redskins was little more than a scrimmage match, but it marked the beginning of the NFL season. Soon enough, I'll be screaming and swearing at the television as my beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers tear my heart out once more.

For the moment though, the Bucs are undefeated and we have nothing but promise before us.

To mark the occasion, I did what I always do: I threw in the one DVD I own and relived the Bucs' 2002 championship season and the beating we laid down on the Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII.

Football calls for football food, and for this event, I chose hot wings.

Rather than frying the wings and tossing them in sauce (which is typical), I grilled them and basted them in the sauce. The beauty of cooking them this way is the wings pick up the flavor of the grill and the sauce adheres to the chicken. It's also easier to dip the chicken in blue cheese sauce when they're not dripping with wing sauce.

The Redskins won the meaningless game (the only kind of game I can support them winning) and we still have a month before the regular season begins.

But with a belly full of hot wings and dreams of another Bucs Super Bowl win, I'm about as happy as I'll be until January.

Grilled hot wings

25 chicken wings

1 bottle of hot sauce (I buy something cheap and relatively mild. Buy what you like)

3 tbs. honey

1/2 stick of butter (room temperature)

Rub or salt and pepper to taste

Blue cheese sauce

(Adapted from Bobby Flay)

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup Greek yogurt

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese (recommended: Cabrales, St. Agur or Maytag)

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

The day before you plan to grill the chicken wings, apply a rub. I use a variation of Steven Raichlen's rub. If you want to skip the rub, salt and pepper the wings to taste before you toss them on the grill.

For the blue cheese sauce, mix together all ingredients in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving.

If you're using a gas grill, pull the wings out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before you get started. If you're using a charcoal grill, pull the chicken out when you light the charcoal.

In a sauce pot, add the whole bottle of hot sauce (I used a bottle of Frank's Red Hot and a little Texas Pete I had left over) and bring up to a boil. When the sauce is boiling, add the butter, honey and stir. Simmer the sauce for 5 minutes and set aside.

When the grill is ready, add the chicken wings and cook with the lid on for 7 to 9 minutes, or until the skin facing the heat browns and begins to crisp. Flip the wings and grill for another 5 minutes with the lid closed.

Using a brush, apply the wing sauce and grill for 3 minutes. Flip, add the rest of the sauce and grill for 3 more minutes.

That's it. Pull 'em, dip 'em and eat 'em.

The reality of pricing

2008-08-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

A while back, the missus and I were having lunch and watching a football game at the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Falls Church, Va.

As we suffered though the Bucs/Lions game, the bartender mentioned that she had a couple bottles of the brewery's special (i.e., high alcohol and expensive) beer, 120 Minute India pale ale. Curious, we ordered a bottle and split it.

The cost? $18.

Sure, that's a lot of money to pay for a 12 ounce beer, but I considered it a rare treat that surely was only available at Dogfish Head's pub and restaurant.

Then I found it a week later at a local liquor store for $8 a bottle.

What the hell?!!

That, I quickly realized, is the rub of restaurant pricing. Even when the bar/pub/brewpub is owned by the brewery, its products will always be cheaper at a store. Every beer and burger you buy in a restaurant has to pay for more than the product and its components. Restaurants and bars have to make a profit on their products in order to stay in business.

Nevertheless, there is something counter intuitive about this concept when the restaurant sells products its parent company produces. Regardless, the rules are the rules, and Dogfish Head has to mark up the cost of the beers it brews and sells in its restaurants.

So when I came across Dogfish Head's limited release Immort Ale during a recent visit to the alehouse, I passed and ordered another Alehouse 75 draft (a blend of the 60 Minute and 90 Minute). At $15 a bottle, I knew I could find the Immort Ale cheaper elsewhere.

Sure enough: I found a four-pack the other day for $15.

Welcoming back a Big Easy icon

2008-07-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

New Orleans has so many iconic elements, the word begins to lose its meaning. The architecture, people, culture, history, geography and, of course, food are the definative elements that make Crescent City the unique place that it is.
When I think about New Orleans, I think about the black iron balconies of the French Quarter and the street cars that have carried me up and down St. Charles. I think about Jackson Square and the Asian women who served me chicory-laced coffee and French doughnuts across the street.
I think of gumbo and Katrina.
If such thoughts fail to occur to you, then we’re talking about different places.
Hurricane Katrina did her very best to wash away New Orleans and its icons. And while she wasn’t completely successful, the thousands of displaced residents who may never return will agree the storm gave them all they could handle.
Although I grew up with a keen appreciation for New Orleans cuisine, it wasn’t until I reached legal drinking age (OK, that’s not quite true) that I got the chance to appreciate the local beverages as well.

One of the first was Dixie Blackened Voodoo.
Of all places, I tried it in God-forsaken Orlando. The details of the event – and the fact that I was underage at the time – are neither here nor there. I was having lunch with friends in a tiny restaurant run by a family that could cook Cajun. We washed down our bowls of spicy gumbo and jambalaya with cold bottles of Blackened Voodoo.
It’s a good beer (that afternoon, it was the greatest beer). A tasty black lager (Schwarzbier) with a spooky label, Blackened Voodoo was at one time sold up and down the East Coast. When I moved from Tampa to Washington, D.C., in the late 1990s, I never struggled to find a bottle or two.
On Aug. 28, 2005, Katrina changed that.
Like most every other building in New Orleans, Dixie Brewing Company’s downtown brewery was flooded and looted. The plant had 11 feet of water in it, which ruined 10,000 cases of beer.
Fortunately, brewery owners Joe and Kendra Bruno are beginning to brew again with the help of the Huber Brewery in Monroe, Wis.
I heard about this some time ago, but I wasn’t sure if it I’d ever have another Dixie beer. Faced with rebuilding their New Orleans facility, while brewing their line of beers thousands of miles north, it seemed like the Brunos faced too many obstacles to get their business back in order.
And then I found a sixer of Blackened Voodoo.
There it was, sitting on a shelf at the Lost Dog Cafe in Arlington, Va., next to a six pack of Dixie Lager. It was like running into an old friend, someone you weren’t sure you’d see again.
Dixie Blackened Voodoo is the same beer it was before, though it seems to taste better. But seeing it for the first time since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast was one more indication that New Orleans and its icons might just be alright.
(Want to help New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana get back on it's feet? Check out the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and consider making a donation. Hurricane Katrina might be a memory, but the damage she left behind is not.)