Ginger Beer!

This weekend my housemate and I bottled the first batch of beer we brewed in our new place! It's a ginger beer we brewed on August 16th. It's not technically beer because they're no grain in it so I suppose it's more of a fruit wine. But comparable non alcoholic ginger drinks (like Reed's) are called ginger beer so I think the name calls to mind the appropriate flavour.

We started with something like 1 kilo of ginger, 2 lemons, some cloves, cinnamon, and maybe nutmeg (my housemate did the recipe mostly off the top of her head so the details are sketchy).

We couldn't find a good brew pot in the area that didn't cost an arm and a leg so for now we're using a Ball canning pot that has about a 5.25 gallon capacity. It's working fine so far, but the size means we can't do any all grain brews.

All the ginger needed to be ground up. It was tough work for my food processor. The stringy ginger kept getting caught up in everything. The house smelled incredible though.

The lemons were sliced and tossed in water (about 2 gallons) with the ginger and spices and about 2 kilos of raw sugar.

We boiled the crap out of it for a while.

Then we strained it and brought the temperature down so we could add the yeast. We used a champagne yeast (another brewing first for me) so it could handle the high sugar content.

Then we let it ferment away! It bubbled quite a lot for two weeks. The lid on the top bowed out because of all of the air pressure that built up inside the bucket. We bottled it into 12oz bottles and I think we ended up with 55 bottles total, so the batch was a bit more than 5 gallons. We tasted some when we bottled it and it was really good (pre-bottling the beer is alcoholic but not carbonated or cold, so it doesn't taste quite like the finished product). It has a solid ginger flavour with a spicy kick to it. Definitely a good way to start the year.

easy dinner: vegetarian hot dogs, sauerkraut, & beer

vegetarian hot dogs, sauerkraut, & beer.

chopped onions (1/4 c)
sauerkraut (drained & rinsed if canned)
two soy dogs chopped
dijon mustard (1T)
black pepper (1/2 t)
caraway seeds (1t)
beer (1/3 c)
butter (1T)

• melt butter in pan, add onions and saute for a few minutes
• add all other ingredients and simmer in pan until most of the beer has evaporated/absorbed
• taste and adjust seasoning
• serve w/ a slice of rye bread

I used Arcadia Ales Sky High Rye, which seemed like an appropriate choice. It's a tasty, super drinkable summer ale, but a little lighter on the rye than I would have expected.The sauerkraut dish came out super tangy and yummy, a bit sweeter than I would have liked so I added more pepper and mustard. Definitely going to try variations of this in the fall. My homemade kraut should be ready in a few days. **Edit! I added more beer and let it simmer a little longer. This took care of most of the sweetness and gave it a nice bitter bite. Just goes to show you that the solution is always more beer.

Vacation Beer Reviews

I spent the weekend visiting my friend Kelly in Hollywood, Florida. It's a cute little town on the coast between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. While I was visiting I did my best to try as many new beers as I could, and Kelly definitely aided me in the process!

Knowing my great love of beer and being the wonderful friend that she is, Kelly got me an assorted six pack of local beers (save one from CA, which she picked out because the label was cool). I drank these over the course of the weekend along with a few other brews out at bars/restaurants. I took notes on a few. Nothing incredibly remarkable, the Monk in the Trunk was my favorite by far.

Holy Mackerel Special Golden Ale Ft Lauderdale, FL
A- opaque golden color, like cloudy honey. Thin head with persistent lacing

S- smelled like a hefeweizen, banana, slightly floral, alcohol aroma.

T- bit of a sharp/sour tang at first, but overall mild flavor in spite of the alcohol content. still put me in the mind of a hefeweizen

M- slightly viscous and heavy on the edges of my tongue.

D- pretty well balanced, and goes down easier than one would expect from an 8.5% abv, but not really one that I'd drink again.

Hurricane Reef Pale Ale Melbourne, FL
A- Poured a golden honey color with a thin head that quickly dissipated but left some lacing. Visibly highly carbinated.

S- Not a very strong nose on this beer, either that or my own was stuffy. Malty perhaps.

T- light, very mild hop taste, slight spice taste

M- light, again very carbinated, kind of thin.

D- very drinkable, goes down quick and easy, perhaps the only upside of an otherwise kind of boring beer. I wouldn't go out of my way to find this one again, but it was neat to try it.

Monk in the Trunk Amber Ale Jupiter, FL

A- pours amber with golden hues, thin head that lingered a bit

S - sweet, malty nose, faint hops and some alcohol

T - had a coppery metallic tang that reminded me of some copper ales I've tried, otherwise malty and sweet

M- crisp, not over or under carbinated

D- definitely could have had a few of these, and would drink it again. it was a good, solid amber and organic as well!

Heavy Seas Peg Leg Imperial Stout, Maryland

I had this one at a restaurant, served from a bottle. I was really not impressed and then I gave the bottle a better look over and noticed that it said to serve before May 2009. Since I drank it in August, I figured it was 3-4 months past its prime and will blame the restaurant for now instead of the beer for my underwhelmed reaction. Perhaps I'll get a chance to try it again sometime.

A-dark but thin pouring with ruby notes and little to no head
S-roasted smells on the nose, coffee and chocolate perhaps, but very faint
T-yeasty taste, alcohol-sweet with a kind of stale malty flavor that lingered after
M- thinner than most russian imperial stouts i've had
D-definitely wouldn't have had another, for the abv and the taste. i'll have to try this on tap before i pass final judgment, but overall i thought it tasted bad

Mustard

I really suck at updating this blog. I’d like to pretend that it’s because I’m too busy doing exciting things in real life, but that’s really not the case. I’m going to try to play catch up with a couple of posts here and then we’ll see if I can commit to updating once a week.

In January I was rifling through my spice cabinet and wondered if I was ever going to finish the giant bag of mustard seeds I bought for making Indian food. A couple of days later I was flipping through Savour magazine (my mom got me a subscription… but it’s unfortunately mostly geared toward meat eaters) and happened upon a recipe for Spicy Guinness Mustard. Convenient? I thought so. I didn’t actually have any Guinness, but we did have a keg of BBC Coffeehouse Porter in the fridge, so I thought I would just swap out the beer. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly. It was waaaay too spicy, both in terms of heat (and I like hot mustards) and in terms of the dominating flavor of the cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. It also made a great deal more mustard than I had anticipated. So, I decided to experiment and add different things to the mustard to change the flavor, mostly just sweeteners. The results, according to my roommates and coworkers, were much improved. The mustard’s all gone now and they keep asking me to make more. I think I’m going to try champagne shallot mustard next. Anyway, here’s what I ended up with:

Spicy Guinness Mustard Take 2 (and 3 and 4)

12-oz. BBC Coffeehouse Porter
1 1⁄2 cups brown mustard seeds (10 oz.)
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1⁄4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1⁄4 tsp. ground cloves
1⁄4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1⁄4 tsp. ground allspice

Divide 3 ways.

To the first batch I added 3 cloves of garlic (minced and blended with the rest of the mustard) and 1-2 T of really sweet balsamic vinegar (I don’t remember how much, I just did it to taste). This one was by far the favorite of the three.

To the second batch I added molasses (1-2 T), brown sugar (1 T) and some cinnamon

To the third I added honey (1-2 T) and apple cider vinegar (1-2 T). This was the second favorite I think.

Pictures!









The ingredients assembled. It was actually way easier than I thought it would be.

Mixing everything together.










How it looks from the side.










You can see how much of the liquid the mustard seeds absorbed. I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the finished product.


The end!