Quick and easy Hoppin’ John

By bwyker

Way back in the early days of my vegan life, I picked up a copy of a “vegan cooking zine” called Please Don’t Feed the Bears. I don’t recall where I got the first copy, but it was one of very few cookbooks I had at the time and I used it constantly.  With it, I basically learned to cook. I’ll never forget the time I tried to make falafel from it, not knowing a “clove” of garlic is different than a bulb of garlic. What a mess. Anyway, soon after getting the first issue I was at a conference at Penn State and ran into the author, Brad Misanthropic, who was selling the second issue of the zine. I told him how great I thought the first issue was, so he gave me a copy of the second. More than a decade later, I still go back to that zine – usually for one recipe, Hoppin’ John.

I’ve made a few minor modifications to the recipe, mainly subbing “tofu or seitan” with a vegan chorizo called “Soyrizo.”

I can usually find the soyrizo in the produce section of the local supermarket. For the beer, I used Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I wanted to make this recipe simple and SN pale is a great beer that nearly everyone has access to. One other change I made for this recipe was inspired by the Hoppin’ John recipe on the can of black-eyed peas I used. The recipe suggested adding mustard greens as a garnish, so I added a bunch for the last 5 minutes of cooking. Here is the recipe, using canned beans instead of dried for simplicity:

2 15.5 oz cans black-eyed peas, drained
1 c uncooked white rice
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped (I never add this, but its in the originial recipe)
1 package Soyrizo
2 Tbsp canola or vegetable oil
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
2 c water
1 c beer of your choice
1 bunch of mustard greens, chopped

In a large sauce pan, saute the onions and green pepper (if using) in oil for 5 minutes. Add Soyrizo and saute for another 5 minutes or until onions are almost clear. Add rice and stir to coat. Add drained black-eyed peas, spices, water and beer. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute. Stir, then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Add mustard greens and cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from the stove and let sit for 10 minutes. Keep in mind, this makes a lot.

I’ve made this recipe many times, but this is the first with SN pale and mustard greens. I think it added a nice bittersweet flavor and I would definitely use them again. The greens also gave it more texture, so it’s not just a pile of mushy starch and protein. The slight southern spice from the food was perfect for the citrusy hop flavors in the pale ale. If you want to spice it up more (and I suggest you do), throw in some of your favorite hot sauce  and/or some Dinosaur Cajun Foreplay.

I’ve also made this in the slow cooker, which made it even easier. Just be sure NOT to add the onions to the slow cooker. For some reason, they just don’t do well in there and create a horrible flavor that will be overwhelming. Saute the onion in a frying pan for a few minutes, then toss it in at the end. When I made it in the slow cooker, I used an Aventinus clone I brewed for the beer. It came out hearty and more stick-to-your-ribs, stew-like, with a peppery flavor. I brought it to a barley wine and imperial stout tasting in the winter, so it went nicely.

Overall, simple, relatively cheap and very tasty. Enjoy.

Smoked porter review

By bwyker

A few months back, I brewed up a smoked porter – based mostly on Stone’s smoked porter.  I liked the results quite a bit, so much so I got through the entire keg in about 2-3 weeks time. Before finishing it off, I bottled up a six pack to enter in competitions. I did have some hesitation, as JZ says in Brewing Classic Style’s (somewhat of a bible here on VeganBrew), “(t)he worst smoked beers I’ve ever tried were all made with smoke flavoring or peat-smoked malt. I recommend never using either, no matter how tempted you might be.” Well, I was very much tempted by the Stone smoked porter clone recipe that appeared in the Dec 08 issue of BYO. I decided to ignore these words of advice from a champion homebrewer, which, surprisingly, was wise. I entered the peat-smoked porter into the 13th annual Brewer’s East End Revival Brew-off and took first place in the smoked beer category. Now, that’s not to say peat-smoked malt will always work. In fact, one judge commented “Nice job with the smoke. Peated malt can be a killer & I think you did a nice job taming it.” So, my guess is, if using peated malt, use it in moderation. A lot of recipes call for pounds of smoked malt – I only included a quarter pound, which went a long way. Anyway, here is my take of the beer:

Aroma: Slight sweetness, with a coating of smoke. No hops or anything from the fermentation.One judge noted musty cellar smells that he associated with the peat.

Appearance:  Rich dark, yet clear, body, with coffee colored foam. Plenty of head that sticks around as a thin film on the edges of the glass.

Flavor: Smoke is there, but doesn’t hit you over the head. More chocolate and roast. Smoked beers are judged by the balance of smoke and the flavors of the underlying beer. I find this to be quite balanced, with a clear porter character being enhanced with some smokeyness. One judge mentions some acid tastes, but says not enough to offset the beer. The Mt. Hood hops give it an earthy flavor that suits the style well. There might be a touch too much sweetness, depending on what style (brown or robust) of porter this is meant to be. I think it’s intended to be a robust porter, but one judge assumed brown. I may have to explore this further next time, as it might have helped to have a clear impression of the base beer. By the way, I did end up adding .3 oz of bourbon soaked oak chips in the secondary for 2 weeks. I don’t notice any bourbon or oak flavors. If you want that to come through, probably need at least an ounce, or use wood cubes and age longer.

Mouthfeel: Medium body with a dry finish. Light carbonation, but enough to help bring out some of the more subtle malty flavors under the smoke. A light ashiness, but not burnt astringency.

Overall: I really enjoyed this beer. I may need to bring down the mash temp a touch to drop some of the sweetness on the next batch. However, it might be that sweetness that is helping balance the smoke. I dont know what age will do, but I plan to keep a few bottles around for another competition in the fall.

The Great Potoo

By bwyker

Back in February, my wife and I left the tundra of Albany and took a vacation in Costa Rica. For most of the trip, we stayed at Cashew Hill Jungle Cottages in the very veg-friendly town of Puerto Viejo. The food was excellent and plentiful. Wendy, one of the owners of Cashew Hill, is a long time vegan and at least one other guest was also vegan. Their advice helped us choose among the many food options in and around town. For better or for worse, most of C.R. does not have the infrastructure we in the U.S. are accustomed to. The novelty of roads and an electric grid has barely worn off for most of the natives, so don’t go expecting to stock your cabinets with 365 deals from Whole Foods Market. Nonetheless, in large part thanks to Wendy at Cashew Hill, you can find soy milk at the local grocery store in Puerto Viejo and locally made tofu and tempeh is available in town. Also, Veronica of Veronica’s Place, a small vegetarian café situated in Veronica’s car port, makes her own seitan.  Most of the meals out  involved Gallo Pinto, a traditional Tico rice and bean dish, and generous portions of fresh “exotic” (to us anyway) fruit. Since we were on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, several meals involved really tasty jerk sauce or coconut curry. The beer selection was dominated by Heineken and fizzy yellow beers made by Cerveceria. The best beer available was Bavaria Dark, a Munich Dunkel. Good enough to hold me over, but boring enough to make me appreciate the micro-brewed cerveza available back home.

Two things that keep Costa Rica’s economy running are coffee and chocolate. Unfortunately, the sad reality is most of the cash crops grown in Costa Rica are stripped out by enormous agribusinesses, leaving behind pollution and exploited impoverished communities. Fortunately, not everyone is trying to F things up for this beautiful place. There are a number of businesses and organizations working with local farmers to promote environmentally sensitive organic farming and sustainable, community-empowering trade policies. In Puerto Viejo, we had breakfast at a place called Mighty Rivers, one such organization trying to make a difference. Part of Mighty Rivers is a “Coffee Factory,” where fair trade organic coffee and cocoa is roasted and sold as Caribean organic coffee and chocolate. I picked up a pound of whole cocoa beans and a block of bakers chocolate.  Crucial ingredients for a homebrew recipe I had thought up while relaxing in the hammock in our cottage. The cocoa, along with some old Dean Beans Italian Espresso seemed like a nice touch to an organic Imperial Porter, which I named The Great Potoo after a crazy red-eyed bird local to C.R. From our cottage, we heard the eerie cries of the Potoo in the middle of the night and wondered what the hell was about to attack us. Evil.

So a few weeks back, Kevin came up to Albany and helped brew up the porter, along with my friend Reed. Here is the recipe I came up with, using all organic grains from Northern Brewer.

14.00 lb  2-Row Malt
2.00 lb  Munich Malt
1.50 lb Caramel 60L Malt
1.00 lb Organic Quick Oats (added to the recipe last minute – see below)
.50 lb Chocolate Malt

1 oz Chinook (08 crop from my garden) 90 min
.5 oz Organic German Saphir pellets (4% AA) 15 min

2 packs Safale US-04

2.5 oz bakers chocolate (15 mins)
3 oz Dean’s Beans coarsely ground espresso beans (flame out)

1.5 oz Cocoa beans (secondary)

I attempted to Mash at 154 with 4.3 gallons of water, but it was a bit lower – maybe 152. That quickly cooled down to around 150 before we could get boiling water into the mash to bring it back up. To add some body I lost with the lower mash temp, I added a pound of quick oats I had on hand. Mashed for about an hour, then sparged and collected about 7.75 gallons of wort. I hit the gravity I estimated I would end up with, based on the shitty efficiency I keep getting (65%, which is, sadly,  good for me).  Pre-boil gravity 1.059. After a 2.5 hour boil, I ended up with 5 gallons of 1.082 wort. I tried to melt the bakers chocolate with some hot wort, before adding it to the kettle. It did not melt completely, but I expected the rest to liquefy in the last 15 minutes of the boil. Turned out to be a huge mess, as most of the chocolate did not melt and just gunked up the kettle with a waxy chocolate coating.

Fermentation was a little warm, despite the room temperature being in the low 60s. It started at about 68 and climbed up to about 70 – 72 for a day or two before finally dropping down to 66 for the last few days of fermentation. When I transfered to secondary, my gravity was 1.012, which is about .10 points lower than expected. Way over attenuated, hot tasting, and thin boddied. Not sure how this will come out. The color is off too – almost brown ale color. I would normally add black patent, but NB did not have any organic. Maybe more chocoalate malt could have helped with that.

Anyway, I removed the skins from 1.5 oz of cocoa beans, crushed them into nibs with a coffee grinder and added to the secondary.

I’ll keep it on the cocoa nibs for about two weeks and see how it tastes. I may brew up another full-bodied robust porter to blend with this to cut out the boozyness and give it more body. Just not sure if I want 10 gallons of heavy porter going into the summer.

Wit Minus Minus Tasting Notes

By kevin

Here’s a stab at tasting the Gluten Free wit I talk about here.

Poured at room temperature into a pint glass.

Appearance: Golden color – should be a tad paler to be closer to a true wit.  I swirled the bottom of the bottle (these were bottle conditioned) to add a douse of yeast to my pour.  A couple of inches of foam built up but disappate rapidly.  The head is not even remotely close to what a normal barley or wheat-based beer produces – these are fluffy with large bubbles that pop easily.  Within seconds there is nothing visible except for scant bubbly lacing on the outer rim at the liquid level.

Aroma:  orange, orange, and more orange.  Kind of smells like the crappy orange juice from concentrate you’d find at a crappy hotel continental breakfast.  I clearly went overboard with the orange marmalade on this one.

Mouthfeel: Carbonate does not persist.  This is a real bummer.  I can see how sorghum is not a simple drop-in replacement for malted barley extract.  No head retention and funny behaving carbonation.  This has been in the bottle for around a month now, so it has had plenty of time to carb up.  A true wit would be refreshingly carbonic here.

Taste: Too orangey.  Way too orangey.  I feared that I overdid the chamomile and coriander, but those are dwarfed by the orange here.  Sucks.  I think it kind of ruins the experience.  The orange tastes mildly syrupy too, even though the fermentation left a fairly low amount of residual sugars (1.012 FG – within the range for this style.)  Slightly sour tang to each sip (something I was warned amount with sorghum.)  Aftertaste is not so clean.  For comparison’s sake, last night after my Fishtown Beer Runners 5.5 mile run, I had a Long Trail Belgian White, which was the most coriander-filled beer I have ever had – but the finish was immensely clean and refreshing – leading me to want to take another sip each time.  This beer?  Not so much.

Overall:  Eh.  I won’t dump this pint, but it is probably my weakest beer since the plastic debacles I experienced early on (before I learned about chloramines and how abundant they are in Philly water… and how much yeast love to feast on them, creating some vicious off-flavors.)  Too syrupy and too undercarbonated to truly enjoy it.  Personally reminds me of the unauthenticness/artificial-ness I get from a Blue Moon.  Beth seemed to like it, as did Brett and Jaime, but the true test will be Keith, whom this beer was designed for and whom I can always count on to give me unbiased critiques of my beer.

What I would change in the future:

  • Much less orange marmalade.  Probably 1/3 of the amount I used.
  • Some more buckwheat flour.  Beer was not hazy enough until I swirled the yeast in.
  • Use Brewferm Blanch yeast instead of Safale T-58.  No complaints about the yeast flavor, but I think this flocculated a little too well.
  • Force carbonate it with co2.  Not sure if the yeast just was not healthy enough from the sorghum, or what, but I expected a more carbonated final product.  Force carbonating with co2 is pretty foolproof.
  • Figure out how to get better head retention.  I used 8 oz of maltodextrin here but that was not enough.  Adding GF quick oats or oatmeal would be helpful, but I am pretty sure they need to be converted with a base malt – which won’t exactly work here.

Hickory Smoked Seitan Steaks in a Porter-Bourbon Demi-glace

By bwyker

One day, I hope to come up with a way to extract the gluten left in spent grain and turn it into “steak.” A lot of breweries give their spent grain to farmers to feed cattle. Why not skip the middle man? For now, however, I use store bought vital wheat gluten and a kick-ass recipe Kevin developed using bits and pieces of other recipes floating around the interwebs. Last night, I made some seitan and served it in a slightly modified version of Tim Shafer’s Stout-and-Whiskey Laced Demi-glace that was featured in the July 2007 issue of Beer Advocate magazine. I made some roasted potatoes & garlic and sauted collard greens for sides and paired with Stone Smoked Porter.

I only made minor modifications to the sauce recipe, using Jim Beam bourbon instead of scotch and my uncarbonated smoked porter instead of Irish stout. Also, I switched out the Kosher salt with smoked salt and used Earth Balance instead of butter. Here is the recipe with these modifications:

1/2 TSP. olive oil
1 white onion, diced large
10 organic whole peppercorns
2 oz Jim Beam bourbon
4 oz smoked porter
2 cups brown stock (I used Organic Better than Bouillon Vegetable Base)
1/4 TSP. smoked salt
1 TSP herbs (I used dried rosemary, parsley and thyme)
1 TBSP. Earth Balance

In a sauce pan, heat the oil and add onions and peppercorns. Cook for 5 minutes over medium heat until the onions have become tender and golden in color. Remove the pan from the stove and add bourbon. Carefully return the pan to the flame – the ALCOHOL WILL IGNITE! (since I use electric, I had to light mine with a match) Stir in the beer and cook 4-5 minutes until half of the liquid has evaporated. Add the stock and continue to simmer for 15 minutes. There should be about 1o oz remaining. Finish by straining out the onion and peppercorn, then season with herbs (note: I also strained out the herbs after infusing the sauce for about 15 minutes). Whisk in Earth Balance and set aside.

The steaks:

Dry ingredients:

1 cup vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 TBSP. corn meal
1 TSP. onion powder
1/2 TSP. adobo

Wet ingredients:

1/4 cup rehydrated porcini mushrooms (I usually use shiitake mushroom stems, but didn’t have any on hand)
3/4 cup water
2 TBSP.  Wan Ja Shan oyster mushroom sauce
1 TBSP.  olive oil
1 TBSP. tahini
1/2 TSP. Dijon mustard
1/2 TSP. truffle oil (optional)
1/4 TSP. smoked salt (optional)

Mix together the dry ingredients. Blend the mushrooms into the liquid ingredients (I use a hand blender), then mix the liquid ingredients into the dry. Form a ball, then pull off pieces and flatten into rounds.

Normally, the seitan is baked for about 10 minutes in an oven at 350 degrees, flipped and basted, then returned to the oven for another 15 minutes or so. I wanted to give the steaks a smokey flavor, so I decided to cook the seitan in my smoker for the first 10 minutes, setting the grill to low heat.  I used about 1/2 cup of the demi-glace as the basting sauce and returned the steaks to the grill in a baking dish on low heat for another 15 minutes or so, until most of the liquid was gone and the steaks were firm.

For the sides, I sliced about about 6 medium sized organic red potatoes and about 6-8 cloves of garlic, placed them in an oiled baking dish with 1/2 cup of light stock, black pepper and a pinch of smoked salt. Baked at 350 for about an hour. I sauted the greens in olive oil with a little pepper.

Everything came out great. The bourbon and porter gave the sauce a sweet toasty flavor, wihtout the boozy character you might expect. The texture of the steaks was perfect. I feared they would come out too doughy, which has happened in past efforts to grill seitan. The mushrooms give the seitan an earthy flavor, which removes the grainy gluten taste you get in most seitan recipes. It has a smooth smokey flavor, but it’s not an overpowering bacon-like taste. My wife Jaime, who does not care for bourbon or smoked beer, found the sauce to be really tasty. In fact, she even had some smoked porter with the meal, as it  complimented the sweet smokey flavors of the food nicely. The only complaint we both had was it was a touch too salty. I probably could have left out some of the smoked salt and adobo and maybe reduced the amount of Better than Bouillion I used to make the broth. Overall, a great steak and potatoes meal.

Dijon (& IPA) Lentil Sauce over Grilled Polenta and Rapini

By bwyker

For months I’ve been meaning to make the Dijon Mustard Lentil Sauce from the first Milennium Cookbook. The trouble was, I could never really make it fit into a meal. Serving a protein up in sauce form is a little strange and pouring it over tofu or seitan felt like too much protein. Since spring has returned, I’ve been cooking on the grill and a spring/summer favorite of mine is grilled polenta. The lentil sauce recipe suggests a hoppy beer and I have a homebrewed IPA on tap at the moment (the IPA didn’t turn out well enough to get into the complex recipe,  but it is plenty hoppy.) With all the other ingredients on hand and some rapini (aka broccoli rabe) for a side, I cooked it up last night.

First, I cut up a roll of organic polenta into about 1/2 inch rounds and soaked them in a marinade for an hour or two.

Polenta Marinade:

1/4 cup olive oil
4 tablespoons champagne vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground sage
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

Next, I cooked the lentils in the pressure cooker for about 10 – 15 minutes and then started on the sauce. Here is the recipe directly from the book:

DIJON MUSTARD-LENTIL SAUCE
Makes 3 cups

With this sauce, I prefer using a red ale with a strong bitter hop flavor; stouts and heavy Belgian beers also work well. Any good beer of your choice will do except maybe fruit beer.

2 tablespoons corn starch
1 large yellow onion, cut into 1/3-inch dice
1 tablespoon olive oil (optional)
1/4 cup sherry or white wine
1/2 bunch fresh thyme leaves, or 2 teaspoons dried
One 12-ounce bottle of beer or non-alcoholic beer
1 cup apple juice
2/3 cup Dijon mustard
3 cups vegetable stock
1 cup cooked French lentils
1/4 bunch fresh tarragon, leaves only
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoons salt

Dissolve the corn starch in 1/4 cup cold water and set aside. In a saucepan over medium heat, cook the onion, oil, and sherry until the onions are lightly caramelized, about 15 minutes. Add the thyme leaves stir into the onions. Add the beer, apple juice, mustard and stock. Simmer until reduced by one third, about 20 minutes. Add the lentils, tarragon, pepper, and salt, and whisk in the cornstarch until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Simmer 5 minutes, remove from heat, and use or set aside. Will keep up to one week in the refrigerator.

I did not use quite as much mustard – maybe 1/2  cup. There was plenty of mustard flavor with that. The rapini was sauted with a few cloves of sliced garlic in a tablespoon or two of olive oil and sprinkled with a little salt and pepper.

I paired with a Berliner weisse I had been aging since September. With the weather in the 60’s, it felt like a nice day to tap it.  The recipe for the Berliner was very simple; however, I still managed to f it up. I used the recipe from  Brewing Classic Styles, which calls for 2.75 lbs of wheat LIQUID malt extract (LME) and 2.75 lbs light LME. I was so accustomed to using DRIED malt extract (DME) that I used the same amounts of DME. Yes, a very stupid oversight, but the results were still great. I boiled for 15 minutes, adding .5 oz organic NZ Hallertau (8% AA) at 15 minutes. Primary fermentation at 68F with safale US-05, then transferred to a keg and pitched Wyeast Berliner weisse blend (3191).

The sauce is excellent. It’s rich and earthy with a pronounced Dijon flavor. There is definitely a slight citrusy sweetness that may have come from the beer, but it was subtle and buried under layers of other flavors. Maybe a Belgian or a hearty stout may have come through more. The bitterness of the rapini and the sourness of the Berliner complemented the sweetness of the sauce nicely. If I were to make this again – and I most likely will – I may switch out the polenta with grilled portabella mushrooms to give it a little more substance.

Notes on BrewStrong’s Dry Hopping Episode

By kevin

Over the past year or so, brewing-related podcasts have really helped to increase my knowledge and understanding – of techniques, styles, and the actual processes that are going on from start to finish. I’m a big fan of Basic Brewing, and the Jamil Show on The Brewing Network. A few months back I noticed that Jamil Zainasheff teamed up with John Palmer for Brew Strong, a show geared towards extensively covering a single brewing topic for each episode.

One of the recent episodes, and by recent I mean almost 3 months ago, focused on Dry Hopping. JZ & JP brought in Mike McDole, he of the Longshot-winning-Pliny-Clone that I will be hopefully drinking soon. Anyway, since dryhopping seems to be an important but often overlooked technique, I figured I’d take some notes while re-listening recently.

Dryhopping

  • When to add? Approximately 90% of the way through primary. Since the process of introducing hops into your fermentor while inevitably introduce oxygen into the system, you want some fermentation activity still going on so that if can scrub that oxygen out.
  • JZ mentions that he mostly is not concerned with introduction-of-oxygen-via-hop-addition, since racking is likely going to be a more oxygen-inducing process anyway. I recently started doing co2-driven transfers from better bottle to better bottle, better bottle to corny keg, and corny keg to corny keg, so hopefully severe oxidization will not be a problem for me in the future.
  • Hop resins coat yeast, inhibit them, reduces viability… As a result, pitching rate generally has an effect on hop absorption
  • 65dF seems to be the optimal dryhopping temperature
  • Quantity? For an APA, McDole uses 2 oz per 5 gallon batch. This seems to be the standard amount for most American styles. English and Belgian styles should use a little less.
  • How long? Usually, no more than 1 week. For Double IPAs (which would require more dryhopping… McDole recommends splitting the total in half, and dry-hopping each total 5 days apart. For light styles (not sure if this refers to light in color, light in body, etc) – it should definitely never be longer than 1 week.
  • McDole blows co2 in every couple days to rouse the yeast and hops, which should give better utilization. Unfortunately most of us don’t have conical fermentors where this is easy to do. However, I imagine I could rig up some sort of racking-cane-and-carboy-cap based solution for my better bottles where I could blow co2 in.
  • Taste samples! The key is to just be consistent with your quantities and times. That, combined with sampling often, means finding the perfect balance in the future should theoretically just be a recipe adjustment.
  • Put your nuts in your sack. If you are going to use sacks to neatly contain your hops for dryhopping, you need to balance the weight of the hops with an equal amount of something else, or it will end up floating on the surface. Marbles or stainless steel nuts are good for this purpose. A tight sack is not good, it has to swing free. Hang it in and pull it out, like you are teabagging. Wow.
  • In “traditional” German brews, dryhopping is not appropriate. This is because Noble hops tend to somehow give more flavor and aroma from boil.
  • JZ lures dogs towards his crotch with malt extract not peanut butter. Interesting tidbit. Shadow certainly would love some malt extract.
  • High alpha hops have more oil per weight, which produces more pure aroma, which means you can get more with less. The percentage of alpha acid and the percentage of oils are not same but often related. Hops that generally have more time on the bide, have more oil in them.
  • Too much dryhop for too long leads to grassy flavors, due to the abundance of vegetal matter floating in your beer.
  • Simcoe is yummy but some people think it reminds them of cat pee. JZ loves that variety of cat pee regardless.
  • Extraction seems to be better at higher temperatures.
  • If filtering (McDole filters his beer), and you feel as though the filtering stripped any hop flavor out – you can fix this with a recipe adjustment next time.
  • Temperature: Earlier they said 65 dF is perfect, but they mentioned that Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River [side note: they fine every single beer with gelatin] believes 50 dF is the perfect temperature – “cold enough to drop cal ale yeast [out of suspension] but warm enough to dissolve hop goodies.”
  • JZ almost always skips secondary (most times, it is just another opportunity to oxidize or introduce infection.) However, if doing a massively-dry-hopped beer like Pliny, he will transfers to a carboy and then adds his dryhops
  • If you dryhop in the keg, there will be less loss of delicate aromatics being carried out from the ferment. (But if it is not drunk fairly quickly, it will get vegetal.)
  • Dryhopping with wet hops is a terrible idea due to the high bacterial / wild yeast load, since most plant matter is covered in wild yeast and dust and stuff. (Kilning kills off the bad stuff.)
  • Mixing hops: You can use many if they are the same family (there are dominant hops and there are background hops. Simcoe is onion, celery, Northern Brewer is minty, woody, Columbus is piney, catpee-ish. Consult the Hop Flavor Wheel in Brewing Classic Styles
  • And finally…Pliny the Elder is able to be so full and have wonderful mouthfeel despite being so dry, because the boatload of hop resins are able to provide balance and almost take the place of malts.

Smoked Porter

By bwyker

After my first brew kettle/MLT sprung a leak, it was time to retire my 5 gallon ghetto setup. I decided to upgrade to a 10 gallon megapot from Austin Homebrew. I added the Blichmann BrewMometer and stainless steel 3-piece ball valve. While the new kettle is awesome, dealing with Austin Homebrew was not the best experience. It took more than a month to arrive, thanks to an incredibly stupid system in which the thermometer and ball valve are shipped directly from Blichmann. Despite it being listed as “in stock” on the Austin Homebrew site, the thermometer was, in fact, not in stock. When it finally was, Blichmann shipped, then recalled the order due to an “invoicing error.” Anyway, the full order finally arrived last week and I got to work on the smoked porter I had planned out ages ago.

The recipe is primarily based on the Stone Smoked Porter clone from the Dec 08 issue of BYO. I had to make a few modifications to correct for a slightly shitty efficiency and to use up some crystal malt I had. Also, I scaled down to fit the batch into my 5 gallon primary fermenter (corny keg). Here is the recipe I used:

Grains:

10 lbs 2-row pale malt
1.5 lbs chocolate malt
5 oz crystal 60L
4 oz crystal 90L
.25 lbs peated malt.

Added to make up gravity points:
.75 lbs light LME
.25 lbs brown sugar

Hops:

1.5 oz Perle (7.6% AA, 90 min)
.5 oz Mt. Hood (Kevin’s Fresh Hop rejects, 5.8% AA, 15 min)

Yeast: 1 pack Safale 04

Other: 2 tsp Irish moss (15 min)

Mashed at 154, with 4 gallons of water. After a 60 minute mash, batch sparged with 3 gallons of 170 degree water. Collected 5.5 gallons of smokey wort.

Since the new pot is gigantic and cannot fit on my stove, this was all done on the back patio with the help of the turkey fryer. Few things are as disgusting as the act of deep frying an entire turkey’s dead body; however, the burner is significantly cheaper than anything from homebrew shops and a million times more efficient than my electric range. Most importantly, it allows me to bring the brewing outside – great for spring days like this brew day. Big thanks to Kevin for this. He needed a kettle a while back and picked up the fryer kit on sale at Boscovs (as he put it “nothing more humiliating than being vegan and walking around a store with a turkey fryer.”) Split the cost – he got a $20 7 gallon pot, I got the burner, which the new kettle barely fits on.

Keeping the mash at 154 was much easier with the thermometer. It dropped down to about 150 midway through, so I added a few cups of boiling water to get it back to 154.

My target pre-boil gravity was 1.053. I ended up with a corrected reading of 1.049. To compensate, I added some LME I had in the fridge and a little brown sugar. After a 90 minute boil, I ended up with about 4 gallons of 1.066 wort. I probably could have gotten another half gallon out of the sludge at the bottom of the kettle, but, mostly out of laziness, I decided to leave it behind. I needed headspace in my keg anyway. After it chilled to 68, I transferred directly to a corny keg. I’ve been using corny kegs as secondary fermenters for a little while now, but this is only the second time I’ve used kegs for primary fermentation. I got the idea from an article in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of BYO. It’s pretty simple and has many benefits (less space, don’t break easy, no light and a built in handle to name a few). Just pull out the little tube under the gas-in post and put a barbed gas quick disconnect on the post. Run a hose from the disconnect as you would a blow-off tube.

This should ferment at 68 for about 3 weeks. Once the primary fermentation is over, I’ll transfer to another keg (through a tube connected to each liquid-out disconnect) using CO2. I may add about .25 oz of bourbon soaked oak chips I’ve had around for some time. That’s yet to be determined.

Wit Minus Minus (Gluten-Free ‘Wit’bier)

By kevin

One of my good friends was semi-recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease, a rather craptacular condition that essentially makes consuming gluten a big no-no. Most of the world’s beer is brewed with barley and/or wheat, which both contribute gluten proteins. Bummer. Said friend loves beer, so I figured I needed to take a stab at brewing a completely gluten-free beer, using Briess White Sorghum Syrup a gluten-free, 100% concentrated wort made from the unmalted grain of the white sorghum plant.

Original guidance on this recipe came from Russ Chibes’ White Riot sorghum based wit. First off, I had a little bit of trouble finding sorghum extract. Most online homebrew suppliers seemingly used to carry it. I even recently have heard commercials from Fermentap on The Brewing Network podcasts advertising that they carry it… but that seems to no longer be the case. Northern Brewer stopped carrying it; Beer, Beer, & More Beer seems to be completely out as well. Locally, Keystone Homebrew had a small amount left, but their two locations are quite a haul for me from South Philly these days, now that I no longer work in the suburbs. Midwest still had some though. Score!

One of Russ’ comments to me on beeradvocate.com when I asked him about the beer was that it needed some more orange peel character. Recently during a fun-filled week in Philadelphia Jury Duty, I spent a lot of time reading Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher. I am typically a “stick-to-the-bjcp-guidelines-and-use-proven-recipes (coughcough Brewing Classic Styles coughcough) but this book is pretty inspiring in a challenging, refreshing way. It includes lots of pointers on using non-traditional ingredients, and how to go about getting the most flavor out of spices and other additions for homebrewers. One of the sections that caught my eye was on orange peel – a typical addition to most of the world’s witbier recipes. Mosher points out that in his brewing, he has found the dried Curacao orange peel that most homebrew shops sell imparts “too much pithy bitterness and not enough orange aroma.” One of his substitutions? Seville Orange Marmalade. Usually marmalade would be a no-no in beer, since the pectin would lead to a haze, but luckily, that is quite acceptable in this style of beer! The other day at Wegman’s I stumbled upon a Seville Orange Marmalade, actually made by Trappist Monks in Massachusetts, which I clearly had to have.

Anyway.. On to the recipe:

Wit-- (Sorry, I’m a computer geek, and this is a wheat-less wit)

Fermentables:

  • 6# Briess Liquid White Sorghum Extract
  • 8 oz Maltodextrin powder (to add body)
  • 2 oz Corn Sugar (just to boost the alcohol a tad)

Other Ingredients:

  • .7 oz (6% AA) Organic New Zealand Hallertau (60M)
  • 1 oz Fresh Mineola Orange Zest
  • 1 T Buckwheat flour (to add more haze)
  • 1 T Seville Orange Marmalade
  • .4 oz Lightly Crushed Coriander Seed (Fresh, not stale!)
  • .15 oz Dry Chamomile Flowers (both JZ and Mosher mention this as pretty key in this style

After chilling this down to the low 60s, I pitched a packet of Fermentis Safbrew T-58 dry yeast. Normally for a belgian specialty ale, I’d use a nice starter of some White Labs or Wyeast yeast.. But they are usually grown on barley, whereas most dry yeast are grown up on gluten-free sources of food like beet sugar and the like.

I started with 5.5 gallons. I racked from my kettle to a 6 gallon better bottle and had about 4.75 gallons. My starting gravity was 1.050; assuming I get solid attenuation like I always seem to from Fermentis dry yeast, I am looking at a final gravity in the low teens and an ABV in the upper 4s. We’ll see. Beth commented that the aromas permeating from this wort were the most pleasant of any batch to date. I think using good quality coriander, vibrant chamomile, and fresh orange zest is really the way to go with this style.

I had good activity by the next morning – though there was no krausen. I’ll let it go for about 10 days or so and bottle, and hopefully we’ll be tasting in a couple of weeks.

Phillies 2008 Opener

By kevin

Thanks to my awesome brother, I scored a ticket to today’s Phillies home opener against the Washington Nationals.  Last year, PETA named Citizens Bank Park the most vegetarian-friendly ballpark in North America due to the various veg options. Vegan garden burgers, vegan hot dogs (taste like Smart Dogs), and vegetarian cheesesteaks (vegan if you order minus the cheese.) Well this year they have stepped it up even more – Planet Hoagie now offers crab-free crab cakes (dissapointingly not vegan) and Rick’s Steaks has added vegetarian chicken cheese steaks (again, vegan minus the cheese.)

Since I did not have a very substantial lunch, I started the game off with a vegan hot dog and gardenburger. They have these neat onion grinder thingees that you can use to add onions to your food. You spin a wheel and out comes fresh-diced onions. Yum. A perfect accompaniment to both of those items (especially since I personally hate both mustard and ketchup.)

The second best part about the Phils’ stadium? A stellar beer selection. Pretty much every local brewery (Sly Fox, Victory, Yards, Troeg’s…. Yuengling) are represented on draught, Dogfish Head (Shelter Pale Ale, maybe) can be found in bottles, and the big national craft brews – Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada, are pouring also. Good stuff. All very vegan friendly breweries.

I helped myself to a Victory Hop Devil with my burger & dog, which was an awesome trio. I later grabbed a Troegs Sunshine Pils (ridiculously refreshing, but probably better suited for those mid summer 90 degree games, for me). My last beer of the day was somewhat ominous; Yards Philly Pale Ale, probably my favorite local goto beer (deliciously citrus-hop aroma and flavor, reasonable bitterness, light enough to drink lots of) tasted like crap, and it came right around the time that the game imploded for the Phils. I’m not sure what the deal is, but of the past 4 Yards Philly Pale pours I have had (4 different locations) – 2 were delicious, and 2 were dump-worthy. Today, it tasted kind of like malt vinegar (aceto bacteria) with a splash of moldy bread. Not pleasant. Don’t know who is to blame – infected tap lines? Brewing inconsistencies while they continue to contract brew up at The Lion (until the Delaware Ave new brewery opens?) I don’t know. I hope it gets remedied soon!

Side note: I cracked open a finally carbonated bottle of my All-Summit Pale Ale that I brewed like 6 or 7 weeks ago and it is freaking delicious. New. Favorite. Hop. Between the orangey-citrusy hop flavor & aroma and the subtle fruitiness of the Safale US-05 yeast I used, I think I’m in love.

Final Score: Nationals 11, Phillies 6… But at least I ate and drank well!