Just checked into our room at Motel 6 in Rochester. We’re postponing our Rohrbach visit until tomorrow, but here are our notes for the motel room:

Appearance: Hazy, golden yellow, with evidence of recent head.

Nose: Earthy with notes of sulfur and urea.

Taste: Also earthy. Very salty.

Mouthfeel: Okay, I’ll stop being gross now.

Overall: Smooth and chewy okay I am done.

Miscellany Add Comment »

Time for an update from my phone while Mel takes a shift driving.

We made our first brewery stop Saturday afternoon at Ithaca Beer Co. for a tour (expertly led by Gina Lola — I hope I’m getting her name right) and tasting. Great beer, and a surprisingly small operation for a five state distribution: There are only 12 employees in the whole company and the bottling line could fit in a large van.

Last night, we had a delicious, greasy dinner at Syracuse Suds Factory. Their house brews were surprisingly tasty for how straightforward most of the lineup was. The sweet stout and cherry lambic in particular were a good time.

Today we’re making our way to Rochester to visit Rohrbach Brewing Co.

We’ve both been tweeting throughout the trip. If you want to keep up, follow @ElBueno (me) and @melomel (Mel) on Twitter. Fair warning: I have a potty mouth on Twitter due to the fact that I have a potty mouth normally.

Miscellany Add Comment »

This coming week, Ray and I are dusting off our suitcases and taking a bit of a roadtrip — a mini vacation before all the wedding tasks really pile up.

We’re heading north, to central and western NY, where I spent my early adulthood. We’ll be in Ithaca, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, before heading down to Miamisburg, OH (near Dayton) for my cousin Kerry’s high school graduation.

I figured since we’d already be on the road for the graduation and we would only have had a 4-day week at work (even less with leaving early for the graduation in Ohio), we might as well take some time to see some of my favorite places in NY.

Now, I wouldn’t be mentioning ANY of this if it weren’t for the fact that we have approximately four brewery/brewpub visits lined up for the NY leg of our trip:

Ithaca Beer Co.
Rohrbach Brewing Co.
Flying Bison Brewing Co.
Pearl Street Grill & Brewery

There’s also the possibility of checking out some Ohio beer, thanks to my Uncle Steve, who has become a proud member of the craft beer drinking community.

Ray will be bringing his precious Mac Book Pro, so we’ll try to give you updates while we’re on the road. And of course we’ll have a trunk full of homebrews to share with friends and family!

Breweries, Brewpubs, Craft Beer, Miscellany 2 Comments »

On Saturday, Ray and I attended the 2009 Brandywine Craft Brewers’ Festival, which featured “25 regional breweries. No monotony. Lotsa porta-potties.” So true. The 2007 fest was the first brew fest I had ever gone to (my first beer that day was Iron Hill’s Cherry Wheat and Ray had me take notes on the program about what I liked or didn’t like and why), and if you ask Ray, it was also the place where we fell in love.

This year’s event ended up selling out shortly before Saturday, with proceeds benefiting the Media Youth Center. I always love a brew fest that supports a cause!

We immediately made it over to Riverhorse, where I sampled the much beloved Double Wit, complete with new packaging (I love the new hippo…he looks so cute and badass), while Ray had the Hop Hazard, also a winner.

I was surprised by Lancaster Brewing Co.’s Strawberry Wheat — when I’ve had this beer in bottles, it never wows me, but when served on draught you could really pick up the strawberry notes. Lancaster also had its milk stout available, but in my opinion not much can beat Left Hand when it comes to a milk stout … unless we want to talk about Riverhorse’s Brewer’s Reserve Oatmeal Milk Stout, which is liquid euphoria.

I had the chance to try a simcoe IPA from Triumph, but Ray and I determined that it doesn’t quite hold a candle to Weyerbacher’s Double Simcoe IPA. Weyerbacher was there of course, pouring Double Simcoe from bottles, and Merry Monks and Muse from draught. Definitely pleasant surprises for Ray, since he loves Monks and Muse.

We kept an eye on time so that we could be at Iron Hill’s table for the 2:30 pouring of a 2006 3L bottle of Russian Imperial Stout. It was perfect in every way, and the crowd went nuts for it. At 3:00 we swung back over to Triumph for its Belgian Le Cinq. What is that? Think about it — dubbel, tripel, quad … and then you have a cinq, the French word for five. Prior to the special pouring, I got a sample of their Gothic Ale, which is a gruit — my first one ever. I appreciated the creativity, but I wanted to cook with it more than drink a pint. Ray thought differently. Notes of rosemary and spruce tips were evident.

We also ran into our friends Amanda and Keith, fellow homebrewers, and had fun comparing notes on the different beers. We missed out on Yards, who kicked all of their kegs before we got to them, and went back multiple times to Nodding Head, who had 3C on cask, Monkey Knife Fight, Ich bin ein Berliner Weisse, Grog, and BPA available to quench our thirsts. You know we love our Nodding Head.

Lastly, according to head brewer Larry over at Iron Hill West Chester, Drew Carey was lurking amongst us beer addled folks. We had no clue! Then again, there was a ton of people — the open air venue kept things reasonable — so I’m not super surprised we didn’t spot him.

Breweries, Brewfests, Craft Beer Add Comment »

Pulled pork is the classic barbecue dish amongst classic barbecue dishes. Flaky, tender morsels of juicy, slow-cooked meat; tangy, spicy sauce soaking into a soft, fresh kaiser. All it took was a sale on pork shoulder at Shop Rite, and I knew what my all-Sunday-afternoon production was going to be.

Our condo association doesn’t allow grilling/barbequeing, so I grabbed a bottle of our kolsch and decided to braise the shoulder in it for a few hours with some rosemary and star anise. Once the meat was sufficiently tenderized, I strained out the herbs and simmered the beer with some brown sugar and garlic to create the sauce while I shredded the meat. Mix in a long list of spices, heat up some sauerkraut and onions, and you’ve got yourself a sweet and succulent sandwich perfect for a cool spring night.

We also had some dandelion greens that we got from the local farmer’s market. It doesn’t say so in the recipe, but Mel cooked those with some onions, garlic, dried chiles, salt, and pepper. The bitter dandelion greens went great with the sweet onions and garlic.

The recipe here calls for kolsch, but any malty beer will do. Your best bets are probably kolsch, anything Belgian (especially dubbel), brown ale, malty English beers, and sweeter stouts (perhaps even a coffee stout).

Pulled Pork in Kolsch Sauce With Sauerkraut

3 lbs Pork shoulder
12 fl oz kolsch
3 or 4 star anise pods
2 tbsp dried rosemary
4 or 5 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste

3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 Tbsp coriander
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cayenne
freshly ground nutmeg to taste

1 15 oz can sauerkraut
1/2 c minced onion
1 Tbsp olive oil
A few pinches salt
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard

Cut pork shoulder into 2″ steaks. Make sure to cut perpendicular to the grain so the pork will be easy to shred when it’s cooked. Season liberally with salt and pepper.

Combine shoulder steaks, kolsch, star anise, rosemary, and bay leaves in a large saucepan over low heat. Cook for at least three hours, flipping the pork halfway through.

Remove pork and set aside. Strain herbs out of the kolsch and scrape the bits of cooked meat stuck to the bottom of the pan. Add brown sugar and garlic and simmer over high heat until thickened and caramelized. It will smell like burnt sugar when it’s ready.

While the sauce reduces, shred the pork. The easiest way to to this is to hold the meat in place with tongs, and use a large-toothed steak knife or bread knife to gently pull the meat apart. The slow cooking will have weakened the connective tissue, allowing you to shred the meat without much force.

When the sauce is dark and thick, add the spices and stir. Return the pork to the pan and turn it with tongs to coat it evenly with sauce.

While the meat rests, prepare the sauerkraut. In a separate pan, combine oil, onion, and salt and cook over medium heat until the onions are tender. Add sauerkraut and mustard, mix until ingredients are evenly distributed, and cook over medium heat for five minutes.

Serve pork on toasted kaiser rolls with a little bit of sauerkraut.

Pairings, Recipes 1 Comment »

Hefeweizen was one of the first styles I was exposed to when I first started exploring good beer at the Iron Hill in Newark, Delaware. It’s a sweet German wheat beer brewed with a strain of yeast that produces lots of banana and clove flavors. This particular strain does not readily settle out of suspension, and the beer is served unfiltered, giving hefeweizen a cloudy appearance and a thick, bready body. It’s a great springtime beer, but the big body and above-average alcohol (depending on the brewer) make it less suitable for hot summer days, making it more appropriate at sunset. Or, well, sunrise, too. I’m not here to judge.

We got adventurous again with this recipe. We’d wanted to explore dried fruit for a while, so we’ll be adding raisins and dried cranberries to the beer during a two-week secondary fermentation. We’ll then transfer the beer to a tertiary fermenter, wringing the raisins and cranberries out to reclaim all of the beer that gets absorbed into them, and age it with orange peel and a lot of coriander. There’s going to be a big danger of oversweetening the beer with all of that fruit, so we’re using a bit more bittering hops than you’d normally see in a hefe (actually, we’re doubling it).

3 May 2009
Hefe the ORC
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

4.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
4.0 lbs Wheat Malt Extract (60 min)
2.o lbs Orange Blossom Honey (15 min)

0.50 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Hops [8.4% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (15 min)
0.50 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Hops [8.4% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (1 min)

1.0 lbs Raisins
1.0 lbs Dried cranberries

2.0 oz Sweet orange peel
2.0 oz Crushed coriander

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min – clarifier)

White Labs Hefeweizen Ale yeast (WLP380)

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

—

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.

Turn off heat, add malt extract. Bring back to a boil. Add 60 minute hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add orange blossom honey. Stir until dissolved. Return to boil. Add 15 minute hops.

At 1 minute, add 1 minute hops.

At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.

Rack fermented beer over raisins and dried cranberries to secondary fermenter. Age for 2 weeks.

Rack to tertiary fermenter. Recover raisins and cranberries from secondary fermenter and squeeze absorbed beer into tertiary fermenter. Add orange peel and coriander. Age for 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for 2 weeks.

The hopping schedule is needlessly complicated because we had a bunch of leftover hops that we just wanted to use up. Normally you’d just use something neutral like Sterling for all of your hopping.

We weren’t able to find dried cranberries that did not have added sugar. You may have better luck, but after consulting with our adviser, we concluded that the small amount of sugar on the cranberries would have no significant impact.

You might be wondering why we’re adding the coriander after fermentation is complete instead of during the boil. We’ve boiled it in the past, but the flavor has always been nonexistent in the final result. We’re guessing that the coriander flavors are volatile enough to be carried away by the CO2 released during primary fermentation, so we’re going to wait until all of that destructive effervescence is done first.

This will be a HUGE morale boost for us if it’s successful. Our previous attempts at getting a little trippy with our recipes have been a bit disappointing, but we have a really good feeling about this one. Neither one of us is especially crazy about adhering too strictly to the established styles, though we certainly understand how important it is to know them to give you a metric to hone your skills against. I guess this is just what happens when you put two creatives together and tell them to have fun. We could fart out a Reinheitsgebotized hefe if we wanted to, because proven recipes are so easy to come by, but isn’t it a bigger test of skill if you can make a train cross the continent without even touching the rail?

Regardless, we’ve got a pound of crow ready to roast if this does end up exploding in our faces.

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Recipes Add Comment »

So I decided to take a walk on the tame side, and write a recipe for a beer that didn’t have 18 adjuncts, 5 varieties of hops, and a tribal good luck dance. I went easy this time, and this is where it got us:

1.040 OG; 1.012 FG; 3.7% ABV; 30 IBU

Appearance: Slightly hazy golden orange with a foamy white head.

Nose: Slight grass and citrus, some fruity sweetness; overall very subtle and inviting.

Taste: Very balanced and refreshing. Some caramel and fruit sweetness mixed with citrusy hop bitterness. Toasty.

Mouthfeel: Very smooth, medium bodied. Leaves the tongue fairly dry.

Overall: Extremely refreshing while still having a nice malt heft to it. We’re both really happy with how the kölsch came out, and enjoy the subtly and the interplay between the sweetness and bitterness.

I’m glad I scaled things down a bit and just tried to conform to a style. Ray thinks we nailed it, but I have slight reservations after comparing with a bottle of Reissdorf Kölsch, which is supposed to be a standard example of the style and is much lighter colored and crisper than ours. Our version is probably darker because we use malt extract (an all-grain version probably would have been lighter), and I think lagering the beer for a month or two would have also put us closer to the reference beer. Nonetheless, I know Ray has been enjoying it, and Steph and Tim paid it high compliments this past weekend. Can’t beat that!

I just realized we didn’t take a picture of the kölsch, and both of us are already half-way through our pints. Hopefully you’ll forgive me and I can post a picture later … maybe an action shot!

Our Brew Days, Tasting Add Comment »

Our Hoppy Dubbel experiment proved to be another case of the end result not matching the original vision, while still being successful in its own right. We were going for a hoppier and slightly lighter version of the classic Belgian style dubbel, but came out with what I would probably call a Belgian amber ale.

1.046 OG; 1.006 FG; 5.3% ABV; 23 IBU

Appearance: Brownish, reddish orange; very clear. Foamy, off white head.

Nose: Fresh and floral, with a hint of fruit and a nice balance of caramel malt.

Taste: Very balanced. Slight hop bitterness with subtle spicy hop flavors, complemented by hints of caramel. A subtle chocolatey finish emerges as the beer warms up.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, dry, and very clean. Leaves a tingling on the side of the tongue that says, “Yeah, drink some more.”

Overall: “Wildly refreshing,” as Mel put it. This is definitely a very satisfying quaff, and we can’t deny that hit our goal of making a hoppier and lighter dubbel. There is nothing but success in this beer.

Nevertheless, I feel like we took it too far from the base style. The use of saison yeast in particular was a big mistake. There are almost no fruity esters or residual sweetness whatsoever, which, yeah, we should have expected that. There is some chocolate there, but not enough. Same goes for caramel. Next time, I’d like to see a darker, smoother beer. We’d probably double the doses of chocolate and caramel malts, and switch to a Trappist yeast strain.

Regardless, Mel is correct in her adamance that we made a good beer here. It’s delicious and refreshing, perfect for springtime. The only complaint I have is that there isn’t enough “dubbel” there, and that’s easy to fix.

Our Brew Days, Tasting 1 Comment »

Welcome to The Session, a monthly event for beer and brewing bloggers! This is Session #27, for which Beer at Joe’s writers Joe and Jasmine has chosen the topic, “Beer Cocktails: Beyond the Black & Tan”.

This is probably going to be the shortest Session post ever. I call it a Ginpel. Ready? Add a shot of gin to some tripel. Imbibe.

I’ll wait until you’ve picked yourself back up off the floor.

Let’s make it official with a formal recipe:

Ginpel

Ingredients:
2 oz gin
12 oz Belgian style tripel

Pour tripel vigorously over gin to raise a good head. Drink. Seek local non-profit organization to help you recover.

The first time I did this, I used our homebrewed tripel and Dogfish Head Jin. Dogfish makes the best gin ever, but unfortunately it’s almost impossible to find if you don’t live in Delaware or South Jersey. We’ve only ever seen it at their brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, ourselves.

What makes their gin special, apart from the spelling, is the use of rosemary, pineapple mint, and green peppercorns in addition to the usual juniper berries, giving it a crisp mix of citrusy and spicy flavors, and also making it immensely fragrant. All of these qualities blend superbly with the sweet and fruity tripel.

If all you have on hand is regular gin, the cocktail will still taste good, but it might pay to steep some of your gin with the missing herbs and spices for a few days, at least if you can find them. Pineapple mint and green peppercorns will probably be difficult to locate, but I’m betting regular mint and black or white peppercorns will be a decent approximation. If anything, you should be adding a branch of rosemary to every bottle of gin you bring home anyway.

Okay, so I guess that wasn’t as short as I thought it would be.

This discovery inspired us to try adding juniper and rosemary to our next batch of tripel. We’ll probably do it in August or September, so keep an eye out for that.

Recipes, The Session 2 Comments »