Always Double Check Your Connections

Yep. Whole Pony Keg of stout gone, and most of a co2 cylinder.

My cloud of profanity is still hanging somewhere out over Puget Sound.

Can't wait to clean this up.

Tomorrow.

Firmly filed in the Don't Do This tag.

Read more

Pain d'Epi FAIL

Yep. Going to have to try that one over again...

It looks like a Mummy's severed arm. Maybe it will cure 16th Century diseases. Or bring me good luck. Or perhaps an angry Zahi Hawass.

Still tastes good though.

Here of course is the goal, perfect Pain d'Epi:


(Photo: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=152)

Read more

The Most Annoying Sound in the World

From our Monte Cristo Mine hike: here's Al and Meredith pushing the old railway turntable. I have to post this, just for the sound.



And because it's strikingly similar to this:

Read more

Koolicle update

Ok, it's been a week. Here goes.

Sweet Jesus. It's a neon-red-cherry-flavored-hyperpickle. What else can I say about it.

How about: "No."

Read more

The Hot Dogs of Failure

So I figured I'd make a batch of Chicago-style all-beef hot dogs for the 4th. I'd found suet, already frozen and ground at the Ballard Market. So I figured: ok, go get a pound of ground beef, combine them and you're golden. Normally the suet and beef would be ground, then combined and run through the grinder again with ice. I figured since they were going to be whipped in the kitchenaid for six minutes, I'd just combine the meat, suet, spices, and some ice water and let 'er rip. Hot dogs are an emulsified sausage, so it's going to become a paste anyway right?

WRONG. Fail #1.

After six minutes some little chunks of suet refused to go into an emulsion. I couldn't get them to go in and any more whipping risked breaking the emulsion. You can see some of the white flecks in the sausage. But I said, screw it. Into the casings.

Attractive, no?

Fail #2. Casings.

I bought a pack of casings from a local sausage company down the street. They charged more than they were worth, but it was short notice and the day before the 4th. Grr. But what can you do? (Answer: don't make sausage right before the 4th, buy some of their awesome ones instead.) Then it turned out that the casings were on the small side, maybe 29mm but it didn't say on the package. So I had an incredibly frustrating time getting them fed on the tube. And I had part of it burst once it was filled. But at least I have enough for 100 more pounds of sausage... Fortunately they'll last a year or so in the salt-brine I put them into.

Fail #3. Impatience.

Ultimately the lesson is, if you're just getting over a cold and are tired and cranky, don't rush things. Normally the dogs would hang out overnight, then get cold smoked and poached to 140. I figured that the rest was so they'd dry out and the smoke would adhere better. In retrospect, there's a small amount of pink salt in them and the overnight rest would also cure them. But I just went ahead and poached them. So the color is off, and the taste and texture were weird. Not mealy, or particularly more greasy or anything, just weird. I don't think the emulsion broke, I just think it wasn't fully emulsified. Part of it is there's a weird taste that makes me suspect the suet picked up some other flavors from where it was refrigerated before. The other possibility is the lack of 'cured' taste just makes it taste off. Not nearly as good as the last time I made them.

Oh well. They've been sitting overnight, I'm thinking I'll try one out for lunch and see if they've improved at all. Otherwise I'll have one very happy dog this week.

UPDATE: Dog food. (Which is to say, compost. I will not be held responsible for what might happen if I fed Ase two pounds of dubious hot dogs...)

Read more

Brewday: It's Parti Time!

In a fit of perhaps serious optimism I did some brewing in preparation for a major Bar Is Over / Meredith's Defense Is Over / Housewarming party that will take place in early August. Since I had little time and a lot of catching up to do I decided to do two parti-gyle brews back to back, one week apart. Hah hah, I know.

Parti-gyle brewing is a historical method of brewing whereby the first runnings of the mash are collected for a strong beer, then second runnings are collected for a weaker beer. This is a great way to make different beers with different alcohol strengths, and to use the grain more efficiently. The idea would be to get a start on two barleywine strength beers and also make two regular-to-light session beers for the party. I'd make a huge wheat mash and split it into a wheatwine and a summer wheat ale. Then use the yeast from the primary of the wheatwine to ferment an American barleywine and a second American Amber. The wheat beer would be called Triticus Maximus and Triticus Minimus, the barleywine would be this year's Shoggoth's Old Peculiar, with the amber being Shoggoth's Little Peculiar.

That was the plan anyway. And it was a good plan.

Things I have learned from the experience:

1. Don't do a parti-gyle brew as your first brewday in a new house. Just don't.
2. Don't do a parti-gyle brew as your second brewday in a new house. Just don't.
3. Seriously, you don't know what kind of boiloff rate and efficiency you're going to get with your new location. Madness and Chaos will ensue.
   
4. Take a temp reading on your tap's hot water before you start heating it for the dough-in. I was looking to do a protein rest on Triticus at 122 degrees, which meant strike water at about 135. So I started heating the water and dropped the thermometer in: 145. That after about two minutes of heating. So I did a whiskey tango foxtrot and measured the hot water coming out of my tap. 136 degrees! "Safe" water temps are in the 120's. Which explains why I kept burning the crap out of my hands when I did the dishes. But at least I know I can protein mash right out of the tap! Sweet.
5. Unpack everything and put it in its place before you brew. Make sure everything is there. Don't find yourself with 5 minutes till flame-out but your heat-exchanger out-tube and thermometer are MIA. Then find yourself speeding downhill to the wonderfully named Tacoma Screw to get some kind of bodged together hose barb solution.
   
6. Also learned: "It's a beer emergency!" will get a shopkeeper to stay open a few minutes after closing to help you.
7. Homebrew Rule # 1836: Your wife will inevitably find the hose you were looking for within moments of you returning.
8. My kettle has a false bottom that functions as a hopback. It functions quite well actually, when you use whole hops. When you use four ounces of pellet hops, don't put them in a hop bag because you get lazy, and can't whirlpool because your kettle draws right out of the middle, your valve will clog. Halfway through cooling Shoggoth's Old Peculiar. Lesson learned. Fortunately Oldy came out at a frightening O.G. of 1.120 (was shooting for 1.090). So the rest was dumped into the bucket holding the runnings for Little Peculiar and the whole thing was diluted and boiled at about 8 gallons. This resulted in somewhere near 4 gallons going to the Little Peculiar at 1.050 and the rest diluting Old Peculiar down to around 1.085. Chaos and Madness, appropriate for a Lovecraft themed beer, but it all worked out. Though now I have no idea what the IBUs or hop profile will be like. I may have a very bitter amber indeed.
9. I haven't figured out when to stop the fly-sparge on a partigyle. I went too long on Triticus Maximus and so Minimus came out at 1.030 and I had to spike it with Extra Light DME. And Shoggoth's just ended up being chaos.
10. Since it gets dark at around 10 PM right now at least you have lots of extra time to finish your brewday when things go horribly, horribly awry.
11. My new cellar holds a near constant 64 degrees. Sweet!
    

On to the recipes. To make them I used Randy Mosher's parti-gyle tables to figure out the needed O.G. of the 'master' beer, then estimated 60% for the 1st half and 40% for the second. Then spiked them with DME to my liking. I made three recipes in BeerSmith, one for the master and one for each half (estimated and 60/40 of the master). I could then adjust the hops to get the right level out of the two beers based on their gravities. So here goes:

Triticus Parti-Gyle - Master
Brewer: Russell Everett
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Barleywine
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.80 gal
Estimated OG: 1.072 SG
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
8.0 oz Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 2.00 %
4 lbs Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 16.00 %
10 lbs Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM) Grain 40.00 %
8 lbs Pilsen Malt 2-Row (Briess) (1.0 SRM) Grain 32.00 %
8.0 oz Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) Grain 2.00 %
8.0 oz Caramel Malt - 20L (Briess) (20.0 SRM) Grain 2.00 %
8.0 oz Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 2.00 %
2.00 oz Horizon [12.00 %] (90 min) Hops 39.5 IBU
2.00 oz Pearle [8.00 %] (90 min) Hops 26.3 IBU
1 lbs Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 4.00 %


Mash Schedule: Double Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 20.00 lb
----------------------------
Double Infusion, Light Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
30 min Protein Rest Add 4.50 gal of water at 134.8 F 122.0 F
30 min Saccrification Add 3.00 gal of water at 203.5 F 150.0 F
10 min Mash Out Decoct 2.73 gal of mash and boil it 168.0 F


Notes:
------
This assumes DME added to boil based on amount stated in the separate recipes. The total DME listed is the total amount needed for both recipes. 4 for Maximus and 1 for Minimus. 1lb honey for Maximus. This should make 5.25 gallons of 9.5% Wheat Wine and 5.25 gallons of 4.75% American Wheat Ale, but honestly take gravity readings and shoot from the hip. You will also need 2 oz Perle for Minimus and 2oz Horizon for Maximus. Also 6g Kaffir Lime Leaves and some lemon grass, in a tea, at bottling, for Minimus. Yeast was a 1L starter of Pacman for Maximus and American Wheat for Minimus.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Shoggoth's Old Peculiar - 10 gal parti-gyle - Master Recipe
Brewer: Russell Everett
Asst Brewer:
Style: American Barleywine
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: I could murder a Shoggoth's...

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.80 gal
Estimated OG: 1.075 SG
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
5 lbs Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 18.69 %
14 lbs Pale Malt (Weyermann) (3.3 SRM) Grain 52.34 %
5 lbs Munich (Cargill) (9.5 SRM) Grain 18.69 %
1 lbs Caramel Malt - 60L (Briess) (60.0 SRM) Grain 3.74 %
1 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 3.74 %
8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 1.87 %
4.0 oz Special B (Dingemans) (147.5 SRM) Grain 0.93 %
1.00 oz Simcoe [13.00 %] (90 min) Hops 20.4 IBU
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (90 min) Hops 8.6 IBU
1.75 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (90 min) Hops 35.8 IBU
4.00 oz Centennial [10.00 %] (90 min) Hops 62.9 IBU
3 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 21.75 lb
----------------------------
Single Infusion, Light Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
75 min Mash In Add 5.44 gal of water at 168.3 F 150.0 F
10 min Mash Out Decoct 2.17 gal of mash and boil it 168.0 F


Notes:
------
Theoretically the gravities would be 1.090 and 1.055. As for hops, the idea was to do 1 oz. Chinook at 90, 1 oz. Simcoe at 30, and 2 oz. Centennial at 10 for the Old Peculiar. For the little guy it would be 3/4 oz. Chinook at 90, 1/2 oz. Cascade at 30 and 1/2 oz at flameout. The hopping went to chaos after I had to mix half of the finished Old Peculiar into the Little Peculiar. So for that boil I added no bittering hops, and 3/4 ounce Cascade at 15 minutes and 3/4 at 1 minute.
Yeast was the Pacman from Triticus Maximus for Oldy, and Wyeast Northwest Ale for Little P.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read more

CSA Week 17

Here's this week! Only three weeks left, down to the home stretch.

• Red Potatoes
• Daikons with Tops (3)
• Bok Choi
• Romaine Heart
• Dandelion Greens
• Spring Onion
• Valencia Oranges (3)
• Strawberries
  

Wow more daikon. Also my Bok Choi here are all so big they're starting to flower, so bok choi was certainly on the menu this weekend. And then I got another one! :)

Thinking the daikon tops, dandelion greens and one of my bok choi will be stirfried with some Black Bean Garlic sauce.

Potatoes will keep. Strawberries are dessert. Daikons were all dealt with today.

Here's how!

Leftover Wrapup and The Week So Far

• Korean Spareribs; Daikon Slaw with Szechuan Peppercorns and Red Chile; Grilled Kimchi Bok Choi

So for tonight's dinner I finally got around to my Korean Spareribs. Picked up about two pounds worth of "Flanken" cut beef ribs. Thinner would have been better, these were pretty thick. But hey, what're you gonna do. Marinade was:

• 1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
• 1/4 Cup Mirin
• 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/8 Cup Rice Vinegar
• 1/8 Cup Sesame Oil
• 1/8 Cup chopped garlic
• a couple tablespoons of chopped chives because I didn't have any green onions around

Left it overnight. The next day, onto the grill until delicious. (And they were delicious!)

The Daikon Slaw was basically this recipe from Epicurious. It was good, but nothing to write home about. I would have liked more szechuan peppercorns. Also I grated the daikon, in the future I would recommend a julienne.

Finally, in my book there is no better way to cook bok choi than by grilling it. So I split the head, washed it out, and placed it in a baking dish. I took my remaining half-jar of daikon and bok choi kimchi from last week and blitzed it in the miniprep with a couple T's of sesame oil. Pour over the bok choi halves and work it in a bit. Onto the grill for about 3-4 minutes a side. Amazing. Just the right amount of burn, great intense flavor. Nice texture on the bok choi. And this meal used both daikon and bok choi in two different ways!

• Paella!

I had a whole chicken, a bunch of veggies, it was a nice night, and I got the paella itch. And so it was. There are as many paella recipes as there are people with large shallow pans so I won't really get into the recipe too much, other than to say that I put in a whole jointed chicken with gizzards, some guanciale, a half pound of mussels, some Miami chorizo, a CSA zucchini and squash, some red bell peppers and a tomato from the yard, assorted CSA herbs and house herbs. And the last of my proper Calasparra rice.

Don't Do This

What I will mention is this: a tale of woe and tragedy that almost ruined my ricey dreams. It is a chronicle of hubris and punishment of ignorance. It concerns a nearly incinerated paellera and an overzealous grill-master.

Prior to this episode I always made paella inside, switching between the stove and oven. Keeps good control and the pan serves 8, not 30, so I don't need the big burner. But it was a nice night, so I decided to go outside and use the grill like a real man. Sadly, I was simultaneously overzealous with the charcoal and impatient in letting the fire die down. So the pan went on, oil went in, infrared thermometer said 375, chicken bits went in and were all cooked well, then they were removed and the guanciale went in. At this point things went horribly, horribly wrong.

Keeping the lid off the BBQ was really heating up the coals. Soon the thermometer was off the chart, the guanciale was beginning to burn, grease fires imminent. So I rescued the guanciale, took the pan off, ran across the deck with my lame pot mitts doing an insufficient job on the searing handles, dumped the now blackened oil, and spent about half an hour spraying the now blackened pan and trying to scrape the burned on crud off.

Took the noticeably still charred pan back inside and finished on the stove. The paella was still really, really good. Haven't been able to get my incinerated pan back to rights though...lesson learned.

• Caldo Verde
  

Had to use last week's kale. Didn't want to make kale chips again. So the national soup of Portugal it is!

I set off from this recipe and it was good, but kinda bland, thin and lifeless. So I added some more paprika. Then I was pondering what else to do when it hit me: Trotter Gear! So I dug one of the jars out of the fridge and added a couple big spoonfuls. Suddenly the soup had body, and some nice unctuous goodness. Great with some fresh bread, and it used the leftover chorizo from the Paella, all the kale, and all my old red potatoes. To do again I would say use a good stock and some more garlic and it would be really good.

• Tzatziki

I used last week's cucumbers to make some tzatziki. I'm fortunate enough to live near Miami's Oriental Bakery, so I was able to procure some fresh pitas and the secret ingredient to awesome tzatziki: labaneh.

To make watery, lame tzatziki you need non-fat plain yogurt.
To make ok, but still meh tzatziki you need plain yogurt.
To make good tzatziki you need strained yogurt.

You can take plain yogurt, hang it in some cheesecloth over the sink for a couple hours, and it will be good.

Or you can go for the gusto and skip straight to the thick-yogurt-cheese-universe-expanding-awesomeness of good labaneh. You can find it by the pint or quart at most middle eastern markets. There's a brand called Romi's out of New Jersey that's pretty good.

Here's the tzatziki recipe. Take two cucumbers. Top and tail them, then cut them in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Grate the cucumbers into a bowl and sprinkle with some salt. Let them sit for an hour or two, stirring occasionally, then strain them and wring them out in a paper towel. Mix the cucumbers with a pint of labaneh, two crushed cloves of garlic, a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and some minced mint or dill if you're feeling like it. Adjust for salt and serve with pitas, or on souvlaki or falafel, or with lamb. It's amazing.

Read more

Times are tough? Make your own whisky!

No, we're not talking making moonshine here. (That would be illegal and immoral and if you do it you are ridiculous and everyone hates you.)

But there's nothing wrong with adding wood chips to alcohol. This week's Drunk of the Week in Seattle's The Stranger contains just such a recipe. I'd like to try it, and I have oak chips and Jack Daniels barrels, but alas I don't have the time. I have heard of people oak aging cheap tequila, and filtering cheap vodka, so I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Except for horrible, horrible memories of the time some years back that I tried to make my own absinthe. Don't do that.

Read more

Don't Do This: Bubble Tea Beer

So I'll get the CSA post for the week up soon, I've been strapped for time and all the pictures are still on the camera.

Quick word of advice though: don't use gelatin to fine your beer while it's in a keg.

Bubble Tea Beer

There is a form of sugary-tea-like-beverage originating in Taiwan, now popular throughout East Asia and the West Coast of the US known as Bubble Tea. It's a saccharine sweet milk tea coupled with little round balls of tapioca or cubes of jelly, served on ice in a big cup with a huge straw for sucking up the chewy tapioca balls.

I hate it like poison.

Sorry, but it's just a texture thing. And the major bubble-tea-stomach afterwards. The tea itself is tasty enough though, so I'd often order just that. If I wanted make sure I could still produce insulin, that is. I've only seen one place that makes it in Miami *I admit not looking too hard for it* but I watched as it spread like an itchy rash through my old neighborhood in Seattle, replacing every third store with a brightly colored cafe featuring posters of huge-eyed anime characters exhorting me to give in to chewy deliciousness.

Anyway, back to beer.

In a flash of idiocy I forgot to add whirlfloc tablets when I made the latest Cream Ale a couple months back. It ended up pretty hazy, but was supposed to be crystal clear lawnmower beer. So I figured I would just hit it with some gelatin in the keg. The idea was: gelatin works best if the beer is cold. The beer in the keg is cold. Therefore it will work in the keg. All the proteins and chill-haze will sink to the bottom. I'll pull off a couple pints of crud and voila! Clear yellow beer.

Here's what actually happened.

One packet of gelatin was proofed in about a cup of boiling water. Then it went into the keg. I waited a couple days and pulled off a pint of fairly turbid beer. So far so good. The next day I went to pull off another pint and I only got a slow trickle out of the tap! I check the CO2, fittings, etc. Couldn't figure it out. Then I had an idea. I cranked the reg up to 30 PSI, pulled the tap, and shot a solid plug of gelatin out at high velocity. Gross!

Since then I've been pulling off pints that are increasingly clear, but with occasional chewy floaters. Ewwwwwwwwwww. I have made bubble tea beer. The gelatin is not settling or racking like I'd hoped. At all.

So if you're going to use gelatin to fine (which is just fine, har har) do it in a carboy and rack it off.

Also, if anyone adds tapioca pearls to actual beer, let me know how horrible it turns out to be.

Read more