Tasting: Lazy Day Ale

In their books, accomplished homebrewers often advise the reader to keep notes on how the character of a brew evolves over time. A brewer who has insight into how flavors and aromas lent by malt, hops, and yeast evolve over time can adjust the recipes and technique  to make a beer ready for consumption sooner or improve its longevity by trying to achieve stable characteristics. With this in mind, I’ve waited over a month to review my session ale, but I’ve found that over that month the only thing that’s changed are my perceptions and opinions of the beer, while the characteristics of the beer itself have not.

Tasting: Coffee Porter

In one week’s time I’ll be headed off for England, and either this blog will go on hiatus or its nature will have to change. I’ve got plenty of adventures planned for my time abroad, quite a few of them even beer related (probably not many pizza related; I don’t know what I’ll do for pizza oh no I’ll probably have to make some!). I’ll be sampling many cask ales in the pubs, taking cycling and train trips to old English breweries, tracking down hop farms on the isle and the continent, and chasing lambics and Trappist brews in Belgium. But for now, tasting notes on my last brew until I’m back.

Adding Fruit to Beer, Adding Beer to Bread

I’ve been baking more bread lately, and most often I will make my dough ala Jim Lahey’s no-knead method with a 24-hour fermentation that develops the gluten and contributes full flavor. However, sometimes I won’t be able to bake bread 24 hours after I assemble the dough and require quicker turnaround. One trick for faking the flavor of a well-fermented bread is to use another fermented product: beer! And I have had plenty of beer on hand that I was in no rush to drink (namely the peanut porter).

Tasting (and Blending): Honey Season

After a healthy fermentation with repitched yeast from my pomegranate saison, something seemed to go a bit agly with my honey saison. The beer that went into the bottles tasted like the same as my pomegranate saison before priming, but the beer that came out was changed. It developed more acidity, and I thought I spotted small pellicles in some of the bottles. I tried to snap a photo, but (fortunately) those brown glass bottles are very effective at blocking light.

Beer & Pizza Pairing: Henry Kissinger’s Smoked Summer Ham & Hot Poblano Pizza

To clear things up right off, there is no ham on this pizza. All of my pizzas are vegetarian. The smoked summer ham actually refers to my rauchbier, which has an undeniable meatiness bound to the smoky malt. Colleen and I are fans of Futurama, so as I was describing the beer to her, I joked that the beer was “fresh as a summer ham.”

While thinking of toppings with complimentary flavors, my failed attempt at a smoky seitan pizza stuck in my mind as something to avoid repeating. Then I remembered seeing a recipe on SeriousEats for stuffed poblano peppers in a cashew-chipotle sauce that I had been curious to try my hand at. It struck me that it would be very easy to adapt this recipe to a pizza, using the cashew-chipotle sauce to replace the traditional tomato sauce and simply turning the stuffed peppers into toppings.

Hosting a Homebrew Tour (plus Rye Wit Tasting)

Yesterday Joshua Bernstein, author of the recently released The Complete Beer Course, brought about 25 beer geeks, homebrewers, and curious travelers to my apartment to sample some homebrew and pick my brain. Besides making some cool cash, it was also exciting to get to share my beers with many people all at once who were interested in discussing it and noting what they tasted and enjoyed.

Tasting: Peanut Porter

I had high aspirations with this beer. From my reading it seemed like although it could be difficult to get a definite peanut butter flavor, many people had found success. I approached this brew with confidence from my success with my experience adding pomegranate to a saison, and opted for the higher end of the amount of peanut butter that other brewers had successfully used. However, somewhere along the line, either with the peanut butter or the cacao nibs or with my sanitation, something seems to have gone wrong.

Tasting: Saison du Pom

After tasting my pomegranate saison at bottling, I was a bit concerned with whether or not it would have any fruit character. There was nothing in the beer to suggest fruit at the time, so I decided to prime with more pomegranate molasses. I simply calculated the amount of priming sugar I would need, and then multiplied it by the ratio of the total mass of molasses to the mass of sugar (i.e. according to the nutritional facts there is is  x grams of sugar in y grams of molasses). I didn’t get a chance to taste it until I was serving it at a New York City Homebrewers’ Guild meeting. The priming method completely transformed the beer.

Beer & Pizza Pairing: Summer Session Ale & Artichoke Pizza

Over two months ago, I brewed a beer with Colleen’s tastes in mind. I wanted it to be light and crisp on the palate with citrus aromas and flavors. However, Colleen felt I overhyped the beer a bit, and that the citrus didn’t come through as strongly in the flavor as she had hoped, and that the beer seemed watered-down. Nonetheless, I was really pleased by this brew, and think it has great potential to be even better.

Tasting: Schnellweiße

We here in the apartment have been sucking down bottles of my quick Berliner weisse in the summer heat, but only now have I been able to get a good picture of a pour and write up a review.

Besides serving it quite a few of my friends, I was also able to bring a bomber of the brew to the last NYC Homebrewers Guild meeting. Some said that the beer was mouth-puckeringly sour while others suggested I make it more sour still. Many of those who were just returning from the National Homebrewer Conference in Philadelphia a few weeks before agreed that my beer was much more pleasant than many unfortunate examples of the style that had been served at the conference. One person even said it was her favorite beer that had been shared that night.