Homebrew Update

Homebrew Update
April 26


I had a bad cold several weeks ago and missed an opportunity to brew as well as the Portland Cheers for Belgian Beers festival that I had been looking forward to. But there’s still beer at home and some things have gotten brewed.

The Brown Ale is still kicking around, and with its malty intensity, it’s still my favorite current homebrew for spicy food. I am afraid it’s going to run out fairly soon however, but it’s holding well, particularly for a lower alcohol, low hopped beer.

The Biere de Garde/Biere de Noel (call it what you want) has really come into its own. It’s dried out as it’s lagered and is now crystal clear, but still pours with a rich, long lasting head. It’s still sweeter than a regular Biere de Garde should be, but it’s incredibly flavorful with great malt and light esters in the nose. It’s still something I’m considering entering into the Collaborator contest, but I have a few others I’m debating as well. It’s a little high in alcohol for a lot of hotter foods (the chile heat brings out the alcohol), but it’s fantastic with roasts. I made a pan roasted pork tenderloin with a cherry sauce (dried cherries, shallots, white wine and stock) that I served over mashed potatoes with glazed carrots last weekend and it was phenomenal with that. I’ve been tapping it so often, I’m worried there’s not a lot left, but I can always make it again).

Our updated Steam beer is still around, but I also wonder for how long based upon how good and drinkable it is now. It’s also the only hoppy beer I have at the moment, so it gets tapped pretty regularly. It’s got an intense citrus/orange hop nose from all of the Simcoe and Summit hops. It’s another one I’m considering for Collaborator, but I don’t know how it would stand up amongst all of the other hoppy styles that I expect will be in there. If nothing else, I’m enjoying it on my own.

The Belgian Golden from about a month ago is drinking well, but still needs to come together completely. We used two yeast strains in it (the Duvel strain and the La Choufe strain) and the Duvel strain takes a long time to clear. Clarity and appearance are only 3 points out of 50 on a BJCP score sheet, but it’s incredible how much clarity really does affect perception of a beer. I’m hoping it will clear soon, but it’s been kegged and chilled for the last two weeks and really hasn’t improved much yet. The nose has developed nicely and has a spicy, orange note to it. Belgian Goldens are amongst my favorite beers and I normally have one on hand because they’re food friendly, but it will be nice when this one finally clears up. I have several bottles, and strangely the bottles have cleared at room temperature, but the keg is still cloudy. We’ll see on this one.

The last beer we brewed was a Saison. The grain bill is the same as our Saison that won Collaborator, but the yeast is the same mixed strain we used of the golden ale (as a way of saving money and re-using yeast). We realized that we hadn’t made this recipe in about 2 years although it’s a favorite of both of ours. It’s still in secondary, but it could be kegged at any point and I may try to get to it soon just to have a little more variety.

March 28th - Hopworks Urban Brewery

March 28 – Hopworks Urban Brewery

Hopworks opened last Tuesday and apparently was mobbed on the first day. Since they had our El Diablo on, we wanted to get over and taste it. We had planned on getting there at about 5:00pm and were hoping to beat the rush, but I got delayed at work and didn’t get there until about 5:30pm. My brewing partner was already there at the bar when my wife and I got there.

They’re serving the El Diablo in goblets, which is good since it clocks in around 8.5% alcohol. The nose is spicy with good candy and honey notes. Although it tastes fairly full on the palate, assistant brewer Ben Love, let us know that it had a terminal gravity of 1.3 plato (about 1.0005) which makes it drier than most pale ales. It’s one of the best domestically produced Belgian Golden’s I’ve had. Yes, I’m biased, but I was really surprised at how authentic it tasted. It’s considerably drier than most of domestic Belgian style ales. I was also delighted to get a couple of bottle to bring home.

In addition to the El Diablo, I tasted through a fair amount of the other beers. The HUB lager is still one of my favorites. I’m very fond of the pilsner at Max’s Fanno Creek, but the HUB lager is no slouch. It’s a little lighter in body than Max’s, but is very clean with a great hop bite and is full of Saaz flavor and aroma. After the El Diablo, it may be my favorite of Hopwork’s beers. The Crosstown Pale is a hoppy but incredibly drinkable pale. It’s got an assertive hop character but doesn’t spill over into IPA territory. It’s a terrific food beer, because it has a lot of character but isn’t big and overwhelming. The Velvet ESB is more English style with a great malt character and a more subdued hop character. The Survival Stout, with its grain bill of barley, wheat, Oats, Amaranth, Quinoa, Spelt, and Kamut, is a great beer as well. It has an intense coffee and roast/black malt nose, but has a smooth, rich, round character to it. IPA is still a hallmark NW style and Hopworks is a great example of the style. It’s got a great malt backbone to stand up to the hops, but the emphasis is still hops. I had tried the beer previously at last year’s Oregon Brewer’s Festival, when the beer was being brewed at Golden Valley in McMinnville. The current version brewed on-site at Hopworks seems more balanced and more intense though.

When we had brewed with them, the test pizzas that their chef was working on had been impressive and the large pepperoni we ordered was actually very good. I’m form NY originally and in NY we’re pizza snobs. Luckily their chef learned to make pizza on the East coast and the pizza is really good. I ended up eating entirely too much, which was probably OK since I ended drinking too much as well (my wife wasn’t drinking and she as driving). I’m looking forward to going back, but am going to wait at least a few weeks until the crowds die down a little. If you haven’t been, you should. It’s well worth it.

January 5th

January 5th

I normally am good at improvising on meals but unfortunately, most of the things I’ve been craving require either a stove or an oven, so I’ve been feeling a little constrained and thwarted. I’m starting to realize that I may have to start repeating some of the easier meals I’ve been making and luckily I still had some things left over in the fridge to help out on this.

I had cooked a white bean puree on New Years and still had some left over so I opted to do more of the pork chops form the electric griddle, but wanted a sauce of some kind this time, which would be a little more difficult to pull off since most sauces require sautéing or deglazing and neither of those would be possible. I decided to try and emulate this by using the microwave and lower, longer cooking times. I chopped some shallots and tossed them in a small bowl with some olive oil and microwaved them on medium for about 3 minutes and then pulled them out to look at them. They didn’t quite looked sautéed but they were a reasonable facsimile and I figured it would have to do. I added some chopped garlic to it and then put it back in the microwave for about another minute or so. White wine was next with a longer time to burn off the alcohol. Finally I added some Dijon mustard and a drop of cream and then out it back in just long enough to heat it. Was it the best sauce I’d made? Not by a long shot, but it was adequate. The flavors blended well, the shallots weren’t crunchy, and it did vaguely resemble sauce.

I had brined the pork chops again and then cooked them on the electric griddle. They were nicely browned and juicy. I put them on a bed of white bean puree (which had been flavored with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice) and then pout a ribbon of sauce over it, but left enough of it uncovered so it wasn’t drowning in sauce. I had a glass of my Belgian golden ale with it that I’m really starting to like. It’s totally cleared at this point and is brilliant looking. It pours with a thick, billowy head (not as long lasting as Duvel but similar). It has incredible spiciness to it with a subdued undercurrent of orange. It’s a great beer with food and a brilliant match to pork. This meal may have been a repeat but it beat frozen cannelloni.

My Wife's Birthday

December 27th

This was my wife’s birthday and the rule in our house is that the on your birthday you get to dictate the activities and meals of the day. She had chosen a fairly simple meal to prepare so that we would have time to go see a movie and watch some other ones at home as well.

For her birthday dinner she chose sautéed scallops, Brussels sprouts cooked with homemade pancetta, shallots, and white wine, and orzo tossed with garlic olive oil, and pine nuts. It was in fact a quick meal to cook, because none of them take very long to do. In fact the Brussels sprouts take the longest. I started those and then got the orzo cooking and sautéed some garlic in olive oil to mix with the orzo. I toasted some pine nuts in a pan and held those to the side. When the orzo was done I drained it and tossed it with the garlic oil and added the toasted pine nuts. I was initially going to add some cheese to it, but I was using the orzo “pilaf” as a bed for the scallops and thought it would interfere with the flavor of the scallops so I decided not to.

I dried the scallops well on paper towels to help them get a god crust and sautéed them quickly in olive oil over high heat. Scallops cook very quickly and generally one minute a side is plenty of time to cook them without letting them get tough. I pulled the scallops form the pan, added some chopped garlic, let it cook briefly before deglazing the pan with white wine and then added some butter to pull the sauce together. I added the scallops back to the pan briefly to coat them in the sauce and then plated everything. I used the orzo as a bed for the scallops and did the Brussels sprouts on the side. The scallops were tender and very sweet and delicious. I would have liked a little better crust on them, but the crust was adequate. I had a glass of inexpensive Viognier with it which went quite well.

For dessert, we had Napoleons form the Beaverton Bakery, which is one of the best bakeries I’ve ever seen. She had chosen these instead of a cake, and although we didn’t add candles, I did sing her “Happy Birthday.” The Napoleons were as perfect as anything else I’d had form them and was a great ending to a great meal.

December 26th

Have eaten the big roast beef dinner the previous evening, I felt guilty and thought I needed to make something that I could pretend was healthier. I love legumes and hadn’t cooked any in a while, so I opted to make some lentil soup. I had just finished smoking some bacon I had cured and cut a small piece off because cured pork is so good with bean soups. This one was fairly simple. I sautéed onions, carrots, celery, and the bacon, added the lentils and then some chicken stock. I added a few sprigs of thyme out of the garden and two bay leaves and turned it down to a simmer. When the lentils were done I served it with some grated grana padano cheese on top.

Even with the bacon and cheese in it, I could pretend it was a healthy meal (even if it might not have been), but. After the excess of Christmas dinner and the great wine, I chose to go with beer instead. I had a homebrewed Belgian Golden ale that was made with a combination of the La Chouffe yeast and the Duvel yeast. It had cleared out and was brilliantly gold with a classic spicy, Duvel like aroma and a hint of orange. It was a little bigger than the soup needed but it was a nice beer that goes well with food. Simple and less extravagant than the night before but satisfying in a way that most simple foods are.

Brewing on a Cold Day and Yellow Split Pea Soup

I was brewing beer yesterday, which was nice since I hadn’t brewed in the previous three weeks. We had previously brewed a Belgian Golden Ale using a mix of the Duvel yeast and the La Chouffe yeast. We had mashed it low in hopes of getting a very dry beer and if the samples we had during bottling and kegging yesterday are any indication, we hit the mark pretty close. In the past I hadn’t been too fond of the Duvel yeast because it takes a long time to clear out of the beer, but it does a characteristic fruity citrus note to it that is tough to beat. My half is kegged and carbonating now and should be ready in a day or two, but I think it will take a few more weeks for it to round out. Still it’s very approachable now and quite delicious.

We won Best of Show with one of our Lambics at the Fall Classic a few weeks ago and part of our prize was a 55lb bag of Weyerman pilsner malt, so we decided to repitch the yeast and brew another Belgian Golden style beer but this time with a little more alcohol and slightly spiced. (The last one clocked in around 7% and we were looking for something more around 8-8.5% this time). We used about 23 pounds of pilsner malt and 4.5 pounds of sugar to boost the alcohol and lighten the body. We had some odd lots of American hops sitting around so we decided to actually use them in this batch, so we ended up with Amarillo hops for the bittering and a small amount of Summit hops in the finish for aroma. We also added some bitter orange peel and sliced fresh ginger at the end of the boil to add just a hint of spicing. In keeping with the season, I’m calling it a Tripel de Noel. With any luck it will actually be ready by Christmas. Purists may decry the American hops, but Belgian beer is all about experimentation.

It was cold and overcast yesterday and by the time we were done, I was ready for something warming. We had been eating Thanksgiving food the last few days and needed a break from it. I had cured some pork belly for bacon about a week ago and was smoking it yesterday, so I decided to make a pot of yellow split pea soup. As a kid, I hated any kind of split pea soup, but I’ve since grown to love it (at least yellow split pea), but it’s unthinkable to me to make it without some kind of cured pork for flavor. I’m actually very fond of the smoky undertones that bacon gives it. It was pretty standard stuff: onions, carrots, celery, bacon, chicken stock, a few bay leaves and the yellow split peas, but it was the kind of warming, homey dinner that I love on a cold day. It had only been about 40 degrees, but brewing in the garage left me cold and raw feeling and soup is a natural restorative. We had a loaf of Grand Central Ciabatta with it to help soak it up. After the overindulgence on Thanksgiving, it was exactly what I wanted.

I was looking forward to tasting the new Belgian Golden, but it wasn’t carbonated, so I just had a pint of our dry Irish stout. We sample some of it yesterday while we were brewing and were amazed at it. It’s a simple recipe, British two row malt, flaked barley, and roasted barley, but it’s incredibly good. Most commercial Irish stout, like Guinness and Beamish (my favorite), are actually quite low in alcohol and that increases their drinkability. Most of the stouts we had made in the past were too big and rich, and ultimately, too filling. This one is about 4% alcohol, just roasty and bitter enough, with enough body to match with food, but also light enough to not overwhelm what it’s served with.

While I’m writing this, I’ve been sipping on a Cascade Lakes Monkey Face Porter, which is new to me but very nice. It has nice chocolate and roast notes in the aroma, but a rich bittersweet chocolate flavor and a good long finish. It’s definitely something that I’ll look for again.

Mussels and Carbonade Flamande

We were having a friend over to dinner and I was wondering what to make. I didn’t know how sophisticated a palate he had but it was clear that he liked good beer so I decided to cook something that would be easy to match with beer. I don’t normally require a lot of convincing to drink Belgian beers, so I thought that was Belgian inspired food might be nice.

A lot of people aren’t that familiar with Belgian food, and I must confess that I’m no expert, but it’s fair to say that there is a big French influence in Belgian food, although the food is by no means a knock off of French food. There is a big reliance on butter as a cooking fat, and beer is used extensively in cooking. Belgium is far enough north that grapes don’t really grow there but beer has replaced the central role that wine has in some much traditional French food.

For an appetizer, I decided to go with mussels because of their prominence in Belgian cuisine. Mussels are easy to cook and I decided to stick to a pretty basic preparation. I sautéed some shallots and garlic in butter and then added some Belgian golden ale to the pot and reduced it all. Then the mussels went in and they streamed open in about 3 minutes or so. I served them family style with some parmesan toasts to soak up the juices.

To go with the mussels, I served Duvel, one of the quintessential Belgian Golden ales. Duvel is light in color but clocks in at about 7.5% alcohol. But it’s very floral and fruity with a distinct citrus note that makes it perfect with seafood. Despite its alcohol content it’s very crisp and very dry. It also has incredible carbonation to help it feel light on the palate. It was a great match to the simply prepared mussels.

For the main course I opted to go with Carbonade Flamande, a traditional Belgian beef stew made with dark beer. If you look at Carbonade recipes there’s very little consensus as to what’s traditional, but everyone seems to agree on beef, onions and dark beer. For mine, I used a homemade Belgian Dubbel which is very fruity and low hopped. I browned the meat first in butter and removed it to a plate. Then I added about 4 large onions (to about 2 pounds of beef). I cooked the onions down some allowing them to caramelize slightly, added some garlic and the deglazed the pan with the beer. I let the beer reduce some, added some beef stock and added the meat back in. I also added a bouquet garni of parsley, bay leaves and thyme sprigs. I like to do braises and stews in the oven and like to cook them long and slow. Generally 200 to 250 degrees max. You don’t want stew to boil at all. It leads to stringy meat. The key is long slow cooking.

I had debated dumplings or spaetzle on the side but went for mashed potatoes instead partly because they’re so easy and everyone likes them. With the carbonade, we had Unibroue Trois Pistole, a Canadian brewed Belgian dark beer. Its fruity notes and rich intensity matched the dish and the underlying flavors of the Dubbel I had used in cooking. Trois Pistole has rich dark and dried fruit flavors similar to a great tawny port, but, unlike port, it’s very dry. For a second glass of beer, we tried the homemade Dubbel and it was also a great match.

For dessert, I broke the Belgian mold and went with a simple apple crostata. Again easy on the cook and something that showcases the great apples we get here in the Northwest. We had a homemade strong ale with the dessert, because it has some nice honeyed notes. It was OK with the crostata but not really the right beer. Not being easily discouraged, we went back to the Dubbel for after dinner conversation.

Brewing Belgian Golden Ales and Tripels

I’ve been working with the White Labs Abbey IV yeast, which is reputed to be cultured from the Rochefort yeast strain, which I hadn’t used before. I normally repitch yeast from one bath to the next and generally build the strength of the beer up with each new batch since repitching also is the easiest way to build up a lot of healthy yeast. I started this run with Belgian Summer Ale and then a Dubbel and decided to finish it off with a Belgian Golden Ale. Luckily Belgian Golden isn’t as hard to brew as Dubbel. In fact it’s pretty easy. The grain bill was pretty straight forward: 80% pilsner malt and 20% sugar added to the kettle. This seems to be a good ratio because it allows you to make a fairly alcoholic beer (about 8-9%) that is also fairly dry, which makes it good with a variety of foods. The biggest problem with most homebrewed Belgian Goldens and Tripels is that they’re too sweet and don’t have the lightness on the palate that they should. Go try a bottle of Duvel or a bottle of Piraat and you’ll be amazed at the lightness of such a high alcohol beer. The key to beers like these is a low mash temperature (to make a highly fermentable wort that will have less residual sugar) and then to bump the wort up with a lot of sugar.

You also need a lot of healthy yeast to ferment this much sugar. If you don’t pitch enough yeast or if the yeast isn’t healthy enough, chances are that it will quit working before all of the sugar is gone and you’ll have a sweet beer which is nothing like the genuine article. I generally like to think that the best Belgian Goldens are made by producing a highly fermentable wort, pitching a lot of yeast, and then getting out of the way to let the yeast actually make the beer. It seems that the more neutral flavored the wort, the more the yeast can express itself. This isn’t a beer style where you want to use darker malts or crystal malts. I also think it’s best to use neutral sugars like corn sugar that ferment cleanly and don’t leave any residual flavors behind like dark sugars do (although dark sugars are wonderful in Dubbels and dark strong ales).

I tend to stick to pretty traditional hops for these beers and generally go with Saaz, Styrian Goldings, Goldings (or a derivative like Willamette), or Hallertauer (and it’s derivatives like Mt Hoods) and use a lighter hand. You want the bitterness in the 25-35IBU range, which is pretty mild by NW standards. I also don’t add a lot of hops to the finish because I don’t like too much hop aroma. F you put the later hops in about 15-20 minutes before the end you can get subtle floral and spice aromas without getting too much overt hop aromas.

These beers and their close relative, Abbey and Trappist Tripels, are great food beers because they have enough heft to stand up to a wide variety of food, but generally also have enough carbonation and dryness to cut through richer foods. The Tripels tend to be a little more elegant and refined, and the Goldens tend be drier and crisper. I normally try to keep one of them on tap all the time because they are so friendly. Unfortunately I did run out of my last one about 10 days ago and this one won’t be ready to be kegged for about 2 weeks (it will be drinkable at that point, but will mellow and round out after a few more weeks). They’re great with roasted chicken, pork, and shellfish, and could actually stand up fairly well to beef, particularly if it had a rich sauce (like steaks with béarnaise sauce). They’re also great aperitifs, but because of their alcohol content, you don’t want to have too many without some substantial food.