March 25th - Beer Update

March 25, 2008 - Beer Update

OK, I haven’t added anything here in quite some time and for no good reason other than laziness. Just to get going again I thought I’d start with some beer related updates.

On February 14th, we were able to brew our Belgian Golden Ale at Hopworks Urban Brewery with owner/brewer Christian Ettinger and assistant brewer Ben Love. The grain bill recipe was pretty straight forward: 86% pilsner malt and 14% organic sugar (by weight, but that means about 25% or more of the fermentables are coming directly from the sugar). We mashed in somewhere around 146-148 degrees or so because we wanted a very dry style of beer. They used Magnum hops for the bittering (about 10 IBU’s there) and then two later additions of French Strisselspalts for flavor and aroma (total of about 10 IBU’s between the later additions). The yeast was the Chouffe yeast which is one of my favorite strains. The original gravity was around 18 plato and I haven’t heard what the terminal gravity was, nor have I been able to taste the beer yet. But Hopworks opens today, so I’ll taste it soon. What we were designing was a very dry, almost Duvel-like beer but with more of the Chouffe spiciness to it. They started the fermentation in the mid-60’s and were going to let it rise naturally to whatever temperature it wanted. They also under oxygenated it to push for more esters. My brewing partner and I had a great time and want to thank Christian and ben for putting up with a couple of homebrewers in their way all day. They also fed us a bunch of their pizzas which their chef, Andy, was still in the process of perfecting. Andy is a talented chef and definitely knows how to make great pizzas (maybe because he’s originally from the East Coast).

Assistant brewer Ben Love came up with the name El Diablo, which I think is a great name for it. It will be available at Hopworks on draft and was used as one of their entries into the World Beer Cup which will be held in San Diego in mid-April. El Diablo will also be Hopworks entry into the local Portland Cheers for Belgian Beers festival to be held at Roots Organic Brewery on Saturday April 5th. The Portland Cheers for Belgian Beers festival is an interesting idea. About a dozen different breweries all brew a Belgian style beer but use the same yeast strain and then go and taste each other’s beers. It gives everyone an opportunity to learn more about that yeast strain and how it behave with different malts, fermentation temperatures, etc. It’s all done in fun and proceeds go to charity.

On the homebrewing front, I have a couple of new beers on draft. The English bitter and all the Belgians are gone, and the molasses porter is down to the last gallon or so. We brewed a Bier de Garde several weeks ago. Bier de Garde is an obscure and fairly misunderstood style of beer. It’s French in origin and comes from the farmhouse brewing tradition of Northeastern France (French Flanders). It’s a style that had almost completely died out but is having a bit of a Renaissance thanks to the growing popularity of craft beer. Bier de Garde’s are generally amber beers with a full malt flavor, but with a dry finish. They often have some subtle herbal notes as well, but the big malt nose and flavor are in the forefront. They are often brewed with lager yeasts but at fairly warm temperatures (58-60 degrees), so they have some esters, but still have that clean lager crispness. Ours is brewed with pilsner, Vienna and Munich malts, with a small portion of aromatic malt. It ended up slightly sweeter than I had hoped but is still a very good beer. It’s slightly alcoholic (about 8%) and is drying out a little bit as it sits and lagers. In competition it may do better as a Bier de Noel, which is stronger and often sweeter seasonal version of Bier de Garde.

Using the same lager yeast, we brewed an updated Portland style steam beer. The grain bill is similar to the legendary Anchor Steam Beer, but we used a combination of Centennial, Summit, and Sterling Hops. It has a little more bitterness than the Anchor version, plus a lot more hop aromatics. It was just kegged a few days ago, so it will need a few more days to come around, but is already, a nice, moderate strength beer with a great hop nose. Since we were completely out of Belgian beers, we had to brew another Belgian Golden Ale (since it is one of my favorite styles and a great food beer). This version is being brewed with the same combo of the Chouffe and Duvel yeasts that we used last time. Next up with in the brewing queue is a Saison using the same yeast. We won a Widmer Collaborator competition with our Saison several years ago and realized we hadn’t brewed that recipe in about two years or more, so it’s time. Plus Saison is another favorite style and a versatile food beer. That’s a quick update on the beer front. I’ll try to get something about food up here soon as well.

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.

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.