May 13th - Quick Pasta and Pints at Green Dragon

I was contacted by a writer who’s looking to write an article on beer judging and the BJCP. She had spoken to a few people in the Oregon Brew Crew who referred her to me. I had agreed to meet her at Green Dragon for a few pints to discuss beer judging. Being essentially a cheap bastard, I decided to eat at home first before I ran over there. I still had a piece of homemade pancetta that I needed to use or freeze so I cubed some of it and sautéed it. As it browned and rendered its fat, I boiled some pasta. When the pancetta was browned I added more garlic and some crushed red chili pepper. I tossed all this with the pasta and a little pasta water to make a sauce. If I hadn’t been so lazy, I would have chopped some parsley and added that as well but I was in a hurry and was feeling lazy. It’s still one of my favorite quick pastas. Since I was going to Green Dragon I didn’t actually drink anything with it.

I got to Green Dragon a few minutes early and looked over their extensive draft selection. It’s a tough place to get a beer because there’re always too many great beers available. I had been told that the Weihenstephen Doppelbock was available last week but it was long gone by the time I got there so I had to settle for a La Chouffe. It’s still one of my favorite beers, although it is a little different on draft. It’s not as carbonated as the bottle conditioned ones but does have the same, slightly hazy golden color and the signature spicy nose from the yeast. It’s also incredibly easy drinking for an 8% alcohol beer. Luckily they only server it in 8 ounce pours. They were having a Meet the Brewer event with the Mia and Pia’s from Klamath Falls, so in addition to their ridiculous line up of great beers they also had four beers from Mia and Pia’s, including their pilsner, which is a wonderful beer. It wasn’t as hoppy as I thought previous batches were, but it’s got a good malt flavors and, because of its slightly subdued hop bitterness is actually a softer style delicious beer. Style-nazis may say it’s closer to Helles than pilsner, but I wasn’t concerned with splitting hairs. It’s a delicious beer and I was happy to have another opportunity to taste it again. The last beer I had was Six Rivers IPA from McKinleyville, CA. One of the bartenders had just been there and recommended it. It’s darker than many IPA’s and had a lot of caramel richness and sweetness. It had a much bigger and richer malt profile than most IPA’s but had the requisite hop bitterness and good citrus hop aromas and flavors. I’d love to taste more of their beers if they come into this area.

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.