April 30th - Pasta with Sausage and Tomatoes

April 30th – Pasta with Sausage and Tomatoes

Pasta is still one of the fastest things you can make for dinner. The plan is pretty easy. Sauté some things together in a pan and toss it with cooked pasta. What could be simpler or faster? Pasta sauce doesn’t have to be an all day affair. In fact, most of the “sauces” I make for pasta can be prepared by the time the pasta cooks.

So, I had decided on pasta and the Black Olive and Orange Sausages were calling to me. Even though it’s not really a traditional Italian flavored sausage (it’s actually more Eastern Mediterranean or Greek) I still wanted to use it for pasta. I sautéed some onions in olive oil and let them brown a little and then threw in two sliced up sausages and browned those. The sausage already had a lot of garlic so I didn’t add more, but did add some tomatoes and let all that reduce. Once the pasta was done, I drained it (reserving some pasta water in case I needed to use it in the sauce) and then tossed it in the pan with the sauce. Put it on plates and grate a little cheese on. Simple.

For no special reason, I pulled a pint of my Steam beer, just because I felt like having something hoppy. Ideal match? Maybe not, but it was a great beer and the pasta was fantastic. The hop bitterness helped to cut some of the richness and it had enough malt body to stand up to the robust flavors. Although I like to match food with wine or beer, it doesn’t always have to be rocket science, and sometimes just having what you’re in the mood for will work.

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 26th - Roasted Chicken and NW Steam Beer

March 26th - Roasted Chicken and NW Steam Beer

I have a co-worker who’s been asking if I’ve eaten for the last several weeks because I haven’t posted an actual “what I’m eating" entry, so here goes. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge fan of roasted chicken. Few things are as easy and ultimately as satisfying. Antony Bourdain has the best commentary about roasting a chicken in his Les Halles Cookbook. I normally brine chickens before I cook them but last night I didn’t have any time, so I just stuffed it with garlic and lemon, trussed it (you absolutely must truss a chicken) and put it in a 400 degree oven. It was a small bird; only a little more than 3 pounds. I let it go at 400 for about 20 minutes and then turned it back down to about 350 until the last 5 minutes or so and raised it back to 400 to make sure I got a crisp skin.

I had started to make stock with the neck and giblets, and used some of it, along with some white wine, to deglaze the pan to make gravy. I kept the sides simple: mashed potatoes with buttermilk and horseradish and some orange and vanilla glazed carrots. (Steam the carrots in orange juice, vanilla extract, and olive oil. When the carrots are tender and the liquid has mostly evaporated, turn the heat up high to get some color on the carrots. It smells vaguely like carrots cooked with Creamsicles, but the end result is very good. The vanilla seems to accentuate the sweetness of the orange juice and carrots.)

I had an absolutely horrid Fiddler’s Green IPA while I was cooking. Well, I tried it but didn’t really drink more than a few sips. In all fairness, it’s not the brewer’s fault. It was just old and tired and had a distinctly sharp and acidic, oxidized hop bite. Fiddler’s Green is brewed by Matt Brewing Company in Utica, NY (the makers of the Saranac brand). I’ve seen some things online referring to it as an English style IPA, but the nose was distinctly American. Again, I can’t really judge it because it was horribly oxidized and tired. It also seemed distinctly East Coast. On the west coast, it would be considered a Pale Ale because it didn’t have enough punch to be an IPA.

With the Fiddler’s Green poured out, I opted instead for a Full Sail Ltd No. 1 Lager. There’s a real knee jerk reaction to larger craft breweries amongst some beer snobs, because many seem to think you can’t be large and brew good beer. Full Sail (amongst others) disproves this again and again. This is a tough beer to nail down stylistically, but it’s a very nice beer. It’s brewed with pale malt, chocolate malt, and crystal malts, and uses Hallertauer and Styrian Golding hops. It’s dark copper and exhibits a lager-like cleanness. It’s got a restrained nose but has a distinct caramel note in the finish. It doesn’t seem to fit any historical style, but it’s a great beer. Who needs styles anyway?

With the chicken I pulled a pint of our recent Steam beer. Legally the term steam beer only refers to Anchor, who holds a copy write on the phrase, but prior to this the name referred to a style of beer brewed by German immigrants in California. Essentially, it was brewed with German techniques but adapted to new environments and conditions. Nowadays, it’s also referred to as California Common beer. The most distinctive thing about Common beer is that it’s brewed with lager yeast but at ale temperatures. As a result, it has a cleaner fermentation profile (ie, less fruity esters). The version we brewed is an updated version with a Northwest spin. We used a Munich lager yeast but fermented it around 60 degrees for the first week and then at about 66 degrees for the second week. Ours has a good malt backbone but is more bitter and has a lot more hop aroma and flavor from a hefty addition of Simcoe, Sterling, and Summit hops in the finish. It’s medium bodied but assertive. The bitterness of the beer was a nice backdrop to the sweetness of the carrots, but didn’t overwhelm the chicken. It’s still a little young, but it’s developing nicely, and may be one of our Collaborator entries this year.

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.