Skylight Brewing

Brewer: Innis & Gunn

English Pale Ale @ 6.6%

Source: Bottle from Company Beer Swap

Overall: 4/5

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“Hot date” is a Jewish Rye Amber Ale brewed with date sugar – brewed in honor of my girlfriend (a Jewish redhead) . It’s an extract brew and specialty grain brew that I will transition to an all-grain beer soon.

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Finally broke out the smoker for our first grilling day in 2011.  We had two main goals going in to today – first to rework our throwdown-winning dessert from last year and second to give beef ribs a whirl.

Beef Ribs

Beef ribs hit the irons first.  Mark (y’all remember Mark) picked up some mesquite wood – so we went that route with black pepper and salt for a straight forward prep.  The grill held pretty constant between 200 and 225 for around 4 hours – which wasn’t long enough… but did a lot better than I thought it would.  I was actually pretty impressed that we were able to keep the heat as constant as we did considering I forgot my chimney starter.

The beef ribs came out fine – probably needed to go a little lower on temp for another two hours – and I overdid it on the pepper. The smoke (which ran maybe a quarter of the time) was spot on – with a killer smoke ring in the meat.  Honestly, though, I think I’m going to stick with brisket if I want beef and pork if I want ribs… brisket is just easier to deal with for what seemed like the same result.

Dessert

We had a ringer last year with a smoked dessert pizza. It’s essentially pizza dough with fruit over a sweet ricotta cheese filling smoked in barley smoke.   We’re looking to give it a face lift – mostly focusing on presentation.  I’ve got three preps I’m looking at now – super interested what you think.

1.) Regular rounds – whole berries

2.) Cream-puff style

3.) Flavored cream rounds – half berries

I’m leaning toward #3 – but I’m not sure I’m sold…

So my first self – designed recipe is in the fermenter.  Oddly enough – this will also be the first batch of beer I bottle myself.  The “first batch ever I brewed” I had blogged a couple weeks ago I destroyed by accidentally mixing with bleach.  Long story short – when the Joy of Home Brewing Book says “relax – have a homebrew” maybe wait till AFTER you’ve finished racking to your secondary fermenter. (I will actually post about what happened soon.  Kind of needs video.)

Whatever.  I honestly wasn’t that excited about “Pirates Gold” anyway.

So back to the fermenter.  It’s an extract and specialty grain ale – an Amber Jewish Rye recipe brewed with date sugar and pepper.  I’ve got a certain flavor profile in mind here and will keep adjusting the recipe till I get it right – the name will be “Hot Date” which is fun if you know me (my girlfriend is a Jewish redhead).

This brew day went MUCH easier than my last. I think the biggest thing was going from the kettle to a bucket for primary fermentation – SO much less work than going to a carboy.  I gave it about two days till the bubbles had calmed down a bit and then moved to the secondary – which might have been early based on the books I’m reading but I wanted enough activity to push the oxygen out of the top of the bottle quick.  I know with an ale I could go straight from the bucket to the bottles – but brewing with date sugar left a lot of crap in the beer – I want to be able to see when the beer clears.

I hope it clears.  *fret*fret*fret*

Anyway – wanted to post so people didn’t think I gave up already.  I’ll throw up some more notes on the beer soon.