Brewer: Innis & Gunn
English Pale Ale @ 6.6%
Source: Bottle from Company Beer Swap
Overall: 4/5
Category: Brewing Gear/Supplies
“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.
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.
So I finally got all this gear I bought home and opened it up. I have to say – a 32oz brewing pot is a MAMOTH piece of equipment. I mean… I knew it was big from the box… but it barely fits on my stove. I actually have to pull the stove away from the wall to make sure there is enough clearance around for it to fit. It’s crazy. It’s too big.
That said – I think I kind of love it. I had 2.5 gallons of water going to a boil in there tonight (checking my timing ahead of my first brew day – which is currently set for Wednesday night) – 39 minutes for 2.5 gallons to hit a rolling boil. It looks a little goofy – but the pot sits stable on the burner and has several advantages over my next-largest stock pot (which is about 1/3rd the size).
After realizing everything I missed at HSHB yesterday I swung by Fante’s to use up an old gift certificate. Picked up an all stainless steel spatula (which I love), a food scale (I’ve needed one of those forever), a bottle brush (still need a big one for the carboy) and some much needed gasket sealed jars (which I’ll use to store my priming sugars and grains air tight.)
I was also going for a funnel. I don’t own one currently and figure there is no way I’m gonna be able to pour a 32 quart pot into a carboy without one. I had actually picked one up off the shelf when a clerk asked if she could help me out. I asked if they had any larger funnels than what I saw and she said no – but I might be able to find one at a hardware store… I just had to be sure it was food safe…
Food safe…
After about two months of reading about it (first with John Palmer’s “How to Brew” then with Charlie Papazian’s “Complete Joy of Homebrewing“) I finally took the plunge and bought a homebrewing kit from Home Sweet Home Brew in Philadelphia. George and Nancy were great – very patient with my clueless bumbling ways. I went with the “deluxe” kit – which came with a glass carboy (largely because that’s what John said to get). HSHB was kind enough to throw in most of what I needed as well as a pre-packaged beer kit (malt extract, hops, yeast, etc in a cardboard box).
