Grilled organic turkey with sage and garlic
Celeriac mashed potatoes with giblet gravy
Scalloped sweet potatoes
Key lime cranberry sauce
Cabbage wedges braised in butter and dry vermouth with garlic and shallots
Savory chanterelle stuffed White Swan acorn squash
That's everything we served. The celeriac mash was really the most amazing bit. It did something with the giblet gravy that briefly blew my mind (embarassing yummy noises ensued). It just wasn't the same with other gravy as leftovers, and I don't know why.
Our distinguished guests brought pumpkin pie, chocolate pecan pie, and some delicious olive bread with goat cheese to go with it. I had picked up some green olives stuffed with PiriPiri peppers, which were great. Some of them were really hot, others not.
I drank my way through a six-pack of my Fresh Hop IPA over the long weekend. My brother had one and was mildly complimentary. I like it a lot, still, although it disturbs me that it did not turn out precisely as I planned. I have to let such things go, I know...I'm really thrilled at the head on this beer. It's a major accomplishment, in my book. I will calulate fastidiously when priming from now on.
Showing posts with label Fresh Hop IPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fresh Hop IPA. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
first taste Fresh Hop IPA
Last Friday, after a brutally disheartening commute, I came home, cooked up some steaks, had a couple of Martinis, and decided that now was the time to try my first fresh Hop IPA.
My first impression: sweet. Not sweet as in sweet, this turned out awesome, but sweet as in it hasn't fully carbonated sweet. Don't get me wrong the head on the beer was very nice for a two-week-old beer, hell even for a fully conditioned beer it was admirable. The color was beautiful, golden brown like toast, the smell was amazing, just a little hot, perhaps not as aromatic or citrusy as I would ahve liked, plenty bitter, but the taste, especially the first sip, was malty.
Once the beer warmed up (and the beer had a chance to shake hands and get acquainted with the two martinis), it really started to shine. It was nicely bitter, and the sweetness revealed itself to be a warming boozy flavor, not unlike what you would expect to find in a winter warmer. I can't say that the overall impression screams IPA, but I could perhaps fake my way into suggesting that it's a holiday ale, or even perhaps a young barleywine. I'll have to give it a second (or third or fourth)shot over Thanksgiving to see how it shapes up.
My first impression: sweet. Not sweet as in sweet, this turned out awesome, but sweet as in it hasn't fully carbonated sweet. Don't get me wrong the head on the beer was very nice for a two-week-old beer, hell even for a fully conditioned beer it was admirable. The color was beautiful, golden brown like toast, the smell was amazing, just a little hot, perhaps not as aromatic or citrusy as I would ahve liked, plenty bitter, but the taste, especially the first sip, was malty.
Once the beer warmed up (and the beer had a chance to shake hands and get acquainted with the two martinis), it really started to shine. It was nicely bitter, and the sweetness revealed itself to be a warming boozy flavor, not unlike what you would expect to find in a winter warmer. I can't say that the overall impression screams IPA, but I could perhaps fake my way into suggesting that it's a holiday ale, or even perhaps a young barleywine. I'll have to give it a second (or third or fourth)shot over Thanksgiving to see how it shapes up.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
what gives?
OK, so why would it be that, right when Portland becomes a focal point for food enthusiasts across the nation, the food here starts to suck? The number of mediocre-to-revolting restaurant experiences I've had over the last two weeks or so exceeds the total number for the previous year. What gives?
Granted, half of those problems stemmed from eating at a mall food court, and therefore hardly count, but the other half occurred at establishments that I have come to count on for decent grub. The first (and only one I'll mention by name) occurred a couple weekends ago at Laurelwood. The wife and I found ourselves with a free evening, so we thought it would be good to drive over to Laurelwood's new location on Sandy.
We stepped inside to be greeted by a hostess holding one of those obnoxious flashing pagers. I was a little skeptical that such measures were really necessary for a party of two, but I took it like a good complacent customer and we went to sit at the bar. I was pleased to see that they had a Fresh Hop IPA on the specials board, and I was very excited to give it a try. If only that wonderful sense of anticipation could have lasted a few moments longer, but alas, the beer was served, and it had pretty much zilch in the way of hop aroma or flavor. It had plenty of bitterness, of course, but I could have ordered literally 75% of their brew menu if that's all I was after.
The new bar looked great, but they have added TVs everywhere you look, so the Beavers game was playing in one focal point, and the Ducks game in another, so of course, rather than looking at the digs, everybody was glued to the tubes. The brewery was visible through the back of the bar, but you could really only see one of the tanks, not even close to as cool as the surgical-gallery-like view of the operation in the old place. Sigh. Another brewpub decides to go for quantity over quality. Sure enough, I looked over the bar, and they had bottles of Laurelwood beer lined up, ready to go.
Eventually, our pager buzzed and flashed, indicating that our seats were ready. I looked around the dining room adjoining the bar, expecting, as a party of 2, to be seated at a 2-seater booth or small table. Nope. Once we were able to stand in line (what was the pager for, again?) long enough to get the hostess's attention, we were led back to a larger room with a row of tables along the wall and a bunch of roughly-shaven yuppity young parents standing around a kids' area. The waiter led us to a table where a man was standing over his kid, who was sitting in a chair wiping boogers on every available surface. The waiter actually had to go up to this guy and say, "excuse me" before the guy scooped up his brat, and moved, shooting us and the waiter a dirty look. There was, I shit you not, an actual booger sitting on the table. The waiter thoughtfully placed my menu down beside it, rather than on it, then wandered off, leving me to deal with the icky booger-removal chore. Whatever, I have kids, I can handle it. Never mind that I came here without my kids, like on purpose, just to escape for a few precious hours from having to wipe anybody's anything.
I ordered the flatiron steak with parsnip mashed potatoes. The potatoes were exactly what I was hoping they would be, creamy and parsnippy. The steak came sliced, as I would have expected. The problem was that the person doing the slicing had obviously never seen a flatiron steak before, and had sliced it the wrong way, resulting, as anyone with any meatlore would expect, in very tasty, but completely tough and chewy slices of steak. A bit of chefly incompetence would not have bothered me much, had I not been seated where I was, or had I not ordered a completely different style of beer (Hooligan)that inexplicably ended up tasting precisely like the Fresh Hop Ale I had just finished. This was not a mixup, just the way it was. By design, I have to assume. I could even have tolerated that, had we not been seated right next to a couple with two kids, both of whom did all the screaming and gobbing that my kids would have done had I chosen to bring them. EVEN THIS I could have tolerated, had I not had to use the restroom, which was a serious trade down from what they had in their old place. The bathrooms in the old restaurant did not smell like pee, even on busy evenings with lots of kids. They had more than one unisex bathroom in play, as well. You could expect to just waltz in and pee with no wait, then wash up and return to your table to finish your sentence. Bah! The new place was the opposite of that, pee-stinking, single, and tucked back inconveniently from both bar and restaurant.
The service didn't measure up, either, but once I managed to chase down the waitress, tackle her to the floor, and wrest the check from her clenched fist, ignoring her screams of protest, we were able to leave.
So, I'm sad to say that I won't be going back to Laurelwood anytime soon. I anticipated great things from their new location, but all I got was this lousy nostalgia.
Granted, half of those problems stemmed from eating at a mall food court, and therefore hardly count, but the other half occurred at establishments that I have come to count on for decent grub. The first (and only one I'll mention by name) occurred a couple weekends ago at Laurelwood. The wife and I found ourselves with a free evening, so we thought it would be good to drive over to Laurelwood's new location on Sandy.
We stepped inside to be greeted by a hostess holding one of those obnoxious flashing pagers. I was a little skeptical that such measures were really necessary for a party of two, but I took it like a good complacent customer and we went to sit at the bar. I was pleased to see that they had a Fresh Hop IPA on the specials board, and I was very excited to give it a try. If only that wonderful sense of anticipation could have lasted a few moments longer, but alas, the beer was served, and it had pretty much zilch in the way of hop aroma or flavor. It had plenty of bitterness, of course, but I could have ordered literally 75% of their brew menu if that's all I was after.
The new bar looked great, but they have added TVs everywhere you look, so the Beavers game was playing in one focal point, and the Ducks game in another, so of course, rather than looking at the digs, everybody was glued to the tubes. The brewery was visible through the back of the bar, but you could really only see one of the tanks, not even close to as cool as the surgical-gallery-like view of the operation in the old place. Sigh. Another brewpub decides to go for quantity over quality. Sure enough, I looked over the bar, and they had bottles of Laurelwood beer lined up, ready to go.
Eventually, our pager buzzed and flashed, indicating that our seats were ready. I looked around the dining room adjoining the bar, expecting, as a party of 2, to be seated at a 2-seater booth or small table. Nope. Once we were able to stand in line (what was the pager for, again?) long enough to get the hostess's attention, we were led back to a larger room with a row of tables along the wall and a bunch of roughly-shaven yuppity young parents standing around a kids' area. The waiter led us to a table where a man was standing over his kid, who was sitting in a chair wiping boogers on every available surface. The waiter actually had to go up to this guy and say, "excuse me" before the guy scooped up his brat, and moved, shooting us and the waiter a dirty look. There was, I shit you not, an actual booger sitting on the table. The waiter thoughtfully placed my menu down beside it, rather than on it, then wandered off, leving me to deal with the icky booger-removal chore. Whatever, I have kids, I can handle it. Never mind that I came here without my kids, like on purpose, just to escape for a few precious hours from having to wipe anybody's anything.
I ordered the flatiron steak with parsnip mashed potatoes. The potatoes were exactly what I was hoping they would be, creamy and parsnippy. The steak came sliced, as I would have expected. The problem was that the person doing the slicing had obviously never seen a flatiron steak before, and had sliced it the wrong way, resulting, as anyone with any meatlore would expect, in very tasty, but completely tough and chewy slices of steak. A bit of chefly incompetence would not have bothered me much, had I not been seated where I was, or had I not ordered a completely different style of beer (Hooligan)that inexplicably ended up tasting precisely like the Fresh Hop Ale I had just finished. This was not a mixup, just the way it was. By design, I have to assume. I could even have tolerated that, had we not been seated right next to a couple with two kids, both of whom did all the screaming and gobbing that my kids would have done had I chosen to bring them. EVEN THIS I could have tolerated, had I not had to use the restroom, which was a serious trade down from what they had in their old place. The bathrooms in the old restaurant did not smell like pee, even on busy evenings with lots of kids. They had more than one unisex bathroom in play, as well. You could expect to just waltz in and pee with no wait, then wash up and return to your table to finish your sentence. Bah! The new place was the opposite of that, pee-stinking, single, and tucked back inconveniently from both bar and restaurant.
The service didn't measure up, either, but once I managed to chase down the waitress, tackle her to the floor, and wrest the check from her clenched fist, ignoring her screams of protest, we were able to leave.
So, I'm sad to say that I won't be going back to Laurelwood anytime soon. I anticipated great things from their new location, but all I got was this lousy nostalgia.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
IPA
Last saturday I bottled the IPA. Gravity was stable from 3 weeks ago at 15 GU, which probably indicates that all the fermentables were used after primary, and the remaining 15 were nonfermentable sugars. It tastes pretty good, and had around the bitterness level I was looking for. I used a calculator to figure out how much malt to prime with, and used a scale rather than a measuring cup when I was putting it all together, so hopefully my carbonation levels will be more in line with what I want this time. Of all the things I would like to have better control over, conditioning is up there near the top of the list. I ended up discarding a lot of bottles because they had scuzz in the bottom, even after going through the sanitizing cycle in the dishwasher. I'm considering dropping the money for some new 20-oz Euro-style bottles for my next batch, just to upgrade my stock of bottles a bit. I like that size a lot better, and if I could get them with the stopper tops, it would really make bottling a lot easier.
I used a new tool for the first time, and I liked it a lot. It's nothing fancy, just a bottle filler wand, the kind where you press the bit down on the bottom of the bottle to fill it, lift it up to stop. It turned bottling into a virtually mess-free one-man operation. Best $3.50 I've spent at a brew store for quite some time.
I used a new tool for the first time, and I liked it a lot. It's nothing fancy, just a bottle filler wand, the kind where you press the bit down on the bottom of the bottle to fill it, lift it up to stop. It turned bottling into a virtually mess-free one-man operation. Best $3.50 I've spent at a brew store for quite some time.
Monday, October 15, 2007
IPA update
I racked the IPA on Sunday. I took a gravity reading, and it's gone down way more than I thought it would, from 1.085 to 1.015. Whoosh. Now comes the long stretch. I plan on giving it two weeks in secondary. I dry-hopped it with a modest 1/2 oz in a hop bag. The beer had a very floral aroma, with a little citrus, but was quite sweet still, with good bitterness that stopped short of that overhopped earwax flavor. Good color. It's really hard to say what the finished beer will taste like just judging from primary fermentation results, but I'm feeling good about this one.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Beer
After a long hiatus, I decided to brew again. I was running out of beer. My brother is visiting from Thailand, so despite my resolution previously always to brew alone, I invited him over to help me out. Turned out fine.
I wanted to try out some of the techniques and ideas I have gotten reading Designing Great Beers, and I had just harvested hops, so I thought I'd try making a fresh hop IPA. I had originally intended to use more grain than extract, but to simplify things and reduce the amount of new equipment I would have to buy, I decided to go about 1/3 grain and 2/3 extract. I bought about 4 pounds of Pale Malt, 1/2 pound of 60L Crystal Malt, a vial of California Ale yeast, a kitchen scale, and some bottling equipment at the brew store, along with a couple sacks of dry malt extract (instead of the goo in a can).
I have to say, the dry extract is so much easier to work with than canned. I won't be looking back on that decision, that's for sure. No waste, easily dissolved, precise measurements on the scale. Enough said.
I have never mashed this much grain before. For that matter, I've never properly mashed grain. I always just dumped it in while I was bringing the water to a boil, then scooped it out before the boil, Papazian-style.
This time, I measured out (!) 5 quarts of water (1 quart per pound, plus another because it looked like it needed it), brought it to 172 degrees in the brew pot, added the grain, and used the oven on a low setting to maintain the mash at around 150 degrees for about 30 minutes or so.
After that, I dumped the mash into a grain bag inside my bottling bucket, ran off the liquor, added 3 more quarts of hot water and ran that off, and ended up with 9 quarts or so of wort with about 53 gravity units! That's sweet enough that it could have been beer after boiling! I could easily go all grain!
I chose, at this point, to ignore my carefully calculated figures about how much extract to add, which was, of course, stupid. I added 4.75 pounds of dry extract, which should have brought the final gravity to about 72 gravity units (my target was 65). After boiling, including 3 additions of hops, one of which was fresh hops, I ended up with a final gravity of about 85 GU! I was blown away. I'm still not able to figure out where the extra sugar came from, unless the brew store gave me more malt than I asked for.
I pitched the yeast at about 75 degrees, and it's just starting to blow foam out of the hose today, 2 and a half days later. I'll have to be more patient with this beer than I have with the others. It will take 6 weeks or more to be ready to drink, and even then, I anticipate it being immature.
This was an exciting batch of beer, becuase I'm just that much closer to being able to brew with less extract and more grain.
I've been getting a lot of compliments on both the Honey Cream Ale and the Smoked Rye Porter lately. Hopefully this latest batch will be even better (enough to be worth the extra bother).
I wanted to try out some of the techniques and ideas I have gotten reading Designing Great Beers, and I had just harvested hops, so I thought I'd try making a fresh hop IPA. I had originally intended to use more grain than extract, but to simplify things and reduce the amount of new equipment I would have to buy, I decided to go about 1/3 grain and 2/3 extract. I bought about 4 pounds of Pale Malt, 1/2 pound of 60L Crystal Malt, a vial of California Ale yeast, a kitchen scale, and some bottling equipment at the brew store, along with a couple sacks of dry malt extract (instead of the goo in a can).
I have to say, the dry extract is so much easier to work with than canned. I won't be looking back on that decision, that's for sure. No waste, easily dissolved, precise measurements on the scale. Enough said.
I have never mashed this much grain before. For that matter, I've never properly mashed grain. I always just dumped it in while I was bringing the water to a boil, then scooped it out before the boil, Papazian-style.
This time, I measured out (!) 5 quarts of water (1 quart per pound, plus another because it looked like it needed it), brought it to 172 degrees in the brew pot, added the grain, and used the oven on a low setting to maintain the mash at around 150 degrees for about 30 minutes or so.
After that, I dumped the mash into a grain bag inside my bottling bucket, ran off the liquor, added 3 more quarts of hot water and ran that off, and ended up with 9 quarts or so of wort with about 53 gravity units! That's sweet enough that it could have been beer after boiling! I could easily go all grain!
I chose, at this point, to ignore my carefully calculated figures about how much extract to add, which was, of course, stupid. I added 4.75 pounds of dry extract, which should have brought the final gravity to about 72 gravity units (my target was 65). After boiling, including 3 additions of hops, one of which was fresh hops, I ended up with a final gravity of about 85 GU! I was blown away. I'm still not able to figure out where the extra sugar came from, unless the brew store gave me more malt than I asked for.
I pitched the yeast at about 75 degrees, and it's just starting to blow foam out of the hose today, 2 and a half days later. I'll have to be more patient with this beer than I have with the others. It will take 6 weeks or more to be ready to drink, and even then, I anticipate it being immature.
This was an exciting batch of beer, becuase I'm just that much closer to being able to brew with less extract and more grain.
I've been getting a lot of compliments on both the Honey Cream Ale and the Smoked Rye Porter lately. Hopefully this latest batch will be even better (enough to be worth the extra bother).
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