Beer and Food, and update on home brew!

Beer and food

my journey over the last two and a bit years as a delve into the world of craft beer has had an interesting side effect. Before I started regularly drinking the craft beers I would never consider sitting down and drinking one or two beers, to enjoy the flavour, nor to enjoy with a meal. Beer to me was something to be drunk when out with the lads or at a sporting event.

Thats changed now, and for the better. I consider my craft beer to be comparable to wine in this respect. I would happily have a glass of wine or two at home with my feet up and watching a movie, or of course with a good hearty dinner. With the complexity of flavours and styles now available in the craft beer scene this has opened the door for a similar level of enjoyment.

As we come to the summer, one of the things most of us will look forward to is a good barbecue. The barbecue was always the exception to the rule, grill up some read meat some chicken and fire on a load of salad, maybe a baked potato and half a dozen lager in the fridge, that is my overriding memory of summer parties at my parents, and then as I got older my own house. These days with having a real job the sun doesn't always come out exclusively when I've got a day or two to recover from the dreaded hangover, so its nice to have a choice of beers that I can maybe have one or two with a flamed steak or a chicken breast, and still be able to get up for work the following morning. Beer goes with barbecue like white goes with rice.

I enjoy spicy food. Mexican or Indian, even certain Chinese dishes are among my favourite. I was always told don't mix beer with spice its unpleasant. However Ive found recently that certain intensely hopped beers, particularly IPA varieties actually enhance the flavours and subtle spices of these dishes, while the malt flavours help to regulate the heat.

Id recommend you try an Amber Ale with an Italian dish such as Spaghetti Bolognese, and everyone has their own weird and wonderful combinations. My own process for selecting a beer to go with food is heavily influenced from my wine background and the skills are transferable.

First think what it is you are eating, what are the flavours, do you want to compliment these flavours or contrast them to make it a more vivid experience? Irrespective of what decision you make at this stage you have to think about the weight of the meal you are eating, are the flavours light and delicate, subtle? The select a beer whose body is lighter with more delicate flavours. Is your meal full of complex overpowering flavours? Then select a heavier beer that wont be over powered by the flavours of your meal. Its a balancing act, you dont want your, normally more expensive, beer to be wasted if it is lost against a complex heavy dinner, on the other hand you don't want to spend hours in the kitchen creating the culinary master piece with all the subtle grace of a Russian Ballerina, only to completely over power it with an Irish Stout or Porter!

Its about trial and error, there are no wrong answers here, no combination is outlawed!

Bottling day:

An update on the American Amber I am brewing at home, I let it ferment and settle for quite some time and its currently sitting at a little over 5.4% Its been dry hopped with Pacific Jade, Summit and Cluster. The aromas coming from my dinning area of the flat are amazing. The alcohol level will rise ever so slightly as I add approximately 100g of priming sugar before bottling.

Brew Day At Puzzles?

Brew Day at Puzzles?

Last night I started my fourth home brew kit, this time I chose the American Amber Ale kit from Youngs. I have previously done an American IPA from Youngs and it was amazing. This time I had full intentions to hack the kit within an inch of its life to turn it from an Amber Ale, to an Irish Red.

Unfortunately real life got in the way and I was unable to get to my local brew store, and time is against me on this one it has to be drinkable by mid July. An Amber Ale for Orange fest?

If you’ve already got the hardware, such as a fermenter (adapted bucket) then Kit brewing really is as easy as brewing a cup of tea, for almost a month. Its cost effective too, for £23 you get 23ltrs of beer, roughly 50p a pint! If you haven’t got the kit then I would recommend the Coopers Starters kits, which include a primary fermenter that doesn’t require an airlock. Airlocks seem complicated to me.

So onto my brew day. If you look anywhere on the internets for a guide to home brew the first thing you will always see in any guide is to sterilise your equipment, this cannot be understated the easiest way to make 23ltrs of rubbish is to get an infection in your beer, and this is or can be caused by even the smallest amount of dirt or bacteria getting in contact with your wort. My technique is much like myself, simple, I put everything in the dishwasher, put it on a quick cycle to wash it, then put it through a second cycle but instead of adding soap I add steriliser. This also helps keep the dishwasher clean too. Then finally just rinse out all the soapy bubbles and reminisce of the steriliser with some fresh cold water, and put the lid back on your fermenter for now. I also like to sterilise the work surface i'm using on brew day, and for that I just use Flash wipes.

The pouch of LME

Warm it slightly will make it easier to get all of it

The Youngs kit like some of the more “upmarket” home brew kits is a Liquid Malt Extract, or LME kit, the other alternative is Dry Malt Extract or DME. I’ve used one DME before but I find it is definitely worth the extra few quid to get a LME kit. A step in the brewing process that isn’t always written on the instructions is to heat the can or pouch that the LME is in with some warm (not hot) water, let it sit in a saucepan with some warm water for about 5 or 10 minutes before you start. This tip turns the LME from a semi solid goop that you will struggle to get out of the container, into a proper liquid albeit very sticky but it becomes much easier to get every last drop out.

Every last drop is in the fermenter now

Just Add Water?

stir it until it looks like its fizzy

Next you add roughly 3 ltrs of boiling water this will soften the LME further, the instructions generally tell you to add your sugar now but I hold off instead making sure there are no lumps in my fermenter, by giving it a good vigorous stir. You aren’t stiring soup and you are in a 40ltr container, stir the absolute you know what out of it, the more bubbles you get on the top the better, more on this later. Then I add the sugar, and stir again, you’ve not added any more liquid but added maybe a kilo of extra solids you want dissolved. Every bit as vigorous as before for a good minute. Youngs comes with a packet of “Brewing Sugar,” or as it is sometimes called, Caster Sugar. Yep that’s right the expensive brewing sugar is no different to the expensive cake baking sugar from Tesco, which co-coincidently is just your normal granulated sugar from your tea or coffee ground down really finely. This is the first place you would consider “hacking,” the kit, in any good

brew shop there is a multitude of alternatives to this expensive sugar, my plan was to put some different varieties of malt extract in here to make the flavour more complex and deeper. You can literally add anything at this point which contains sugar, and it will change the flavour of your end product (not always for the best it must be said) There are many resources online where you can see what sugars will influence you beers in what way, what goes well with what etc.

Next you just top up to 23ltres with cold water, I like to pour as violently as possible, to get as much oxygen into the fermenter as possible, notice a theme here? Not much I can say about this stage, except I am very lucky where I live and I can use tap water. Tap water is a bit risky because I cannot control what baddies are inside the pipes, but the 4 brews I have done so far none of them have been infected. Most people recommend using filter or bottled water but this obviously increases the cost.

Add the magic fairy dust!

Now comes the magic, at this stage the instructions tell me to stir the mixture getting as much oxygen into the mix as possible..... oh wait I've been doing that at every stage. Its not easy to stir 23 litres of liquid, and you are much closer to the top of the bucket now so you are more susceptible to splashes and spillage! If you've done what I have you'll already have a fair few bubbles at the top almost like a cheap head of beer. I give it a quick whisk near the top just to get a few more bubbles up there and then, I open the smallest pack in the kit, the yeast. There are many varieties of yeast for beer and each has its own characteristics and traits, it is after all a living thing. There are two schools of thought on how to add yeast, the first it to re-hydrate it first using a small amount of water and the other is to just buck it in and hope for the best. I use a kind of hybrid, I sprinkle the contents of the yeast across the full surface area of the head and let it settle in by the power of gravity. The instructions say to give it a good soft stir at this point allowing the yeast to diffuse evenly throughout, I skip this. I guess in my head the yeast rehydrates in the head before getting to work, but then in my head yeast looks like Pacman and spends the next few weeks running round the maze of your beer eating sugar and shitting out alcohol!

Now its the patience game, replace the lid, fix your airlock if you have one put it somewhere where the temperature is constant, (ill not go into too much detail about temperature because each beer style needs a

Use a cylinder like this to measure Original Gravity

different temperature) take a small sample in a cylinder to measure your Original Gravity, which is used to determine your alcohol content at the end then, and this is the most important step, LEAVE IT ALONE! Do not disturb your beer, resist the urge to have a hoke at it no matter what it smells like. Leave it for at least 7 days, I usually go closer to 10-12 days and then take another gravity reading. You are looking for 2 or 3 days where your gravity stays consistent, congratulations, you have completed the first stage of your home-brew! Ill detail the next steps in a blog post in a couple of weeks when my brew is ready for it. Hopefully I will be able to follow my own advice and just leave it alone!

America The Brave(ish)

America the Brave(ish)

A few nights ago I sat with a friend and colleague of mine and decided to hold an impromptu beer tasting using a few of the beers I had received from Beer 52 over the last lot of months. In total we selected 6 at random and then tried to see if we could make them fit into some kind of logical order.

In the first of the tasting comparisons I selected two IPA's and both happened to be from the good old US of A.

Founders All Day IPA Session Ale 4.7% ABV

Its clear what Founders Brewery want to associate with this beer, the label shows a typical American SUV with a Kayak strapped to the roof, driving along a dirt track in a forest. Bring this beer on a fishing or camping trip. I should say at this point, although I have pictures of the empty bottles, taking pictures of the actual beer poured into a glass slipped my mind on the night. Lesson learned there. Anyway As soon as this was poured I could get strong aromas of Tropical Fruit, breakfast juice, blood oranges and passion fruits, the aroma was coming from the glass almost a metre away. It was strong and very in your face. This was as good as this beer got unfortunately. The taste, again hit you straight away, but this time there was none of the tropical tastes which were certainly overpowered by, in my opinion an over-hopped taste. I cannot tell you what hops or even what flavours where present, the taste simply evaporated off my tongue before I could go looking. I was disappointed, I was so excited by the aroma, the tropical notes the clear fragrances I had high hopes and they were dashed by a poor finish to this beer. It was approaching its best before date having been in my collection for anything up to 8 months, but I'm not convinced this was the reason for the poor showing. An All Day Session beer? Well its certainly not offensive and the crisp fragrance and initial burst of flavour would keep you refreshed, and lack of after taste could prompt you to sink a few more of these than you initially expected to, if you were on a camping trip in the middle of nowhere with no off licence available to buy something else.

13 Guns American IPA 5.5% ABV

The second beer on my short tour of America was Crafty Dans 13 Guns American IPA, named after the original 13 states that made up the USA. (Ok I am cheating a little here, this is brewed in the Thwaites Brewery in Blackburn England.) Both bottles were poured at the same time. The 13 Guns bottle has an in depth label detailing the hops used the malts, the yeast used and even the name of the brewer! It also tells me this is recipe 213, for what tha

t is worth. To contrast this with the All Day IPA, the nose was harder to find, I really found myself having to go looking for flavours, and when I got there, I found none of the tropical fruits I expect with an IPA, and having read the hops list. It was a much darker experience, much more of the malt character was coming, and I even detected the slightest hint of light chocolate. Looking at the malts used I would say this is unexpected. Another contrast between the All day and the 13 guns, All day was very light in appearance, a typical IPA, the 13 Guns on the other hand was much darker than any IPA I have encountered recently, a real chestnut colour. On tasting, again the subtle flavours weren't in your face, it took several samples to really identify, the dark malty taste again was contrary to what I was expecting reading the label and knowing what an IPA usually taste like, I even got a touch of coffee. The tropical fruits where there, subtly in the background. I really had to work to identify even these few flavours, the beer was certainly very complex and enjoyable. However, directly below where the bottle says “13 Guns,” and above it identifies the style of beer it declares “An intense hit of hops.” Unless the hops that I am unfamiliar with provided the dark malty and coffee tastes that I got early doors this statement is simply not true. That said I enjoyed working with this beer, of the two I would be more inclined to session the 13 Guns, and if both were sitting in the local off licence I would definitely pick 13 Guns over the All Day IPA.

The contrasting styles were fun to work with, the light crisp experience with the All Day was contradicted by the dark malt flavours of the 13 Guns, although I wouldn't say it was heavy by any stretch of the imagination. At the time, I suggested that perhaps the All Day was a touch young and the flavours hadn't had time to develop but after investigating the bottle and seeing the Best Before date, I can only conclude this was done on purpose. I have recently tried Trouble Brewing's Remix, which is a similar style to All Day, and I wonder had it influenced my experience?

Founders Brewery:   Website

Crafty Dan's:             Facebook          Twitter

Thwaites:                   Website

Re Introduction, and review of Tap Take Over

Well after an enforced hiatus I am back on the bloggisphere! I fully intended my return to coincide with the Marble Brewery's “tap takeover” at the Woodworkers Bar in Belfast, unfortunately real life got in the way and I spent most of last week in the Ulster Hospital. More on the Tap Takeover later.

Over the winter I have continually received my care packages for want of a better word from Beer 52, and although they have been arriving faster than I can drink them (summer Barbecues should sort that out) I have yet to be disappointed with an overall package from them. Since I started receiving them last June I have had 1 bottle of Weis Beir that I was dissatisfied with, through quality rather than my own preference. I have to say that is not a bad return on my investment and I plan on continuing my subscription with them for the foreseeable.

This summer, it is my plan or personal policy to stick to local beers, I have tweeted some nonsense about this over the winter but this summer I plan to put my money where my tweet is. That is to say where there is a choice of quality Irish craft beer I will opt for that first. 

To that end I am really excited by the prospect of ABV 15 festival this May at the Titanic Drawing Offices in Belfast. Just look at their website for the list of Breweries already confirmed, it promises to be a good one. I hope to review in my own style various Irish craft beers this summer, and conduct my own mini tap take overs (although they will be bottle take overs, ill have to think of a more catchy name) by reviewing maybe a few from a selected brewery. Of course the Beer52 packages will contain beers from around the world and if one jumps out at me I will be sure to tell you about it.

My own brewing has reached a crossroads, I have nailed a couple of Pale Ales using brewing kits, the last one in particular which was dry hooped within an inch of its life I was especially proud of, and got rave reviews from friends and gatecrashers alike at a recent party. Do I continue along the brewing kits path with the heavy restrictions or do I make my first tentative steps into all grain brewing. Space is an issue for me in a small 2 bedroom flat, and initial outlay of expense for equipment is something I wont be taking lightly. In any case I will be making one more batch of kit beer as I have a party coming up in June and then perhaps I will seek some advice from people who have made the next step.

Marble Brewery Tap Take Over

Thursday 5^th March Marble Brewery took over the new bar on Bradbury Place, The Woodworkers. They brought with them 6 beers which they felt best represented the brewery and the message they were trying to get across. I had planned to fully review each and give those not there an idea of how the evening went, however as I've mentioned I spent last week in hospital so here is a quick overview of the night and couple of the beers that I enjoyed the most.

I arrived not really knowing what to expect, I met a friend there and we promptly made our way to the bar. I could see the list of beers high above the bar, but I had not had any dealings with Marble, besides the styles of beer I couldn't easily identify a good starting place, so I started at the top of the list. Earl Grey IPA, for most people there is an obvious connection here, Earl Grey is Tea. I didn't make that connection until much later in the night. I initially found Earl Grey to be heavy on the citrus fruit for the nose, but extremely well balanced on the taste, I promptly finished my pint, and looked in amazement at the board which was telling me this was a 6.8 ABV ale. There is no way you could tell by the taste that this was such a heavy hitter.

At this point the official tastings began, and in a much more sensible order of weakest ABV to strongest. When the speaker stood up and explained about Earl Grey and the Tea infusion it was like the penny dropped. Gone were the citrus fruits, any hop flavors I got vanished and all I could get from it was Tea. I'm not a fan of Tea and this really ruined what I initially thought was a nice beer for me.

Another beer of note was the Antipodean. Billed as a New Zealand Pale Ale, the marketing here was clear, lots of New Zealand varieties of Hops, with crystal clear water used in the process. This was a 4% ABV, and super easy to drink. It was hard to get past the hops on the nose but I did get hints of freshly cut grass, and under ripe citrus. On the taste this was again very well balanced, everything about this beer screamed “fresh!” You would definitely have this on a warm summers day with a barbecue lit.

The final beer I want to mention was my personal favorite, and the one I continued to drink long after the tastings had finished, Little Barney. Produced in association with Tyrone's own Pokertree Brewery, this is billed as a West Coast IPA. It poured a golden red, almost copper color in the glass, as opposed to the amber color of the other Ales sampled that night, but again it was rammed with luscious fruit fragrances, some peach and pineapple were obvious to the nose. This beer was bitter, too bitter for my friend who was with me, but perfect for me, the long after taste satisfied me in a way that none of the other marble beers could. Again, this beer was very enjoyable and fresh, billed at 5%ABV I thought was the perfect strength for my favorite beer of the night.

All in all a very enjoyable night, and the speaker (your name escapes me 100 apologies) was very approachable after the event to answer any questions about Marble specifically or beer, or brewing on general. Ill be keeping my eyes peeled for the next tap takeover which I am informed will be another good one. My only slight gripe about the evening, it was slightly difficult, impossible at times to hear the speaker over the general bar noises, perhaps next time they should give him or her a microphone to ensure those at the back of the room don’t miss any nuggets of information.

I've been in the Woodworkers I few times now and I have to say I am mostly impressed. Its the sort of bar you can go in with a few mates and sit and have a conversation without having to shout over the drum n bass “background” music. Woodcutters does have a DJ most evenings as far as I can see, and having a snoop on the facebook page, it appears a live band from time to time as well but the sound levels mean you can still have a conversation. Be prepared to spend some money though, the guest draught beers are all premium and the price generally reflects this, I couldn't say anything I've had so far has been overpriced, but I equally couldn't say I've snagged a bargain either.

* Photos taken from Woodworkers Facebook site.

The Woodworkers:  Twitter       Facebook

Marble Brewery:     Twitter       Website

ABV FEST:             Twitter       Website