Sierra Nevada Porter

Now that the weather's changed, Matt and I are into brewing some darker beers. Next up on the brew schedule is a porter. I'm pretty stoked for this, as Anchor Porter was my favorite beer in college (well, besides High Life). As prep for brewing, we thought we should sample another porter, so Matt picked up a sixer of Sierra Nevada Porter.


Aroma: There is very little smell to this beer. I mainly get a clean, malty nose. Matt thought he could smell some spiciness.

Appearance: Dark and cloudy, but slightly opaque at the bottom of the pour. Topped off with a thick creamy head.

Flavor: Chocolaty roastiness, a clean finish with a slight hop flavor.

Mouthfeel: Creamy, but not too thick and heavy. (As a porter should be.)

Overall, this is a nice example of a classic porter. I still prefer Anchor as it's heavier - I like chewing my dark beers. As ususal, we're going for a hoppier version for our brew, and plan on dry-hopping with Chinook and tossing in some grains of paradise for spice. Should be perfect around March when we're totally sick of winter.

Belgian Prankster Label in Zymurgy

On a whim, I sent one of our labels into Zymurgy magazine, and it got printed in the November/December issue! Many thanks to Gabe Patti for doing the original watercolor, which we scanned into the label.

In case you're wondering what the hell this is all about, this beer is named after a character in The Order Of Odd-Fish, by James Kennedy, which is one whacked out book. After reading it, Meg and I both decided we needed a beer called The Belgian Prankster. We then met James while he was doing a reading at The Hop Leaf, and turns out he's not only a beer fan, but loved the idea of a beer brewed for one of his characters. After laboring over the recipe for awhile, we came up with an interesting ale that pays homage to our Latino Chicago neighborhood by incorporating 1.5lbs of Pilloncillo sugar. We used Mosher's Belgian Pale Ale recipe as a starting point, but by the time we were done with it, the numbers tossed it more into the Belgian Specialty Ale category. I think we're still figuring a few things out, but after 2 batches we thing we're onto something good. It's one of those beers we miss after not having it for awhile.

I will say it was interesting to take a character from a book (and an evil one at that), and figure out what sort of beer he might be. It put a whole new perspective on the beer-as-art thing by putting us into a new mindset when working on a beer. It was a ton of fun, why not try brewing a beer for one of your favorite fiction characters?

New Crop O' Hops

We were at our LHBS (Perfect Brewing) over the weekend, and since we've been brewing quite a bit lately, we were discussing buying grains and hops in bulk. Billy advised us to hold off a bit, as the hop harvest is about to happen - so in the coming months we'll have both fresher and cheaper hops!

Then today, I see this great New York Times pictorial on the hop harvest - so beautiful. Enjoy.

Fresh Cherry Crisp (with spent grain topping)

There's almost nothing better than fresh cherries in the summer. Matt and I got used to having plenty of sour baking cherries around since our old apartment in Logan Square had seven huge trees in the yard. Even though we planted a cherry tree at our new house, it has yet to produce more than a handful of cherries. Luckily, we live a close drive from a number of cherry orchards in Michigan.

So in July we made a road to trip to central Michigan to pick cherries. Our original idea was to make a cherry stout. However, after a trip to Bells, we decided against brewing the beer. (For me the only fruit beers worth drinking are the New Glarus Cherry and Raspberry ales and Dogfish Head Aprihop on tap.) Since we had made the trip though, we still decided to pick cherries.

The orchard we went to had so many ripe trees that there was an 11 lb. minimum for picking. Now, if you're brewing, that's not too many. But for baking...well, let's just say that I have a freezer full of cherries. (See photo. Yes, they had a pitting machine! It's truly an amazing thing.) Time for baking!

I've made this crisp many times over the years, but I think this alteration for the grains was my best yet. As with any spent grain recipe, use only DRY grains. (Here is my method for drying spent grains.)

Fresh Cherry Crisp (w/ spent grain topping)
4 c. pitted sour cherries*
1 1/2 c. sugar
4 T. flour

Crisp
3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. old-fashioned oats
1/2 c. spent grains
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. butter, room temperature
1/2 c. butter-flavored shortening

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In large bowl, combine cherries, sugar, and 4 T. flour. Pour into 9x13 baking pan.

In medium bowl, combine crisp ingredients and cut in butter and shortening. (Use a pastry blender.) Blend until crumbly. Sprinkle evenly over cherries.

Bake for 45-50 min, or until golden.

*No need to drain the cherries. The juice is delicious. If you have a lot, just add more flour to thicken the mixture.

Using a Paint Strainer Bag in the Boil

On a tip from another website, for our last brew session I used a 5 gallon paint strainer bag in the boil. I am always annoyed with post-boil straining - it seems to just take too long as the strainer gets clogged and has to clear. So this time, I kept all my hops in a cheap 5 gallon paint strainer bag, which you can find at about any hardware store (I got mine at Menards). It was clipped to the kettle using 3 small spring-clips:

To my surprise, the clips didn't really get too hot, so there's really no need to take off any rubberized handle material before using them, like I did. This worked really well, and made cleanup a snap too. I even transferred my wort into the kettle through the bag, so it caught any grains that got through during the sparge. Next time I'll probably just dump the hops, rinse, and reuse the bag (a pack of 3 was around $3). After the boil, all I had to deal with was break material. Before transferring to the fermenter, I let this stuff settle to the bottom of the kettle by leaving it alone for 15 minutes (have a drink, clean up, etc.). When it's below the ball-valve, most of it gets left behind in the transfer. Whenever I get my pre/post boil volumes ironed out, I hope to leave it all behind.

For transferring, I attach a really short hose to the barb, and let the wort slowly fall a good couple feet into the fermenter, which helps aerate it. When that initial foam dies down, I pitch and then aerate it again with a power drill mixer. Maybe someday I'll go completely crazy and get an oxygen tank, but for now this, plus a good yeast starter, plus yeast nutrient (in the boil), seems to work very well.

Cheers and good brewin'!