Stout Bread

February 14, 2012

I could have sworn I posted about this the other day but we did have a lot going on.

We managed to surpass the last beer bread with an intense stout bread:

3.75 cups king arthur white flour
2.75 cups king arthur whole wheat flour
1 cup spent grain (from the Imperial 666 Stout)
1 cup Cummings sourdough starter
1.5 Tbsp kosher salt
2 cups of lukewarm water
3/4 cups of Susan's Birthday Stout, warmed to room temperature
1 Tbsp barley malt syrup
2 tsp barley malt powder
1 Tbsp commercial yeast
Flax Seeds for crust

(method is same as with past loaves)

The Cutting of the Manchego

February 14, 2012 (V Day)

Last night we decided to cut into the young manchego --- at 7 days a mere Manchego Fresco --- as we're still young in our cheesemaking and wanted to experiment to see what a young Manchego tastes like for comparison.

First, it was a big success.

The texture is firm but supple.  The flavor is slightly, pleasantly tangy (like a feta).  You can tell that with aging, this would be pretty stellar and already, at a week, very edible and tasty.  We're going to have some tonight when friends are over for dinner.  I learned that a great way to store cheese is to wrap it in parchment paper (marked with name/date in pencil) and then loosely in saran wrap and then store all your cheeses in a big tupperware.

Today, when we get some spare time, we're going to bottle the Heff!

Last night we tasted a bottle of Barred Aged Old Rasputin XIV which I picked up for Lee as a surprise.  Stellar.  If you can find it, buy it.  They're calling it one of the best RIS beers you can get.  Hopefully the one we have fermenting will be just as tasty (esp considering the price tag on this one):

M3 Mead

February 12, 2012

Today began, as most of my favorite Sundays do, with a trip with Lanyon to Hollywood Farmers Market.  Today I picked up a Raw Sage Honey from Marinez Apiaries for making our next mead.

M3 Mead:

3 lbs of the aforementioned raw sage honey
1/2 Liter apple juice
4 Liters water
1/2 teaspoon yeast fuel
1/2 packet of Red Star Pasteur champagne yeast (Note:  the other half of the packet is going to be used to amp up the 666 Imperial Stout and get it over the 12% alcohol limitation of US05 yeast)

Quick beer update

Brewed a Russian Imperial Stout yesterday, 5 gallons (1.086), which went a bit crazy overnight - filling the blowoff tube and almost popping the lid off the bucket. Luckily I got in there and released the pressure just in time. After cleaning and re-attaching

Mmm new beer grains to bake with

The Imperial Stout is underway and that means more bread grain to play with.  I'm inspired by the dark, rich smell of the grains and planning to make a Stout Bread today incorporating the new grains, and one of our older stouts.  I'm also planning to play with barley malt powder today for this first time.  Stay tuned for pics.

In other news, we cut open the first farmhouse cheddar last night.  As expected, it was no where near perfection...far from it.  A lot went wrong on that first cheese but we let it sit to see what came out.  Happy to say it was mold free and a beautiful creamy white throughout.  But it was unsalted (mistake from first batch) and a bit of a sour aftertaste.  It was creamier than I expected, which was nice.

The feta has been well used the last few days, topping some homemade pizzas last night and as part of a Greek meze spread.  Very happy with the feta -- creamy, tangy, couldn't ask for more.

Yesterday we made our first Manchego and following its bath in a salty brine last night, it is beginning its long nap at 55 degrees (in our wine refrigerator..).  The cheese changes over time of course, and in Manchego's case, it even gets a different name based on how long you wait.  We'll see how patient we decide to be.....

Big beer, small batch

I've wanted to do a big (high alcohol) imperial stout for a while now, but I wanted to wait until I made the move from extract to all grain, which happened last month.

But now I face the issue that my current BIAB all grain setup really struggles to do a bigger grain bill than 14lbs or so. So how do I get to a beer which takes 20+lb of grain?

Well, the mead experiments from a few days ago gave me an idea. I'd do a micro batch of beer in a 3 gallon water bottle. The bottles make aeration a lot easier, and long term storage is much easier (very important given that this stout is going to need to bulk age for a few months. So I started with a recipe for a very heavy 5 gallon stout, scaled it back to a third across the board (ending with 1.666 gallons of beer or so), and swapped in some DME for grain so that if I ever want to scale this back up to a bigger volume I can make with my current setup then I at least have a fighting chance of doing that.


666 imperial stout

4lb 2 row pale malt
1 lb pale dry malt extract
1.5.5lb roasted barley
0.5lb special B
0.25lb German chocolate malt

1.5oz challenger 60 mins
0.75oz goldings 30 mins

US05 (1 packet) - hoping that this will get to 10 or 11%. US05 can go to 12%.

makes 1.666 gallons of beer - I think - going to start with 2.5 gallons which, after grain absorption and boiloff should get me around 1.666.

"Run and Gunner" cocktail

1 part Jack Daniels Honey Whiskey
3 parts (homemade) ginger beer
good squeeze of fresh lemon juice
tsp of honey
3 small dashes of maple bitters
mint leaf garnish
served on neat over granite "rocks" for a chill