First up is a “pumpkin pie” ale. The base beer is pretty straightforward, being more or less the grain bill from my American Amber, but with a single hop addition for bittering. The twists come from the addition of 58 oz (23% of the grist by weight) of canned pumpkin in the mash, and traditional holiday spices at flameout:

• 10 g grated ginger root
• 10 g whole cloves
• 5 g whole stick cinnamon
• 5 g coarsely crushed nutmeg

In addition to the pumpkin and spices, I wanted to further enhance the impression of pumpkin pie by giving the beer a pie-crust, graham-cracker finish. Biscuit malt would fit the bill perfectly, but getting some presented a problem. I do have a brand-spanking new “local” homebrew shop in Durango, but I wasn’t able to get there before brewday. The only solution was to try to make my own biscuit malt. Following Randy Mosher’s guidelines from Radical Brewing, I spread a pound of pale malt out on a tray and toasted it at 300°F. The entire house was immediately filled with the delightful aroma of non-enzymatic browning, progressing from sweet to bready to toasty to (unexpectedly) peanut butter. After 27 minutes the malt began to smell a little carbonized, so I took it out and left it spread out on the tray overnight. (Mosher mentions that some of the more odious aromas generated by the roasting process should be allowed to dissipate.) The finished product had a very nice biscuit character, although it may have been a little more “husky” than a commercial biscuit malt. Without tasting them side by side, it’s hard to say. The color did end up right where I wanted it at about 20 SRM according to the ol’ eyeball test.

Cargill Special Pale before and after toasting. SRM guide added digitally.

The brewday went off without a hitch. With such a high proportion of pumpkin in the mash, I was halfway expecting a stuck sparge or two, but my MLT handled it admirably. I did incorporate a long protein rest in order to ensure the pumpkin was fully converted, and ran off the wort a little more slowly than usual, just in case. It’s worth noting that according to the nutrition label on the cans, the pumpkin should have added ~0.8°P to the beer’s OG. BeerTools’ efficiency calculation doesn’t take that into account, hence the unusually high “mash efficiency” seen in the recipe.

Fall Classic recipe (PDF)

Fried Beer Comes to the Texas State Fair

• 2 cups spent grain, pureed
• 4 cups wheat flour
• 1 cup beer
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/8 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 packet dry bread yeast
• white flour, as needed

Proof the yeast with a teaspoon of sugar and a few ounces of warm water. Knead to combine the rest of the ingredients, and add white flour as needed until the texture is right (not dry to the touch, but no longer sticky). Pound the dough down into a loaf pan, then let it rise for 1-2 hours. Bake at 350°F until the internal temperature is 210°F, or a “toothpick test” shows that it’s done – it should be about 45 minutes.

We had dinner (crab legs plus unlimited sushi for $25!) at Bluefin Bistro Friday night, so I had to do something with the leftover crab.

Yay breakfast!

Ingredients

• 1/3 jigger (0.5 fl oz) Martini & Rossi dry vermouth
• 3 jiggers (4.5 fl oz) Bombay Sapphire gin²
• 2 large olives³
• 4 large ice cubes⁴

Procedure

1. Place cocktail glass in the freezer to chill.
2. Soak olives in cold water for 10-15 minutes to remove brine.
3. Add gin, vermouth, and ice to cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for 15 seconds.⁵
4. Strain into the chilled cocktail glass and add olives.
5. Wait 60 seconds for the drink to come to thermal equilibrium (watch the condensation on the glass), then enjoy.

 
 
1. Not to mention that this recipe is formulated to essentially fill a 7 fl oz cocktail glass. Please please please don’t drink one and drive.
2. When on a budget, Seagram’s Extra Dry is a surprisingly good substitute. Hendrick’s is phenomenal but doesn’t play well with olives.
3. I’m a fan of the traditional pimento stuffing, but feta cheese, garlic, onion, almond, all good. The olives are basically an après-aperitif snack.
4. The larger the better. You want to transfer heat, not water down the drink excessively. If there are ice crystals on top of the drink, you’re doing it wrong. You can also chill the vermouth and gin ahead of time, but I find the -10°C of a typical freezer far too cold. Shoot for more like 4°C. Using a kitchen thermometer probe instead of a toothpick makes this child’s play, and satisfies a desire to geek the fuck out while drinking.
5. Yeah, yeah, you’re going to “bruise the gin”, whatever that means. In blind taste tests people generally prefer shaken martinis. Introducing oxygen enhances the flavors of the aromatics, and if you don’t want to taste them, well, you should be drinking vodka anyway.

I made a Dinosaur Comic! Turns out it isn’t too hard.

I really am making potato salad though.

Powerthirst Mk2

Powerthirst Mk2 recipe

1. I charge $109.19 on my American Express.
2. AmEx gives me 1.5% back, or $1.64.
3. I take my receipt, coupons, and Kroger card to the Customer Service desk.
4. They give me $37.05 in cash. (I’m kind of a Nazi about only buying things on sale.)
5. My effective cash back is 2.27%, which doesn’t seem like a big deal until you consider that I’m getting to $6500 on the card 50% faster, and once that happens, I get 5% back – on anything I can buy at Kroger (which also happens to have the best prices in town on booze).

If I do this every two weeks, which is about average, and charge (the 2008 average of) $793 a month, this will net me an additional $42 a year in cash back – a 40% increase. I <3 math.

Dublin is just too expensive, so we caught the last train to Galway and walked around in a torrential downpour looking for a hostel. That taken care of, I got something like 10 hours of sleep and woke up to a beautiful sunny day. “Do you think we should take rain jackets?” Yuri asked. “I don’t think so,” I said. Then it started hailing.

Yuri at Jameson's

The view from our hostel