Weekend cooking

We're planning on a "cookout" for Memorial Day (Monday). Most of my team at work is going to come over and we'll throw down with some food from the grill.

So today I'm cooking one of Ames' favourites: Baptist Chicken. We take some chicken pieces (I've never tried with whole chickens) and barbecue them (~200F for several hours). Once the chicken is completely cooked we immerse it in some sweet and sticky sauce and put it back on the grill to caramelize a bit. Get it? Baptist: full immersion after it's completely cooked. We started making this when we still lived in North Carolina:

From Baptist Chicken

So I put some chicken on the grill this morning: it smells heavenly out there right now.

From Baptist Chicken

Plenty of things taste better than chicken, but nothing smells better. There's just an indefinable goodness to the smell of chicken fat burning on charcoal.


On another front, I took some time off for my birthday (I had too much vacation time accrued and needed to burn some). Since I had the time off, my kids and I made some beer. I came up with a recipe with the help of Beer Calculus, and we put it together.

From Woolen Shirt

From Woolen Shirt

I'm calling this one "Old Woolen Shirt". It seems an appropriate name for a beer of that colour. I followed some advice I found online and have tasted one bottle a week since bottling. We bottled it two weeks ago today, so that's two beers.

The first bottle was not quite flat, but pretty close (at one week). The flavour was really good: caramel-y and toasty with a nice roast barley undertone, but not too sweet.

From Woolen Shirt

One week later and it was a lot more carbonated (at two weeks).
The flavour was still there, but it's a little drier. It's developed a definite yeast bite, but that should fade over time. I'm not really expecting it to be ready to drink until it's conditioned at least another week and then chilled for several more days, so I'm not too worried about the yeasty flavour.

From Woolen Shirt

The colour's dead-on, but it's a little cloudy. It should clear some more with time, but I don't think this one's ever going to drop really clear.

From Woolen Shirt

I'm really happy with this beer. I realize it's still pretty young, but it's very promising. I'll definitely be making this one again soon. I managed to get a huge crop of yeast from washing the trub when I bottled this one. That always helps with the $$$.


I've got one more batch fermenting right now: this one's an amber beer with wheat. I tried to make it lower alcohol, and I'm experimenting with Irish moss and longer fermentation to see how clear I can get it. I'm making this one with yeast I harvested from the Woolen Shirt, so that's a bonus. I haven't named the current batch yet.

Two Things

So I've been neglecting this blog recently: that's more laziness than anything else. But today I wanted to break the silence to mention two things.

First, there is an interesting editorial by Paul St. Pierre, "A voice from the grave's edge", apparently published in The Vancouver Sun. It's a most accurate and succinct write-up of the direction North American culture has taken in my lifetime. Whether one considers the changes in the USA since 9/11 or the Maoist speech controls in Canada, it's obvious to anyone who thinks that the world is changing, and not for the better. Ayn Rand seems less like a novelist and more like a prescient every day.

St. Pierre writes:

Our Canada is now very close to a condition in which everything that is not compulsory is forbidden. We have become prisoners of the state. Like modern jail prisoners, all our needs for balanced diet, climate-controlled shelter, approved and tested medication, mental health counselling, higher education, suitable entertainment, grief counselling and consensual safe sex are available free. The inmate lacks only freedom itself.

This one is well worth the read.

Second, I've been greatly enjoying West Coast beer, and really have to mention the seasonal offering from Alaskan Brewing Company. I discovered Alaskan's beers when I moved out here, and I've become a real fan. Alaskan Amber Ale is not the best beer I've ever had: but it's very, very good. And at around $1 per bottle at Costco (about the same on sale in Safeway or Fred Meyer), it's a real winner. Listen, I take beer seriously, and I've been drinking this stuff almost exclusively for the last month. Smithwick's and Guinness are better, but not much. This is really good stuff, and at a price point where I can't justify not buying it.

And this last summer, I enjoyed several bottles of the incredible Alaskan Summer Ale. It's nice to have a "summer ale" that's light in colour rather than taste.

But today I bought a 12-pack of Alaskan Winter Ale, and it's amazing. Check out the colour of this nectar:

From Alaskan Winter Ale

This is an insanely good beer. This is the sort of brew the ancient Teutons dreamed they'd drink in the halls of their pagan gods after dying in gloriously in battle. If you like beer and you have access to Alaskan ales, you need to get some of this.

Next to Sarah Palin, this is best thing to come out of Alaska.

House Warming

So we had our first cook-out in the new digs. Our place is still stacked with boxes, we still have very little open floor space; but we had the privilege of some guests this last weekend.



But let's get the backstory first.

When we left the house in January, I had to part with my grill, as we couldn't "cook with open flame" in the apartment. Some wonderful friends agreed to grill-sit in exchange for use of it for six months; and my grill spent several months at a friend's house. We went over and cooked for them on it twice, but I have to admit I've missed my grill.

When we were in BC last month, I bought a small hibachi to use at the beach or the lake, and it was worth every penny of the $21.95 it cost me at Canadian Tire:


It looks a little rusty: that's new after being caught in a rainstorm (we have those in the Northwest). The problem with grilling on charcoal: ash is very caustic once it gets wet. Ash + Water = Lye.

At any rate, I got my grill unpacked, reassembled, and polished on Thursday or Friday. So it was a tearful reuniuon

Notice the shelf under the grill is still dirty. I need to get that cleaned. But the stainless is pretty shiny.

So Saturday KingJaymz and his Queen came to visit. They bore gifts, including a bottle of Old Viscosity Ale and a Stumptown Tart. Neither bottle made it through the night. (No, it wasn't a drunken rout, we had a nice long visit and got thirsty a couple times.)



But the main event, of course, was meat. Saturday as Bone-In Ribeye Day.




Good food, good drink, good company. Saturday was a good day.



Update: I can't help notice KingJaymz' account of the visit is so much more meaningful and kinder than mine. I discuss the grill, beer, and meat; while he talks about how nice we are. I'm tempted to edit my post heavily, but I think that would blur the reality of the situation: he's obviously a better man than I.

Sweet, schticky brew

A couple weeks ago we grilled out with some friends. The food wasn't anything special, but we had a couple beers I had bought on my Easter weekend beer forage. They were a good choice.

They were both He'Brew beers: we drank a MONUMENTAL JEWBELATION, and a BITTERSWEET LENNY'S R.I.P.A..


In general, we start at the lighter-coloured brews and move to the darker ones. A cursory look at each bottle against the light showed that the Lenny's was significantly paler than the Jewbelation, so we started there.



BITTERSWEET LENNY'S R.I.P.A. is an "IPA" that contains rye. In other words, it's not an IPA. But it is very good. In fact, it was a great beer.

For the non-beer people, a brief description of some styles. Please understand I am greatly over-simplifying here. The main distinct ingredients in beer are barley and hops. Barley is malted in the brewing process, which creates a vaguely sweet flavour. Hops, in contrast, are bitter. Thus, a lot of the flavours in beer are from the varying balance of hop bitterness vs. malt sweetness. There are three main "bitter" families of beer, all British in origin: Bitter, Extra-Special Bitter (ESB), and India Pale Ale (IPA).

Bitter is a coppery-coloured, top-fermenting beer. It tends to favour hop over malt, so that the result is a nicely bitter beer. The difference between "bitter" and "pale ale" is vague: "bitter" is a type of "pale ale".

ESB is a high-alcohol bitter. It is not necessarily higher in hop content, although it might be. The most commonly known is probably Fuller's ESB. My current drinking beer is Bridgeport ESB, from Oregon. The term "high-alcohol" is perhaps misleading. British beers can be as low in alcohol as 3% ABV. Budweiser and similar swill are typically 5% ABV. Bridgeport ESB is 6.1% ABV.

IPA is extremely hoppy, and frequently very high in alcohol. Legend has it that IPA was developed by the British as a way to get beer to India for the troops. The super-hoppy IPA was supposed to be like a "beer concentrate" that would withstand the rigours of the voyage to India without spoiling. If memory serves, the IPA was supposed to be watered when it arrived to produce something more like an ESB, but no one does that anymore.

Americans have added a level to the traditional IPA, in so-called "hop monsters". These are beers more or less designed to prove they can actually be made. Some are undrinkably bitter, and they frequently live in the 10+% ABV range. I don't have a lot of use for these, as a rule; although I've tasted a few.

So Lenny's is perhaps not really an IPA, but it is a very good beer.

The addition of rye to a very hoppy recipe makes an interesting beer. The beer is much maltier than any IPA I've ever tried, and the rye adds a spicy darkness. You can see from the photo that the beer is almost amber in colour. The alcohol content is 10% ABV.

I'll buy more if I stumble across it.

The second of the night was MONUMENTAL JEWBELATION:


Consider the colour of that beer. The alcohol content was 10% ABV, and the flavour was every bit as dark as it looks; although it wasn't as malty as I expected.

This beer is almost attempting to play in the "Belgian Ale" category; which is exactly where I don't see He'Brew as a competitor. I've said it before: the only North American breweries that do "Belgian" right are Unibroue and Ommegang (and possibly Dragon Mead, but I haven't sampled enough of their offerings to swear to it). There are any number of excellent American breweries, but they almost always like to push the envelope, and "Belgian" is best in the traditional form. That's not to say I won't drink the other offerings! But I find I much prefer the conservative approach of Unibroue and Ommegang.

Nevertheless, Jewbelation was a treat. If you see one in the store, pick it up. The label is enough reason in itself to buy one of these.

Barbecuen

Disclaimer: I linked to a couple reviews I wrote for Epinions in this article. If you read my Epinions reviews, you'll earn me credit for traffic. Not like I really care, but I thought I should disclose that I have a material interest (however paltry) in directing you to my reviews.


Well, the Fourth of July was a Wednesday this year, so a bunch of us decided there wasn't a lot of point to coming in Monday or Tuesday. Well, Sunday night I was in the grocery store (after meeting), and I saw pork butts on sale for $0.97 a pound.

So Monday was barbecue day.

Now, barbecue is a greatly misunderstood art form. It's not about sweet and sticky ribs, salty beef brisket, or even vinegar-soaked pig shoulders. Barbecue is about tough cuts of meat, slowly and patiently cooked over coals at around 200F. Whether that meat is brisket, ribs, or hog shoulders; the point is to cook it slowly over coals at around 200F.

Personally, my favourite barbecue is the Eastern North Carolina style: where a whole hog is cooked overnight over coals. The folks out there make their barbecue sauce out of vinegar, water, peppers, and some spices; no sugar, no tomatoes. There are other styles, of course: Texans cook beef with tomatoes and sugar, folks in Kansas City cook beef with molasses, and folks in Memphis use molasses and tomatoes on pig shoulders or ribs.

But North Carolina is where barbecue started, and the flavours and styles vary from county to county. Further east, they cook the whole hog in vinegar. Here in the Piedmont, they cook only pieces of the hog (mainly the shoulders), and they add some sugar and tomato to the sauce. West of here in the mountains, the sauce gets more and more tomatoey, until you get over into Tenessee.

I can't cook a whole hog on my grill, so I just cook shoulders. But I do tend to use the simpler "original" eastern-style sauce. I use a mop sauce loosely based on Smoky Hale's "Eastern North Carolina Basting Sauce" on p. 245 of The Great American Barbecue and Grilling Manual (I wrote an Epinions review too). My version of this sauce is a little different than Smoky's, but I think mine gives a more rounded flavour. And mine reminds me a lot of the sauces I've actually eaten in eastern NC. Here's my mop sauce:
2 C. water
1 1/2 C. white vinegar
1/2 C. apple cider vinegar
1 T. crushed red pepper
1 1/2 T. salt
2 t. black pepper
1 T. garlic powder
2 T. paprika
Just mix all that up and you've got a basting sauce

Now I'll be honest and say I love the "Memphis style" sauces I buy from Red Hot and Blue. But I cook pretty exclusively with either my own baste or Carolina Treet, an excellent "eastern North Carolina" sauce.

This time, I cooked the shoulders for 14 hours, but I think I cut it a little short. It could have used another hour or so. There are those who claim to cook barbecue in eight hours or less, but they're really shorting themselves the final burst of flavour and tenderness that only come in the last couple hours: say after the first twelve.

Well, here's my grill with some meat on it:

Notice I moved my Santa Fe up by my other grill. Well, Ames and I lifted it up. I figure my brother-in-law can have it, just as soon as he comes to get it. Until then, I'll keep using it.



My daughter and I prepped the meat and got it cooking before 9:00 AM. I took it off the grill at 11:00 PM. What does prepping involve? For pork butts, it means spreading cheap yellow mustard all over the meat, then sprinkling it with salt, black pepper, and garlic. Then it goes on the grill.

The most important part of barbecue is the temperature. If you look at the photo above, you can see two temperature probes: one in the butt on the left, the other over the butt in the middle. The first measures the temperature of the meat, the other measures the temperature of the grill. Both readings come out on this display:

Its range is in the several-hundred-foot neighbourhood. I wrote a review of this thermometer on Epinions, if you care.

This go 'round, I created a grease fire on my grill. That is, a grease fire started when I was... er... detained. When I got undetained, I checked the temperature and found that is was too hot to register ("HHHH"). Oops! I ran outside in my bare feet, and saw a tremendous grease fire. I managed to stop it, but not before it completely destroyed my pit temperature probe:

That's why there's only one temperature showing on my thermometer above. I guess I need to replace the pit probe: it permanently reads "HHHH" now. I must have permanently shorted out the thermocouple in there.

Thereafter, I had no remote thermometer, so I had to spend most of the rest of my day in an adirondack chair, sipping a beer, and watching the grill. The built-in thermometer on the grill reads low, but it appears to read consistently low. That is, it appears to be very consistently 70F too low. So, I sat there, trying to make sure my grill thermometer was reading between 120F and 150F.

As I've said before, the key ingredient in barbecue is temperature control. Sometimes my grill gets too hot, so I have these little wooden blocks that I use to prop the lid open and lower the temperature a little. They're basically a cut 2X4, with a groove routed in them:

They sit on the lip of the grill and keep the lid cracked (these are old photos):



Well, after 14 hours and a few of these:

I finally took the meat off the grill at 11:00PM. It could've used a couple more hours, but I think it was (all in all) a good day's work:


Now that is a relaxing day.

Java Party!

Well, I'm working long hours this week. I'm working on a JSF application (which is really scope-crept to the point where it ought to be re-worked into about 4 applications) to assist in the chemical engineering and production of flexible polyurethane foam. This project has really turned into a monster, and there have been several technology and architectural changes that have happened under me: this thing is a beast with a life of its own.

So I'm sitting at my MacBook (self-employment has some benefits), with Evanescence playing on iTunes. I'm listening to "Bring Me to Life", which is a wonderful song. I doubt it was written this way, mind you, but it's a great metaphor for Christianity...

So I guess that's another cat out of the bag. I like bubblegum music. So sue me.

Ames and the kids are out doing an errand for some friends: they should be back soon with dinner from Burger King. Time to open a Sam Adams Summer Ale, and see about knocking out this stupid project.

Deadline next Monday. Maybe we'll actually be done by then.

Beer

One of the Epicurean pleasures close to my heart is beer. I like wine, but I like beer more.

When I was younger, I kept a beer tasting notebook, and would enthusiastically search out any new beer I could find; just to add it to my repertoire. I used to read books on beer, participate in alt.food.drink.beer, and discuss beer carefully with other beer drinkers.

Now I just drink it and enjoy it.

I don’t like to get inebriated. I drink beer for the flavor, not the effect. I typically cut myself off after a couple, or as soon as I can feel it.

Beers can be generally divided into two categories: ales and lagers. Ale is beer made with yeast that floats: it’s sometimes called “top-fermenting beer”. Lager is made with yeast that sinks: it is sometimes called “bottom-fermenting”. Ales are fermented at a higher temperature than lagers, and the yeast tends to produce a fruitier drink, since the floating yeast tends to pick up wild strains in the air. Lagers ferment at lower temperatures, and produce “cleaner” flavors, and typically a cleaner-looking beer.

German and Czech breweries typically make lagers; beers like Warsteiner or Pilsener Urquel are lagers. British and Belgian brewers tend to create ales: stouts, porters, and bitter are all ales.

There’s no difference in strength between lager and ale: the strongest beers in the world are pretty evenly divided between lager and ale.

I prefer ale to lager, and I typically drink British or Belgian beers. The Belgians perfected the “Abbey Ale”, which is a strong (typically more than 8% ABV) or “high gravity” beer. They are typically bottled in larger bottles (typically 750 mL bottles) with live yeast and sugar, so they continue to ferment in the bottle. The British term for that is “Barleywine”, although they don’t use it very consistently. I use the term “British” to include all the British Isles: so I consider Guinness to be a British beer, although it is Irish.

So after that primer, let’s look at some of my favorites:

UnibroueTerrible. This is probably my all-time favorite beer. It’s dark. Not “dark” like Guinness, “dark” like “black”. It looks like soy sauce. And it’s strong: 10% ABV. Now, this stuff is too strong for every-day drinking; but Unibroue makes a “light” version (heh), called Chambly Noir. If I had to forsake all beers but one, it would be Terrible or maybe Chambly Noir This stuff makes Chimay look like a girlie beer.


Irish (dry) stout: Beamish, Murphy’s, Guinness. My “everyday beer” would have to be Irish stout. My favorites are these three, but I’m always willing to try something else. These three each have a subtly different flavor, but I like them all, and am occasionally found sitting in a pub with three pints: one each, in front of me. Sometimes people assume I like porter because I like stout, but I don’t. I have no rational explanation for it, but I don’t like porter at all. I’ve tried a lot of porters, and not one struck me as a good beer. Weird.


Smithwick’s. This is an Irish ale that is making an appearance all over my area. A couple years ago, this was only available in “Irish pubs”, now it’s in all the grocery stores. If you like Smithwick’s, another wonderful beer to try is Belhaven’s Scottish Ale. Wonderful, dark, peaty.


Chimay Grande Reserve. Chimay is the “original” Trappist brewery. Well, probably not, but it’s pretty close. This is the gold standard for an abbey ale, but it’s not my favorite. One thing to note about Chimay: it needs to sit a while before drinking. Grande Reserve is almost always too young to drink when you buy it. Experimentation has led me to believe it needs to sit at least four years before opening. Michael Jackson, one of the world’s foremost authorities on beer, claims the shelf life of this beer to be around 25 years, so you don’t need to worry about leaving it too long...




Samuel Adams Summer Ale. Samuel Adams beers are made by Boston Brewing Company in New England. They are all supposedly “craft beers”, but I think the operation is certainly too large for anyone to consider it a “micro-brew”. I’ve drunk a lot of Sam Adams beers, and I have to say I don’t like them for the most part. Having said that, I eagerly await their Summer Ale every year. It’s almost perfect as a warm-weather brew. It’s considerably lighter than I normally drink, but it has the perfect hint of wheat, a light hoppiness, and a mild spicy flavor. I keep this stuff on hand from April to September.



Unibroue Maudite Maudite is a drinkable Belgian. Well, it’s not really Belgian, but it’s a wanna-be Belgian, and it’s a good, solid beer. I try to keep some of this on hand. It’s not cheap, but it’s decent as Belgians go ($7 or $8 for 750 mL), and it’s a great bang-for-your-buck deal.

Delirium Tremens. Some people consider this the perfect beer. It’s a little too light for my taste (straw-colored), but the flavor is excellent, and it’s a great drink. It’s a little expensive in my neck of the woods (typically $9 for 750 mL), but I keep a bottle or two on hand for special occasions. The same brewery also makes Delirium Nocturnum and Delirium Noel. I think they’re both better than the Tremens, but Tremens appears to be their most popular line: it’s the easiest to find.




Corsendonk. Corsendonk makes several beers, none of them bad. I think I like their Christmas ale best of all, but their Abbey Brown is delightful.



This is not a complete list, but it hits some high points. And please be aware that my tastes change suddenly, without rhyme or reason. But I am generally considered an aficionado: I have never been accused of bad taste when it comes to beer.

As a special treat, I’ve included some photos of my own beer collection. This is not complete, in the sense that I have more beer in my “cellar” than I’ve shown here. But it is a few I’ve squirreled away, so to speak:

Beer Gallery