Food: Thanksgiving 2014

Thanksgiving was a success! All that planning and it felt like it was over in the blink of an eye. Everything came out exactly the way I wanted. Turkey was a bit dry, but not bad.

The rub consisted of sazon, adobo, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I used the chicken stock from the practice chicken I made a few weeks ago. The gravy was absolutely delicious! (Thanks Regina and Barb!) We also had garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, homemade Duffy stuffing, carrots, Puerto Rican pork and rice, cranberry sauce, and pearl onions. For desserts, we had chocolate pudding pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate cake, ice cream, homemade whipped cream, brownies, and a variety of cookies.

A couple days later I made another stock with the turkey. Of course, the leftovers made PLENTY of turkey and stuffing sandwiches. My wife isn't a fan of leftovers so I am still trying to consume as much of it as I can by myself. It's pretty difficult. I feel like I've gained 20lbs already. 

 

I also broke out the Apple Pie Ale, as well. It came out great! I don't really have any complaints about it thus far. Very well rounded and delicious. I can't wait to do it again! Cheers!

Beer: New Techniques During Brew Day

I have been on the journey to brew the best IPA I can ever since I started brewing. Which is actually not too long ago. Last year around this time I was brewing 1.5 gallon stove top brews and adding 3.5 gallons of tap water to make 5 gallons. In this short amount of time I have already jumped to all-grain brewing. Can you imagine what I will be doing next year? I can't.

This next brew we are calling The New England 1020. It's going to be a what I call them a "New England IPA". Not as bitter and more aromatic. I get to experiment with techniques I've never used before. I am going to be using a HopShot which is a hop extract to add some bittering elements without adding too much flavor of the hop. Next I am going to be whirlpooling at 180°F with the addition of hops. This is going to (hopefully) create a blast of aroma in the face. I also just picked up this yeast strain which is a Conan clone. 

I will definitely try to take a lot of pictures and update as soon as I can! I have trouble taking pictures because I am having too much fun the whole time. Yesterday I finished up the labels on the Apple Pie Ale and took a few nice pictures. Here they are! 

Beer: Apple Pie Ale Bottling (Update)

We bottled the Apple Pie Ale this weekend. It tasted absolutely amazing. Extremely well rounded with hints of apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and bready notes. Although we wanted it at about 8%, I think having it at 5.8% is actually better. Makes it very drinkable at any time. Also we were surprised at the clarity. You can see right through it!

While all this was going on I was preparing a chicken stock for Thanksgiving. I slowly simmered it for about 6 hours and then strained it. Simple recipe of celery, carrots, onion, parsley, salt, and pepper. 

Kyle did a little photoshoot with the Scotch Stout and The Quadrupel. I have to say it came out looking awesome! 

Beer: Apple Pie Beer (Update)

Last night Kyle and I transferred the Apple Pie Ale. Let me tell you, the young beer tasted delightful. Last year when we brewed it we used McCormick Cinnamon Sticks which, well are pretty much fake and pumped with artificial flavors of cinnamon. This year we used real cinnamon and Tahitian vanilla beans. The gravity was exactly where I wanted it. Well, I mean after the unfortunate event of not having enough grain to get to a OG of 1.080 and instead hit 1.055. The gravity was about 1.011 which puts the beer at a 5.78% ABV.

The equation used to get the ABV is simple:
ABV = (og – fg) * 131.25

Beer: Apple Pie Ale

So this beer holds a very special place in my heart. It was the first beer that I formulated the recipe from scratch by researching how to extract flavors for hours upon hours. As I kept on reading, it seemed like an extremely hard task to get all of these complex flavors to come out properly. Spices in beer is an area that can easily become overpowering and destroy the delectable delicious flavor of beer; the combination of water, malt, hops, and yeast.

One day, along with 2 of my good friends, I decided to just start brewing beer. We started with an IPA kit and then on to a Smokey Porter. They were good, but just like with music, playing covers gets old over time. You want to create something. You want it to be your own. Someone else's recipe isn't as gratifying as YOUR recipe. 

In the "Early Days" as I like to refer to it, we just had a stove top pot and were dealing with extracts instead of all-grain. Since then, we have made many upgrades and educated ourselves much more with the art of brewing. So this year I tweaked the recipe a bit to accommodate those changes. We started the day as we usually do, going out and buying way too much beer for the half day we would be brewing. Also, as with tradition we have to eat food that is not even remotely good for us. 

Here is Ryan cutting the apples so that we can pasteurize them.

Once we were done with that, it was time to heat up the water for mashing in. If you'd like to read more about the process here is the link! Once it's heated to the correct temperature, it's time to mash in, or what some refer to  as "doughing in".

Now we wait. Depending on the recipe, there can be many different times for this. We do a simple batch sparge. There are many other ways of doing this, but with the equipment we have, this will suffice. We get an efficiency of about 68-75%, which isn't bad. For this recipe, we'll wait about an hour until we can test for starch conversion. We tested, and everything was going as planned!

Next up, we transfer the now wort to the next cooler we have to calculate how many gallons we got. We were around 4 gallons and we needed about 7. 

Next up is to lauder the wort and we do this with sparging. This way we can get more wort and get us up to the 7 gallons we want. We let that rest for about 10 minutes and then collect the wort again. Meanwhile... this is Ryan, again. This doesn't even portray how beautiful this smell is. 

Now we're ready to start the boil where we add the rest of our ingredients. This recipe calls for a 60 minute boil, but you can go for any amount of time again depending on the recipe. 

Once boiled, we need to cool the wort down to 68-72 degrees so that we can have a happy yeast. We have also recently included doing a longer cold break and whirlpooling to remove the excess trub.

Now that everything has been cooled and the liquid and solids have separated a bit, it is time to transfer the wort to the primary fermentor. We need to create some aeration so that the yeast is again, a happy yeast. No one wants a pesky yeast. After this, we pitch the yeast!

Now we wait about a week for the yeast to convert the sugars to alcohol and we transfer to secondary fermentation for some more clarity. There is much argument over whether this step is necessary but for some reason, I like doing it. I have never encountered infection or any other problems from this.

We didn't run into many issues this brew day. However, the brew store did not give me the 11 pounds of grain I asked for. As I was brewing I could tell that there was definitely not enough grain in the mash tun. Oh well. This just means that the alcohol content will not be the 8.2% I wanted but more around the 5.5% range judging from the 1.055 OG reading we got from the hydrometer. 

Normally people don't release their recipes to people, but I don't care. The slogan we use all the time with our "brewing company" we have is "Ourbeer is your beer" and I intend to keep it that way. So here it is! This is with the 8.2% alcohol version. If you wanna try for a lower ABV, just adjust the grains accordingly. 

Original Gravity:

1.081

Final Gravity:

1.019

ABV (standard):

8.19%

IBU (tinseth):

30.14

SRM (morey):

19.06

Fermentables

Amount	Fermentable	PPG	°L	Bill %
11 lb	American - Pale 2-Row	37	1.8	66.2%
2.5 lb	American - Victory	34	28	15%
0.5 lb	American - Caramel / Crystal 80L	33	80	3%
0.5 lb	American - Carapils (Dextrine Malt)	33	1.8	3%
2.125 lb	Maple Syrup	30	35	12.8%
16.63 lb	Total

Hops

Amount	Variety	Type	AA	Use	Time	IBU
0.5 oz	Calypso	Pellet	13	Boil	60 min	22.12
1 oz	Cluster	Pellet	6.5	Boil	10 min	8.02

Mash Guidelines

Amount	Description	Type	Temp	Time
5.4 gal	Bring to 175 to warm mash tun	Sparge	152 F	60 min
4 gal	Bring to boil	Sparge	172 F	10 min
Starting Mash Thickness: 1.5 qt/lb

Other Ingredients

Amount	Name	Type	Use	Time
1 tsp	Gypsum	Water Agt	Boil	60 min
1 each	Whirlfloc Tablet	Water Agt	Boil	15 min
0.5 tsp	Apple Pie Spice	Spice	Boil	10 min
4 each	Cinnamon	Spice	Boil	10 min
2 each	Vanilla Bean	Spice	Boil	10 min
1 tsp	Vanilla Extract	Spice	Boil	10 min
5 each	Apples	Spice	Primary	0 min

Yeast

Danstar - Nottingham Ale Yeast

Attenuation (avg): 77% Flocculation: High Optimum Temp: 57 - 70 °F Starter: No Fermentation Temp: 72 °F Pitch Rate: 0.5 (M cells / ml / ° P) 185 B cells required

Notes

Pasteurize apples at low temperature until they turn into an apple sauce.