Trick or Treat

It's Halloween and yes, there are roughly seven hundred pumpkin beers in the world, but I've already said my piece on pumpkin spice beer (as seen here: Pumpkin Beer?). So in the spirit of Halloween here's a little trick or treat action for you guys.

The Trick: I'm writing about whiskey today, not beer.
The Treat: it is whiskey and whiskey is delicious too—just in a different way.

I was doing some shopping at my friendly neighborhood Meijer the other day when I strayed from the beer aisle into the land of the hard stuff. It's Halloween after all, and a flask of whiskey fits better in my costume than 6 bottles of beer. Plus, when I'm not drinking beer I'm a bourbon or whiskey kind of girl and Halloween is the perfect time to warm up with whiskey. As I was gawking at all the whiskey, a bottom shelf bottle of Maple Mist caught my eye. First, it was only $9.99. Second, it was a blend of Maple Liquor and Canadian Whiskey. I was excited and immediately placed it into my empty cart. I've learned to simply ignore the judgmental stares from the shoppers around me.

Whiskey for all of your breakfast needs

I may be late to the party, but maple whiskey is so hot right now. Last year the en vogue flavor for whiskey was honey. Years before, cinnamon whiskey and cherry whiskey all had their five minutes of fame. This is the year of the Maple (it's go time Canada). If you're not as poor as I am, feel free to jump up a shelf or two when buying your maple whiskey. Crown Royal, Knob Creek, Hudson Whiskey, and Sweet Sippin' (which comes in a maple leaf bottle by the way) all make presumably superior versions of this fall friendly blended alcohol.

The Maple Mist made by Canadian Mist that I bought is pretty good, but I'm sure it can get even better. The bottle says the whiskey has notes of maple, salted caramel, toasted oak, and finished with a rich molasses flavor. Not quite. Maple Mist owes its maple flavor less to the maple tree and more to the sticky high-fructose pancake topper—but it's still drinkable. Another minor problem is the astringent whiskey taste towards the middle of a sip. Nonetheless, I still want to put Maple Mist into a flask, or mix it with apple cider, or pour it over my pancakes for a drunken breakfast.

I know it's not craft beer but think of the possibilities. You can add maple whiskey to eggnog, hot toddies, root beer, cocoa, coffee—the seasonal recipes es are endless. I'll get back to beer related topics ASAP but in the meanwhile, warm up after trick-or-tre-treating with this sweet spin on whiskey. stweewitwwaenme in thwt me, bu, latedet et

Rail Dog Smoked Black Lager

I write a ton about ales it's not a secret. But I have love for lagers too. In case you're not familiar with these beer types here's my little guide to both. Lagers and ales are two extremely broad categories for beer (I was once told to think of the two groups like white and red wine). The basic difference is the yeast for an ale is different than the yeast for a lager. Ales need yeast that thrive in warmer temperatures while the yeast used in lagers ferments better in cooler temperatures. Because of the colder temperatures, lagers have a longer brew cycle and a bit more of a mellow (but equally delicious) flavor. Make sense? Good.
Tonight I enjoyed a Rail Dog Smoked Black Lager.

That dog on the cap is just darling. Darling.

Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. out of Ohio makes this tasty black lager. On the bottle, Thirsty Dog tells me that the Rail Dog Smoked Black Lager has the most "complex grain bill" of any beer that they brew. The complexity is apparent and the grains take center stage in this brew. Unlike a typical porter or stout, the notes of chocolate/coffee in this Black Lager are a little more subdued. As I was pouring this beer into my glass, I was hit with a smoky/grainy aroma immediately. As I started drinking, the standout flavors came from the apple smoked grain as well as a slight roasted essence, like coffee or dark chocolate. Another big taste in this beer comes from the earthy and fruity hops. It was a fairly full-bodied lager that was super drinkable. This beer has an ABV of  6.7% that I could barely detect. Rail Dog Smoked Black Lager was really smooth and well balanced from start to finish. 9/10: would drink again and again.

Homebrew: Take One

I decided to brew some beer this weekend. Correction: I decided to watch my dad brew beer, take a bunch of pictures of the process and jeopardize the future of our "co-created" brew. If I want to understand craft beer, I had to be involved in the brewing process. So a few weeks ago, I called my dad and told him to dust off his brewing equipment because we're homebrewin'.

We decided to make a bourbon barrel stout. We had to recreate the flavor of the bourbon barrel, and took a couple of shortcuts along the way but I still learned a ton. I also have an even greater respect for brewers now because brewing is time-consuming and complicated.

There are all sorts of recipes on the interweb, so I wont go through a step-by-step guide. What I will do is show you the basic components and some of the stages of homebrewing. To begin, beer is made up of water, malted barley, hops and yeast. Let's take a look at what we used and how we used it:

Specialty Malt:
Malt is barley that has been germinated and dried. The specialty malt that we used gives flavor, color, body and increases head retention. Once the grains are soaked and in hot water, a wort is produced. The sugars extracted from these special grains will be fermented by the yeast and that's how we get the alcohol. Super important stuff.

We steeped this muslin bag in a vat of hot (not boiling) water like a giant tea bag. 

The grains and heat transformed water into wort

Malt Extract:
After we steeped the grain sack of specialty malt, we added this ultra sticky goo, Malt extract is another shortcut that we took. Basically, malt extract is a base malt that has already been mashed and condensed into a syrup. We added it into the hot wort along with some fresh maple syrup. I had no idea the foundation of a stout was this insanely sweet. My dad told me not to try the malt extract. I did it anyway:

It was sweet, but not in a "this was a good thing to taste" sort of way

We then brought the malt extract, maple syrup and wort mixture to a rolling boil:

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Hops:
After we got our wort nice and hot, we started adding hops. We used four different types of hops: Northern Brewer, Perle, Fuggle, and Tettnanger. I learned that they all had to be placed in the wort at different intervals to ensure a well hopped sensation, flavor and aroma. The malt is very sweet and the bitterness of these hops offset the sweetness to add a fuller, more complex flavor.

Everything was tied in little muslin bags.

These are the dry hops, Tettnanger.
My dad told me not to open the bags because I have a bad track record
of making messes, but I took a little peek anyways.

Improvising a Bourbon Barrel:
We don't have a bourbon barrel at our disposal so we soaked oak chips in only the highest quality Evan Williams Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. Yeah, it's kind of cheating, but it was the best we could do. We tied the oak chips in another muslin bag, smothered the oak in bourbon and let it soak up the flavor over night. We added it to the fermenting beer the next day.

Macgyvered bourbon barrel

Home stretch:
Then we took out all four hop bags, stuck the hot pot in an ice bath, let it cool down and poured it into our keg. I would have liked to use a fancy glass carboy but we weren't making a full five gallons, so we used this plastic keg thing. Don't judge.

Look how dark and thick and fantastic it is. Thanks malt!

Final Steps:
Then we added in brewers yeast to start the fermentation process. We gave it a little stir and closed the lid. We've done all that we can do, it's time for the yeast to go to work. The next day when we opened the lid to add the drunken oak chips, the fermentation process was taking off--which is a great sign. Now, I must wait for the magic yeast to turn the wort I made with my dad into actual beer. I've never been more impatient in my life. Check back in a few weeks to see if my dad and I were successful in our "collaborative" homebrew experiment.