First beer of the fall...

Even though the name of this blog was originally "Piney Grove Homebrew", I've strayed farther afield than just brewing, spending just as much time talking about food, music, and "etcetera".

Well, starting today, I'm getting a little closer to the original roots of the blog. The weather's cooling off (brewing in hot humid North Carolina summers is not anyone's idea of fun), and when it's cool, it's start to thinking about not just drinking beer, but making it.

For the first beer of the fall, I want to take another shot at a beer I made last year, "Maura's Bridal Ale". When I made this last year, I thought it tasted great. It was smooth, with a nice hoppy character. However, it was also way overcarbonated, to the point where every beer was mostly foam it seemed like.
So even though it tasted good, there was a lot of room for improvement.

The recipe grain bill that I started with is as follows:
Maura's Bride Ale (from The Homebrewer's Recipe Guide...)
6 2/3 lbs light malt extract
1 lb crysal malt
1/2 lb flaked barley
1 lb honey
2 oz Willamette hops (bittering)
1 oz Liberty hops (finishing)
1 oz Cascade hops (finishing)
1 oz Cascade hops (dry hop)
1 tsp Irish Moss
1 pkg irish ale yeast (used a smack-pack)
1 1/2 c. honey (priming)


As in life however, nothing went totally according to plan. I didn't have the exact hops I was supposed to, so I substituted like so:
Palisade for the Willamette (using this cool "hop plug"), and Centennial for the Cascade.

And, while I was filling my grain bag with my crystal malt, I ended up accidentally dumping half of it in the sink (d'oh!). I salvaged what I could, but I was still short. I ended subsitituting some 60L caramel malt I had, so I expect that the beer will be a little darker than usual, but hey, that's life.

The actual brewing process went smoothly, with no real hiccups. While I was standing around waiting for the malt and flaked barley to "steep", I decided to take a shot at designing some beer labels. I think any amatuer brewer dreams of selling their beer in the store or in a bar, and I'm no different. Part of that dream is designing your labels (since your beer bottles have to have a label). I'd been thinking awhile about how I wanted my labels to look, and I'd settled on kind of a "paper-crafty" kind of look. I wanted it to look folk-arty, and I wanted it to be neat.
So, I raided the kids' construction paper drawer and went to work. I came up with two designs,
basically a "night" and "day" version of the same view.

When I first started brewing, I lived in Holly Springs, on a road called "Piney Grove-Wilbon Rd" (hence the "Piney Grove Homebrew/Kitchen" moniker). We had just under 8 acres, and I wanted the labels to reflect that in some fashion, and the "view" of the labels is generically the view from my front porch at that house.

I think the labels turned out ok. I need to come up with some little construction paper animals (like cows and pigs and horses) and maybe use different animals for different beers (like cows for a milk stout maybe, or brown cows for a chocolate stout, etc). It's definitely stretching my artistic talent to consider little animals right now, but maybe I can figure out something.
When I first scanned the art, the contrast was not so hot, and the labels didn't "pop". I used iPhoto's "enhance" feature on a whim, and sure enough, they were enhanced.

So here's night:

And here's day:



For both labels, I like how the construction paper gives texture to the picture, and I think it just looks neat.
I think the night turned out better for the first pass, since the contrast looks a little better, but I still like the day. The iPhoto enhance really made a difference on the day label.
Both pics have top and bottom borders so that, after I find a good stencil, I can put text on the borders (like "Piney Grove Brewery" on the top and the beer type on the bottom).

To wrap up, here are some shots of the brewing:

My first hop plug. It's definitely not pretty.

The Piney Grove Homebrewery in all its garage-bound glory:


The brew kettle (above)
My grains and hops (plus the recipe) on the trunk of my car

My malt extracts sitting in pot of warm water.

Spent grains:

The boil in action:

Big Boss Brewery tour...

This Saturday, I went on a tour of the Big Boss Brewery in Raleigh.

My company had put together a "company outing" to the brewery, and a friend and I took advantage of the opportunity. It wasn't like a special exclusive company thing, since the Big Boss tour is open to the public, but it was a good opportunity to meet a lot of people at my company that I'd never met before, and the organizer did a great job of making sure people met each other (and free beer is hard to pass up at any time).

Big Boss is different from most of our local breweries, since their regular line up of bottled beers does not include a pale ale or an IPA, rather going with varieties that are a little off the beaten path. So instead of the "normal" beers, Big Boss sells a belgian blond (the "Hell's Belle"), a kolsch (the "Angry Angel"), and a brown ale (the "Bad Penny").
The tour included two free beers, and I went for the Hell's Belle both times (I'll admit, the 7% alcohol attracted me, but the taste won me over). It's a good beer, with an interesting flavor profile that's hard to describe (I'd say it's smooth, with an almost raisiny undertone).

Once we'd all had a beer, the tour started, with the usual "here's where the mash happens", "here's fermentation", etc. It was a good tour (even though if you've been on one brewery tour, you've been on them all), and the staff was friendly and eager to answer questions. One thing I thought was interesting was that all the beer names come from WWII nose art. There really is a bomber named "Hell's Belle", another named "Angry Angel", etc. I think the brewery is missing a beat, though, since there's no information in any of the marketing material about that tie-in.

After the tour ended, everybody gathered for another beer, and the tour kind of started to break up. Fortunately, the brewery has a "tasting room" (ie, a bar) upstairs, and that was pretty cool. I can't say I've been to a lot of bars lately, but I can say I haven't been in a lot of bars that look like someone's basement. The folks at Big Boss have definitely crafted a neat bar, with the space broken into small rooms, with couches, ping pong tables, etc. It was nice, and evoked more of a "frat party" atmosphere than a bar. Maybe that's the way bars are now. Having kids has a way of bringing "going to bars" to a screeching halt.

When I was in the bar, I had their rendition of a pale ale, and it was pretty good, with a nice balance of malt and hops. I like a lot of hops, and I can't say that it was "super hoppy", but it was tasty.

After my pale ale, I decided to call it a day, since I had other stuff planned for the day, and any more beer would've left me pretty useless (although I guess some folks would say I don't need beer for that!), and I ended up having to take a nap on the couch afterwards anyway.

All in all, a good time. I'll go ahead and post my blurry pictures below (I don't know how people take good pictures with an iPhone):

Obviously, with a line this long, it's a popular tour.

My shaky-cam in action. This was the beer line, where we got our free beers (and when I took this, I'd no alcohol at all)

The introduction by (I believe) one of the brewers, and the sales director. (But I could be wrong).

The mash stop of the tour.

A big crowd...


I got bored during the mash stop of the tour and took these two pics of the brewery. It's a big space, larger than the Carolina Brewing Company (interestingly, a friend told me that their tour is all you can drink. I think I know my brewery tour stop....).

Fermentation room. It's not obvious, but there are what I think are cooling jackets on the fermentation vessels to keep them cool, and the room was pretty chilly.

A crappy pic of my Hell's Belle.

And that's pretty much all I've got on Big Boss. It's a good brewery that makes great beer. The people I talked to from the brewery all seemed really nice, and I'd definitely like to spend some time in the tasting room. If you're in the Raleigh area looking for something to do, you could do alot worse than to take their tour.

Also, if you're looking for a good blog to read, check out this. My new friend Ross (from whom I almost bought a pretty nice Triumph motorcycle) just bought a Honda Ruckus scooter, and he's started a blog about it. So check it out, and give him some hits.

And go Rays.

New Music Thursday...

Whenever I get down, I know that buying music will cheer me up. So, this Thursday, feeling a little down, I went music shopping, picking up two albums I'd long had my eye on.
One was Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga . I really liked their previous album, Gimme Fiction , and after listening to it repeatedly today in the car, as I drove from my physical therapist to work, then from work to the radiologist, and then to the orthopedist, I gotta say, it's a pretty good album.
The thing with Spoon is, they don't really "rock out". They're so cool in their playing that they seem kind of reserved. It's good, but you're not necessarily going to jump around in your underwear with a fireplace iron air-guitaring along.

The other album I got was My Morning Jacket's Okonokos . Now, I am a total sucker for a live album. I have extremely fond impressions of certain artists based solely on the quality of their live albums (the best live album, ever, in my opinion is a toss-up between Tom Petty's Pack up the plantation and U2's Under a Blood Red Sky . Anyone that doesn't like the Tom Petty album is just a godless communist in my opinion), and while I may not like the rest of their work (like other Tom Petty or U2 albums), I will always say "them? yeah, they're pretty cool" based on the live album.
Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying I like live albums, and I like Okonokos. It's not to the level of either "Pack up..." or "Under a blood red sky", but that's ok. MMJ is a pretty tight band, and it shows on the album. They don't fool around, and it's good to hear some of the older stuff in a different way. One of my huge pet peeves with At Dawn is that part of the album has this really annoying noise under the songs (it's like a squeak or something), and on the live album obviously, that's gone.
It makes me wish I could go see them, and everytime Bonnaroo rolls around (since it seems like they place every year) I want to pack my stuff in the trunk of my car and drive to Tennessee.

So, both albums were definitely well-bought.

Friday's roast chicken...

Roast chicken, in my mind, is synonymous with "family dinner". The aroma, the skin, the ritual of carving; all of these items come together for me to symbolize a certain kind of meal.
So, after a hard day at work, it was nice to come home tonight and concentrate on something I really like.
After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma I'm trying to be a little bit more aware of my food and where it comes from, so instead of the usual store-brand (or Purdue) chicken, I went with a "Smart" chicken, which appears to be close to organic, but not quite all the way there. The same company sells an organic version of their chicken, but after reading Dilemma, I'm a little skeptical on what I'm getting for my organic dollar.
Anyway, when it comes to chicken, I'm a simple man. I took my chicken (which came trussed), patted it dry with paper towels, brushed it with melted butter. I sprinkled some coarse kosher salt over top, and some fresh ground pepper, and popped that sucker in the oven for an hour at 375deg. When I pulled it out, it wasn't quite brown enough, so I turned the heat up to 425, and let it go for another 15 minutes.
Here's what I ended up with:
Not bad looking, if I say so myself. I could've left it at 425 longer, to get the skin browner, but the meat was just right.


When I make dinner, I'm usually a "meat and two" kind of guy. I make a starch and I make a vegetable, and occasionally we'll get really crazy and have a salad, too. Tonight, I'd bought zucchini, but since I seem to always either saute the zucchini or grill it, I figured I'd do something different. I hunted around, and in James Peterson's (my favorite cookbook author) Vegetables there's a recipe for zucchini pancakes that I went with. They were pretty easy to make, only requiring that you julienne the zucchini (which went quickly with my benriner) and then salt and drain them, while making a simple batter of garlic paste, water, flour and sage. Once the zucchini drained, I had to squeeze them to get all the water out (and you'd be surprised at how much water those little suckers hold. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that), and then mix the zucchini with the batter, make patties, and fry them up.


With the veg taken care of, the only thing to worry about was the starch, and that was kind of a no-brainer. I love mashed potatoes, and I happen to think mine are pretty damn good, so I went with that. The great thing about mashed potatoes is there no recipe. All it is is potatoes, some liquid, some fat, some seasonings, all mashed together. A monkey could make that.
What I do with mine is I take my potatoes, peel them, cut them into chunks, put them in a pot full of cold water, and then bring the potatoes to boil and boil them for about 20 minutes (or until they're done). Then I drain them, and put them in the dry pot over low/med heat, and let the heat dry the potatoes some. I think this drying is important, because I like potatoes that are kind of "fluffy", and if you don't dry out the potatoes a little, then when you mix in your butter, your cream/whatever, etc, it'll be a little more liquidy/smooth than I really like.
But whatever, after they're a little dried out (the pan stops sizzling), I sprinkle coarse salt over top (totally to taste), and then add my butter, and start mashing. I use a masher, not a food mill or anything like that, because I like my mashed potatoes lumpy. If you don't like lumpy potatoes, well, you can always do it some other way. Then I usually add horseradish to the potatoes. I like a little zip in my potatoes, and horseradish gives the potatoes that without being overpowering. I'm not adding alot, just a forkful or two. You could go the roasted garlic route (where you take a head of garlic, cut the top off, put it in foil, drizzle oil over top, wrap it up, and bake at 450 for an hour), but that requires a level of advance planning I'm not really into. Trust me, try the horseradish. Anyway, once that's mixed/mashed in, I add my cream or sour cream to finish things off. All of this (the butter, the horseradish, the salt, the cream) is to taste, and depends on how I'm feeling, and that's the only way you can do something like mashed potatoes. And that's about it. Mashed potatoes are about as easy as you can get, and if you're making the instant version, you're kind of wrong. Ok, you're not kind of wrong, you're just wrong.
My potatoes:


So there's Friday's dinner. I liked it, the kids liked it, and the plates were clean by the end of the night. I guess you can't ask for more than that.

The recipes, such as they are:

Roast Chicken:

3 1/2 - 4 lb chicken
2-3 tbsp butter, melted.
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375deg. Rinse and pat dry chicken, and truss if so inclined. Place chicken in a roasting pan, and brush with melted butter all over. Sprinkle with salt and fresh ground pepper.
Roast for 1 hour, or until breast registers 165deg and thigh registers 180 with an instant read thermometer. Remove from oven, and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes. Carve and serve.

Zucchini Pancakes:
2-3 med/lg zucchini
6 tbsp flour + more for dredging
2-3 cloves garlic
1/4 -1/2 tbsp ground sage
6 tbsp water
olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp salt

Cut zucchini in half crosswise, and cut into 1/8 in julienne with a mandoline or benriner.
Toss zucchini with salt, and set in a colander over a bowl to drain for 20-30 minutes.
Mash garlic into a paste, and mix in a bowl with flour, water and sage to make a batter.
Squeeze moisture out of drained zucchini (wrapping in a towel and squeezing dry works best) and combine with batter. Form patties, dust lightly with more flour, and fry over med heat for ~7-8 minutes per side.
Serve warm.

Mashed Potatoes:
2-3lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
2-3 tbsp butter
1-2tbsp horseradish
coarse kosher salt + freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 - 1/2 c cream/sour cream

Starting in cold water, boil potatoes for 20 minutes.
Drain potatoes, and add back to hot pan, and over low/med-lo heat, let potatoes dry out.
Add butter, and salt to taste, and mash to combine. Add horseradish, stir and mash to combine.
Add cream, and stir/mash to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve warm.

All songs considered....

I like music, and while some people (ahem) might think they're more knowledgeable than me (and "they" are probably right), I'd like to think I know a bit about the subject.

However, I didn't know about something really cool called "All Songs Considered...".
The back story:
I went to the doctor today, and on my way, I was listening to one of my favorite bands, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. When I got back to the office, humming and tapping my toes, I looked them on Wikipedia, and found a link to this (a recording of a Ted Leo concert), which served nicely as background music while I made cheese soup (by request of my 8yr old).

It turns out npr.org has a buttload of music on their website, much of it served up in podcast form on the podcast "All Songs Considered..." (link). I don't know who does the concert selection for the podcast, but it's like they're reading my internal setlist. They have concerts from Steve Earle, Radiohead, Fleet Foxes, Jim James (lead singer of MMJ), Spoon, Neko Case, Arcade Fire, New Pornographers, and many more.

So, if you're looking for cool music, consider NPR. It's not just for white-wine swilling, granola-eating, tree-hugging, flag-burning liberals.

My favorite time of the year...

One of my favorite times of the year is the transition from summer to fall. It's still warm during the day (but not oppressively so), and the evenings are deliciously cool, making more cozy fare much more attractive.
One of my favorite dishes for cool/cold nights is a gratin, in tonight's case, a potato gratin.
Gratins are really easy to make (all a gratin is, really, is vegetables with a little liquid, baked slowly until a crust forms and the liquid thickens), and they taste sooooo good.

For tonight, I wanted to make a potato gratin, so after I went to the brewing store for beer ingredients, I swung by my local grocer for the ingredients.
To make a potato gratin, what you need are:
potatoes (3-4 med/lg potatoes)
cream
milk
a garlic clove
a good hard cheese, like gouda or gruyere
salt + pepper

What you do is pretty simple. You combine a cup of cream with a cup of milk in a pan, and add a crushed garlic clove. Warm that gently over low heat and leave it be.
Slice the potatoes thinly (a benriner or mandolin works best), and then in a gratin pan (or a pie pan for that matter), put a ladle-ful of the warm milk in the bottom of the pan, and then a layer of potatoes. Add a little more cream, and then fresh ground pepper, and some grated cheese. Another layer of potatoes, then cream, pepper and cheese. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you've either used up your potatoes or the pan is full. Put some more grated cheese over top so that you'll have a nice crust, and bake the whole shebang for about an hour at 350deg F.

What you'll get is heaven in a pan:


What's more, it's not just good food, it's a good test of character. Any person who doesn't like potatos au gratin is probably not someone you need to spend time getting to know in the first place. (After all, who doesn't like cheese, cream and potatoes?)

The Stock Answer...

Chicken stock is a funny thing. It's one of the core ingredients in cooking, whether making a soup, a sauce, a casserole, whatever; yet most people don't make it, but rather buy the stuff in the can (or in box). Personally, I don't have a problem with that, although this guy does. But even though I don't think it's a hanging offense to use the canned stuff, I think homemade stock is superior, and since it's pretty easy (if somewhat time-consuming) to make, it's probably something everyone should know how to do.

I also wanted to do stock today as a blog post because I figured it would be a good excuse to laze around the house, baby-sitting the stock, and recovering from my run this morning. No such luck.
But I did manage to squeeze in all the steps necessary, so maybe that shows you can make stock-making fit your schedule.

Stock is really just "parts", plus aromatics, herbs, and water. I get my parts by cleaning out the freezer periodically. Backs, wings, giblets (minus the liver), those leftover chicken thighs I never got around to using, whatever. I've got roughly 8-12 lbs, and they're all destined for the pot.
The aromatics I'm using today are the "trinity" of celery, onion, and carrot, the herbs are a combination of parsley, thyme, and tarragon (I couldn't find bay leaf in my pantry, and it'll be fine without it), and the water is Cary's finest straight from the tap.

I'm following the recipe in James Peterson's "Sauces" cookbook for Brown Chicken Stock, but you really don't need a recipe for stock. In the most basic terms, you take your chicken parts, you rinse them off, and then put them in a single layer in a roasting pan.




Preheat the oven to 400deg, and pop the parts in for 20 minutes. Once they start getting golden, add the aromatics and stir everything up. Put it all back in the oven for 45 more minutes.



When the parts come out, they'll be nice and brown and smell really good. Then you take out your parts and put them in a stock pot (I used a 16qt, the book calls for a 25qt, you decide). Then you skim the excess fat from the roasting pan, put it over two burners on top of the stove, and turn up the heat. Add about a quart of water to the pan, and bring it to a boil, and scrape all those nice brown bits from the bottom of the pan.


Once you've got the pan deglazed, you (carefully) pour the water into the stock pot, and then you add about 8 more quarts of water. Bring it to a simmer and let it simmer for about 30-45 minutes, add your bouquet garni, turn the heat down to low, and leave it be for about 3-4 hours. Then you turn off the heat and let it cool.


Once you're done, just strain it with a colander to get all the big solids out, and then strain it thru a mesh strainer to get any finer solids out. What you do at that point is kind of up to you, but what I did was take about 8 ziploc freezer bags, and divvied up the stock among them, and froze the bags.

So that's it. Easy peasy. Your house will smell really good, and the next time you make something that calls for chicken stock, rather than reaching for the can, you'll thaw out some stock, and it'll taste 100 times better.