"Deathly Hallows" Butterbeer

If you know me, you know that I am a big nerd. I can't wash a beer glass without thinking about surface chemistry, looking at carbonation in a beer reminds me of nucleation and growth. I can't be at a wedding and here "this ring" without thinking "precious!" I also own an English to Klingon dictionary. I am a big nerd.

It should not surprise you that I am also a Harry Potter fan. To get ready for the release of the next movie, "Deathly Hallows" I am working on a recipe for "Deathly Hallows Butterbeer."

I modified a recipe that is supposedly "historically accurate" (if its on the internet, it must be true!) that I found here. The beer I used was Dead Reckoning, a hoppy porter from Troegs. I thought it fit very well with the dark tone of the book as well as the name has "dead" in it. It is also a great beer by itself.

Here is what I did.

Heated up 3 bottle of the beer with the spices over medium heat (cinamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg). While that came to a boil, I beat 5 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1 tablespoon of white sugar (big deviation from the original recipe, but I didnt have 500 g of sugar). To avoid curdling the eggs, I beat them over a double boiler and slowly added in the hot beer mixture while whisking vigorously. Continuing to whisk, I added a stick of butter, small pieces at a time, waiting for a piece to fully melt before adding the next. The internet recipe says you can cut the beer but up to half using hot milk, but I only added a little bit (not sure of the exact amount).

I really enjoyed it (a non beer drinker complained that it tasted too much like beer) but I think a better cook could play with the spicing and make it better. At any rate, it is a good, beer centered replacement for egg nog come christmas time. And don't forget, when ordering a butter beer, say "Accio Butterbeer!"

Welsh Rarebit with IPA Poached Eggs

This recipe is the second of mine served at the beer geek brunch with Hawthorne's and Philly Beer Scene magazine. This recipe actually started as an attempt to infuse beer into one of my favorite breakfast/brunch foods: eggs benedict. The problem with me doing eggs benedict is that I am not really sure what traditional eggs benedict is exactly. I normally use Bearnaise sauce, but I think its supposed to be hollandaise. I don't care if I serve it with ham or bacon (I usually just use whatever is in the fridge if anything) but probably a purist would say it has to be a specific form of swine. Without knowing what "real" eggs benedict is, and also not being able to taste the beer I put in my Bearnaise sauce, I decided to go a different route.

I still liked the idea of poached eggs over a toasted bread product with a sauce, I just needed to find out how to put beer in there. The best beer sauce I have made before is a cheese sauce made with porter. The sauce is part of a recipe for Welsh Rarebit, something I saw on Good Eats. Welsh rarebit is basically rye toast with a cheese sauce. All I did was add a poached egg.

Poaching the eggs in an IPA worked great. It gave the eggs a nice bitter flavor that went well with the roasty, cheesy goodness of the sauce. Also, I love mixing the runny yolks with the sauce and soaking it all up with nice rye toast.

IPA Poached eggs

Poach the eggs in an IPA (I used Sly Fox Oddyssey Imperial IPA) diluted in half with water. The whites should be cooked but the yolk should be nice and runny.

Welsh Rarebit

2 T butter

2 T AP flour

1 t dijon mustard

1 t Worcestershire sauce

1/2 C plus 1 T porter style beer (I used Victory's baltic porter, Baltic Thunder)

3/4 C cream

6 oz sharp cheddar cheese

1/2 t crushed red pepper

Salt and pepper to taste

Rye toast

Make a roux with the butter and flour over low heat. Add in mustard and worcestershire sauce, 1/2 cup of beer, cream, and season with salt and pepper. Slowly add in the cheese and let it melt into the sauce while stirring. Finish with the crushed red pepper and the tablespoon of porter.

Assembly: Place toast on plate. Place eggs on toast. Smother with cheese sauce.

My "famous" Wheat Beer Pancakes with Beer-nana fosters sauce

Why famous? Because it was served at the Philly Beer Scene Magazine/Hawthorne's Beer Geek Breakfast along with one other of my recipes and a recipe from my fiancee. It was all part of an epic beer weekend that included getting engaged (I'm sorry that I don't have a story for you, but it was a beer filled weekend and I woke up on Sunday with a hangover and a fiancee...).

Philly Beer Scene Magazine (@phillybeerscene) had a recipe contest for beer-infused brunch recipes. The top picks from each of the 4 categories would be served at Hawthorne's for the Beer Geek Brunch. Carolyn and I took 3 of the 4 categories! I will post my second recipe later and hopefully I can get Carolyn to do a guest post with her recipe.

My first recipe is a standard beer pancakes recipe with Troegs Dreamweaver Wheat and a sauce inspired by bananas foster made with Victory Golden Monkey (belgian tripel) instead of rum. The only thing really missing from this recipe is a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Wheat beer pancakes with Beernana Fosters sauce:

For the pancakes
Dry:
3 Cups AP flour
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 Tablespoon kosher salt

Wet:
3 eggs
3 cups wheat beer (Troegs Dream Weaver Wheat)
2 Tablespoons melted butter
3 Tablespoons maple syrup

Mix together dry ingredients. Whisk together wet ingredients and when thoroughly combined, add to dry ingredients. Whisk until they come together as a lumpy batter. No need to overmix trying to get the lumps out. Ladle 1/4 cup portions of the batter on a 350 degree F griddle. Flip when bubbles set on the surface and cook until golden brown.

For the Beernana Foster Sauce
1 stick of butter (8 Tablespoons or a half cup)
1 Cup brown sugar
1 Cup Tripel ale (Victory Golden monkey)
8 bananas sliced into bite sized rounds

Melt butter and brown sugar together on low heat and then add the tripel. As this mixture reduces, add the banana slices and cook until slightly softened and coated with the syrup.

To assemble: Place desired number of pancakes on plate, top with sauce.

Beer Brined Pork Chops

I am really behind on posting and I am sorry. The good news is that I now have a bunch of stuff done and hopefully can post something routinely for a bit. I have some homebrew recipes to post as well as beer/food recipes and some other stuff. In random news, I finished my second Zenos passport, putting me in a tie with my advisor and one passport behind Erhan. Additionally, I will be writing a guest post for Daily Beer Review (@dailybeerreview on twitter). I will let you know when that is going to happen.

The recipe for today is a beer brine. When you brine a meat, you are basically soaking it in a salty seasoned water and I just replaced some of the water with beer (you will notice that I do that a lot to make a recipe into a "beer recipe"). Inspiration for this comes partly from Alton Brown and partly from The HomebrewChef (@homebrewchef on twitter).

Brine:

12 oz water

1/4 cup kosher salt

1/8 cup brown sugar

24 pepper corns

1 Tablespoon thyme

Bottle of harpoon UFO pale ale

Pork chops

Microwave the water, salt and sugar to dissolve the solids. Add in bottle of pale ale, pepper corns, and thyme. Soak the pork chops for about 45 minutes.

Normally, the next step in the recipe would tell you how to cook the chops. I totally failed and overcooked them, so I will let you figure this part out on your own. Fortunately, the over cooked chops were still pretty juicy, and the left overs still had a nice beer flavor. Next time I would use a more assertive beer and see what that would do.

Russian Imperial Honey Stout

Saturday was a very exciting brew day with the debut of my first mash tun!

This 5 gallon beverage cooler is the beginning of moving away from extract syrup and towards all grain brewing.

I’ll keep using the syrup for the bulk of my fermentable sugars since I only got about 50% efficiency on this first mash. But that’s ok because we added a pound and a half of honey to make up for it. I doubt the honey flavor will come through the dark malts and all the hops in this recipe, but it will up the alcohol a bit. This is my biggest beer yet, so I have no idea how long it will take before its drinkable (hopefully it takes less than 6 months to condition).

Mash:

5 lb British mild ale/stout malt (2.5^o L)

1 lb Crystal (90^o L)

0.5 lb Vienna malt

1 lb Chocolate malt (British)

1 lb oat flakes

0.5 roasted barley

I added in 4 gallons (half bottled water, half tap water) of water (165^o F?) and the mixture stabilized at 151^o F. After an hour, I added a half gallon of boiling water to thin out the mash and up the temperature a bit, and then started draining into the brew pot. I did a batch sparge with 165^o F water (forgot to write down the volume, 2 gallons?) to make sure I got as much sugar out as possible. The gravity of this was around 1.026.

Boil Schedule:

Bittering hops (60 minutes): 1 oz Chinook plugs @14% alpha acid

Flavoring hops (30 minutes): 2 oz Northern Brewer pellets @ 6% alpha acid

For the last 15 minutes of the boil, I added 4 lbs Alexanders Pale Extract (liquid), 1.5 lbs of Greg’s honey (Doylestown wild flower?) and about 2 tsp of yeast nutrients.

Aroma hops (10 minutes): 1 oz Cascade plugs @ 8.7% alpha acid

O.G. 1.075

The boil may have lasted longer than 60 minutes, so this may be a pretty bitter brew. We're at the upper end of the bitter scale with about 100 IBUs and at the low end of the gravity scale. Should be an interesting beer.

New Brewery Location

I found a place to brew in State College. My apartment is not really conducive to brewing, so I head over to my friend Greg's place. He has a keggerator and a nice flat concrete area outside for the turkey fryer. We have brewed two beers there: the first was a clone beer from a kit bought by another guy, Nick, and the second was a new take on my Mac's Irish Red recipe. The clone beer turned out well, even though Greg's house was ridiculously hot and the fermenter went a little crazy. The new irish red (which may turn out to be an amber) is fermenting now. The wort tasted great so I am pretty excited.

Nick, Greg and I funneling the beer into the carboy. Nick seems to approve.

Amber Ale/Irish Red mystery beer:
Grains Steeped @ ~165 F for about 30 minutes

• 1 lb Caramel Malt
• 1 lb US Breiss Aromatic 21 L mildly kilned (strong malt aroma +deep color)
• 1/4 lb chocolate malt
• 1/4 lb vienna malt

Malt Extract:

• 5.4 lb (a 4lb can and a 1.4 lb pound can) of Alexanders Pale Extract
• The lid from the small can (Greg was hung over and dropped it in...oops)

I also tried cold steeping about 1/4 lb of the chocolate malt in a gallon of water because someone told me it would give a nice red color. It didn't turn red, but I added this water anyway.

Hops:

• Bittering (60 minutes): 1 oz Perle (Gr) 8.3% alpha acid
• 30 minutes: 1 oz Santium (US) 6.1% alpha acid
• Aromatic (5 minutes): 1 oz Tettnang (Gr) 5.1% alpha acid

Yeast: Safale S-04 dry ale yeast (it was in a blue packet)
O.G. 1.048

I didn't add any irish moss or other fining agent, this will be a murky beer.