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.

Pale Ale #Fail

A couple weeks ago I did an experimental pale ale. I probably tried to do too many "experiments" with it and so it turned out pretty undrinkable. Greg managed to get down a whole pint, but then complained that it made him feel sick.

The original idea was an all cascade hopped, small batch, short boil, late extract addition beer. See what I mean about too many experiments? To be honest, I don't think that any of these things really made the beer fail, I just think I was too distracted by the experiments and didn't pay attention to the normal details of brewing.

The aroma was very fruity, like over ripe (maybe rotting) apples. The taste was similar but with a little ethanol/solvent taste to it. I think it is because we pitched a whole packet of yeast and let it ferment way too hot. Greg thinks it is because we let it sit in primary too long. Either way, the beer was bad. We have begun talking about using the keggerator to control fermentation temps and maybe starting to do some lagers.

The next beer will be better.

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.

A Wine Drinker's Beerfest

I got a call from Dr. Tom requesting help drinking his first shipment from a beer of the month gift he got for Christmas. Obviously I cannot turn my back on a friend who needs help, so I picked up some beer and we had a mini beerfest. The other participant in the tasting, Abby (Mrs. Dr. Tom) is a big wine fan and not so much into beer. I wrote down some of her reactions so we could get the wine drinkers perspective on the beer.

On to the beer...

Saranac black and tan: The smell of this beer immediately reminded me of Guinness. With the beer of the month package, Tom got tasting notes on each of the beers. Normally I don't pick up on a lot of the flavors described, but Tom and I both immediately agreed on a strange one: apple peel.
Abby: " I am having trouble taking this seriously"

Choc Beer Miner Mishap: This is a black lager, a style that I rarely drink. Also I had never heard of the brewery before and I was quite impressed. It had a coffee and chocolate in the nose. The taste had the type of bitterness you expect from a pilsner and a smoke quality in the after taste.
Abby:"It smells burnt." "I just burped up the other beer, it tasted good." She preferred the black lager to the black and tan.

Choc Beer Basement Batch: This is choc beer's pale ale. Each of us had a different take on the nose.
Me: orange citrus, Tom: pine and citrus, Abby: lemon cleaner
The flavor is less intense than the aroma, but was pleasant and not very harsh or bitter. Tasted a little like grapefruit. Abby disagreed about the bitterness and kept sticking out her tongue trying to rid it of the bitterness or something.

Harpoon UFO Pale Ale: This is an unfiltered beer and it is crazy cloudy. It smelled kind of like honey and according to Tom, a little bit of cinnamon.
Abby:" It smells sweet." (I of course told her that sweet is not a smell, and we may have gotten into an argument...)

At this point we were playing a card game and didn't really review the next two beers, Saranac IPA and Sly Fox 113 IPA. Abby did describe the Sly Fox as smelling exactly like a Cannu Chenin Blanc (a wine). Crazy.

Winter Break Beerfest

My friends and I were able to gather some beer from all over the place over break, so we decided to have a world tour beerfest. We had beer from India, Costa Rica, Germany, Belgium and USA (I bet you can guess which ones we were most excited about). Here is a quick list of the beers we had:

Imperial (Costa Rica)
Kingfisher (India)
Gaffel Kolsch (Germany)
Landbier Reigel er Bier (Germany)
Rothaus Pils (Germany)
Becks Dark (Germany)
Hacker Pschor (Germany)
Anchor Steam (USA)
Bluegrass Brewing's Nut Brown (USA)
Lagunitas Pale Ale (USA)
Straffe Hendrick (Belgium)
Corsendonk Tripel (Belgium)
Grimbergen Blonde (Belgium)
Victory 12 (USA)
Abbey Affligen Noel (Belgium)

I doubt anyone wants to read reviews of all those beers (I also doubt I took good enough notes to supply reviews) so I will just give some thoughts/quotes from the evening.

Upon tasting the Imperial: "Booo!" -Greg

My favorite of the Germans was the hacker Pshor (a dark wisse beer). Nice apples and caramel/molasses. Greg reminds everyone that he doesn't like wheat beers.

The coolest beer of the night was the Bluegrass Brewing Nut Brown. I normally don't like browns but this one was really good. Smelled like cocoa and tasted like peanuts at first, then more chocolaty towards the end. I will seek out more brews from Bluegrass.
http://www.bbcbrew.com/

Crowd favorite: Abbey Affligen Noel. Again, another style that doesnt get me excited but the beer was good. Dubbed the "best brun in belgium" by greg. The spices jumped out when I opened the bottle but kind of dissapeared while drinking. I enjoyed the fact that the spices didnt overpower the beer, since beers like that just taste weird.

Overall, a great night of beer (with some monopoly there at the end). I highly recommend this style of beer tastings: just have people bring some random beer, drink and discuss (monopoly is optional).

Cheers!

Las Cervesas de Costa Rica

Just got back from a trip down to Costa Rica for my friend's wedding. I got to see some monkeys, I learned to surf and .... I drank BEER! I didn't know much about Costa Rican beer other than there is beer brewed in Costa Rica, and the most popular one is Imperial. As long as I knew there would be beer, I was happy.Beers that I tried:

• Imperial
• Bavaria Dark
• Bavaria Gold
• Pilsen
• Bavaria 1460
• Mystery beer at wedding (maybe a bavaria beer? Can anyone tell from the picture?)

Unless the beer at the wedding was Bavaria Light, this is the only one I know of that I did not drink.


My first beer was Imperial. It had been a long travel day, it was hot and humid and I needed a beer. Fortunately, Imperial did not disappoint in its refreshment. I expected the same stale flavors that you get with mass produced beer at home, but there were none. Unfortunately, there was not much else for me to get excited about with this beer. By the end of the beer, I had no real desire to have another one.

The next day, at the bar by the pool, I found some variety. There were the Bavaria beers (Dark, Light and Gold) as well as the Pilsen. They all tasted a little different but there were no flavors that really stood out. The Gold did have a nice sweetness to it (Carolyn said it tasted like honey) but by the time I finished, I didn't feel the need to order another one. The Dark was nice, Carolyn and Mom seemed to like this one the best. Nothing exciting about it, but I would drink it over a Yuengling if I had the choice. The pilsen just tasted bad, nothing more to say about it.

Overall, there was nothing exciting about the beer. However, most of it tasted fine and were decent go to beers for the trip. I stuck with the Imperial and the Bavaria Dark. Of course the other option is to just drink pina coladas made with the incredibly ripe pineapples they have down there. I mean, thats what I have been told...there is no evidence that I would partake in that non-beer beverage...