Don’t be fooled…
Based on the (lack of) activity on this blog, you might think that the Beer and Cookies venture has stagnated. NOT TRUE! We’ve just been brewing so much that there’s been hardly any time to blog about it.
Some updates:
- We successfully racked our Scottish ale into a secondary fermenter
- We successfully bottled our Scottish ale
- We successfully waited two whole weeks (this was hard, people!) before tasting the Scottish Ale
- We brewed a spicy pumpkin ale and dubbed it Dragon’s Breath (because it’s just so spicy)
- We used the pumpkin flesh (I know, flesh sounds too…cannibalistic, but that’s what it is!) to bake two batches of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies
- We racked Dragon’s breath into the secondary fermenter
- We baked sweet potato bourbon cupcakes with bourbon cheesecake frosting, a potential dessert pairing for Dragon’s Breath (also, we are going to make a sweet potato beer at some point in the future, so this could be good practice for that…)
- We bottled Dragons’ breath (last night)
- We dreamt up a wonderful and artistic scheme for labeling our creations
- We brainstormed our next beer: Hair of Murphy, a Nutella-inspired (and pet-cat-Murphy-inspired) hazelnut chocolate stout (or imperial stout? muwhaha…)
- In generally, we are constantly getting better at all things home brew
Everything you ever wanted to know about Dragon’s Breath
Our recipe was a blend of two recipes we found through a very thorough and scientific Google search (this one and another that I can’t seem to remember — I know, such poor record-keeping skills for a journalist…). Clearly, we are sophisticated brewers. The main alteration we made to the recipe was adding fresh ginger and re-spicing the whole batch when we put it into the secondary fermenter. Like I said, this beer is going to be seriously spicy.
On brewing day, everything was going so well. We were so proud of ourselves. But then…no airlock! For those of you who don’t brew, this is a small (and easily forgotten) but essential piece of equipment. Because we were doing two simultaneous beers (the Scottish ale was in the secondary fermenter), our one and only airlock was busy.
We left a frantic note on my downstairs neighbor’s door (he is also a brewer). We called and e-mailed the brewers we know. But then, we came up with this elegant (ok, maybe ugly isn’t the exact right word…) solution. It’s a blow-off tube into a bottle filled with sanitizer. Insta-airlock! See, mom and dad, I am putting my engineering degree to good use.
Superior craftsmanship. Insta-airlock. Medium: plastic wrap, tape, tubing, beer bottle.
Miraculously, everything went completely smoothly after our airlock scare. Actually, that’s not quite true. We we bottled Dragon’s Breath last night, we removed our extra-spicy spice bag from the carboy and it looked like poo (oddly, many steps of the beer-making process are poo-like). But it smelled like pumpkin pie!
Notice Lauren's doggie-doo-doo technique for handing the poo-bag (I mean spice-bag)
Bottling was a smooth operation. Behold:
Look at how precise, how calm, how professional Lauren is while bottling.
Some of us aren’t quite so precise:
Why would I possibly need to move so much to cap a bottle of beer? No idea...
We had a chance to taste our beer-to-be, and it was wonderful. Much better than our Scottish ale* was at this stage. Much. It will be ready the day before Thanksgiving.
Upcoming beer events…
This weekend we will try to brew the Hair of Murphy. (Disclaimer: There will, in fact, be a single hair of Murphy somewhere in this batch of beer. Much like the naked plastic baby in a Mardis Gras King Cake, or getting pooped on by a bird, whoever gets the hair will have good luck for life. No, really. Don’t worry, it will be a sanitized hair. Just so you know.)
TONIGHT, NOV. 11: Walnut Brewery is having a tapping party for Rescue Mountain Ale, a beer they are selling as a fundraiser for the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group. It’s a Belgian-style dubbel (one of my favorite beer styles), so prepare for delicousness. Between 6:00 pm and 6:30 pm, your first pint is free!
NEXT WEDNESDAY, NOV. 17: Lauren and I will be attending (and possibly Tweeting and live blogging?) “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About: BEER,” an event sponsored by the CU Museum of Natural History. The special guests are Charlie Papazian, president of the Brewers Association, Darwin Davidson, a botanist and hops expert (what an awesomely appropriate name), and Maureen Ogle, historian and author of a history of beer in America. (Now that I think of it, all the speakers have rad names. Maybe the industry attracts such folk?) If you are local and want to join us, please do!
What could be better than a closet full of beer?
*Our Scottish ale is a few notes shy of mediocre. However, it does indeed qualify as beer. Case in point: It gets more drinkable with each sip.
Tags: beer, bottling, brewing, dragon's breath, events, homebrew, pictures, pumpkin, pumpkin ale, recipes, scottish ale, spices
