Crème Brûlée

 Crème Brûlée is a really wonderful custard desert which impresses when you go to a restaurant but which also is very easy to make at home.  I have been making this for a while and have gotten tired of having to find the recipe so I have documented one of my own here.

For my recipe I'm going for something very simple to make.  I use half and half which I always have on hand for coffee and White Russians and vanilla extract.  Heavy cream would be more traditional along with a vanilla bean but I think the desert is plenty good with these short cuts. When using a vanilla bean you usually steep it in the warm cream and then temper the egg with that.  I am skipping this step as well and mix everything cold.

With all that this still makes a really nicely flavored custard with a nice soft and creamy texture which is lighter than when using cream (tried making it with whipping cream recently and I much prefer the texture with Half and Half).

Anyhow, here is the recipe so I never have to try to find one I like again

Recipe Details:

• 6 egg yokes
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 pint Half and Half
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 tsp Orange Liquor
• 1 pinch of salt
• Extra Sugar for Top (2-3 tsp is a good amount for a 4 in ramekin)

Process Details:

• Separate egg yokes into a mixing bowl
• Add sugar and mix thoroughly - the mix will become a lighter yellow color as  you mix it

• Add the vanilla, orange liquor, salt, and half and half and mix
• Divide the mix into ramekins - this batch will make 4 ramekin worth
• Pre-heat oven to 325 F
• Have a pan of water in the oven and cook the ramekin in them - water bath will slow the cook.  They take about 45 min to setup.  You want them to be jiggly but not liquidy
• Let them cool on the counter top for an hour and then more to the fridge for a couple hrs
• Add sugar to the top and use a torch to caramelize it into a candy layer.  I think some dark patches taste really nice.  Doing a couple thin layers of sugar and two rounds of the torch seems to get a better layer.  Move it back to the fridge for a couple hours to cool down before serving (or you could eat it right then as well)

Russian Imperial Stout with Bourbon Soaked Oak - Take V

This will by my fifth attempt to make a Bourbon Barrel Stout in the vain of the great Goose Island Bourbon Country Brand Stout.  If you have never had it, it's a beer with a very strong bourbon character - there are many beers that market themselves as being bourbon barrel aged and I find almost all to be disappointing compared with BCBS.  It's a beer that is released once a year in small quantities so I find I never have enough to drink it as much as I want.  Being able to make a reliable clone would be a very nice thing.

I have learned some valuable lessons with my previous 4 beers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th) but none have gotten particularly close to the real thing.  Some lessons learned:

• Aging the beer with the appropriate amount of oak to simulate contact with a barrel is very important
• About 56 sqin per gal of oak surface area
• Toasting and Charing the oak to the right level is important
• See this experiment on oak aging for how I arrived at a good number
• Aging the oak with a barrel strength alcohol is critical to getting the intensity of whisky flavors
• Making sure that the created bourbon tastes like bourbon is important
• I have settled into aging my oak at a higher oak to spirit ratio than used in a barrel to conserve spirit.  I have found in previous batches that this creates more of a caramel flavor than vanilla compared with the normal oak to spirit ratio.  I experimented with boiling the oak before aging to mellow it a bit such that I would get more vanilla.
• Getting the beer to finish at around 1.035 is critical as an overly sweet beer will  hide the whisky flavors and throw off the balance
• This bit me on my last batch which ended up at 1.042 and definately too sweet.  I think using a very strong yeast (White Labs 099 Super High Gravity Yeast) is critical to ferment down such a big beer (starts at 1.13 to 1.14)
• Having the oak saturated with spirit such that it fortifies the beer is very important I think
• I did some calculations and came up with about 5 oz of spirit absorbed into the oak per gal of beer was a good target

I plan on taking very good notes this time to hopefully give myself a reasonable shot at reproducing these results if it's a winner.

Other than these notes, I will be brewing basically the same recipe I've used in all the previous attempts.  This was provided by Goose Island in a promotional video linked in my first attempt.  As I believe I've said before, their lack of protection of the recipe makes sense in a way because getting into the fermentor is relatively easy compared with trying to get it to ferment down enough and then in getting their magical bourbon character.  I'm very excited to be trying this again

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 22 lbs Pale Ale
• 8 lbs Light Munich
• 2 lbs Crystal 60L
• 1.5 lbs Chocolate Malt
• 1.5 lbs Roasted Barley
• 12 oz Black Patent
• 4 oz Acid Malt  
• Hops:
• 3 oz Chinook (Pellet, 11.8% AA) at 60 min
• Yeast:
• White Labs 099 - Super High Gravity Yeast (2nd Pitch)
• Water:
• 15 gal spring water
• 5 gal tap water
• 2 tsp CaCl
• 2 tsp Gypsum
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 1 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6.5 gal (Target 6.5 gal)
• Mash:
• 152 F for 60 min
• Boil:
• 4 hrs
• Fermentation Temperature:
• 68 F (Ambient Basement Temps)
• Primary Duration:
• 1 month
• Secondary Duration:
• > 6 months

Results:

• OG:
• 1.140 (Target 1.025)
• Efficiency:
• 72% (Target 66%)
• FG:
• 1.032 (Target 1.035)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 75% (Target 68%)
• ABV:
• 16.8% (Target 12%)

Brewing Notes:

• Oak Preparation
• 3/13/26:
• I decided to make bigger pieces of oak this time.  Settled on 2.25 x 6.5 x 1.125 inch pieces.  I will use 8 of them which should give 371 sqin of oak surface area (46.4 sq in per block).  At 6 gal of beer this is 62 sqin per gal where 56 sqin per gal is the surface area for a standard barrel (close enough)
• I charred and toasted the oak per the results of this experiment (Low +2 Toast and then 3 pass char)
• I then boiled the oak twice to seep out some of the rougher flavors.  I measured the weight of my 8 oak blocks as 53 oz
• I mixed up 4, 2 qt jars, with 60% spirit using Everclear and Spring Water (I didn't record the volume of spirit per jar which was a mistake - was probably about 3 pints) and then added the oak

• Had this in a cold room next to a heating element to age - this would hopefully cause multiple cycles of heating and cooling to accelerate the aging effects
• 8/8/26:
• After aging for nearly 5 months the spirit tastes good.  I am adding the oak to the beer today.  Weighed the oak at 80 oz which means that the oak absorbed 27 oz of spirit.  This is about 4.5 oz of spirit per gal of beer which is pretty close to my calculated target of 5 oz
• 7/2/26 - Prepared a yeast starter for part of the yeast I intended to pitch (pulled from my barleywine)
• 7/6/26 - Brewday - from 11 AM to 6 PM including setup and cleanup
• Heated 8 gal of strike water to 175 F
• Milled half my grain and added half the gypsum and CaCl to it

• Moved 7.5 gal of strike water the the mash tun and cycled through the Grant and RIMS until it was 162 F
• Stopped the cycle and added my grain - stirred well to eliminate doughballs
• Let the mash settle for 10 min before cycling the RIMS again
• Heated 6 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• At the end of the mash I slowly drained into the boil kettle.  I setup a fly sparge as I collected and ran until I had 7 gal
• I started to heat the kettle after collecting and had it at a boil shortly after the end of the sparge
• Boiled for 2 hrs

• I collected a couple gal of extra wort from the first mash which I am returning to the second mash
• Milled my second half of grain.  Added the other half of Gypsum and CaCl to this
• Cleaned out the mash tun
• Heated the second mash Strike water (6 gal) to 185 F
• Added 5 gal of strike water pls the 2 gal of remaining mash water to the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS until it had settled to 162 F
• Added the grain to the mash tun and stirred to eliminate dough balls.  Let this sit for 10 min and then cycled through the RIMS at 153 F
• Heated 5.5 gal of sparge water to 185 F
• At the end of the first 2 hr boil I was down to about 3 gal of wort.  I drained the second mash ton into the boil kettle slowly to maintain the boil.  I fly sparged until I'd collected 10 gal of wort
• Boiled for another 2 hrs to reduce down to about 6 gal.  Had to pay attention to avoid boil over at first
• Added hops at 1 hr left
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• With 5 min left, I added to wort chiller to sanitize
• Chilled down to about 80 F
• Drained the beer into 2 fermentors.  Let the beer fall about a foot to aerate.  Pitched my yeast during the transfer (both from my starter and from the barleywine fermenter - split the two between the two)
• Collected about 6.5 gal of beer and measure the gravity as 1.140
• Set this up in my basement to ferment with the lids loosly attached
• 7/7/26 - By the next day, very vigorous fermentation was underway - krausen pushed out the airlocks even with the 6 gal buckets about half full
• 8/8/26 - Transferred to secondary and added the oak.  Measured the gravity at 1.032 - I am very happy about this!  Collected just about 6 gal.  The beer has a pretty nice set of roasty flavors, a fairly distinct alcohol character, and is decidedly not very sweet - I think this is a base beer that is going to go nice with the bourbon and oak flavors rather than overwhelm them but only time will tell.  I am going to age this batch near the same room that the jars of whiskey were aged and let it at least go through one winter before bottling.  I am excited about this one.

English Barleywine XIII

This will be my 13th version of the English Barleywine style which I have brewed every memorial day since 2014 (read about my previous versions here:  2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025).  English Barleywine is a lovely style as it is complex with Malt, Yeast Ester, and sometimes Hop flavors and, with a high alcohol level, ages well.  I age half the batch and then do a tasting every year to see how the beers develop - based on the tastings of the older versions I can confirm that the beers age well

For this year's version I am attempting to replicate a beer that is no longer made - Edridge Pope's Huntsman's Goldie.  It is an earlier and lighter version of a famous beer I've attempted to make a couple times:  Thomas Hardy's Ale.  I got a lot of good detail from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog but there isn't a recipe for this in circulation.  It is intended to come in at a gravity of 1.085 rather than the 1.11-1.12 that the Hardy's ale does.  Other than that, very similar with a mix of pale malt and wheat, heavily hopped, and then fermented with the potent Eldridge Pope yeast strain (WLP 099 "super high gravity").  This yeast took my 2019 version of the beer from 1.120 down to 1.010 which is 16% ABV - amazing.  The yeast produces really nice flavors as well - I'm excited to use it again.

This is the first beer I've made in 12 months.  I still love brewing (which this brew day confirmed for me) but the dedication of time is proving challenging for me somehow.  I very much want to be brewing more - hopefully I can manage that over the next 12 months.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 17 lb Golden Promise
• 1.5 lb Crystal 60L
• 1.5 lb Flaked Wheat
• 5 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 5 oz Cluster (Pellet, 8.9 % AA) at 90 min
• 2 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 5.3% AA) at 15 min
• Yeast:
• White Labs 099 Super High Gravity Yeast (Edridge Pope's Yeast Strain)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 6.5 gal of tap water
• 2 tsp Gypsum
• 2 tsp CaCl
• 1 tsp Irish Moss

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal(Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• 156 F for 60 min
• Boil Time:
• 120 min
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps
• Primary Duration:
• 1 month
• Secondary Duration:
• 6 months

Results:

• OG:
• 1.093 (Target 1.085)
• Efficiency:
• 77% (Target 70%)
• FG:
• 1.010 (Target 1.030)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 88% (Target 68%)
• ABV:
• 11.3% (Target 7.2%)

Brewing Notes:

• 5/24/26 - Made a yeast starter and set it up to propogate on a stirplate

• 5/25/26 - Brewday - From 10 AM to 4 PM- Including setup and cleanup
• Brought 11.5 gal up to 180 F
• Milled my grain and added CaCl and Gypsum to grain and boil kettle (for later)

• Moved 8 gal of strike water to my mash tun and cycled through the grant and RIMS until the temperature settled to 165 F 
• Added the grain and stirred well to eliminate dough balls
• Let the mast sit for 10 min to settle before cycling the RIMS.  Mashed for 50 min
• Heated 8.5 gal of water to 180 F for the sparge
• Flysparged slowly until I'd collected 10 gal of wart.  I started to heat after collecting 3 gal and had it up to a rolling boil by the time the sparge was complete
• Added the 90 min hops
• Boiled for 2 hrs
• Added Irish Moss and Flavoring hops at 15 min
• Chilled to 80 F
• Transferred to the fermenter - let the beer fall a foot to aerate.  Pitched my yeast during the transfer
• Collected 5.5 gal of wort and measured the gravity as 1.102 which is 77% efficiency - way over target.  Added spring water up to 6 gal to get me a gravity of 1.093 (vs my target of 1.085
• Set the fermenter in my utility sink to ferment
• 5/26/26 - The beer was fermenting so vigorously that krausen was pushed up through the airlock
• 5/29/26 - Fermentation seems to have finished up
• 7/3/26 - Transferred the beer to secondary for aging.  Measured the gravity as 1.010 which is a very impressive 11% ABV.  It is a nice fruity flavor with the booze being prominent but pleasant

Tavern Style Pizza

This is a really interesting style of pizza which is very easy to make at home and get good results.  It is a pizza with a cracker thin dough which is crunchy rather than chewy.  My recipe is based on one I originally saw on America's Test Kitchen (called "Chicago Thin Crust Pizza").

It is a low hydration dough (50% hydration with 10% olive oil).  It traditionally uses raw sausage which is cooked on top of the pizza and is intended to be cooked to a dark brown color.  The toppings go to the edge of the pizza and there is little exposed crust.  It is cut into rectangles rather than wedges which is a fun way to eat it.

I have made this pizza several times.  I find that making enough dough for 4 pizza is a good time savings.  I'll typically eat a couple of them soon after making the dough and then I'll freeze the other two.  It is a dough that isn't meant to get much in the way of air bubbles so over proofing isn't a concern with this one - making it a day to a week in advance and then letting it slowly ferment at fridge temperatures is a good way of doing things

Crispy Pizza Crust Cross Section

Recipe Details:

• Dough for 4 pizzas:
• 680g All Purpose Flour
• 340g Spring Water
• 68g Olive Oil
• 2 tsp table salt
• 2 tsp yeast
• 1 tbs sugar
• Sauce for 2 pizza:
• 8 oz seasoned tomato sauce
• 1 tbs tomato paste
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp Italian Seasoning
• Toppings on 1 pizza:
• 6 oz Monterey Jack Cheese
• 6 oz Spicy Italian Sausage

Process Details:

• Mix up the dough (flour, water, oil, salt, sugar, and yeast) - it is a shaggy dough initially

• Kneed the dough in the bowl until it becomes a smooth ball

• Let this ferment for a few hours at room temperature (it will double in size).  This is really more about flavor than it is about formation of air bubbles.

• Flour a work surface, dump the dough, and then cut it into 4 equal pieces (these should be about 270g each which will make 12 inch diameter pizzas)

• Move the pieces of the dough into the fridge until ready to use
• Mix up a batch of sauce.  I think this makes sense to make a day ahead of use as well and then keep it in the fridge
• When it is time to make the pizza, pre-heat the oven with a pizza stone to 500 F.  Probably want to heat the oven for an hour or so before using
• Form the dough into a rough circle with your fingers

• Then roll out the dough to be roughly 12 inch in diameter with a rolling pin.  The pizza will be about 1/8 inch thick when rolled out.  You want to make it even thickness - I don't put much stock in getting a round pizza but you want it to fit on a round pizza stone.  Move the dough to a pizza peel with corn meal to avoid sticking

• Build the pizza.  Add sauce first (I don't measure but it's a fairly restrained amount of sauce), then dime size pieces of sausage, then add cheese

• Make sure there aren't any sticky spots on the peel - add corn meal where it's sticking.  Ease the pizza onto the pizza stone

• Bake the pizza for 10 min and then check to see how dark it is before deciding how much more time to give it.  In my oven, I typically give it another couple minutes.  The cheese should be browned and the pizza will have burned edges

• Take the pizza out of the oven and let it cool for 5 min
• Cut into 2-3 in rectangles
• It is very good

Margarita Recipe

I really love a Margarita and I found this recipe for making a very simple but really delicious drink.  It uses juice from a freshly squeezed lemon for the flavoring which I think is much better than a pre-made Margarita mix.

It's good with an inexpensive toquilla (at least to my taste) and is nice with varying strengths and levels of sweetness.  Below is a mix that I find very pleasing

Recipe Details:

• 3 oz Taquilla
• 0.75 oz Triple Sec
• 0.75 oz Agave Syrup
• Juice of 1 Lime
• Ice

    I shake the drink

Russian Imperial Stout with Bourbon Soaked Oak - Take IV - Tasting Notes

This is my fourth attempt at brewing a Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout Clone.  I am using a recipe from the brewery - the same one I've used before.  It is a challenging beer to make as the grain bill is more than my mash tun can take and I end up doing 2 mashes on it and then boil for 4 hrs to get down to 6 gal-ish of beer

It started at 1.128 and I had to pitch a second round of super high gravity yeast to get it close to my target of 1.038 (I ended up at 1.042 - although in my bottling I measured it a bit higher than that).  It aged on a large amount of oak that I toasted and then aged with ever clear to attempt to simulate the character of freshly drained bourbon barrel (I didn't think the oak had soaked up as much bourbon as I would have liked so I added some of my extra spirit to try to compensate (perhaps this was a mistake)

I aged the beer up in my attic for more than 3 years before bottling a couple months ago.  The beer hasn't carbonated in that time.

Anyhow, as you'll see, the beer didn't turn out as I'd hoped and is probably a regression from version III.  "You don't learn anything being right" is what I tell myself when drinking this beer.  I'll do a head to head comparison of all my beer to confirm this assessment.  Still I'm happy to drink it as it is not a bad beer even if a bit off the mark

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Chocolate, coffee, and a bit of boozy character and toasted oak which very much blends with the other characters I think - it doesn't smell that much of bourbon.  It is a very aromatic beer though and smells nice.
• Appearance:
• Dark brown - can't see light through it when held up to a lamp.  It pours with just a thin layer of fizz around the edge of the glass that is then gone pretty quickly
• Flavor:
• Chocolate and toasted and roasted flavors up front (once again, for how much oak is in this, some of that toast and roast flavor must be the oak).  Get a hint of booze character in there as well.  Quite sweet on the finish.  It has a bit of bitterness which balances the sweet a bit.  There is a fruitiness in there too and maybe other yeast character  I just don't get much that I would associate with bourbon in this one
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and very sticky on the palate
• Overall:
• This is a rich and flavorful stout.  The boldness of it and the sweetness are lovely but, as a beer intended to imitate BCBS, it is way off the mark.  The other flavors are overpowering any bourbon character it might have and I suspect even if it were more muted there isn't that much of the bourbon character to taste.  I am going to need to think about what when wrong here before my next attempt

English Barleywine (2025 Version) - Tasting Notes

This is my 12th version of an English Barley wine.  It was brewed on Memorial day 2025 and bottled it about 2 months ago now.

This was based on a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog: 1879 William Younger No. 1.  It is all base malt (Pilsner, Golden Promise, and Munich) and is fairly heavilly hopped and then was dry hopped in a 5 month secondary.  Also, I cultured brett dregs from Orval and pitched these in secondary - this is a very interesting fruity Brett which I was thinking could go well in an English Barleywine.

Lets see how I did

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Fruity ester character is pretty prominent (apple maybe).  Get some toasty and caramel malt character as well.  Some booze.  Maybe get some hop character in there as well.  It's fairly bold in aroma
• Appearance:
• Pours with only a thin wisp of carbonation.  Dark gold in color and very clear
• Flavor:
• Very fruity up front (a bit of an odd character - this is the contribution of the Brett harvested from Orval).  Caramel and toasty malt come next.  The finish has a fairly firm bitterness.  It's lightly sweet.  The slightly funky fruitiness lingers in the finish along with the hop bitterness.  Get some alcohol character.  Not picking up much in the way of hop flavor but it's complex beer with quite a bit going on that could overshadow the hop flavor on a beer that is already 9 months old
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied and only slightly sticky on the palate.  Drinks pretty smooth
• Overall:
• It's an interesting beer with it's fruit forward character - I think the Brett delivers a character very much in line with what you might expect from an English Barleywine.  The malt is nice but is pretty much overshadowed.  I like the level of bitterness in it.  I think it's a reasonably complex beer and it's pretty light and easy drinking for a ~10% ABV beer - hides the alcohol well and is a bit dryer than many I've made in the past.  Also, appearance is the least concern but I think the color is very nice on this beer - I don't think I got the priming sugar evenly distributed when bottling this batch so this one had little carbonation and I may have some surprises opening the later ones