English Barleywine (2020 Version) - Tasting Notes

Time for a tasting of my seventh version of an English Barleywine.  This was brewed on Memorial Day 2020, allowed to ferment for a month, and then bulk aged in a glass carboy for the next 5 month.  This beer was based on a recipe I found on the Shut Up About Barclay Perkin's Blog:  1940 Truman Stock #1.  I made enough changes to it it's hardly fair to call it a clone but it was my inspiration for what it's worth.

I bottled the beer close to 2 months ago and have been drinking one a week or so.  It is tasting very good.  English Barleywine is a fairly narrow style but I've found the more I've brewed them the more I've found interesting about them.  You can do a lot with the interplay between bold malt, expressive yeast, and English Hops.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Graham Cracker and toffee prominent with dark fruit a bit further in the background.  Get a bit of herbal hop character in the mix as well
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 1 finger head that fades down to a thin ring after several minutes.  Leaves lacing on the glass.  It is a dark reddish brown color and is pretty murky
• Flavor:
• Malt flavors up front:  caramel, graham cracker, toffee and chocolate.  Very rich.  Herbal and grassy hop flavor comes next and is mixed with subtle fruity ester character.  Finishes with medium bitterness that is countered by sweet malt.  Balance is decidedly towards the malt.  Alcohol is present in the flavor but it is subtle.
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and sticky sweet.  Smooth drinking but a sipper for sure.  Warming alcohol presence
• Overall:
• Bold malt aroma and flavor with pleasant supporting hop and yeast character.  It has a nice complexity in flavors as well.  Sticky and sweet which encourages slow drinking - not a bad thing with a 9+% beer.  The chocolate character is unexpected but very nice.  I used a couple ounces of toasted Cabernet soaked oak in this batch I wonder if that could be a contributor.

American Brown Ale Take II - Tasting Notes

Here is a tasting of an American Brown Ale that I brewed up in Late Nov, kegged in Mid December, and then have been drinking a lot of ever since.  An American Brown Ale, like many of our styles, is based on a British beer but is Americanized with bold and Fruity American hops.

This version was based on a Famous Homebrewer's Award Winning beer:  Mike "Tasty" McDole's Janet's Brown Ale.  The original is an "imperial" Brown Ale.  I wanted something lighter so I adjusted the grainbill to get an ABV of 4.7% which makes having "one more" after dinner an easier decision.

It is an aggressively hopped beer with a big emphasis on late hops.  Centennial is the primary aroma hop in the beer.  I kegged it with two ounces of Centennial which has worked out nicely as it's maintained a nice bold hop aroma and flavor over this last month.

I'm happy with how the beer turned out.  Here is an official tasting for posterity

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Fruity, spicy, and herbal hops are prominent along with a fruity ester character.  The two get along nicely.  It has a smell sort of like Fruit Loops cereal which is quite similar to the hop character in Founders Centennial IPA.  Maybe get a bit of malt character come through but it's far in the background
• Appearance:
• Pours with a dense 4 finger head that slowly fades through the glass.  Leaves lacing on the glass.  It is a dark reddish brown color and very clear when held to the light.
• Flavor:
• Up front I get a mix of hop character (fruity and herbal).  This transitions to bready and toasty malt and then a fairly firm bitterness kicks in that lasts into the finish.  There is some malt that carries through in the finish as well but the balance is towards the hops.  There is a bit of ester character in the flavor but not as strong as the aroma would suggest - it is mostly apparent in the finish
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium light bodied with a very light sweetness.  It is fairly smooth although the bitterness may have a slightly astringent component to it as well that contributes somewhat to the mouthfeel.  Pretty easy drinking though.
• Overall:
• This is a very hoppy beer - hopped to a level similar to an IPA.  The contributions of the brown ale are in the mix but relegated very much to a background role.  The Centennial hops are very nice - the 2 oz of keg hops really amped up hop contribution.  The fruity ester character from S04 is nice as well but it may have been better to go with a less expressive yeast to let malt and hops interplay a bit more - so much going on in the beer with a pronounced yeast component.  Still, can't complain about what is a nicely flavored beer.

Detroit Style Pizza

I've been baking bread for several years now and have gotten pretty good with the process.  After shelling out 24 bucks for our last pizza I started thinking it might be interesting to make an earnest attempt to learn that process as well.  It seems a bit more daunting than a loaf of bread due to the special handling of the dough to stretch, apply toppings, side into the oven and then cook properly in a home oven.

Thanks to America's Test Kitchen I learned of an interesting style of deep dish pizza that eliminates many of the complexities I'd been concerned with - a Detroit Style Pizza.  This is, as I said, a deep dish style pizza cooked in a cake pan (or traditionally a rectangular steel pan).  It has a Focaccia style dough that is covered with a very generous dose of cheese that goes right to the edge of the pan and creates a burnt cheesy bread like crust.  Cheese is put down on top of the dough in this style of pizza and then the sauce (which is a very boldly flavored herb sauce) it put down in strips on top of the cheese.  So, a very odd sort of pizza.

It looked delicious and fairly east to make so I decided to take the plunge and give it a shot.  It turned out to be as easy as I'd hoped.  This is my third attempt at it.  I've stuck fairly close to their recipe but made a few minor tweaks for this version such as adding some peperoni.

Making this pizza takes 3-4 hrs of mostly waiting but it's well worth the effort when the pipping hot pizza comes out of the oven.  It really is an impressive sight and tastes as good as it looks.

Ingredients:

• Dough:
• 12 oz All Purpose Flour
• 1 tsp Instant Dry Yeast
• 1 tsp Table Salt
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 1 cup Spring Water
• 1 tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Sauce:
• 1 cup Crushed Tomato
• 1 tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 tbs Fresh Basil/Basil Paste

• 1 large garlic clove minced
• 1 tsp Oragino
• 1 tsp Dried Basil
• 1/2 tsp Sugar
• 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
• 1/2 tsp Red Pepper (makes for medium-high level of spice)
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• Toppings:
• 10 oz Monterey Jack Cheese
• 5 oz Peperoni
• Pan:
• Oil spray
• 1 tsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Process Details:

• 1/16/21
• Combined the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mixed them together so that everything was evenly distributed

• Added the water and oil and stirred until a cohesive mass of dough is formed.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap

• Performed a few stretch and fold operations on the dough over the next 2 hrs.  The dough is very sticky so, with a wet hand you grab one side of the dough, pull it up and stretch the dough and then fold it over the top.  I usually do this 4 times per session one at each of the 90 degree.  This seems to help make the dough a little stronger and less sticky for the next steps.

• After 2 hr rest I removed the dough from the bowl and onto a floured work surface where it is formed into a ball.  Added a bit of flour to make it a bit more workable

• Then we prepare the cooking pan - I'm using an 13x9x2 cake pan.  It has round corners rather than square ones but works just fine for this pizza.  I sprayed it with olive oil spray to keep from sticking and put 1 tbs of additional Olive oil on the bottom of the pan

• Moved the doughball to the pan and let this sit for 20 min to relax the dough after shaping

• Then stretched the dough out to cover the bottom of the pan.  I ended up having to do a few cycles of this with 10-15 breaks in between before the dough would stretch enough to cover most of the pan.  I didn't quite make it to the corners but decided to leave it be as the dough will continue to expand as it proofs.  Put plastic wrap over the top of the pan to prevent the dough from drying out

• After 2.5 hrs the dough had spread to the corners and increased in size to a nice amount (2x or more maybe)

• Pre-heated the oven at 500 F
• Made the sauce and set aside

• Grated the cheese

• Sliced the Peperoni.  This is cut to between 1/8th and 1/4th of an inch

• Added Cheese to the dough first.  There is a lot of cheese for the pizza - it is added right to the edge of the dough.  This will get cooked onto the side of the crust which makes the best part of this pizza

• Then added the sauce on top of the cheese.  This put in thin stipes rather than all over the pizza

• Then added the Peperoni fairly evenly

• Moved to the oven and cooked for 15 min

• Removed from the oven and let sit for 5 min to cool

• Pulled it out of the pan with a spatula and onto a cutting board
• Cut the pizza into 8 rectangular slices
• Ate with a nice spinach salad.  The crust on this pizza is delicious - especially the cheesy outer crust.  The sauce is a very boldly flavored, between the basil and garlic, which compensates for there being a relatively small amount of it.  The cheese is very nicely cooked and golden brown and creates a nice crunch on the surface along with the bubbly dough.  I think the peperoni is a nice addition which adds a bit of complexity and spice - 5 oz seems like a good amount (might be tempted to go a bit higher next time)