English Barleywine (2022 Version) - Tasting Notes

These are tasting notes from my ninth attempt at an English Barleywine.  I brewed this on Memorial Day 2022 based on a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog.  This beer underwent a a 9 month secondary fermentation with WLP 640 - Brett Anomalus which was isolated from English beers and thought to be a contributor to the original beer this recipe was based on (Tennant's Gold Label).  My 2021 batch used this recipe as well but without the Brett so it will be interesting to see how the two compare.

It has been in the bottle for about a month and a half now and tasting great.  Time to do an official testing.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• A fruity character is most prominent - it is a sort of musty and maybe somewhat tropical fruit flavor - very interesting.  This is the Brett based on the smell of the culture at pitching.  In the background I get a bit of caramel and bready malt.  Maybe a bit of booze in there as well.  Also so oak character.
• Appearance:
• Pours with 1 finger of head that quickly disappears down to nothing.  It is a dark copper color and is pretty clear.
• Flavor:
• Up front there is a fruit-like flavor this fades into a bready caramel flavor.  There is a bit of herbal hop flavor in there as well as an oaky and wine like character (some of it is sort of reminiscent of coconut even).  The finish has a medium-light bitterness that offers some balance to the slightly sweet malty flavors - these linger quite some time after the sip.  A bit of booze flavor in there as well but it's hidden behind the other flavors
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied and slightly sticky on the palate.  A little bit of astringency on the palate and a slight alcohol warming effect
• Overall:
• This is a rich, boldly flavored, and complex beer.  The fruit character is different than any I've gotten from a traditional English yeast.  The yeast and malt flavors get along very nicely in this beer.  It is a strong beer but it's easy to drink due to the balance provided by the hop bitterness that remains almost a year after brewing

Sour Cherry Crop - 2023

 This post will track the continued maturation of my 4 North Star Dwarf Sour Cherry trees over their 4th season (read about Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3).  I've never felt like I was very good with plants so it has been a real pleasure to watch these trees grow from twigs to be 8-10 feet tall on my watch.

I got about about 2 lbs of fruit last year - enough to get a good sense for the quality of the fruit.  They are very dark and seem to me to have quite a bit more rich cherry flavor than the more famous Montmorency Sour Cherry.  Here in the fourth year I stand to get a lot more than that (maybe enough to make a beer out of).  I didn't do any trimming this winter - I'll have to keep my eye out with any problematic growth

They should continue to grow stronger this year if I treat them right - looking forward to watching this happen.

6/2/23

5/20/23

4/17/23

Growing Notes:

• 4/16/23:  Cleared away the weeds from the trunks of the trees.  Have a lot of flowers this year.  Even without fruit the trees are worth having for how they make for a very beautify yard picture:

• 6/7/23 - I've been picking for the last few days and there is a lot more to go
• 6/30/23 - The fruit is just about done.  Ended up collecting 8 1 gal freezer bags worth which weigh 39 lbs

Raspberry Crop - 2023

We are headed into the seventh growing season for my large raspberry beds (read about the 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 crops).  The plants have been putting a lot of growth over the last few weeks and (as of Mid-April) are off to a strong start.

Last year was a bit of a down year in terms of volume (only got 50lb rather than the 80-100 I had previously).  This was largely due to one of the rows (Prelude) not having as many runners as previous years.  I put in some new canes and these look much stronger this year.

I'm excited to see how they do this year and am still very much enjoying this project (even though I have more fruit than I have the time to use).

I will post a photo update every couple week to a month to record my progress:

6/2/23

5/20/23

4/16/23

Raspberry Picking Tracker:

• 6/7 - 1 lb 1 oz
• 6/8 - 1 lb 2 oz
• 6/9 - 1 lb 2 oz
• 6/10 - 1 lb 1 oz
• 6/11 - 14 oz
• 6/13 - 1 lb 8 oz
• 6/14 - 1 lb
• 6/15 - 1 lb 6 oz
• 6/16 - 1 lb 11 oz
• 6/17 - 1 lb 6 oz
• 6/18 - 1 lb 2 oz
• 6/19 - 1 lb
• 6/20 - 14 oz
• 6/22 - 1 lb 6 oz
• 6/24 - 2 lb 15 oz
• 6/26 - 2 lb 2 oz
• 6/27 - 1 lb
• 6/28 - 14 oz
• 6/30 - 1 lb 1 oz
• 7/1 - 13 oz
• 7/6 - 5 oz

• Total:  25 lb 11 oz

Pliny the Elder Clone

 Back in 2016 I attempted to brew up a clone of Russian River's famous Pliny the Elder.  The beer turned out to be dark, murky, and didn't carbonate.  It tasted pretty good but was clearly not a very well made beer.  I'd like to think I've come a long way since then so I've decided to try making this again.

This recipe will be based on one that the Vinnie (the owner of RR) provided - found on the Bertus Blog.  Below is my interpretation of the recipe (which is all in percentages).  The grain bill is pretty simple with just a touch of caramel malt (which is about 25% of what we had last time which should help with the color) and some sugar to create a dryer and lighter bodied beer.  The hops are the star of the show - this recipe has a pretty big dose of flame out hops (although maybe not that high compared with the hazy beers being made today) and I've opted to dry hop with 8 oz which should create a satisfyingly hoppy Double IPA

I'm diverging a bit from the recipe by using Imperial's Juice yeast but it's contributions will be pretty subtle in a beer this hoppy.

I haven't brewed a Double IPA since making this beer previously.  They had been very popular back in the early 2010s but seemed to have diminished in popularity quite a bit since then.  Pliny the Elder was a very difficult beer to get back then as well but these days you can find if fairly regularly on tap here in SEPA as well as in Norther California some 90 miles away from the Brewery (which wasn't the case just a couple years ago).  It is still an excellent beer having had it just last week - I'm excited to drink a keg worth of a (hopefully) close approximation of it.

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct:
• 14.5 lbs Pale Ale
• 4 oz Crystal 60L
• 12 oz Sugar
• 4 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 2 oz Chinook (Leaf, 12.2% AA) at 60 min
• 1 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at 30 min
• 1 Cascade (home grown) at 0 min
• 0.8 Centennial (Leaf, 8.7% AA) at 0 min
• 0.8 Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) at 0 min
• 0.8 Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) at 0 min
• 3.3 oz Simcoe (Leaf, 10.6% AA) Dry Hop
• 2.6 oz Cascade (home grown) Dry Hop
• 1.4 oz Columbus (Leaf, 14.6% AA) Dry Hop
• 0.7 oz Amarillo (Leaf, 8.8% AA) Dry Hop
• Yeast:
• Imperial Yeast A38 Juice (Using a saved yeast from last year)
• Extras:
• 13 gal Spring Water
• 1 oz CaCl
• 1 oz Gypsum
• 1 oz Irish Moss at 15 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash Temp:
• 154 for 50 min
• Boil:
• 60 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Mid 60s (Ambient Basement Temp)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 Weeks
• Secondary Duration:
• NA

Results:

• OG:
• 1.072 (Target 1.070)
• Efficiency:
• 75% (Target 73%)
• FG:
• 1.024 (Target 1.010)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 65% (Target 85%)
• ABV:
• 6.3% (Target 7.9%)

Brewing Notes:

• 3/25/23 - Setup a yeast starter for the beer.  I wanted to see yeast activity to confirm it was a healthy pitch so I didn't put it on the stir plate this time.
• 3/26/23 - Brewday - 10:30 AM to 3:00 PM - Including setup and cleanup
• Heated 11 gal of spring water up to 180 F
• Milled my grain.  Added CaCl an Gypsum so I wouldn't forget

• Moved 6 gal of strike water into the mash tun and cycled through the RIMS until the system had settled out at 164 F
• Stopped the RIMS cycle and added the grain.  Stirred well to eliminate doughballs.  Let this sit for 10 min to settle (ended at 155 F).  Cycled the RIMS at 155 F for the next 50 min
• Heated 8 gal of spring water to 180 F for the sparge
• Fly sparged until 8 gal of wort was collected.  Started heating the boil kettle after collecting 4 gal.  Had it at a boil shortly after the end of the sparge
• Boiled for 60 min
• Added the bittering hops

• Added 30 min hops
• Added sugar with 20 min left
• Added Irish Moss at 15 min
• Put in the wort chiller to sanitize with 5 min to go
• Added the zero min hops
• Left the heat on low and chilled down to 190 F
• Let the hops steep for 30 min as the temperature settled down to 170 F
• Chilled the beer down to the mid 60s
• Drained the wort into the fermenter.  Added the yeast starter during the transfer

• Measured the gravity as 1.072 and collected 6 gal of wort
• 3/27/23 - Signs of fermentation being underway by this afternoon
• 4/10/23 - It has been a couple weeks since brewday.  I'm adding the dry hop addition now and will plan to keg in a week
• 4/13/23 - Checked the gravity today and found it has only fermented down to 1.032 when I'd targeted 1.010.  I guess my aged yeast just didn't have enough vitality to do the job.  I wish I'd checked this before adding the dry hop.  Anyway, I think I'll pitch some additional yeast to try to finish the job (WLP 99)
• 4/14/23 - When I went to add the extra yeast today I found krausen still on the surface of the beer.  The gravity was down to 1.026.  I'm going to give it a few more days and will check the gravity again.
• 4/24/23 - It seemed to settle at 1.024 which I'm calling "close enough". Chilled the beer down to 35 F and added gelatin to fine the beer
• 4/28/23 - Kegged the beer - still at 1.024.
• 6/24/23 - Tasting Notes - This is a boldly flavored hop forward beer.  I think the hop aroma and flavor have subsided a little bit over the almost 2 months I've had it in the keg but it's still plenty hoppy.  The haziness isn't an intentional trait here but it does look nice (if this weren't intended to be a clone of the clear Pliny).  This was intended to be a 7.9% ABV beer and I only managed to hit 6.3% but this is still a pretty strong beer - I like drinking it but it's not a beer to do 2 of on a week night.

French Style Pork Loin Pot Roast

This is one of my favorite Recipes from America's Test Kitchen.  I've made quite a few times and always have some trouble finding it so I thought I'd capture it here for posterity.

This recipe uses a fairly elaborate process to make a pretty boring and unflavorful cut of meet (a pork loin) rich and delicious.  Note, I said pork loin which is different than a pork tenderloin.  It is a cut with a fat cap but very little intermuscular fat.  Apparently a French Pork Loin has a bit more fat.  To try to approximate a French grown pork loin this recipe butterflies the roast which sort of unrolls a log shaped roast down down to a thin flat piece of meat, adds butter to increase the richness, and then rolls it back up into the log shape.  This also allows for more surface area for seasoning the meat.  It is a really great technique.

The recipe also focuses on a spice I haven't encountered much but which is really excellent:  Herbs de Provence.  They provide an amazing aroma and flavor that really go nicely with the pork, onions, apples and garlic which make up the rest of the recipe and really enhance the cooking process while they fill the kitchen with the wonderful smell.

As you'll see below, the process is complicated but it's worth the effort.  There are a few challenging steps but for the most part it's just waiting for it to slowly cook that is difficult.  It's a great meal that nig

Ingredients:

• 2.5 lbs Center Cut Pork Loin

• 6 Cloves of Garlic
• 2 tbs Butter
• 1 tbs salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp Herbs de Provence
• 2 tbs Olive Oil
• 1 Granny Smith Apple Pealed Cored and cut into 1/4 in pieces
• 1 Onion chopped fine
• 2 tsp thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/3 cups of Sauvignon Blanc
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• 1 tbs unflavored gelatin

Process Details:

• 1/22/23:
• Pre-heated the oven to 225 F and set the rack to the lower middle position
• Sliced the garlic thin and put about three cloves worth in a pan on medium-low with 1 tbs of butter.  Cooked this until golden brown.  Once at this stage I poured the garlic and butter to a small bowl which I moved to the fridge to solidify

• With the fat side up I butterflied the pork roast out to a flat piece.  I started 1/3rd of the way up from the bottom, sliced through, parallel to the cutting board, until about an inch from the other side of the roast and then cut the remaining 2/3 side of the roast roughly in half so that it was unrolled (or unfolded like a business letter).  It doesn't need to be perfect but don't slice all the way through the meat

• I then pounded the meat to an even thickness

• Then applied 1/2 tsp of salt to both sides of the meat, 1 tsp of sugar to the inside (side without the fat), and then the garlic and butter mixture to the inside

• The meat is then rolled up  and tied with kitchen twine spaced about 1 in apart

• Herbs de Provence are sprinkle on all sides of the roast at this point

• I then heated 1 tbs of oil in my Dutch oven on medium heat and cooked the roast on the fat side and the two sides until they were each brown (the roast will sit on the bottom during the long slow roasting step so it doesn't need to be browned separately.  Remove the roast to a separate plate after the browning

• Chopped the apple and onion

• Add an additional 1 tbs of oil to the Dutch oven and then cook the onion and apple until the onion is softened (5 min or so).  Then add the garlic and cook for 30 s.  Then stir in the wine thyme and bay leaf

• Added the roast back onto the pot, covered with foil and the lid (to try to better retain moisture) and put into the oven.  Cooked until the meat registered 140 F which took about an hr

• Once cooking complete I set the roast aside tented to rest for 20 min

• Removed the bay leaf from the pot
• To make a sauce I rehydrated the gelatin in chicken stock and then added to the pot along with 1 tbs of butter.  Simmered over medium heat during this.  Added salt and pepper to the sauce for taste

• Sliced the meat and served with a generous helping of the sauce

Raspberry Mead

This will be my fourth attempt at making a mead.  I've made a Spiced Mead, a Bochet (Burnt Honey Mead), and a Braggot (Mead with some Grain derived sugar) so far.  This time I will be attempting a Mead with Fruit which is also known as a Melomel.  I will be using frozen raspberries grown in my garden last year for this.

I've decided to try 3 lbs of rasberries for this one.  I'm going to make a syrup out of it so I don't have deal with fruit solids.  I think this should be a good combo.

I made something close to a 2 gal batch of mead which seems like a good size as honey in larger amounts would get pricy and it is easy enough to make that the volume produced to hrs of work ratio is still pretty good.

It has been over 3 years since I made a mead which is hard to believe.  I look forward to going through this process again

Recipe Details:

• 7 lbs of Honey

• 3 lbs of Raspberry

• 8 oz of sugar
• 1.5 gal spring water
•  0.25 tsp Yeast Nutrient
• Red Star Premier Cuvee Yeast

Results:

• OG:
• 1.139
• FG:
• TBD
• Apparent Attenuation:
• TBD
• ABV:
• TBD

Process/Notes:

• 2/26/23 - Brewday:
• Heated 3 lbs of frozen raspberries and 8 oz of sugar in a pot until the juice had been released and the fruit had degraded down to paste
• Separated the juice and fruit solids, using a metal sieve, into the fermenter

• Added the honey to the fermenter.  Heated some of the water to boiling and added to the honey containers to get all of it out

• Put in the yeast nutrient
• Added the remaining water.  Stirred well to mix everything

• Rehydrated the dry yeast and added it to the fermenter

• Set the fermenter up in a dark corner of the basement to ferment out

Dry Cured Meat - First Attempt - Spanish Lomo

This will be my first attempt at making a Dry Cured Meat after wanting to do so for several years.  I really enjoy Prosciutto which is a Italian Dry Cured Ham.  It has a rich and earthy flavor and really lovely chewy texture.  Prosciutto is a big piece of meat and requires a couple years of aging so I'm not up for trying one but I've come across a smaller piece of Cured Pork which seems much more doable:  this is Spanish Lomo as demonstrated by the Two Guys and a Cooler YouTube channel.

Dry Cured meat is typically aged in a cool and humid aging space, similar to cheesemaking, to allow for slow and even drying.  This recipe was written to allow for making it in a normal refrigerator using dry aged steak wraps which also slow down the drying.  It seems like a simple enough process so I'm going to give it a shot.

This Spanish Lomo (which I've never tried before) is made using Pork Loin and is spiced with Paprika among other things - this recipe is made with Pork Loin.  The recipe calls for the use of "the equilibrium" curing method where salt is added at 3% by weight of the meat and it is allowed to sit in a vacuum seal bag until the salt has had time to penetrate the meat and protect and preserve it.  Following this salting (which takes about a week for this size cut) it is dried until 35% of the water is lost

I am very excited to be trying this finally  I really love doing things that require a small bit of up front work and then become something much better with time.  Dry Aging seems very much like that kind of endeavor.

Ingredients:

• 1333 g Pork Loin

• 40 g Kosher Salt
• 20 g Sugar
• 2 g Black Pepper
• 5 g Paprika
• 5 g Spicy Paprika
• 5 g Smoked Paprika
• 4 g Garlic Powder
• 3 g Onion Powder
• 1.3 Bay Leaf

Process Details:

• 1/14/23
• Mixed the spices

• Covered the Meat with the spices

• Moved the meet to a Food Saver bag and moved this to the fridge to cure for a week.  Moved all the spices that hadn't stuck to the meat into the bag as well as they will need to be allowed to absorb into the meat for the cure

• 1/22/23:
• Removed the cured meat from the bag (removed the bay leaves but left the other spices)

• Wrapped it in the steak wraps and then a netting

• Weighed the meat as 1324 g (so, we'll be shooting for 860 g as our final weight)
• Moved the meat to a wrack in the fridge for drying

• 1/29/23 - Weighed the meat after 1 week at 1162 g.  It has firmed up a fair amount already
• 2/12/23 - Weighed the meat as 1031 g (lost 22% against the target of 35% so far)
• 2/19/23 - It now weighs 995g
• 2/26/23 - It is down to 956g.  The outside layer that is face up after the week is pretty dry and hard.  This seems to even out a bit after being on the down side for a week..

• 3/5/23 - Now down to 928g
• 3/12/23 - It is now 910g
• 3/19/23 - Measured the weight as 875g this morning and flipped it again
• 3/26/23 - The meat is down to 860g - Done! 
• The dry cure wrap has dried out a lot:

• I had to run it under cold water to soften up the wrap such that it could be scraped off (it turns into a gelatin)

• Cut it in half.  It looks really nice.  The bottom is pretty dry which isn't unexpected given that it aged in the fridge

• Sliced it on a home meat slicer my mother had from 30 years ago.  It does a really good paper thin slice.  I'll review the flavor later but it is a really nice flavor - the paprika smoky and spicy flavors really compliment the meat

• I decided to vacuum seal it and let it mature in the fridge to maybe reduce the dry ring a bit