I’m going to be in Austin next week for South by Southwest (the nerdy portion), and was want tocheck out the local brewing scene. Any pointers from current or former Texans or experienced tourists? I am looking for Texas-brewed beers I can’t get here (hence the Shiner DQ), with excellent barbecue on the side. The comment boards are open!
I’m going to be traveling a lot in March and April, so I thought I’d brew up another batch before I go. Since the majority of my travel is back to the Midwest for weddings (Iowa and Minnesota), it seemed appropriate I brew a Farmhouse-style ale, also known as Saison. I browsed the internets in search of a recipe, and stumbled upon this one, which seems almost a little too serendipitous: “Bridget’s (Love Potion) Saison,” apparently named for Brigitte Bardot. With the “B___ S____” name already in place and secondary love theme, I think it’s only appropriate I take some of this “love potion” with me to the weddings. Hopefully the Trappist yeast will work its magic quickly.
Ingredients I used as follows:
8 oz. Belgian Caravienne Malted Barley
4. oz. Belgian Aromatic Malted Barley
6 lbs. Light DME
1.5 oz. Domestic Golding (boiling)
1 tsp. Irish Moss
1 lb. Candi Sugar
1 oz. Domestic Sterling/Saaz (aroma)
1 oz. Domestic Sterling/Saaz (finishing)
.5 oz. Dried Curacao Orange Peel
1 oz. Coriander Seeds
Wyeast 3797 Trappist Ale Smack Pack
O.G.: 1.064 @ 72 degrees F.
We at BS Brewing firmly believe no animal is worth cooking unless it’s been injected with at least a gallon of tasty brine (post-mortem, when possible). Selden agreed to make the brine for our hog (sour oranges, garlic, blah blah blah) ahead of time, since he was going to miss the actual pig-prep on Saturday. In terms of comparative manliness, this process barely warrants the single picture above. Selden, however, redeems himself later…
I can’t explain exactly how the American taxpayers provided these, but trust me, they did. Totally necessary, by the way, for pig prep, unless you grew up in the Appalachain Mountains raised by your mother/sister, in which case you’re used to stuff like this.
Oh, hey, speak of the devil.
Grabbing this cold, dead hog by the arms ‘n legs and hauling it out of a cramped cooler was very Tommy DeVito. “Hey, what do you like, the leg or the wing, Henry?”
Selden was a little surprised that they hadn’t taken anything out of this bad boy, not its eyes, not its tongue, not its brain, and most disturbing, not its teeth. Keep in mind the pig’s teeth aren’t inherently that bad, but it’s hard to give a good smile for the camera when your lower jaw is in two pieces.
Something warmed deep in my heart as I stood over Mr. Pig and realized that while this was the first animal flayed in half in my backyard, if all went well, it wouldn’t be the last. I looked at Hay and Selden and just smiled, proud of my ability not to say things out loud.
While there might be easier ways to weigh out 9 pounds of charcoal from a 22-pound bag, Selden insisted on the hold-the-bag-and-weigh-yourself method just because it would look dumber in pictures later…
…and here we are, proving him right. Actually, this method (combined with Selden’s ability to eyeball charcoal mass) worked very well, and we were never off by more than half a pound. Considering we ended up throwing an extra 10 pounds on by the end of the night, we probably didn’t need to be this precise, but we didn’t know that.
Selden made a horribly off-color joke as we were standing and looking at these charcoal towers. Hay and I stared at him, to which he said, “What? Too soon?” I’ll give you three guesses as to the nature of the joke, and the first two don’t count.
But again, Selden redeems himself by bringing his home-kegging system and accompanying homebrew. The beer is absolutely fantastic, the best homebrew I’ve ever had. I can say that because I had zero part in the brewing process, it was all them other boys. One of my high school friends and I were still talking about this beer a week later.
The pig’s been cooking for precisely 3 hours at this point, during which span we’ve been forbidden (by bold red lettering on the Caja China
The moment of truth. The guests are seeing the pig for the first time.
Uh, let’s just say, mixed emotions. The color’s not quite like the website. The pig in that one certainly didn’t have unhealthy-looking pools of liquid in its ribcage. But it’s real life, so we figure, let’s turn ‘er over and maybe the skin on that side will have the color we’re looking for. Note also that the Caja China
You remember the pictures of the pig raw? Looks no different now, underneath. It’s wetter, and maybe a little warm, but this is not what we were hoping for. 3 hours? It looks like it’s been in for 15 minutes. Is this why they didn’t want us to look at it ahead of time? Is this a sick joke? Who would taunt a man with misleading meat preparation? It’s just wrong. The others remain confident, but I am concerned.
The instructions say to score the skin on the back to promote maximum crispiness. Look on the Caja China website for a hilarious depiction of this process that makes it appear not horrifying. “Crispiness” is not on the radar at this point, and so the scoring is really a process of firm stabbing and then slicing through soft tissue. The skin and flesh are resistant to the knife, like I presume a live animal would be, and the meat (which bursts forth, Tauntaun-style, with every incision) looks fatty, gray, and raw.
Check out all the cameras. It’s kind of like when you’re walking down the street at night, and somebody’s getting stabbed to the ground in front of you, and instead of helping you just pull out your phone and take pictures.
After the pig is scored, it’s left backside-up. We replace the coals, as directed, in hopes that the heat will start hitting the actual pig soon. According to the instructions, the pig should be done in only 30 more minutes. Note the remote meat thermometer we’ve inserted into the haunches. It’s safe to say we’re not trusting the instructions on the Caja China 100% by this point.
About an hour and fifteen minutes after the last picture, and after adding an additional 10 pounds of charcoal, we feel good about checking the pig, and finally, it’s beautiful. I think rump temperature reached about 180, which we all felt would keep trichinosis at bay.
There are all kinds of funny things to say about this picture, but if you look at it for too long it makes you uncomfortable about your own mortality. Let’s get out of here.
Oh sure, NOW we’ve got friends. Where were you all when Hay and I were breaking hypodermics on this beast’s ass and rubbing salt into its brain?
I know you’re drooling. I am too. Isn’t that gorgeous?
You can see how the right side of the pig is starting to disappear. We had two guys armed with steak knives and long forks who were unnervingly efficient at cutting our hog into delicious pieces. Some of the meat falls away like butter, and some comes off in beautiful steaks. After two days of prep, any jitters you had about eating a totally recognizable animal complete with feet, a tail, eyes, tongue, etc., are long gone, and it no longer seems weird to reach in and grab the good pieces as they are revealed. In 20 minutes, there was nothing left but a head and some basic, unconnected bones. Total victory– we would recommend everyone give this a try if you can get a hold of the Chinese Box, because we heard a lot of unsolicited: ”Oh my god, this is the best pork I’ve ever had.” And all we did was follow the directions–though for a little longer than they said–so we thanked the pig and the Caja China
I somehow survived my 28th birthday bash at Concordia Ale House a few weeks ago, nursed to recovery by a 60 lb. pig at Dan’s Superbowl party the day after (review from Dan forthcoming). While roasting the pig, we laid waste to BS Brewing’s first IPA of 2007, brewed and gone so fast I didn’t even have time to write about it, let alone name it!
Christmas was especially kind to the brew crew this year, with a new 30-quart brewpot added, with the idea of improving our hop saturation capabilities. Doing a partial 2-3 gallon boil, I surmised we were reaching hop saturation prematurely. Dry hopping in secondary fermentation helped, but I never got to a place I felt was quite hoppy enough. Now we’re able to hop the full 5 gallons of wort during the boil, and the improvement showed in the magical disappearing IPA of Feb 4th, which I ended up dry-hopping anyway. What can I say? I’m an addict.
Because we increased the volume of boiling liquid, I was concerned about cooling the wort in a reasonable amount of time (read: before bedtime). A quick search online led me to immersion wort chillers, amazing copper coils that allow a DIY kind of homebrewer to cool 5 gallons of boiling wort to pitching temperature in under 5 minutes. I assembled a 50-foot version at Home Depot for about $60 (copper prices have skyrocked in recent months) in less than 30 minutes.
Last night, Dan came over to help christen the new equipment and replenish the IPA stores. The brew began with 1.5 pounds of organic 2-row malt, toasted to perfection in the oven at 350 degrees for just over 10 minutes. I was so enchanted by the delicious vapors emanating from the oven, I completely forgot to mill the grains! Still, the roasty malts had enough delicious mojo to give the wort a nice mahogany color after mashing for 30 minutes at 150 degrees.
We added 7 lbs. of extra light malt extract, and set burners to boil. Geting 6 gallons to a boil takes quite a bit of time on a kitchen stove, but we found a good way to pass the time.
For my birthday, Sarah’s mom was kind enough to get me a gift certificate to Belmont Station, where I picked up a menagerie of interesting beers domestic and imported. From left to right: Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine 2007, St. Rogue Red Ale Rogue, two different Bison Organic IPAs, Widmer Summit 07, Celebrator/Avery “Collaboration Not Litigation” Ale, Bridgeport’s Beertown Brown, Stone Old Guardian Barleywine, and Sierra Nevada’s India Pale Ale. Not pictured: Norway’s Nogne O Porter. Reviews for all will be forthcoming, but Dan and I decided to pass the time with the two Bison IPAs in what we’re calling a “horizontal” tasting. As in, finish 2 22 oz. bottles of 6.8% abv beer in an hour, and you will be barely vertical.
Bison has begun a very interesting, educational, and mighty delicious series of “Single Hop” IPAs. Basically, they brew the same basic recipe, but use just one varietal to hop the brew. It’s a very good way to teach your tastebuds to distinguish the unique characteristics of a particular hop.
Bison “Columbus” IPA, aka “Tomahawk” IPA (above, left)
A very coarse head, with not much foam. An almost oily surface puncuated by frequent large, rocky bubbles. A great, sweet smell with light floral notes. Mellow, very traditional IPA taste, with a little explosion of bitter hop at the end. Very quaffable and refreshing.
Bison “Summit” IPA (above, right)
Much milder flavor than the Columbus with a faintly soapy aftertaste. Very smooth, almost too much so, with faint almond notes and a very vague flavor. Wimpy, even. Contrast that fairly negative taste with its much more agressiva aromas: strong citrus and tangerine hop aromas. Very finely-grained, large head with tiny, champagne-like bubbles in quantity. The label notes onion, earth and “dank” hop resins. Pretty subtle, if you ask me, in an annoying younger sibling kind of way. I ended up mixing this sissy with its stronger brother, which made for a much better brew.
We’re not normally organic nuts at BS Brewing, but we are suckers for novelty, and when Freshops Organic’s “Pacific Gem” hop presented itself, we fell head over heels. This variety, native to New Zealand, had a faint blue cheese aroma when we opened the bag and unceremoniously chucked it into the boil for 60 minutes. We followed the first Kiwi hop with 2 more ounces of New Zealand Halletauer for the final 15 minutes, and added an Oregon twist with 2 oz. Cascade for aroma in the last 5 minutes. Once cooled, we added a little more Oregon flavor with a smack pack of Rogue’s PacMan strain. This is a veritable Kon Tiki of a beer, bringing the Pacific Islands just a little closer to Oregon. I dub thee … Bored Seaman IPA, perfect for long Pacific voyages or long Oregon winters.
O.G.: 1.054 @ 72 degrees F.