Sam Adams, Mighty Oak Ale

I love the pending change of the seasons, as it invariably means new seasonal beers.  Enter Samuel Adams Mighty Oak Ale.

I have to admit, I really wanted to love this beer.  In the end though, we parted as friends with the hope to get together in a couple weeks.  Not exactly the fireworks I had expected.

Everything started off great, too.  The beer poured a beautiful ruby red color and was topped with a small head.  The nose hinted of vanilla.  My first taste was more vanilla, malt and an oaky woody finish which really stuck to my lips. The beer had a rather thin mouthfeel and also an interesting sourish cherry note, which I couldn't completely place.

The last note to myself was "not bad, but not great".  I would like to revisit Mighty Oak again in the future.  Preferably in a couple weeks because, you know, he promised.

NB: Samuel Adams provided Mighty Oak Ale for me to review.  Also, for all of you arborists out there, I am well aware the tree above is a Maple, and not an Oak.  I've cleaned enough of its leaves out of my gutter to know.

Brew Day: Jambalaya Edition

I believe we can carve this in stone.  Winter days make for better Brew Days.  Last week we ran a rarely held Sunday Brew Day.  Rare, because Monday means back to work.  Successful, because the Society continues to grow.

So much happened on Sunday, I need to break it up into parts.

Jambalaya

The newest member of the society is my neighbor and good friend, Bryan.  Bryan and his brother Brad, are half of the band Brothers in Arms, an incredible rock band with a long local history.  Outside of Bryan's musical talents, he also has a love of great food and beer which naturally led to his foray into brewing the last couple of months.  He followed the Dave school of brewing.  Watch everyone else, figure out what works and then jump in with both feet.  So, after attending the last two brew days, Bryan was determined to not only brew again, but add something to the daily menu.  He did so in a big way, too, with his jambalaya.

When most of us take food to a brew day, it involves aluminum foil and tupperware. When Bryan does it, it involves a cast iron pot large enough to hold a small child and a burner with enough BTUs to heat a hot tub.  Thankfully, his transit was short.  It's as heavy as it looks.

Our Brew Day food prep started a whole day before.  Brian swung by and we both went about cutting up onion, celery and green peppers.

Actually, Bryan did the most cutting.  I probably took more pictures.  No surprise there.

Thanks to the magic of gallon ziplock bags, everything was ready for the big day…which we will fast forward to.

When Bryan fired up his burner, I wasn't worried about carbon monoxide, I was worried about oxygen depletion.  Even with Dave & Drew's burners, this was the largest we had seen in action.  Fortunately, warmish January weather meant an open door, plenty of O2 and not some weird mass death scene our wives would have to stumble on later…and explain.

Bryan works his jambalaya by touch, so with his permission, I'm going to work in what he did, keeping in mind that it's scalable and I'm giving ingredients by the gallon bag.

First, he fried a pound of bacon.

From there, he added the bags of onion, green pepper and celery and allowed them to sweat.

Next, he added in several pounds of andouille sausage and chicken.  Both had been previously grilled.  After the mix cooked, he added chicken broth, a bay leaf, cajun spices, salt and pepper.

When you are cooking this much food in this big a pot, you need an oar which, of course, Bryan had.

I think this is the first time we ate so well and early at a Brew Day. The jambalaya was incredible and made the perfect base layer for a long day of brewing.  For the record, it also made great parting gifts and leftovers.  In short, it was great.

Brewing

I started off Brew day crushing grain.  Dave and I are in to our second 50 pound bag of two row.  Thanks to our grain crusher, drill and plenty of hands, crushing grain has become cheap, fun and very fast.

I also started something early I don't normally do. Pre weighing my hop additions into plastic bags.

In the excitement of the day, at one time or another, we have all missed something.  I'm a little tired of that.  Although Brew Days are incredibly social, they are also Brew Days.  Making good beer takes a long time.  Which is why I'm going to do everything I can from here on out to "automate" the process.   This, as I informed everyone, also includes stapling my recipe to the Brew Cart.  I'm brewing an Imperial IPA and if you click the link through, you can see the recipe in detail.

I based this batch on several different factors including, most importantly, grain and hops I had on hand.  The other factors?  A high ABV and a lot of hops.  My needs are usually simple.

My end plan is to dry hop with the cones from my first hop harvest last fall.  To track everything, I continue to use my iOS app iBrewmaster to log my work.  It's pretty slick and the developers continuous improvements keep me a dedicated user.  Using the app, I can even print out my recipes, like I've done above.  I never thought I would have a use for air print from my phone, but I have.

With most of us brewing IPAs, Drew bucked the trend by bringing in gallons of local honey to brew mead.  He has " a source", as I perish to think what that amount of actually costs.

This is the second mead Drew has brewed.  During the process, he found it a challenge to get the honey into his pot while dodging all of the fingers dropping into the buckets striving for a taste.  The honey was amazingly good.  I'm sure the mead will be even better.

You would think the jambalaya would be enough to eat.  Nope, that's only our "breakfast".  We continued on with Drew's bacon wrapped poppers.

And of course, brisket.

By the end of the day, there is nothing more satisfying than stuffing pieces of brisket in your mouth while preparing to ferment and clean up.

It was an incredibly successful day.  Well, mostly successful.  Brian…the Brian with an "i" and supplier of the brisket, got a bit too close to the propane heater.

Also, we somehow polished off a fair amount of beer.  Brew Days are for sharing, thus  the large presence of 22 ounce bottles.

Propane burners, CO Detector, hats, jambalaya, beer, fermenters…Brew Day.

There's an Alpine Spring in my Kitchen

No, I'm not treading water, but I am enjoying the newest spring seasonal beer from Samuel Adams.  Appearing just about everywhere, is Alpine Spring, Sam Adams' new seasonal offering and wow, what an offering it is.  I don't know if it's the influx of all of those big winter beers I've been enjoying, but the crisp citrusy character of Alpine Springs is incredibly drinkable.  It is hitting my palate just right and, at just the right time.

Alpine Springs pours with a huge head and a slightly spicy nose.  For a lager, it has a wonderfully full mouthfeel with bits of banana, orange and breadiness (bread-like-ness if breadiness isn't actually a word).  It is lightly hopped with Tettnang hops and when it slides down the hatch, the taste, oddly enough, abruptly ends.  There isn't really a lingering finish.  It's kind of like when Marshall, Will & Holly went over the falls.  That was it.  They were gone.  Now unlike Land of the Lost, I actually was immediately ready for another Alpine Spring.

This one caught me off guard.  I wasn't prepared to like it as much as I did.  In the past, I welcomed their Spring Ale as a move towards something lighter, but this, this is something I'm opening the door for ahead of time.  This is great.

Note: Although Samuel Adams graciously provided me with a sample of Alpine Spring, the thoughts here are free from influence and even if Sam Adams wasn't nice enough to hook me up, I would have bought Alpine Spring anyway and posted the same thing.

What's on the Grill #237 Grilled Steak Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

Now when I type "Grilled Steak Salad", I mean grilled steak AND grilled salad.  This is, after all, a one grill meal.

While grilling a steak is natural and prudent, lettuce is a little different.  The heat of the grill changes taste and texture and really, isn't that different than throwing greens in a skillet.  The grill adds something completely different and having previously tackled romaine and cabbage I, for one, am hooked.  Hard to believe this is an endorsement for grilled lettuce from a guy who grew up not even liking lettuce!

Grilled Steak Salad w/Buttermilk Dressing
Adapted from Weber's On the Grill app

2 Steaks - I went with strip, but anything will work
1 head of Romaine Lettuce, quartered lengthwise
2 ears of corn
1 small red onion, 1/4 inch thick slices
10 grape tomatoes (again, any tomato will work)

Dressing
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
2 T finely chopped fresh basil leaves
1 T finely chopped fresh tarragon leaves
1 T finely chopped fresh dill
1/2 t Dijon mustard
1 garlic clove, peeled
olive oil
salt and pepper

For the buttermilk dressing, add the ingredients into a food processor and blend.

The goal, as with any meal, is to have all of your cooked food ready at the same time.  When fixing a "one grill" meal, this can get a little dicey, especially when cooking incredibly different types of food.  For instance, a smorgasbord of beef is as easy as bullseying womp rats in your T-16 back home, whereas grilling a mixture of beef, leafy vegetable and grain, is not.

Sometimes to do this right, it means having two grills, or at least one grill with enough space to work a 3 zone fire (Direct High, Direct Medium and Indirect).  For this recipe, I sort of "cheated" by deploying my island grillstone.  It allowed me to go indirect, while at the same time keeping my tomatoes and onions on the grill and not down the grate.

Brush all of the vegetables with olive oil and then grill the corn, onions and tomatoes over direct medium heat.  (Depending on the size of tomatoes used, a "grill topper" may be needed.) After several minutes, the tomatoes will be done first.  Move them to indirect heat.  Flip the onions and then, after a few more minutes, move them to indirect heat.

I was cooking steaks to two different internal temperatures: well done (not mine) and medium rare (mine).  This meant starting one steak early over direct high and then moving to indirect to finish out.

At this point the corn was still on. With the kernels blackening, move the corn to indirect to finish cooking.  Next, add the medium rare steak.

With the medium rare steak about done, move it to indirect medium and then added the romaine.

The romaine should only be grilled a few minutes total; typically until it starts to slightly char and wilt.  Once it does, remove everything form the grill.  Chop the romaine and discard the core.  Chop the onions.  Remove the corn kernels from the cob and corral the tomatoes.

Fill a plate with the romaine, onions, tomatoes, corn and finally the steak, sliced.  Serve the dressing on the side.  It's not right to immediately cover up great looking red meat.

This was so enjoyable, I made it two nights in a row.  I guess I would consider it a sucess.  Happy green leafy vegetable grilling.