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Beer and Food Tuesday: Nua Pad Prik with Miranda

August 14, 2012 9:26 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Sometimes, Beer and Food Tuesday just falls in your lap and today was one of those days. I got a call from Troy Burtch at Great Lakes Brewery this morning. Shockingly, he wasn’t called to yell at me for the outcome of the Ontario Brewmaster’s Cup. I would have been yelling, but Troy is a laid back fellow who understands that sometimes the rules just don’t work in your favour.

The reason they didn’t work in the favour of Great Lakes is that, while they make many beers that range towards exceptional, they’re seasonal. One of the best things they’re doing this year is taking advantage of the R&D that Mike Lackey has been doing over the last couple of years and releasing fairly large batches of what would have been pilot brews. The first one was the Robust Porter, which was well received by just about everyone. Hell, even Alan liked it and he’s a hard man to impress.

The one that they’ve got out now is the one that I’m excited about. It’s the 25th Anniversary Belgian Saison. Lackey has been working on a number of Saison variants for a while, and I’ve been following the process relatively loosely from point when he started experimenting with fermentation temperatures. It was a while back. Probably a year and a half. I figure that’s no time at all in craft brewing. This is how good Lackey’s experiments have been: Other people have followed suit. There are a bunch of breweries experimenting with this now. Nevermind whether it’s commercially viable on the large scale; they like it and they’re doing it. That’s awesome.

Troy Burtch wants me to tell you some things: It’s going into the LCBO real soon. There are about 3000 bottles total. It’s going to cost $9.95. It will be in bars starting later this week. There is no wax on the bottle this time around because the folks at Great Lakes figure people will want to dive in and drink the thing. You could probably age it, but why would you? It’s a refreshing summer beverage.

Troy Burtch does not want me to tell you some things: His street name is “T-Bu”, even though that’s not very forceful. He is thought of as the gentlest and most respectful hustla.

THE RECIPE:

If you’re hungry when you’re making a stir fry, it’s hard not to snack on the veggies as you wait for your electric element to reheat the faux wok.

The release for the Saison suggests that you pair this beer with seafood. I can tell you that this is something that definitely works. It’s an extremely complimentary pairing that reinforces the sweetness in shellfish and lobster. It’s actually strong enough to stand up to Salmon because of the peppery character of the Dupont yeast strain they’re using and the spices they’ve added. The body is light and relatively highly carbonated.

The release also says, “or go in a different direction with… Thai Food.” Groovy.

THE RUNDOWN:

I’ve been wanting to experiment with Thai Food and beer. To be honest with you, people send me beer. Sometimes, it’s the good stuff. Sometimes, I nod politely. Either way, I’m generally happy about it. Thai Food, people only bring me if I dial up Just-Eat.ca in Google Chrome. Learning how to cook Thai Food with a sort of faux wok on an electric element is, I can guarantee you, some foodie’s version of hell. Sisyphus ain’t got nothing on a faux wok on an electric element. Your temperature control is basically zilch.

Not bad for a faux wokkin’ mook.

I’m not necessarily that worried about the technique. The flavours are important here. I suspect they’d be even better if you had the proper equipment.

Nua Pad Prik is, as far as I can tell, something no one agrees on. The only concrete elements seem to be Beef, chilies and bell peppers. The sauce changes from recipe to recipe, but I’ve used this one, partially because I remember the episode of the show the blog is talking about and I’m thinking about going to see Jamie Oliver at Massey Hall. He is a well intentioned man with a silly accent.

The recipe calls for fish sauce, oyster sauce and chilies. I had those kicking around. I was lucky enough to discover that there’s a Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays near my apartment. I went over and got some beautiful bell peppers, garlic, onion and some grass-fed round steak. Also, I got some Oaxacan Coffee from Chocosol. 12 bucks a pound. I love beer, but without coffee I start freaking out.

I’ve been playing with the recipe with various proteins over the last week, and I’ve left out the cornflour, which is really only there to act as a thickening agent to coat the beef. I’ve changed it so that the garlic goes in the marinade for the beef. The farmer’s market garlic was incredibly pungent, so I liked that component at that point. I had the beef sliced thinly enough that the garlic would never have had the chance to char. Also, I substituted half of the chilies for Sambal Oelek. It’s hard to predict how hot a chili will be. Sambal never changes.

Nua Prik with Miranda, which I think was the gist of the beer’s original name anyway.

THE VERDICT:

This is pretty complex, when you take the component ingredients into account. The beef, probably because I’ve used good beef, is relatively mildly flavoured. The bell peppers shine through with a sweetness and a slight bitterness of their own. The difficulty is that because it’s a stir fry and my julienning skills are … uh… rusticated… it’s hard to get a composed mouthful that brings everything into focus.

What you end up with, then, are the impressions of two separate pairings that are reinforced by the sauce. Both the peppers and the beef seem to take on the fermented tang and salt of the fish sauce and the subtle sweetness of the oyster sauce. This means that as an underpinning you’ve got that sort of shellfish sweetness pairing that they actually suggested 500 words ago. If you get a bite with enough bell pepper, it’s a race between the sweetness of the saison and the sweetness of the pepper on to the palate, and as those cascade (or rather Columbus, I suspect) into the mid-palate, you get the pop of citrus from whatever hop is being used here before a mild spice finish. If you get a bite with the beef, which seems to take on the more of the heat, you end up with a really exaggerated sensation of carbonation, but instead of the hops it’s an exaggerated kick of coriander and white pepper with a sort of lifting sensation on the swallow.

This is a really interesting pairing, food wise, and probably worth trying. You either need better knife skills than I’ve got or the willingness to accept that this one is a thinker. The different textures combine to make it even more interesting. Plus, the beer seems to relieve the heat completely.

WHAT DID WE LEARN:

1)      Even if you’re surprised by the effect of a pairing, that’s going to be a useful lesson down the road. Plus, at least you ate. There are Children starving in Freedonia.

2)      My knife skills, while not bad, ain’t chef level and I should probably take that into account.

3)      “T-Bu” is indeed the gentlest hustla.

Posted in: Beer and Food ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Toronto Beer Week 2011 – Day One – Drinking Sumac, Eating Crow

September 17, 2011 10:28 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Competition tends to bring out the worst in people and for all that brewers exist in a sort of brotherhood (siblinghood, so as not to exclude the brewsters) most of the time, there is a significant amount of smacktalk that surrounds events where there’s going to be a significant amount of friendly rivalry. One such event was Barrel Bragging Rights at the Monk’s Table last night.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, Mike Warner from A Year of Beer organized an event whereby a number of local bloggers and beer writers were tasked with teaming up with a brewer in order to design and brew a beer to be served on cask at the Monk’s Table. It’s a departure for the midtown pub in that they mostly serve European imports. I wouldn’t want to say that this was the first time that they’d had Ontario beers on offer, but if it isn’t it’s a near run thing.

The thing is that objectively, I’m not sure that the event should have worked. Not a lot of beer writers and bloggers have experience brewing anything for public consumption. Oh sure, we’re pretty in touch with the brewing scene in Ontario and a lot of us have pretty good ideas, but the realization of those ideas is usually beyond us. Essentially, most of the success can be attributed to the brewers we teamed up with, who patiently listened to our ideas and then explained why they wouldn’t work. Originally, I had suggested attempting to define a new style of beer by attempting a White IPA. I think the only people that had tried that before were Deschutes and Boulevard, who had collaborated.

Between us, we had managed to come up with some beers that should probably have been untenable. Chris Grimley and Mike Lackey had a sort of peppered Saison. Matt Caldwell and Andrew Bartle ended up brewing something between a brown ale and a porter that involved date sugar and a lot of brown malt. Josh Rubin from The Star made an Imperial Milk Stout and used the two gallon wooden barrel to his advantage by soaking the insides with brandy (I think he’s the only one of us with an expense account).

In the days leading up to the event, there was a lot of infighting on twitter. I, for one, went into full on WWE promo mode, stealing heavily from The Rock. I may have even used the phrase “roody-poo candy-ass” when describing Chris Grimley. I even went so far as to troll Josh Rubin by sampling his beer at the brewery before it was casked. I took a picture of his beer and tweeted “This is your beer.” I took a picture of me drinking his beer and tweeted “This is me drinking your beer.”

By the time we arrived at the Monk’s Table, we had all pretty much given up on that line of spirited japery. There was a lot of nervous energy, mostly because some of us hadn’t tasted the beers that we designed yet. We didn’t know how they would be received. Around 4:30, the terrible thought occurred to us “what if no one shows up?” Ideally, the upside of having all of the beer writers in the city involved in an event is that there will, at the very least, be a lot of publicity for the event. If no one showed up, it would mean that our efforts were really some sort of recursive loop and we were the only audience for our writing. We can be a little backslappy and self congratulatory, but that would actually confirm our worst fears.

It turns out we needn’t have worried. By 5:00, there was a lineup of about 40 and people just kept coming. I’ve never seen the Monk’s Table that busy. If pressed, I’d be forced to admit that I’ve never seen ANY pub that busy. Judging by the looks on the faces of the staff, I would bet that they hadn’t either. I don’t know what the capacity is for the location, but we were pushing the limit. This reinforces my opinion that Adam Grant is an extraordinarily shrewd pub owner.

Here’s the thing: I was prepared for all of the beer to be at least drinkable. We were working with talented brewers and they weren’t going to let us down. Using oak barrels added a bit of difficulty, but realistically, wasn’t that big a problem even if people hadn’t used them before. After all, we’ve got google.

I wasn’t prepared for the majority of the beers to be excellent, though. It was genuinely surprising. Aside from one entry that was a little wine-y, I would have ordered all of them again. For me the standout was the Black Creek/Dick Snyder collaboration IPA, which was as good as any IPA I’ve tried in Ontario. It was balanced, nuanced, delicious. I’m not sure I’ve ever met Dick Snyder, but congratulations are due; also to Ed, the brewer. I got the dregs of the cask on that one, and felt absolutely no regret in preventing other people from trying it.

The winner was Pantalon Saison brewed by Chris Grimley and Mike Lackey, and it probably should have been, given that it was a public judging. Not only was it of really high quality, but it had a small advantage in that there was enough of it that more people got to try it and probably derived more votes because of that. It likely would have won even without that advantage. I must therefore retract my assertion that Chris Grimley is a “roody-poo candy-ass.” His status is hereby upgraded to “Jabroni.”

The competition does make me wonder. Since beer writers tend to have some pretty good ideas, and local brewers are clearly able to run with them, I don’t see why this kind of thing shouldn’t happen more often. This time we ended up with Sumac, date sugar, and brandy as ingredients. I’m not sure that would have happened organically without the competition. It seems like it could be a good ongoing resource.

I tied for third place with Josh Rubin, whose beer was great, if heavy for the season. This means that the eternal battle between The Toronto Star and The Toronto Sun continues.

Next time, Rubin. Next time.

Posted in: Toronto Beer Week ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

Beer Launches and The Christmas Ramble

December 20, 2010 12:56 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

While there’s some question about whether this is the most wonderful time of the year (much as there is debate about April being the cruelest month; I’ll have you know August once stole my bike) it is certainly one of the busiest socially and it is for this reason that I haven’t been doing a great deal of blogging lately. Ix-nay on the og-blay. It’s like Satchel Paige says: The social ramble ain’t restful. I’ve been all over the place the last couple of weeks, attending beer events and launches and I think there may have been a jamboree in there somewhere. It could have been a hootenanny. My memory of it is slightly hazy.

It’s for this reason that I’m going to update on a whole bunch of topics at once, to try and get them out of the way so that we can all get off the internet and have a holly jolly Christmas and a great deal of Turkey. Unless you’re opening presents via skype, I’m told that taking your netbook with you to the tree is bad form exemplified. You might start a flamewar if you get socks from Great Aunt Gladys.

Let’s do this thing.

GREAT LAKES/ST.JOHN’S WORT LAZARUS BREAKFAST STOUT

This got launched at Project Xmas down at Great Lakes on December 10th. The cask version did extremely well and it ran out in what I think was just slightly over two hours. I have got to tell you that all of the whacking stuff with a mallet that my junior sergeant-general correspondent royale did really paid off. We were all worried about having used so much Ancho Chili in the recipe, but it just sort of lingers a little at the back of the palate. The coffee flavour really came through up front and in the bottled version there’s a nice cocoa note right in the middle.

There were some bottles for sale, but there weren’t many of them, so they were gone within 48 hours. Mike Lackey, Great Lakes beer guru and guy who’s crazy enough to let me try brewing stuff, says we’re going to take another run at it, so you can expect to see that back on the shelves in the next couple of months. It may even make it out of the brewery in cask form. Look out, beer nerds!

It used to be that when I’d see Mike out at the pub, he would be standing in the corner with a pint of whatever it was that he brewed and he wouldn’t be saying a whole lot. I used to think he was just taciturn, but now I realize that he was thinking about what had gone into the recipe and made that beer what it was. I experienced the same thing at the Great Lakes launch. There was about 20 minutes of relative silence and instropective blinking and stammering and pride. My recipe did better than it had any right to, and I’m going to credit that mostly to Mike Lackey. Thanks, man!

ST. JOHN’S WORT CHRISTMAS ALE

I finally got to try this beer on December 17th and we’re currently in the process of getting it to all of the people who helped brew it. As you may recall, Chris Schryer, Matt Caldwell and Andrew Bartle helped to actually brew the thing, although I came up with the recipe. While we were all extraordinarily manly and competent and not at all confused or worried looking, Andrew Bartle was pretty much the lynchpin that prevented us from scalding ourselves with boiling wort. Credit where it’s due: Because of Bartle none of us have third degree burns in unpleasant areas.

As you’ll recall, it’s sort of a Winter Warmer/IPA. Promash is telling me that it’s supposed to weigh in at about 77 IBU, but that bitterness really only comes through on the tail of the thing. Up front it’s mostly cinnamon and there’s a touch of molasses, which is just the sort of thing that you want at this time of year. I stopped in briefly at the Amsterdam brewery where it has been fermenting and we opened a couple of bottles for sampling purposes. Again, better than it has any right to be and you’ll be pleased to know that even after fermentation is seems to have retained its aroma and ability to waft female people along like a cartoon pie on a windowsill.

PUSHING MY LUCK

My last three beers have done great! The IPA was third best in the Toronto Beer Week Competition. The Christmas Ale is better than it has any right to be. The Lazarus Breakfast Stout is apparently not just going to be a one off; it’s actually going to be produced again with a few small tweaks.

Where do I go from here, you may ask? I’m still convinced of the worth of gambling big. Maybe the next one will be a hoppy American Style Old Ale. Maybe it’ll be a Biere de Garde or Saison with indigenous North American fruit. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll attempt to answer the question “Why the heck aren’t people doing any really big lagers with American style hops?” Only time will tell.

All I know is that there’s a heck of a lot of actual research going on and not a great deal of writing, which is slightly worrying since I know just enough about the subjects I’m researching to screw up incredibly badly when it comes to execution.

A  WORD ON LAUNCHES IN GENERAL

My Lazarus Breakfast Stout wasn’t the only one that launched last week. Fuller’s Bengal Lancer hit town in a relatively spectacular way at the Monk’s Table and Chris Schryer and I spent rather a lot of time at the launch. The Bengal Lancer is very tasty if you like an English style beer. It’s somewhere between a Bitter and an IPA. It’s got some earthy and coppery notes and a smooth mouthfeel and reminds me very much of beers that purported to be IPAs in Ontario just over a decade ago. It really is rather good.

You should go to the Monk’s Table, but I’m not sure the Bengal Lancer is the reason you should do that. Let me tell you about Lester. Lester is the Guatemalan ubermensch behind the kitchen over there. Everything is made from scratch, all the time. The Artichoke dip actually has bits in it that are recognizable as Artichoke. The Buffalo Shrimp have actually been freshly breaded. The Baked Wings manage to retain their texture and have just the right amount of heat. The Apple Cobbler is maybe the best Apple Cobbler I’ve ever tasted and I usually hate dessert.

Adam Grant, the owner, is doing some really good things with beer. He’s bringing in rare bottles and interesting things on tap, but the thing that convinced me that the Monk’s Table is a destination is that they do exactly what people claim to want to do: quality food. You’ll notice I leave out “pub” there. I think that’s a qualifying adjective that causes people to lower their expectations. In this case the menu fits the concept and it works spectacularly without any qualifiers.

FINALLY

The Canadian Food Blog Awards are up and still running their nominations today and tomorrow. Now far be it from me to attempt to wheedle nominations out of my readership, but I’ll just remind you that it’s Christmas and you haven’t gotten me anything.

Wink-wink. Nudge-nudge. Say no more.

Posted in: Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

So You Want To Be a Brewer – Great Lakes/St. John’s Wort Lazarus Breakfast Stout

November 18, 2010 12:33 pm ⋅ 6 Comments ⋅

(Astute readers will have noticed that this blog has taken a heavy turn towards actually brewing beer recently. I promise you that I will return shortly to making fun of the other facets of the brewing industry and beer drinking generally. There will also be some input from a couple of correspondents in the next few weeks, so be sure to stay tuned for coverage of Houston and Vancouver.)

Mike demonstrates the top-secret fermenter draining process.

On the heels of the Amsterdam brew day, I was invited by Mike Lackey (ed. note: Laskey) to try my hand at brewing on the pilot system at Great Lakes. Clearly this was not an opportunity to be passed up, but it came with a couple of significant realizations. The Christmas Ale isn’t really for public consumption. If it doesn’t pass muster, I can just sweep it under the rug saying that everyone who helped brew got some of it and it was a just reward for a day spent hard at work.

The beer for Great Lakes was actually for December’s Project X (unless it is so bad that it’s unusable). This means public consumption: An actual stage to see whether people like it or not. And given that it’s a Project X brew, it might even show up on ratebeer; a fact I realized while idly stirring the wort. Add to that the fact that my brewing output tripled in two weeks. This is a trend which, if it continues unchecked, seems to suggest that by early 2016 I will be brewing all of the beer in the world.

So: some mild cause for alarm.

I have essentially adopted the following principle: Plan big. If you can’t manage to be a great success, you will have at least been a spectacular warning. Think of Guy Fawkes. He’s famous in song and story for not quite managing to blow up the houses of parliament, but he has a day named after him. Think of John Brown. Didn’t quite manage to take Harper’s Ferry, but he’s got the Battle Hymn of the Republic. History is littered with examples of splendid attempts that resulted in failure: The Titanic. The Ford Edsel. Betamax.

With this in mind, I designed a beer based around two things that I really like. Breakfast Stout and Oaxacan Mole sauce. Great Lakes, it has to be said, has produced John Bowden’s Morning Glory Breakfast Stout on several occasions and it’s always been something that I’ve enjoyed. Last week, I got to

The Great Lakes Pilot System

try Founders Breakfast Stout for the first time. I liked it so much, that I decided a modified Breakfast Stout was the thing to try, but with a couple of additions. Most Breakfast Stouts according to my research have chocolate and coffee flavour and some oats for body. To me, this sounded like it could be a Mole sauce if you added some chili and some spices. I decided on Ancho chili since it’s not particularly hot and lends an interesting sweetness and some cinnamon for a little kick. It sounds farfetched, but I’ve been putting cocoa powder in my chili at home for some months now, and I know it’s a flavour range that works.

BEHOLD!

Besides, with Mike Lackey guiding me through the process, how could it fail? (Disclaimer: if it fails, please do not blame Mike Lackey. I’m the maniac with the recipe.)

I rolled in to Great Lakes around 10:00 on Tuesday with my Senior Superlative Correspondent Deluxe, Catherine Strotmann and got down to business.  The Great Lakes pilot system is a lot more advanced than the equipment that I had previously used and also a great deal bigger, but I found it interesting to note that producing 15 gallons of beer is not actually any more time consuming than a 5 gallon batch. You just have to be prepared to lift buckets of water a great deal higher in order to get them into the mash/lauter tun. It was also gratifying to note that the milling system was identical to the one we borrowed during the Amsterdam brew day, except that it had the addition of a power drill for ease of use. You don’t want to mill 42 pounds of grain by hand unless you have no alternative. It would be time consuming and eventually give you brewer’s elbow.

Chili, cocoa, cinnamon and hops. Breakfast of Champions.

Unlike the Amsterdam brew day, we took notes. Perhaps most importantly, we had to note the substitutions that went into the recipe. Instead of all pale ale malt for the grain bill, we had to substitute in some Maris Otter. There wasn’t any Biscuit malt, so we eschewed that in favour of Coffee Malt since the Maris Otter would give it a small amount of biscuit flavour. There were no Willamette hops on hand, so we substituted Styrian Goldings. There wasn’t any Columbus on hand so we used Chinook. I couldn’t find any Star Anise, so we did without. Probably just as well.

We mashed in at a relatively low 151-2 degrees. It would have been higher, but the equalization of temperature between

Clarity is important

the 42 pounds of grain at room temperature and the water used brought it down a little bit. We adjusted temperature as we went and everything went along pretty well.  The nice thing about having proper brewing equipment is that the steps that didn’t make sense before suddenly did. For instance,  prior to sparging, there’s a clarifying step where you’re trying to get the grain bed to settle. Last time we did this with tinfoil and a pitcher which was, as the kids say, pretty ghetto. At Great Lakes, they have an attachment for the Mash/Lauter Tun that allows you to just hook up a hose to a pump stand back.

The boil went along nicely, and we had our hop additions premeasured on a side table. We somehow ended up using an extra ounce of bittering hops, but I think the IBU measurement will still be under 70 (which is slightly higher than Founder’s Breakfast Stout, but not by a whole lot.) The best part of the brew day for me was the first opportunity to mix the Ancho chili and Styrian Goldings together. They both have a slightly earthy flavour that I think should complement each other in the final product. It’s always nice to find out that you weren’t so very far off base with your assumptions.

Catherine Strotmann: Destroyer of Coffee

In coffee that would be a "crema." I don't know what it is in beer.

Despite having some coffee malt in the wort, we decided that since we couldn’t add coffee directly to the secondary fermenter due to the likelihood of plugging the system up, that we would instead add it to the whirlpool. The whirlpool was a new step for me, and one that I was unaware of. It essentially helps to clarify the wort by separating the trub and hops from it. It also cools down the wort somewhat after the boil. By waiting until the wort was at a lower temperature and then adding the coffee as it cooled, it not only removed the likelihood of acidity, but also ensured a dark roast finish which should be really nice. Think of it like a giant French press that makes beer. Catherine was given the job of grinding the coffee. If you work for me, you better be able to swing a hammer.

I think that this is going to be good, at least I hope that it’s going to be good. I don’t think the chili will be overpowering (2oz in a 15 gallon boil should be gentle). I think that it will probably come out around 7%. The important thing to remember here is that I’m not insanely overconfident about this project. I never claimed to be some kind of zymurgical messiah. In fact, I’ll be content if I don’t look like a moron in front of the beer nerds and if the recipe turns out to be viable.

It’s sitting there at Great Lakes, bubbling away. Now we play the waiting game.

Posted in: Ongoing Projects ⋅ Tagged: , , ,