cdh

I think it is more about the amount of hopping in there than the way you got the fermentables. The Red Ale has a lot more hops than the Golden, so the hops changing with time are what you're tasting. The bitterness and hop flavor balance out and mellow over time. It shouldn't be concentrated... as a matter of fact, it should be about right. If you were losing more wort at the beginning than at the end of the runoff it will be weaker, not stronger. If you were losing evenly throughout the runoff it should be normal. If you lost the most at the end, it will be stronger. The concentration of sugar in the runoff is pretty much even during the first runoff, and even, but lesser during the second runoff. The yeast will make sure that it won't be sweet in any case.

I stopped by there recently too, and found their chocolate to spectacularly good. A deep roasty rich Belgian chocolate flavor in a unctuous soft presentation. Yummy.

Are the long grub-like things solid all the way through, or are they just encapsulated liquid? The idea of making a noodle that contains the sauce kind of effect is sort of appealing. Toss some real pasta with some en-noodled sauce and present... Any idea if that could be accomplished?

A diet of salad, gazpacho, sashimi, carpaccio, and fresh fruit doesn't sound all that hard to accommodate. Unroasted nuts don't appeal much, so I'd try to avoid them... You'd have to eat the flesh for the protein if you're avoiding things that need cooking like beans and rice. The mistake somebody could make here would be trying to fake up substitutes for cooked food. Embrace the rawness... eat the raw on its own terms. Find raw crunch in things like jicama that can be whittled down into any shape you want your crunchy things in. I don't think I could stick with something like this for more than a week or two, but it might make a nice change. Why not give it a probationary week and see? Does pasteurized milk count as raw, or cooked?

Once the fermentation is mostly done, the beer is acidic and alcoholic enough that most nasties will have a hard time getting started in there. So ordinary sanitization procedures should be enough to keep your beer safe. Oxidation is not something too worrisome either, as the beer makes a CO2 blanket over itself that protects it. The three days rule is not something you need to use every time you brew... only when you're not sure about whether the beer is done or not. After two weeks in the fermentor at ordinary room temperature, most yeasts are going to be done. Saison yeasts are a little wacky and may decide to take their time, so you need to check up on them, but they're something of an exception. I had the 3944 around because I'd planned on brewing a wit this summer, and made a batch of the Saison with it, and I know how that yeast operates, so I let it go crazy for a week, clean up after itself for a week, and then just moved the beer over into a keg. Once you gain some familiarity with how a yeast behaves, all of the sampling becomes more a confirmatory step than vital data points. If the first reading shows the final gravity where you want it after 2 weeks, you're likely to be alright. If there are still signs that fermentation is going on, more readings are probably wise. You don't want to put a beer that's not done fermenting into bottles, as it will likely overcarbonate and may blow up the bottles and make a (potentially dangerous if you're using glass) mess.

Hey- mercury makes ya crazy... maybe some people who are only halfway there might say something like that. If you're half crazy, no harm in going all the way! MMMMMmmmm mercury!

I find that the Sicilia brand squeezy limes and lemons are actually quite good for cocktail making purposes. I made the discovery about 10 years ago and when I divulged it to a friend, I got laughed at... until he tasted the drinks made with it. Not all plastic squeezy citrus is awful reconstituted stuff. This stuff is juiced by some technique that gets the oils from the rind into the juice, and that really makes the flavor of these things. The lemon is even not from concentrate. Available from Trader Joes, and at supermarkets. Usually around $1 per 4 fl oz.

Rom- Glad to hear that the carbonation is just slow, and not absent. Low temperatures do slow yeast down a good deal. What is ambient temperature for you in your beer storage facility?

Strikes me as an uninformed snob coughing up a bit of bile. Thing is, the US is a huge market, and there is room here for terrible coffee, bad tea and oaky wine, along with lots of other options which might be more to Herr Spengler's ever-so-refined tastes. Were he not so busy looking down his nose at the things he disliked, he might have observed something he would enjoy.

Congrats MSK! You've made it through everything you'd need to do if you wanted to engage in all-grain brewing. Now that you know your equipment and the technique, the mess should be more easily avoided. Dealing with the grains and hitting the mash temperature were no big deal, right? Sounds like you're using one of the White Labs yeasts... which one? I've always been partial to Wyeast, myself, but that's just because my local shop carries Wyeast's full line.

Best soup I've had lately was the snapper soup at the Piper Tavern up in Pipersville, Bucks County. Spiced right, lots of chunks of turtle in there, nice sherry to add... yummy!

What temperature are they sitting at? It is winter time down there for you, so the temp may be low enough that the yeast have gone dormant. Warm them up to at least 20C, and agitate the bottles to re-suspend the yeast. If you're impatient to try them, and have any of the first batch around, you might try blending some of flat batch 2 into fizzy batch 1 and get an idea of what it will be like.. .

As to books on grain flavors, they're not going to do the trick for you since the number of varieties of grain is huge, and the selection on the market keeps changing. Factors to consider, however are: Is the grain from a 2-row barley plant or a 6-row barley plant? There are different breeds of barley that farmers grow. Some produce heads with only 2 rows of kernels, while others produce heads with 6 rows. The 6-row barley, when malted, has a lot more of the enzymes in it that convert starches to sugars. Using 6-row barley as a base malt is necessary when you're brewing with a large percentage of adjuncts that don't bring along the power to convert themselves. 6-row also packs a more grain-y flavor, so a recipe calling for 2-row that gets brewed with 6-row will taste different. There are specific strains of 2-row barley that often get called for in recipes, like Marris Otter, or Optic, or Golden Promise. These are all 2-row barley, but with slightly different characteristics. Farmers will often grow something new that has a better yield, or a better adaptation to their particular farmland, and another type of grain will enter the market... often you'll not know that is the case, however, as base malts sometimes don't indicate exactly which strain of barley they came from. Knowing all that, you have to ask what kind of barley your specialty grains started out as... a 10L crystal malt made from Nebraska 6-row will taste different from a crystal 10 made from Belgian 2-row. I don't know that the taste vocabulary has developed enough to accurately describe the differences in a way that anybody could understand. Who processed the grain? Along with those funny varietal names, you'll also see calls for specific maltsters in particularly detailed recipes. For example, you might see a call for Crisp Marris Otter... that "crisp" is not a descriptor of a physical property of the grain, but rather a specific malting house in England called Crisp. Simpson's, Fawcett, and Baird are others located in the British Isles. In older Belgian style recipes, you might see calls for DWC grains... which you won't find on the market anymore since the DeWolf-Cosyns company in Belgium was bought out by Interbrew and closed down. There are subtle differences between all of the maltsters' products, and again, I don't think that the vocabulary is there to sufficiently inform you through words on a page. It is better to chew on a kernel or two of the grain to get an idea of its flavor rather than relying on a book to tell you what it is like. Using amber DME you'd end up with something closer resembling Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The Cascade hops are part of their flavor profile, and moving to a darker more caramelized malt will add in that flavor element as well.

Michael-- You're welcome to put up a recipe and take the lead on a porter... they're not something I've brewed in years.

Isn't the perplexing thing about northerly grape growing that the Vikings called Newfoundland "Vinland"... implying that grapes grew well up there? And don't non-vinifera grapes still grow pretty well up in New England?

The character of the adjuncts and malt will stretch just fine from their representation in the original recipe. The spicing is really up to you... play around, but don't go overboard. The yeast should be fine without going through the starter process for a 4 gallon batch.

You're tasting exactly what I'd wanted you to taste with that second recipe. It took the use of the specialty grains out towards the limits of what you can do with them, and the added complexity going on in there is the result. As an experiment, you might want to try making a blend of batch 1 and batch 2. Get a bottle of each, and mix them in various proportions. You'll be able to figure out just how much of the specialty grain kick you enjoy in your beers, and be able to scale your recipes accordingly. Hmmmm... porters, eh? There's a recipe out there for a Bourbon Vanilla Porter I've been meaning to try... maybe we can brew that one... Add some of the chipped Jack Daniels barrels to a secondary fermentor... and I'd bet we'd get a nice beer. I'll give recipe adaptation some thought and let you know as you're getting done with the Saison. My trial batch of the Saison is drinking really nicely right now... I think you'll all enjoy it. I made mine with Wyeast 3944, which is a witbier yeast, hence a bit sour... but I like it that way. As to brewing it in Houston temperatures, cool it down to 70 or so and pitch your yeast, then keep it inside for the first few days, then keep it outside in the shade in a ventilated space for 2 to 3 weeks... and consider using the 3724 family of yeasts, which are really happy fermenting up into the 90s. They'll throw all sorts of fruity peppery complexity into the beer. If you can get your hands on a bottle of Saison Dupont, give it a taste and you'll see where this beer is aimed. It is fermented as warm as 95, or so I've read. So you want it some place where it won't get too baked, but can get up to around 90

Does sound like a promising week. Lots of detail on the molecular experiments, please. Pick up lots of goodies to play with at Room4Dessert and let us know how they all work.

MSK, glad to hear reports of your success! The newest lesson is up now, so feel free to inquire about anything that comes to mind.

You have do decide exactly what you want from your machine in order to figure out the best one for your needs. Do you want to learn how to make a cappuccino yourself, or do you want a machine that spits out a coffee with fuzzy milk on top if you look at it funny? How much mess are you prepared to accept in the general vicinity of the machine? How much room do you have to install coffee equipment? What style and color scheme does it have to fit into? When you're talking about a $2000 budget, you're up there in the superauto price range... but the superautos are really not the devices that can produce the best coffee and fuzzy milk. They will, however, produce something alright, and with a minimum of mess, and in a smaller space than a grinder and espresso machine would take up. If you're a more hands on type, put down the money for a high quality grinder and a good solid espresso machine. The Rancilio Rocky/Silvia combination is frequently cited as a great pair of machines that will produce damn fine caffeinated beverages. You're likely not to spend more than $750 on the pair. You should have a poke around www.coffeegeek.com to get an idea of what's out there and what people think about various machines.

Well, there is the Dutch brand Hoppe, which isn't exactly a substitute for the Fees'/Regan's... much less concentrated flavor. Riemerschmid makes the wacky anise-y Boonekamp bitters... do they sell the orange bitters in the full-sized bottles too? Talk about a way to get a lifetime supply... And to some extent the Torani Amer/AmerPicon might count as orange bitters too, though not an exact replacement...

That menu appears, from its title, to have been served at the Belmont mansion in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. That is some fine circumstantial evidence that the use of the term "shoo-fly" is a bit of local PA Dutch color, rather than a citation to a real dish. I wonder if one of the guests at this dinner came in from Dutch country into the city and the dish was added to the menu in their honor, or at least as a subtle wink in somebody's general direction. The Centennial in Philadelphia was a huge event, so records of who attended that dinner should be available someplace... the Centennial Commission's records are certainly someplace that the Historical Society of Pennsylvania should be able to find them. This must be a fairly early meeting of that Commission, since the Centennial was still three full years off. The reference desk at the Free Library of Philadelphia might also be a good place to start, as it appears that the Free Library has a significant collection of Centennial Commission related publications. If the "president" mentioned is the President of the US, that would have been Ulysses S. Grant, whose parents were Pennsylvanians. Plenty of familiarity with the "shoo-fly" nomenclature, and maybe the source of the pun/conflation.

It would be very much in PA Dutch sense of humor to purposefully get the name wrong and perpetuate it using a more familiar word to them. Some fancy city-English comes along selling shoestring potato makers, and nobody wants to buy one. Somebody local notices them, produces one, and calls it a shoofly potato maker... and it would sell. That is a scenario totally within the realm of reason. I still think you're dealing with a conflation.

It sounds as if you've found a menu where somebody way back in the day conflated the idea of "shoestring" potatoes, potatoes made into long ribbons like shoestrings, and the shoofly concept in PA Dutch cooking. I think you've found an ancient typo, more or less.

How do you see either higher prices or less variety as a necessary result of mandating booze come in through Phila? Is our port notably more slow, inefficient, corrupt, or otherwise quality-reducing than the Port of New York? If the levels of inefficiency and corruption here and there are equal, then there should be a net price drop reflecting the cutting out of trucking costs (and any bundled inefficiency and corruption). Using PA's purchasing power to drive more business to our longshoremen and port authorities seems quite reasonable, provided the port folk don't immediately decide to abuse their monopoly. It will certainly up city and state tax revenues, as all of the excess work will certainly produce more taxable wages. What's wrong with that? This seems like a play to get all of the big importers to do business here rather than (or in addition to) elsewhere.