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s part of a Homebrew Tasting/Judging Circle I’ve been organizing, we recently did a tasting of an array of different Caramel malts. The goal was to identify the differences between these malts, other than color.
For each malt, I did a small mash of 6% crystal, 84% Briess Pale Ale malt. All of the Caramels were also made by Briess. The mash temp was 154 degrees. Continue reading
In our house, Halloween isn’t so much a holiday as it is a month-long celebration of the harvest and the Fall, and also of murder, mayhem, and death. We’re equal parts pagan and horror-movie-obsessed, and October is for us a month both high and holy.
Beyond trips to pumpkin patches and abandoned-prisons-cum-haunted-houses, we make a yearly pilgrimage to the town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, of Headless Horseman fame. These people do Halloween properly, right down to their street signs, which are orange and black and feature a silhouette of their most infamous resident. It’s a great little town, with a few wonderful bars and restaurants to round out an evening visiting their Halloween attractions.
So. You keg an IPA and a cider you have recently brewed, and place them neatly in your fancy kegerator. You hook up the kegs to the system and the close the door, trusting your fancy CO2 canister and regulator to faithfully carbonate your beverages according to the precise pressure you have dialed up. These things probably work best in the dark anyway, unwatched and untroubled by brewer’s eyes and hands.
After a few days of patient waiting, you grab a glass, pull the tap handle, and…. nothing. Continue reading
We recently visited The Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog, a historical-revivalist taproom and parlour on Water Street in Lower Manhattan. While TDR is just a short walk from Battery Park and other tourist attractions, it is a destination worth traveling to in its own right.
The whole joint is thoroughly infused with the Gangs of New York – era, 1850’s Irish gangland NYC theme. The ground-level taproom is an honest recreation of a period Irish pub, complete with sawdust on the floor. The bar servers a good selection of craft beer, with a focus on local selections (Sixpoint, Bronx, Ommegang) and Belgian styles (Ayinger, DuPont, Ommegang). Most notable is their house ale,
brewed by Sixpoint, a cask-conditioned Mild with tons of brown malt (which fits the period theme nicely). Tasty. Continue reading