Bacon Beer Mk II

I finally got around to bottling this, after brewing, what, almost two months ago?  The (still not quite finished) result is pretty outstanding.  Flavors are pretty basic: malt, a tiny bit of hops, and a good shot of smoky bacon.  All in all it’s amazingly well balanced – nothing about it screams OMG BACON.  You can’t miss it, but it doesn’t punch you in the mouth.  And the flavors all go surprisingly well together.  The smoke flavor makes the hops into more of a grassy bitterness than any kind of citrus or floral flavor.  And since grain goes so well with bacon anyway…

I can’t wait for this one to finish conditioning.  It’s remarkably clear, at least based on how hazy Mk I was.  With proper carbonation and two more weeks of mellowing, it should be pretty darn awesome.

Up next for bottling is the hard apple cider, which I’ll condition with brown sugar.  Then, of course, comes the spiced barleywine.  Good times ahead.

testing mobility

if this works, I can officially post from my phone. Score!

Pope of Chile Town, revisited

Yet another beer post.  At least it’s something, right?

Pope of Chile Town is by far the riskiest beer I’ve done to date, and by and large it has failed.  The intent was to make a super strong beer (>10%), something like an imperial pale, and flavor it with TONS of chiles.  Serranos, japoneses, guajillos, and anchos.  I think it was… 30 chiles for the 2.5 gallon batch.

About 2 months after brewing (in summer 2008), it was terrible.  Most bottles had effectively zero carbonation, with others having somewhere between 5 and 10 bubbles total.  (Inconsistent carbonation has been a recurring issue for me, especially on smaller batches.  Still trying to pin down the cause.)  The flavor was primarily sweet, supported by the incredibly thick body, with a good amount of chile flavor and heat.  The worst part about it was the debris, which would never stay in the bottle.  It seemed almost… salty…  Maybe salty isn’t the right word, but it’s a bit more descriptive than disgusting.

Anyway, I just opened a bottle in the interest of dumping out the entire batch (in an effort to clean out the brewing closet).  Amazingly, there was a satisfying fssst, and so I had to pour a bit of it.  Bubbles!  Carbonation!  Then I had to taste it.  Chile!  Chile!  Chile!  And alcohol!  Still a tiny bit of that cloying sweetness, but verging on the maple syrup-ness like William and I experienced with our very old beers.  It was actually pretty damn satisfying, though slightly hampered by the almost overwhelming chile flavor.  That’s when I made my mistake: I poured the rest of the bottle.  All the debris poured out, ruining the beer with that bizarre salty grossness.

It seems pretty lame to have a beer where you can only pour out half the bottle before the flavor gets ruined.  I think I’m just going to dump the rest down the drain, and perhaps shed a little tear in the process.  Maybe I’ll take the bottles actually go fssst and pour half of them into a glass, then drink that and get really toasted.

Update: Only one other bottle had a fssst.  That means the batch had higher than a 90% failure rate (with carbonation being a major component of success).  Ouch.

One more brew post

This is my last brewing-related post for at least the next week.  Yesterday Clint and I brewed up a seasonal barleywine which we’re hoping will be ready in time for my end-of-quals celebration on Feb. 1.  If all goes to plan, it’ll be around 11-11.5% ABV.  We spruced it up with molasses, orange peel, apples, cloves, canela, and allspice.  It smelled pretty amazing during the boil!  It’ll sit for a bit over a week with plain old ale yeast, then we’ll sucker punch it with some champagne yeast at the end to really eat up a ton of sugar and hopefully lighten up the texture a bit.  We’re very excited about this one!

More brewing, more of the same

Two new brews into the carboy on Sunday.  Well, one brew and one straight ahead apple cider + yeast dealie.  It’s my first time doing hard cider, so I really have no idea what to expect.  I had initially wanted to make a hard ponche, since this’ll be ready right around Xmas and all and it would actually involve some work and creativity, but Jacky specifically requested a simple fruit cider.  And since she’s coming back after a 3 month research trip, I figured I’d indulge her.  Just this once.

Also brewed up BaconBeer mkII.  This one is just simply bacon.  And more bacon.  None of that fruit crap that got in the way with the first batch.  To start: I took Bill’s advice and soaked the bacon (2 lbs this time) in the brew water for a few hours.  This gave the water a simultaneously pleasant and disconcerting smell.  Then I removed and dried the bacon.  Once it was ready, I fried it up, making sure to collect everything that came out of the pan.  I then added the bacon grease to the water and began the boil.  Then went the grain bag, into which I put not only grain but also cooked bacon.  This then soaked in the hot water for approximately 30 minutes.  At the end of the brew, the wort had an aroma of cereal grain and bacon, which, let’s face it, is a pretty awesome combination.  The carboy is currently extremely active, again with the characteristic fatty layer up top.  I hopeful for this one.

Today I submitted my petitions to fully satisfy all coursework requirements.  This means, assuming they’re accepted, that I’m all ready to qualify in January.  Speaking of which, time to get back to writing.  FOREVER.

Homebrew batches #0001 & #0002, 27 months later

Last night at a little dinner party, William and I cracked open the last remaining bottles of our very first forays into homebrewing, from July and August of 2007.  Batch #0001 was called “West Coast Pale Ale,” a HomeBrewMart starter recipe.  At the time we noted the beer was very “safe,” that is to say very boring.  Very little alcohol, with very mild flavor (at least it was a balanced mild!).  #0002 was our first “recipe,” “Continual Surveillance,” a pretty good West Coast-style IPA complete with dry hopping.  Decent alcohol (~6.5%), good IBUs, and all around good flavor.

Fast forward 27 months, and these beers were vastly different.  Extremely different from when we tasted them at one year of aging.  Both took on a darker color and gained an interested maple syrup-like flavor.  #0002 was a little brighter from the original hops, but in terms of obviously recognizable hop flavor they were more or less the same.  Alcohol flavor was there, but almost as a component of the maple syrup-ness.  Really, really weird.

As for new beer, we also opened up a few bottles of the new xoconostle brew, a Belgian golden flavored with xoconostle fruit.  Very light body, nice yeasty funk, nice sugary sweetness and nice fruity tartness.  I think we did a pretty good job with this one.

I also made a couple of new salsas last night: a serrano/lime salsa that was delicious, and a tomato/pequin salsa that came out much milder than I had anticipated.  I guess I overestimated the impact that the little suckers would have on a whole batch.

Chiles!: Pequin

I’ve just about recovered fully from a pequin chile.  This little thing, barely the size of my pinky nail, packed a mighty wallop.  It had a very nice bright, herbal and somewhat citrus-like flavor for about 3 seconds before the heat kicked in.  And, probably owing to the minuscule size of the chile, it was an intensely focused heat.  Not like a serrano or something where the sheer amount of fruit means that the capsaicin gets everywhere.  I can still feel the pain localized on about a quarter of my tongue, one side of my throat, and barely into one ear canal.  Good stuff!

Chiles!

Beautiful, beautiful chiles!  Given to me by a friend of my dad’s, probably the best part about this particular Thanksgiving.  And I only know the bookends: the far left chile is a pequin, a tiny sucker about 5 times spicier than a japaleño; the far right chile is a bhut jolokia, aka the spiciest mofuckin’ chile on the planet.  As for the insides, I’m not sure – the long skinny one is some kind of bird’s eye, whether it’s Thai or African I have no idea.  And the more bulbous chile, I’m completely unsure.  All I know at this point is that it’s probably very spicy.  Any ideas?

As for how to use these – I have no clue.  I’m sure the three on the left will work well in the food I make normally, albeit in much smaller portions than I would normally use with, say, jalapeños or serranos.  I’d love some suggestions about how to use the bhut jolokia in particular, though of course I’m always up for food suggestions in general.

To be honest, I can’t wait to try making something with them.  Chiles are one of my favorite things ever.  It can be such a cathartic experience to consume massive quantities of capsaicin, to the point of inducing a sort of spiritual experience.  One of the first times I made salsa was a catastrophic culinary failure but caused such intense pain that all I could do was sit down and accept it, think about it, feel it moving through my head and indeed entire body.  On another occasion I ate a piece of habanero, mostly to prove something to my father-in-law, and was quite surprised to feel the pain move very (even painfully) slowly from my mouth to my throat and finally into my ears.  It was an amazing experience of my own body, in a way that other foods don’t normally induce.  I just hope I can have many more such experiences before the capsaicin finally tears a whole in my stomach lining and gives me a horrible ulcer.

Yay chiles!

My (apparently) semi-annual post

Just about half a year since the last post, and very similar content to report. Rather odd, that.

This past weekend was the 54th annual Society for Ethnomusicology Conference, at which I presented a slightly updated version of my IASPM-US paper, albeit with a different title (“Creative Listening: Playlists, Mixtapes, and the Virtual Ethnography of Virtual Music”). I got some really good questions, including a prompt to consider the ways I’m using the term “consumption” (spoiler alert: I used it really sloppily). That might actually end up being a major part of my qual essay on the same topic – what exactly it means to consume something without the explicit exchange of goods. Then of course there’s the issue of radio, which I’ll need to deal with in some way. We’ll see.

Amazing food was had in Mexico City, including tacos piled sky high with delectable meat (the highlight being carne asada+bacon+onions+charred queso fresco), verdolagas (my new favorite vegetable), and escamoles (which, while very tasty and fun to eat, were a bit too pricey). Other highlights include lamb with beer/tequila salsa and getting drunk from two bottles of Negra Modelo because of the altitude.

Here’s my attempt at pork & verdolagas in salsa verde. Turned out pretty well!

Aquapuke recently performed a new piece, “Aquapuke and the Reefed Victory,” at the first UCSD Grad Forum of this academic year. It was a piece less obviously related to contemporary issues of body/presence/sexuality than, say, “Industrial Transsexual” was. Rather, it drew from the mythology of sirens as seductive/destructive binary, effectively making Clint into the siren to my ocean/sailors. The sailors, conquering the ocean, are lured to and eventually destroyed by the siren, bringing about the realization that their conquest was false, unattainable from the start. Plus it was loud and noisy and I was in fishnets and booty shorts. High art indeed.

The xoconostle beer that Clint and I made is almost ready. The unconditioned beer that we tasted (right out of the carboy, prior to bottling) was incredibly tasty. Very light body, with a great balance between sugary sweetness and fruity tartness. Plus some really great yeasty flavors from the mix of Trappist and Belgian Ale yeasts we used.

And now it’s all preparation for qualifying in the early half of next quarter. Woohoo. Then I can put some of this work aside and move on to the stuff I’ve been loving lately. More to come.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s official, we’re a band.

Yup, Aquapuke is officially a band.  Not only did we play the Che Cafe, we finally got a flyer that’s not done up in Microsoft Word.  The show was crazy in a good way, probably our most energetic yet (and boy, did it hurt).  Turns out substituting grape juice for wine didn’t make a huge difference.  Thanks to everyone who came!

Oh, the IASPM paper is over and done with.  It ended up going really well.  A number of people showed up just for my paper, which I wasn’t expecting at all.  We had a great panel with some very interesting discussions, as well.  All around a great experience.  I definitely feel a lot better about myself after yesterday.  Thanks to everyone for all your support!  You’re the best!