I added a bunch of fruit juices to a basic Italian Dandelion must, that included the flowers of that greenhouse grown dandelion-chicory that grew over last winter, including plain cane sugar, cherry juice, hibiscus, raisins, orange.
I also included the herbs lemon balm and rose hips.
It started off very high gravity at 13%, according to my hydrometer, and fermented it using EC-1118, which has turned out to be a mighty yeast for Niagara and other white wines, as per the expert at Cornell recommendation.
And now, at tasting time, after months and months since the yeast began in May, 2012, this wine's ended up with a highly clean, bright, crisp flavor, and beautiful aroma like a good quality Pinot Grigio.... no grapes required. Very odd, surprising and delightful result.
These are my notes while drinking Peekskill Brewery's ("PB") Shotgun Willie IPA last night, an IPA made of Rye and Hops imported from New Zealand, where perhaps Peekskill has a long lost or recently found sister-city: "Clean, bright, toasted, hoppie awesome."
The beer is balanced and outstanding, just like PB's "Simple Sour" I slurped down before it.
I can't say enough good things about the quality of the beer in this brewery since it's moved across from the bakery, from the small Nano space up the road. I think maybe upgraded equipment has made a world of difference.
Fermentables. I make awesome krauts by the gallon, using a wide array of vegetables. But just recently, I've discovered adding fresh horseradish root puts it to the upper decks. The stuff is awesome for pork chops, hot dogs, brats, sausages, and any version of BBQ that you'd like to go on about. It's also perfect for pairings with beer as well as roasted beasts.
But some beers are even better than others with it, such as this Belgian style concoction I made in the spirit of "Radical Brewing," just before New Year's: "Dark Honey Pumpkin Cran Apple Cider-Ale, with kraut (cabbage with fresh ground horseradish), for which I used dark Malt, Clover honey, Pumpkin mash, and Cran Apple cider. And of course there were various spices in the mash.
I've been trying to think of a shorthand name to distinguish the ale, but I'm not repeating the recipe just yet, so there's no rush... maybe Hudson Valley Saison Cider-Ale v.01.
I was going for a French-Belgian ish-esque sour Farmhouse, Saison flavor, and it worked pretty well, if a little sweet for my taste at this point. Perhaps a few more weeks in the growler would have helped bring that sweetness down a bit. However, when paired with these highly sour krauts I'm kicking out, you've got a no hitter (yes, that's baseball metaphor number 2).
The Cider-Ale had a thin but sweet finish, after a giant frothy head, and a very mild hoppy aroma. I can't recall 100% the hops I used, but pretty sure it was the Chinook, which retained nice aroma and flavor in spite of all these errant flavor profiles form various forms of sugar.
When used to wash down this fermented cabbage-horseradish sauerkraut mixture, this Belgian Farmhouse on-the-Hudson style Ale is something worth writing home about.... and maybe Indonesia too via Blogger.
Massive froth, mild aromas, nice color, true to form, balanced, flavorful and basically amazing-delish as you might expect if you're forking over the big bucks for 64 ozs of it at the craft beer grocery store, which also sells Citra hops and cask finishing yeasts.
Peak washed down the Superbowl pizza in an unparalleled fashion.
I'd get it again.
This imported Kolsch is turning up in more and more places as a nice light alternative to some of these heavy craft beers that dominate beer menus in Craft beer bars.
Gaffell's Kolsch, at 4.8% ABV is light, odor free, nice froth, and pretty popular on a chalk board of Craft beers that average about 7% alcohol. I'd say 4 of us were drinking it to punctuate the high gravity beers.
And it's nice, if you don't want to end up yelling at the flat panels because Kentucky is losing to Texas.
I'm not sure if it was correlation or causation, but there were a lot of cocktails being poured (even a woman ordering Shirley Temples with Vodka, which was kind of cute), and I also did hear two people drop glasses to the floor. So I'm thinking maybe a light Kolsch can't do any harm at Harlem Public.
Awesome bottle conditioned, light, mildly sour, full bodied home made cider made light work of Turkey sausages in mushroom and asparagus. It went down fast too, like being chased by 40 men.
This is a story inside of a story of Sausage and Cider, as good, if not better than anything the mayor and all his friends have waiting for you down at the Lido.
But I'll tell you something; this cider was made with higher acid, higher sugar, heirloom apples (the kind from trees that were senselessly slaughtered during senselessly ineffective prohibition), and lots of honey, and fresh roasted pumpkin, which stands out most for a much fuller, thicker, maybe tannic mouth feel that I can only surmise came from the roasted pumpkin part. I've made a lot of cider, some with honey, and most end up thin on their own, when made without some other fruit to fill them out. Not this sausage slayer. Sure it's made it a little more cloudy than and average batch of cider without, but it's a small price to pay to balance out that thin cider mouth feel.
This bottle of Honey Pumpkin Ale was bottled as a baseline scenario, the starting point without adjuncts, additives, odd elements (those bottled with Kelp) and experimental flavaz, the ordinary least squares, lowest aggregate, the path of least resistance, and most regression.
This was the head cornerstone of this batch, made with fresh pumpkin, cored, carved, peeled, roasted and fermented right along with the malts, as if it were grown in the next field over.
It turned out well and suggests good things for the whole batch and any of the odd, offbeat, racy, radical permutations, starting with a nice, if loose froth, and mildly hoppy aromas lingering about the nose, like a summer hobo, outside the pub, soaked in whiskey, next to the single ladies in their perfumes, emitting smoke along with his borrowed cigarette, giving you that heads up that sparks a very slight adrenal spike before you walk in: "who knows, this could be a dangerous place".
But once your in the glass, and this ale floods your mouth and gums you're fine, you're going to be fine, and you know it because it has balanced, full malty mouth feel to complement the dark brown hue, like the light bouncing off the wood paneling or well worked and worn out wood fixtures on the bar top and rail. It's fine, full bodied, familiar and flavorful.
Makes me seriously think, if and probs nothing else, the fresh roasted pumpkin may impart a tannic quality that enriches the mouth feel beyond the grains and any Belgian candy canes. And it makes me glad I added the extra honey.
Here's my prediction-- this Baseline Honey Pumpkin Ale Scenario it a winner, and the variations that I've bottled from it will be one BLITZ after another, stunt after stunt, sack after sack of grain in a Super BOIL a fermented out just in time Superbowl. That's what my little cabron bubbles have been doing while your little digital guys with the big hearts have been running their routes with Flacco, king of the angry birds.
