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Volume 1, Issue 3 |
In this Month's Issue: |
Setting Up A Home Brewing Party (part 1) | Recipe for Cherry Wheat Ale | Monthly Food Recipe |
Setting Up A Home Brewing Party |
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Making your own beer is a great hobby to share with your friends and relatives. Regardless of whether you are a first time or an experienced brewer, combining beer, food, and snacks in the company of friends will make lasting memories. This is the first in a series on hosting your own home-brewing evening. | ||
One important
aspect of the party is to involve everyone in the brewing process. Many
people are very interested in learning about the processes of brewing.
And you can be the one to give them this awesome experience.
Many will have at least some familiarity with beer and cooking, so you
can start there. Invite your friends to participate in each
step along with you as their guide.
Start by
displaying all of your equipment and ingredients near the cooking area
(but not in the way of dinner!) Have
everything out so guests can touch, feel, smell, and look over each
item. Help explain what
each is for and how it is used. And be ready for any questions.
Most of our guests are intrigued by the ingredients.
I invite guests to pick up and explore each ingredient, usually
on a small table near the cooking surfaces, yet close enough to the
brewing area so I don't have to move them when its time for the
'entertainment'. As dinner is
prepared and served, put your brew kettle on to boil. This will enable you to start the evening's entertainment
soon after dinner is finished.
While dinner is cleaned up, invite guests to the brewing area and
carefully explain the process and what you'll be doing.
What should
you have for dinner and drinks? Obviously
this is a prime time for you to showcase your homebrews.
You'll want to have some small
samplers on hand throughout the evening. Also think about
dishes you can pair with your best brews.
You can find some recipes and matching beer selections on our
website. And remember,
though many guests will be brave enough to try your homebrew, there will
be some who will only want a taste (and some who won't want any at all).
Therefore, make sure you have other drinks available, such as
beers, wines, sodas, and other soft drinks.
Keep this in mind as you plan on what wines to serve.
Once the
water is boiling, prepare your malt.
Allow guests to smell, touch, and even taste each ingredient
before it is added. Select
guests to stir the wort and smell the brew.
Remember to involve your guests, as you're entertaining and
educating at the same time. Explain
carefully what you're doing at each step.
Answer their questions, let them experience each facet, and above
all enable them to have fun. I like to
assign several jobs to our guests.
Each guest should take turns stirring the wort, as this is very
important anyway. This
activity allows guests to smell the wort and see the brew up close.
Another job is to open each ingredient package.
One person opens the malt and stirs it in, while another opens
the hops, and yet another guest opens the yeast.
Each guest is allowed to check out each ingredient, smelling,
touching, (and even tasting) each.
Hops are
another important ingredient everyone has heard of and yet many have no
experience in seeing. Open
the hops at the last minute and let everyone smell them.
Guests can feel the hops, rubbing them between their fingers.
This works whether you use whole hops, plugs, or pellets.
Of course, having a few whole hops available to look at will give
your guests a chance to see what hop flowers look like before they're
processed. After dinner, we start the serious brewing. Your water should be boiling by now and your guests are fed and ready to be entertained. As the evening passes on, make sure you have snacks or a dessert ready for during the long boil or for during the rapid cooling. You want your guests to see the entire process, from boil to bucket. The next article in this series will continue the events through the evening. You can also use some of our monthly food recipes for ideas on what to serve your guests for dinner. |
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Check out our website at http://www.griswoldmountain.com | ||
Frank Holes, Sr. is the Vice President of Griswold Mountain Brewing Company and a distinguished crafter of homemade champagne and cordials. |
Recipe for home brewed |
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Even after eleven years of home brewing, we still make our small batches just the same way we started long ago - from a kit or just like a kit. Our cherry wheat ale was first developed back in 1998 and played with since then. We've enjoyed experimenting with cherries in our beers, from the cherry wheat to a cherry-nut-brown, to a chocolate-cherry porter. You can use your favorite wheat kit (German or American) with this recipe or check your beer pantry for the individual ingredients below. | ||||
Cherry Wheat Ale Recipe Directions: In your large brew kettle, bring 2 gallons of water to a boil. The more water available to boil at the beginning will provide you with a much lighter colored finished product. Place the malt syrup (still in its container) in a large bowl of warm water to make it easier to work with. Once the kettle comes to a boil, slowly add the liquid malt syrup, stirring constantly. Add the dry malt extract (I like to pour off a bit of the wort and whisk in the DME in a large bowl, then pour everything back in to the kettle). Once all the malt is stirred in, add half of the hops. Start your timer for a 45 minute boil. Stir often. With 15 minutes left in the boil, add the Irish Moss. At 5 minutes left, add the remainder of the hops. Once the boil time is over, remove the kettle from heat (I like to pour the wort off into another large pot I can cool in the sink - or use a wort chiller if you have one). Reduce the temperature to around 75 degrees F. If you are using fresh ripe cherries, frozen cherries, or even cherry pie filling, pour this into your primary fermentor. If you are using cherry flavoring, pour in while adding the wort. Add in the wort, being sure to leave the bottom dregs in the pot. Fill up to the 5 gallon line with room temperature water, being careful to stay between 68 and 76 degrees F (don't kill the yeast). Stir in the yeast (pop your liquid yeast several hours or even a day earlier if necessary) well, and seal the fermentor with an airlock. Store in a room temperature place out of the way for 7-14 days. You can re-rack into a secondary fermentor after 7 days if you wish. Bottle and store for three more weeks (taste and carbonation both improve in my opinion). You can also add another 4 oz of cherry flavoring at bottling if you want a more pronounced cherry flavor. This beer will keep in bottles for up to 4 months (but they probably will disappear well before then). This makes 5 gallons. We use fresh ripe cherries picked picked off our trees during the summer, but you can use the frozen cherries, cherry flavoring, and we've even made this beer with two cans of cherry pie filling during the winter. You'd be surprised that it does turn out well! |
Recipe of the Month: Salmon in Red Wine with Apricots by Michael Roberts |
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Salmon in Red Wine with Apricots Always make sure you cook with a wine you'd drink on its own.
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Check out our website at http://www.griswoldmountain.com | ||||||
Email us at griswold@griswoldmountain.com |