So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Malt 101

Hey, I see you there, backing away from that conversation about malt because one person started talking about amylase activity in mash.

Get back in there slugger! I got you covered with this overview of what malt is, how it’s made, and why it’s important.

This primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a deep dive into delicious piles of malt, check out John Mallet’s book from Brewer’s Publications. I heard the guy who edited it is pretty cool.

Malt as a beer ingredient

While consumers may name hops as the most recognizable ingredient in beer (water is always so sadly overlooked), malt does a ton of selfless work in the brewhouse. Loose kernels of malted grain are cracked in a mill then added to the mashtun, where they steep at a specific temperature to encourage enzyme activity, ultimately creating the sweet primordial soup from which all beerish life will eventually emerge: wort.

A beer’s recipe will normally include a combination of base malts and specialty malts.

Base malts are generally pale with high diastatic power (also known as degrees Litner), meaning in layman’s terms that they have the potential to produce more sugar, more easily. They provide the food for the yeast (often called fermentables), and a beer made entirely of a single base malt would be a shade of yellow or gold with a singular complexity.

Specialty malts are added at various points during the mash (depending on the recipe), and contribute to the color, aroma, and flavor profile of the beer. Contrasting the base malts, they tend to contain very few fermentable sugars, and are used primarily for their other gustatory and olfactory qualities.

The length of the sugars extracted by the enzymes in mash dictate much of how the yeast will ferment the beer, too. It may not be as sexy as those sticky pods of lupulin, but malt is incredibly important to brewing (and enjoying) beer.

Malt as a verb

Although “malt” in the brewing industry often manifests as a noun (“what kind of malt did the brewer use in this beer?), the verb form – “to malt” – is more important to understanding the ingredient.

Cereal grains grow tall, and when they are mature, produce seeds. These seeds are like any other; out in the wild, they’d fall to the ground, get covered in dirt and moisture, and begin to grow when the next season came rolling in on Spring sun.

Simple enough.

But taken out of the natural cycle, cereal grains cannot make beer until they are malted, or more specifically, soaked, germinated, and dried. Maltsters (the people who make malt, shockingly enough) harness the seed’s biological imperative, and trick it into growing. They place the seeds into a bed of water and let them begin to grow roots and breathe. The goal is to allow the seed to change – or modify – sufficiently that it will break down its own internal sugars and release them into the hot waters of the mash to make wort.

When the seed is fully modified (or close to) they halt the growing and modification process by blowing hot air through the grain. After the tiny roots are removed (a process call deculming), the malt is kilned, both to prevent spoilage and create desired flavors through Maillard reactions. All of a beer’s color is derived from its malt; the darker the roast, the darker the beer, from the delicate daffodil of lager (pale bale malt) to the midnight dark of stout (roasted barley).

It’s imperative the grain be malted well before it reaches the brewery; without the malting process the seeds would be dry, rock hard, and lacking the necessary sugars to provide a feast for the yeast. Apparently some attempts at non-malt beer have been tried by the Japanese, but 99% of the time, when we’re talking beer as history and culture knows it, we’re talking malted grains.

Malt as a noun

“Malt” as a standalone makes for a poor noun. It’s far too abstract, as many different grains like rye, wheat, sorghum, oat, rice, and corn can be malted.

While yes, malted barley makes up the vast majority of all malt used in beer making, it’s important to quantify which type of malt you’re referring to, which is why you’ll often see references to “malt barley” in beer writing. Malted barley itself can be expanded out into a huge list of varieties and levels of roast, and many beer recipes use multiple types of malted barley to achieve certain flavors and colors (two-row, six-row, Munich, Carapils, Crystal, patent black, etc). Other beers mix types of malted grains – a rye IPA for example might use both malted barley and malted rye.

“Grain” is equally lacking as a noun. Industry jargon discusses the grain bill of a beer (or the list of malts that went into the mashtun) but the word itself refers to unmalted seeds. Grain exists in the fields; it’s an agricultural term. “Grist” – as in grist bill – reads similar; it implies ground grain (like that used to make bread flour), but makes no reference to whether or not it has been malted. Neither are fundamentally incorrect and both are used widely, but it’s always good to remember exactly what each means.

Malt as an adjective/adverb

In Chapter 2 of his book, Mallet says that he thinks Munich malt is the closet match to quintessential “malt flavor” and I tend to agree. It compares best to malt as it appears outside of beer: malted milkshakes and malted chocolate balls. But other varieties of barley malt taste very different; dark roasted specialty malts, like Special B for example, can have notes of raisins and dates, while some other pale base malts taste like Pillsbury dinner rolls or KFC biscuits. All that to say that while there is a basic malt flavor, varieties of malts can taste very, very different from each other.

“Malt” works perfectly as a traditional adjective: malted barley. Use it with impunity.

It doesn’t work at all as a blanket adverb: “malty.”

“Malty” is lazy. And boring. And uninspired.

It’s equivalent to boiling The Alchemist’s Heady Topper or Ballast Point’s Sculpin down to “hoppy.” A single adjective doesn’t do justice to the complexity and variety our tongue and noses are capable of experiencing. Saying a beer is “malty” is like saying that your steak tastes like meat or your wine tastes like grapes; of course it does, it’s quite literally made of that thing. Every single beer in the world (barring maybe that weird aforementioned Japanese stuff) will in some capacity taste malty.

Use bready or biscuity instead. Or toasted or roasted or burnt. Hundreds of other, more specific adjectives can describe what you’re tasting, so don’t  cop out and go with “malty.” Your future readers thank you.

I understand a lot of people use “malty” as a way to grade the level of noticeable malt flavor when compared to others beers and styles, but it’s still an unimaginative smear of language being used in the place of proper, descriptive prose. If something tastes more malty than something else, say exactly that, but then follow it up with concrete examples of what you’re actually tasting.

Malt is both simple and complex, both obviously present and hiding in the background. Take the time to get to know how malt works in your favorite beers, and you’ll discover a new appreciation for the naturalistic side of beer, and how amazing it is that maltsters have basically bridled and domesticated the Kreb’s cycle. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still beautiful in its own, agronomic way, and deserves to be treated with respect lest it, and your writing about it, be infested with weevils.

TL;DR – to use the term “malt” or “malted” is to imply that a grain underwent a specific process that has been used to make beer for centuries. It’s a verb first, a noun second, an adjective third, and an adverb never.

One million pounds of barley malt drying at the Budwesier malting plant in Idaho Falls, ID.

You’re Allergic to What?

Yeast. Legion eukaryota responsible for bread and beer and wine. They’re quite literally everywhere. In the water you just drank. In the food you just ate. I don’t mean to alarm you, but you’re probably breathing some into your mouth and lungs right now.

Normally, that’s no big deal. Our bodies love to play host to microorganisms, especially bacteria and other single-celled-soldiers that keep our homeostasis all homey and stasis-y. To a healthy, balanced body, neither the infection causing candida albicans nor our beloved saccharomyces cerevisiae pose much of a physical threat. Despite populations beyond count, yeast aren’t exactly challenging ebola and influenza for the title of “most dangerous tiny thing in the world.”

When we write and talk about beer and wine, lose ourselves in the revelry of recording good times, it’s easy to forget there are quite a few people out there who don’t drink. Some abstain for moral or religious reasons. Others, while it may seem baffling to me and my kin, legitimately don’t like the taste of alcoholic beverages. Others simply grew up in households without, and as adults, hold a casual indifference towards libatious sorts.

And then there are those who love beer and wine, and would drink it if only they could. Those unfortunate souls who have developed a yeast allergy. Not an alcohol intolerance (which is bad, but not nearly as miserable), but a full-fledged histamine reaction to yeast. They’re the real victims in this crazy kettle of fermented life; willing but not medically able, banished from enjoying pales ales or sandwiches or any products spiked with nutritional yeast, lest they incur the wrath of the anaphylactic gods.

Yeast allergies can be serious and life threatening (like allergies to nuts and bee stings) but they generally present through the antibodies IgG (Immunoglobulin G), which slowly build up sensitivity to certain foods over years of exposure. IgG allergies sneak and snake through your system, presenting very subtly, and getting worse over time. There’s also no (known) genetic marker for a yeast allergy, so in theory, anyone could develop one at any time.

As a beer lover who has woven brewing into the fabric of his being, that’s sort of terrifying.

The symptoms are bad enough: sudden weight gain, complete lack of alcohol tolerance, frequent headaches, dehydration, sometimes even dermal rashes. Worse are the treatments: there are none. Well, no medications. The only real remedy is to avoid foods that contain yeast.

Sounds simple enough, right? Stop drinking beer and wine. There will be a ten minute period where you’re completely inconsolable, but hey, life goes on.

But much like aspartame and high fructose corn syrup have dastardly crawled into more products than expected, yeast can be found in many things you might not have imagined. Cheese fan? Bleu and brie both contain large amounts of yeast. Pretty much all leavened bread? Yeast-city. Many restaurants season broths and soups with yeast, and “nutritional” yeast is a staple in some vegetarian and vegan dishes. Suddenly eating becomes a game of gastrointestinal Russian-roulette, hoping yeast isn’t in the chamber when you pull the dinner-trigger.

It may seem trivial, as yeast allergies constitute a very small percentage of all allergies suffered in the United States. But new research suggests that yeast allergies and intolerance can be linked to celiac disease, the very real and very serious immunological monster that spawned the gluten-free food craze. It’s entirely possible many people who do not have diagnosed celiac but do feel better when they avoid products with gluten – breads, beer, cereal grains – are partially recovering because they’re limiting their exposure to yeast. Both cause your body to reject certain proteins, both present with somewhat similar symptoms.

All medical woes aside, the allergy can also have social impacts for the sufferer. Fellow writer Sheryl Rivett suffers from a yeast allergy she developed in 2007. After years of being a social drinker, her newly developed allergy forced her to dramatically change her lifestyle:

“I’ve found that people often react as if you’re a recovered alcoholic or a teetotaler or even a wet blanket. It can be awkward to explain, “I’m allergic, but please enjoy one for me!” There is such a social element to drinking. Some friends were so uncomfortable with our lack of social drinking that they stopped inviting us to events…I could choose to just drink wine and beer, but I’d weigh an extra 20-30 pounds, I’d never sleep, and my GI system would be my worst enemy.”

The relatively innocuous allergy even changed her plans for the future:

“In the beginning, I had hope that I would one day travel with my husband to Italy or France and drink wine. I still really love the image of the two of us sitting at a Parisian café with glasses of wine in our hands. But as I’ve faced additional health challenges, I’ve come around to embracing a full, healthy life without alcohol…My philosophy, coming through these changes, is that life is to be enjoyed; the trick is to figure out what that life looks like for you specifically. And in my case, it means learning new ways of enjoying life and social situations.”

Yeast allergies don’t command much attention in the medical media, but they’re a serious reality for a lot of people, even if not because of immediate, mortal consequences. Having to remove beer and wine (it should be noted that distilled spirits contain no yeast, so they’re still fair game) from one’s lifestyle may be easier on paper than in practice. It may mean a radical change in behavior and diet. It may mean completely changing activities and groups of friends. It may even mean rebooting what you consider fun, realigning your life in a way that involuntarily but necessarily shuns fermentation.

The good news, as I noted, is that even if you do develop a yeast allergy at some point, you can still drink scotch.

 (It may interest the more beery folks to know that the bacteria, Lactobacillus acidophilus [the same bacteria that makes some sour beers sour], helps to naturally balance the amount of yeast in our bodies. Sheryl noted that she can eat sourdough without much problem, a bread made with a heaping scoopful of lactobacillus. It also helps facilitate lactose digestion, so if you’re lactose intolerant [like me], it’s basically the most glorious bacteria in the world.) 

Many thanks to Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff for their literary help.

Beer Review: Flying Dog Dead Rise Old Bay Summer Ale

Wooden mallets strike claws, sending fissures through crabby chitin, exposing the sweet, seasoned flesh beneath. Soft hands meet sharp shells, poking, probing, splitting, snapping; a modest labor for a morsel of meat. Twelve spices form a homogeneous cocktail with light lager and briny boil, resulting in a liquid unique to the summers of the Chesapeake watershed. The crustacean covered newspapers lining the tables tell a new story now, a story that to the outsider sounds like barbaric ritual, but to the native sounds like hallowed tradition.

Despite my international birth, I’m a Marylander. All of my education – from Jones Lane to Johns Hopkins – unfolded in the Old Line state, and I’ve called the marshy lands north of the Potomac home for nearly 25 years. There are those in other parts of the country who don’t understand Maryland’s insistence on maintaining a unique identity; those who find such cultural fervor from a small state cute, or quaint, or some combination there of. But the people of Ocean City, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Salisbury don’t just mindlessly crab and boil or Raven and Oriole, they hold high their state standard, proud that 9th smallest state boasts one of the biggest personalities.

A veteran of the picking art shows a tourist where and how to lift the plate to get at the blue gold in the body, like the master teaching the neophyte who reached the peak all the simple secrets of life. A little girl takes her time, building a mini-mountain of crab to eat all at once, while her older brother yanks white chunks out of cartilage lined crevices with the only tool he needs: his teeth. Corn on the cob sits cooked but idle, waiting for the pile of dusted red delight to give up the spotlight.

Maryland suffers from poorly built sandwich syndrome; its thin landmass pressed between the top bun of Pittsburgh, Gettysburg, Lancaster, and Philadelphia, and the bottom bun of DC, Shenandoah, Richmond, and Norfolk. New York City is only a 4 hour drive from our naval-steeped capital, and a brief jaunt south would have you in North Carolina before the sun fully lowered itself into a western bed. There’s a lot of artisanal bread for Maryland’s meat to contend with, and it knows it needs to taste damn good to get any attention when someone takes a bite of the East Coast.

The notes that haunt the humid air are distant but familiar – bluegrass, country, possibly Jimmy Buffet. The giant stock pot – already full of potatoes and garlic and onions – sits on open flame, slowly rising to boil as a bushel awaits fate. On the shore, seagulls have taken note of the feast, and caw their dinner bells to nearby friends, hoping to snag some scraps after the lungs, mustard, and empty shells have been tossed. As the sun begins to set, the hiss of bottle cap sighs fade into the backdrop of ten thousand cicadas.

You might expect a beer brewed with Maryland’s favorite crab seasoning to be nothing more than a well-marketed gimmick. But Flying Dog, after moving to Frederick after a few years in Denver, is one of the oldest functional breweries in the state. Like Heavy Seas and their nautical flair, Flying Dog understands what it means to be in this state, but also what it means to live in Maryland. What it means to wear purple during football season. What it’s like to contend with a parade of transient traffic as I-95 shuttles people to states external. What it’s like to pay a tax on rain.

Deposits of seasoning get stuck under your fingernails. Little cuts from shards and spikes sting when hands meet soap. The entire process means a lot of work and a lot of clean up, but the rewards, tangible and tantalizing, make the effort seem minor. Those who partake in the rituals of the bay go to bed satisfied, dreaming of food and friends and family and future.

The beer isn’t perfect; the smell hits you like a fishy breeze off of a populated wharf, and the Old Bay spikes a flag into your tongue, marking its savory territory despite the summer ale’s crisp attempt to quickly wash it down. But Maryland isn’t perfect either. It’s a hodgepodge of DC politicians and career fisherman, a swampy land swarmed with mosquitoes and mariners. Its weather can be extreme and unpredictable and relatively slow speed limits lead to some of the worst traffic in the country. But it’s a state that knows who it is, where it stands, and what it likes, by virtue of geographic necessity.

Flying dog tried to brew and bottle Maryland itself. Did it work? That ship’s still at sea. Either way, it’s a flattering homage, and I’m willing to bet a lot of Old Bay junkies just found the perfect partner for a summer romance.

“Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.” – H. L. Mencken

How to Brew Sweet Vanilla Sack Mead

New year means new brew. The brew kettle is all sanitized and ready to boil here at Gray Breweries, and it is just a matter of what is going into my big ol’ white buckets first.

Last year I had several dreams that coalesced into waking recipes: a traditional British Pale Ale with caramel as a finishing sugar, a first attempt at a noble hopped Pilsner, and several fruit and spice variations of sweet mead. I bought 10 pounds of Vienna Pilsner malt, all five noble hops, and some Budejovice lager yeast in support of my first ever all-grain beer. I’ve also had 15 pounds of white clover honey taking up precious shelf space in my brewing cabinet.

Personal laziness dictated which to brew first. I can’t do an all-grain beer yet, as I haven’t completed my home made mash tun (stayed tuned for that adventure in a future post). Sparging is pretty difficult without a mash tun, so merry mead making it is for me!

I guess 2013 is to be the year of sweet, sweet honey wine.

Things you’ll need:

• Honey (lots of it – 15-20 pounds of white clover, but orange blossom is permissable)
• Water (4-5 gallons of spring water)
• Fresh vanilla beans (3-4 bourbon, Mexican, or Madagascar beans, depending on taste)
• Good vodka (I used Stoli, but anything not in a plastic bottle should work)
• Sweet wine yeast (I used WLP720 Sweet Mead/Wine, but something like Yeastlab Sweet Mead yeast M62 could work, too)

Grade A or Grade get-the-hell-out-of-here.

Step 1: Infuse!

Let’s do the easy part first. Using a good, sharp, elvish blade, slice your vanilla beans lengthwise, then chop them into three or four pieces (depending on length). Once they’re all nice and split, drop them into the vodka. It will take a while for the vanilla to seep into the vodka and create an infusion, so just seal your jar or bottle and set it aside. By the time you’re ready to rack your mead, you should also have some delicious home made vanilla extract, too!

Do not be tempted to take the shortcut down the well-worn path of store-bought vanilla extract. The preservatives in the baking stuff can completely ruin the flavors of your honey, which might result in five gallons of something tragically unpalatable.

Word to the wise: no matter how good the beans smell while you’re cutting them, do not eat them. They do not taste like you’d think (or hope) they would. They’re actually sort of sour. Weird.

It takes about 3 weeks for the beans to fully vanilla-fy the vodka.

Step 2: Stir and Sanitize!

Traditional sweet mead is incredibly simple. Honey, water, yeast. Nothing else. Nothing fancy.

But with great simplicity comes great responsibility. You need to be attentive when adding your honey and sanitizing your must, as it is the most crucial step to making good mead. Anything that touches your water or your honey needs to be sterilized (seriously, everything). You have to keep stirring to make sure no honey settles on the bottom of your pot and scorches.

Every time honey gets scorched, a viking in Valhalla sobers up.

Note: Honey takes up a deceptively large amount of volume. Roughly 10.67 fluid ounces per pound, for anyone trying to do math and stuff. Be sure to leave enough room in your boil pot to allow for all that yellow sugary joy. I started with three gallons, just to be safe. You can always add more water after the must is sanitized to make up the difference.

Once the water has reached ~130 degrees or hotter, you can start to add your honey. You don’t want to add it much earlier, or it will pool on the bottom like a lazy salamander. Or something. You’ll want to add all the honey and then let the entire must get up to at least 160-170 degrees for 15 minutes to make sure it is free from any unwanted yeasts or sneaky mead-ruining bacteria.

Honey by any other name would taste just as sweet.

Step 3: Keep stirring!

You need to make sure the mixture homogenizes, so keep stirring aggressively. The pre-mead will develop a thick, white froth. This is normal. And awesome.

The mixture should turn a dandelion yellow and smell intoxicatingly decadent. Honey is probably the best thing ever. Probably.

Don’t forget to re-sterilize your stirring spoon if you leave it out for too long, or if it touches those gross kitchen counters of yours.

I’m like one of those cappuccino artists, except with booze.

Step 4: Cool and Pitch!

After its relaxing, stress-relieving hot tub, you’ll need to cool the must down before you pitch any yeast. Too hot and the yeast will burn to death and die horribly, too cold and they’ll go into hypothermic hibernation.

I’m in the process of making a brass coil wort/must cooler (apparently I have a lot of half-finished projects), but until it’s done, I’m using the classic “fill the kitchen sink with a crap load of ice and promise your wife it will only be in there for an hour, tops.”

Four hours later, your must will probably be the appropriate 70-75 degrees needed to pitch the yeast.

I highly recommend investing in an infrared thermometer if you plan to brew often. It saves having to sterilize a normal thermometer over and over again to take readings, and is fun to shoot around the house like you’re an Imperial Stormtrooper.

I use liquid yeast as it saves having to rehydrate dry yeast and create a starter, which I’ve never had much success with. It’s a little pricier, but I’d rather have something that works on the first try, to prevent the headaches of the second, third, and fourth tries.

Use a large spoon (sterilized!) to create a maelstrom in the middle of your mead and then pour the liquid yeast into the center of the honey storm. Stir once again in the opposite direction to fully aerate your yellow brew.

If you shake this vigorously then try to uncap it with your teeth, it may explode in your mouth, which is generally unpleasant.

Step 5: Wait!

So you’re all like, “OK great, but you promised me vanilla!”

I know. Patience is a virtue and all that.

From my research, adding vanilla beans directly to the fermenting must can lead to all sorts of problems including stuck fermentation and off-flavors. It is also possible to over vanilla  your mead(I know, I didn’t think that was even possible either), and by chucking some beans in you lose all control over how much flavor you have in the final product.

When fermentation slows and you are ready to rack the mead into the secondary vessel (probably after a few weeks in primary), then you can add your home made extract. Go slow and only add a little bit of a time, sampling every week until you reach the desired balance of honey and vanilla.

In four to six months, you should have a very sweet, very smooth mead ready for drinking, sharing, and toasting! Cheers!

How to Ireland: Dining

(Before we start, I’m forcing myself to do some PR. I’ve made a Facebook page for this here blog, so feel free to “Like” it if you prefer to get your updates through that medium for whatever reason: LitLib on Facebook! I also have a Twitter profile that I thoroughly neglect @OliverJGray)

Ireland is like a small East Coast fishing town. Paint peels from wood from overexposure to salt air, there is a subtle quaintness to the tininess of the houses, and every business in the entire place shuts down around 9:00 PM.

Well, the pubs stay open, but those don’t count.

Due to a slight logistics explosion, our first day in Ireland was set back roughly six hours. We had planned to pick up our rental car and careen into Kilkenny around 1:00 PM Irish time, but a delayed train and missed flight had us pulling into the hotel around 7:45 instead.

We checked in, dropped off our gear, and sat around for a few minutes, trying to shake the travel dust from our shoulders. It’s pretty hard to keep up the international kickassery after 36 hours of being awake, in a completely different time zone, after hurtling through the air at 505 MPH next to a demented clown-woman, but we tried anyway.

We got back into the car and drove to the heart of Kilkenny; an awesome Irish town with brightly colored row houses, a decidedly European bridge smack in the center of town, and a nearly 900 year old castle looming on a nearby bluff. After fighting with some locals for a place to park, we got out and sauntered around like tourists will do; giggling at the accents, remarking on the obvious cultural differences, and pining after pints of Guinness and Bulmers.

Kilkenny by day.

We were in no rush. Drunk on wanderlust, we were happy to finally be together on our honeymoon, and happy to just enjoy the lively Sunday evening. Kilkenny had beaten long standing rivals Tipperary in the All Ireland Senior Hurling semi-finals match earlier that day, and the town was awash in mirth and merriment. Every pub we passed was overflowing with music and loud patrons, despite it getting later and later on a work night.

Tiff and I wandered down a side street that had Chinese-style stringed flags hanging over head, each one decorated with a carp or a flower. All I could smell was beer and cigarette smoke, which was oddly welcoming. When we finally decided our stomachs were too hungry to ignore, we popped into one of the less rowdy pubs, Kyteler’s Inn, that had a delicious sounding menu scribbled in mutli-colored chalk just outside the door.

This inn is supposedly haunted, but we didn’t see any ghosts. Next time, I guess.

But as we sat down, the waitress informed us that the kitchen was closed. We were free to get drinks and take a seat wherever, but food wasn’t going to happen. We thanked her and tried another place.

Then another.

Then another.

After five restaurants, we began to realize that kitchens close early in Ireland. By 10:00, we had resigned ourselves to eating Lion Bars and Tatyo brand Cheese and Onion crisps in our hotel room for dinner.

Fortunately, on the way home, we found a Turkish Kebab restaurant that was still open, and was more than happy to serve us massive portions of doner, salad, and pita bread. I’m not sure if it was the hunger or just really good kebab…but it was the best meal I’ve had in a long time. We even had to pull the typical American move and take some home with us.

This night set the tone for the rest of our trip. We spent most of the day out having grand adventures, only to be rushing to any place we could find, praying their kitchens were still open.

If you decide to eat while you’re vacationing in Ireland, be aware of the following:

1. There are pubs and bars, but they aren’t always the same thing. Pubs sell food, but only until about 10:00 PM, and that’s on the extreme end. Bars typically only sell alcohol (you may find a bowl of nuts if you’re lucky).
2. Most normal restaurants serve meals between certain hours (like dinner between 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM); there are no Applebees or 24 hour fast food restaurants like the ones that kept you alive during your college binge-drinking years.
3. There are no hostesses. Do not go into a restaurant and assume that someone will lead you to your seat like an elementary school teacher leading a recess line. Seat yourself. A bar back or other employee will notice you, so don’t worry.
4. Menu items are not always available all day. You may find that a pub only serves sandwiches at lunch time. Deal with it. Nothing is worse than a confused, whiny American asking for Bangers and Mash at 8:43 PM after drinking four pints of Beamish.
5. Fast food is almost non-existent. You may stumble upon a Subway or a McDonald’s, but who wants to eat that garbage anyway? Ireland doesn’t have fast food, because there is no slow food. Menus will inform you and apologize if a certain dish will take 15 minutes to get to you. You’ll get your food fast, wherever you eat.
6. Tipping is not required. It’s kind of the way tipping should be, if the American restaurant industry hadn’t ruined the whole thing by paying their servers slave wages and making them rely on tips for sustenance. You can tip if you thought the service was especially good, quick, or friendly. Otherwise, there would be no harm in paying what you owe and saying thank you.

The good news is that almost all of the food we had was excellent. We may have been lucky in choosing our places to eat, but I liked everything I ordered, and only felt it was overpriced on one or two occasions.

So, eat, drink, be merry. Also remember pulling a real pint of Guinness takes about ~5 minutes, so make sure to order your second before you’re done with your first.

Blaa blaa blaa sandwiches are soooo blasé. Ba dum ching.

How to Valedict your Grill (and make Inauthentic Peanut Chicken Satay)

(Before we start, I’m aware that I’m not supposed to turn nouns into verbs, but I did anyway. And this won’t be the last time.)

My little Weber charcoal grill has been a stalwart backyard companion, seeing me through several summers, many parties, and many more beers. He has served admirably, weathering harsh winters, falling branches, and admittedly too infrequent cleaning from me. He is as loyal as a grill can be, given that he can’t really move or talk or do much of anything to prove its loyalty.

He is a little small, and annoying to light, but that was all part of his charm. He’d often sear my food a little too aggressively, leaving me to pick off the black burny bits before serving anything to my guests. But he was a good grill, and it was easy to look past most of his shortcomings.

Most of them.

There comes a time in a man’s life where he has to admit: despite nice flavor, grilling with charcoal is a total pain in the ass.

It takes too long to heat up for someone as impatient as me, and you have a limited cooking window once the coals are aflame. You also have to store big bags of weird smelling black bricks that inevitably soot up your hands when you’re trying to spread them out correctly.

To that end, I caved. I bought a gas grill. A behemoth of a thing, really, but it’s shiny and sturdy and new.

To say goodbye to my little turtle of a Weber, I decided to grill up one of my (and my wife’s) favorites: Peanut Chicken Satay.

How to Make Inauthentic Peanut Chicken Satay:

This recipe is inauthentic because I neither 1) cut the chick up and put it on skewers as is the “satay” part of the name, nor 2) marinate the chicken properly beforehand. I used a basic salt-and-seasonings chicken brine, which is pretty not Thai.

Things you’ll need:
-Chicken (skinless breasts are best, but tenderloins would work too)
-Seasonings (unfortunately, Old Bay isn’t called for, but salt, mustard seeds, coriander, black pepper, and garlic are)
-Peanut sauce (Time permitting, you can make your own with peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, and chicken broth. Time did not permit, so I used  House of Tsang Bangkok Padang Peanut Sauce that I found at Safeway)
-A grill and grill accessories
-A sauce brush
-Beer (Sam Adams Summer Ale makes another strong appearance)

Start with an image of the finished product, that makes sense, right?

Step 1: Brine your chicken
This is a technique I picked up from a fancy Williams Sonoma grilling book. The concept is deceptively simple: soak your chicken in seasoned brine so it retains its moisture on the grill. Making the brine is super easy: just dump a bunch of water, salt, mustard seeds, coriander, black pepper, and garlic into a bowl (or freezer bag, like I did) and then add your chicken. No need to measure amounts, just add a lot of each thing, but make sure there is more water than anything else.  Let it sit around for a few hours to really soak up all the tasty goodness.

Bag-O-Brine

2: Prep the grill
Chicken is a fickle meat. It burns quickly and dries out without warning. A big mistake a lot of green-grillers make is allowing their poultry  to sit over open flame while it cooks. Doing so will quickly render your chicken rubbery at best and burned at worst.

The solution is indirect heat. Arrange your charcoals so that they only take up half of the grill. This will give you two areas to work with: direct heat over the coals, and indirect heat…not over the coals.

1. Arrange

2. Spray

3. Burn…BURN! HAHAHAhahaha….sorry.

Step 3: Chicken + grill = ??
While you’re waiting for the coals to heat up, remove your chicken from the brine and use some paper towels to pat them down. Removing the excess water will keep the grill from smoking and also make the chicken sear better when you drop it on the direct heat.

Mmmmmm, delicious raw chicken.

When the coals are ready (very, very hot, white around the edges, glowy in the middle) briefly place the chicken over the direct heat for 2 minutes. Flip and repeat for another 2 minutes on the other side.

Sear and move, sear and move.

Move the chicken over to the indirect heat to finish cooking and prevent evil, evil dry-out.

Step 4: Sauce!

Let the chicken cook for about 10 minutes with the lid on, letting all of the juicy brine cook the chicken from the inside out. No need to flip yet, there will be time to flip out later.

Pour your sauce all over the chicken, but try not to spill it into the coals, as that could cause smoke, which will mar the flavor of your meat. Use a sauce brush to spread it evenly on the breasts to ensure maximum spicy peanut coverage.

Spicier = better

Brush, brush, brush, all day long.

Let the sauce cook a little bit, then flip the chicken. Learn from my mistake, and don’t leave it too long, or the sauce can and will burn. If it does, brush some more sauce over top of it and hope no one notices.

Almost ready for the devouring part.

Step 5: Serve with scalloped potatoes and peas
Because, duh.

And you’re done. Enjoy the spicy flavors against the juicy (presumably perfectly cooked by now) chicken!

With that, I say farewell to my little grill and hope his time out to pasture is relaxing and flare-up free.

Just for the record, here is his replacement (4 burner, 45,000 BTU, propane):

Shiny!

How to use Old Bay Seasoning

Old Bay seasoning, like Old Spice deodorant, is no joke. It’s so awesome, it doesn’t even need a ridiculous ad campaign.

If you’re from anywhere near the Chesapeake bay, you know this to be true. Old Bay is the standard-bearer of Maryland summers; his blue, red, and yellow heraldry fluttering in the breeze coming off of the water. Where there is Old Bay, there are crabs, and there is beer.

But Old Bay need not be saved, hoarded, coveted, only to be used on crabs. Even the labeling says, “For Seafood, Poultry, Salads, and Meats.” I have never had an Old Bay salad, but it sounds like the kind of thing a bad ass Corinthian warrior would eat. I suggest using Old Bay on anything and everything, as it can do no harm, only good.

According to the best and most trustworthy research tool ever known to humankind, Wikipedia, the ingredients of Old Bay are as follows:

• mustard
• paprika
• celery seed
• bay leaf
• black pepper
• red pepper
• cinnamon
• cloves
• allspice
• nutmeg
• cardamom
• salt
• mace
• ginger

I think they left a few out. Namely:

• Very finely ground crack-cocaine
• 99.9% pure distilled youthful exuberance (harvested from only the most carefree of American teenagers)
• Beer flavor enhancer #19
• Refined Chesepian spirit dust (salvaged from Skicoak, near Norfolk)
• High fructose black bean syrup

How to use Old Bay:

Things you’ll need:
-Old Bay
-Food you are going to cook
-Beer (may I suggest Blue Moon Agave Blonde Ale?)

Step 1: Put copious amounts of Old Bay on everything

And you’re done! You and your reborn taste buds can thank me later.

The picture is a little blurry because I got some Old Bay on the lens.

How to Make a Mess in your Kitchen (and Make Inauthentic Shepherd’s Pie in the process)

This pie is inauthentic for two reasons. 1) I used highly nontraditional ingredients and 2) it isn’t really a pie.

No crust = not a pie.

But I’m not one to question the practices of shepherds. They’ve been doing what they’ve been doing way longer than I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. If they say this is pie, then it’s pie, damnit.

Things you’ll need (in some places known as “ingredients”):

-Beef (of indefinite quality and weight, preferrably ground)
-Potatoes (the key to making the inauthentic version is to use random potatoes. I used sweet potatoes, red bliss, and Yukon gold. Mega bonus points for using blue potatoes)
-Green beans (fresh, frozen is some bullshit)
-Sugar snap peas (see above)
-Unnecessarily large carrots (because, why not?)
-A random chunk of onion you have left in your fridge from something else you made (or a fresh onion, I guess)
-Butter (I know, but if you know a better way to brown onions deliciously, I’m all ears)
-Milk (dog or better)
-Worcestershire sauce (the burger and…pie?…booster)
-Beer (Troegs Dream Weaver Wheat this time around)

Step 1: Go back in time to last weekend and purchase all of your produce from a local farmer’s market

Whether you’re a hardcore Locavore or not, buying local is just the nice thing to do. You help the farmers in your community, the produce is usually fresh and relatively cheap, and it’s a fun day out.

I was going to use cream of chicken, but I didn’t, so don’t.

Step 2: Chop and boil the ‘taters

Find your finest, sharpest, biggest knife, and proceed to cutting the potatoes into manageable chunks. Since the sweet potatoe takes longer to boil, you’ll want to cut it into smaller pieces than the rest. Once they’re all in pieces, drop them into a pot of pre-salted water and set to high heat. Cover if you don’t want it to boil over. Leave it uncovered if you’re looking for a culinary adventure.

As you can see, I didn’t follow my own advice and cut the sweet potatoes, smaller, so I had to boil for longer.

Step 3: Sauté the onions, carrots, and whatever else

You’ll need to boil the potatoes for about 30 minutes (since you’ll be mashing by hand, not with some fancy machine, so they need to be very soft). While you’re waiting on these, melt a chunk of butter in a big pan.

Remember: never use the old crappy metal utensils on the brand new expensive nonstick pans,

Chop and add your onions.

Protip: cut the onion in half with a very sharp knife and run both sides under cold water. Using a sharp blade will reduce the number of cells you rupture and rinsing it will wash away the sulfur compounds, resulting in fewer tears being accidentally added to the meal.

If you’re adding carrots to the pie, chop them up and add them with the onions. They (like the sweet potatoes) will take longer to soften.

Sorting your ingredients into neat little lines makes them taste better.

Step 4: Chop your green beans and de-pod your peas

Chopping green beans is easy. If they’re fresh, all you have to do is make sure you cut off the stringy little ends. After those are off, you can pretty much just flail the knife randomly until the pieces are in sizes/shapes that fit easily into a human mouth.

Sugar snap peas on the other hand, are slightly more complicated. I never truly appreciated buying frozen, pre-separated peas until last night. It’s a labor intensive process. If you have a child or a very smart pet, you might want to assign this task to them to save you some time.

The good stuff.

Interestingly enough, the older and more dried out the pea pod, the easier it is to remove the delicious fruit inside. The peas inside the very green, juvenile pods often aren’t yet detached, making is near impossible to remove then. The good news is that these taste great! Eat them.

If you’re into fiber in a big way, you can also eat the pods when you’re done.

Just in case you’ve managed to go through your whole life without seeing what “peas-in-a-pod” look like, here’s an example.

Step 5: Add the beef, beans, and peas to the softened onions and carrots

Toss everything in a stir it up with the spatula. You want to cook everything on medium heat until the meat is completely cooked through. If you still see pink, keep cooking. This is also when you’ll want to add some salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, Sriracha Rooster Sauce, and whatever else you think might taste good.

Does it look appetizing yet?

Step 6: Mash the hell out of some potatoes

Leave your new mixture of tasty deliciousness to simmer on low heat and drain your now very squishy potatoes. At this point, you’ll start to notice this is a very orange dish. That is a good thing. Beta-Carotene, good eyesight, all that.

If you are hardcore, you’ll use a hand masher. It tends to leave lumps, but for an inauthentic pie, lumps are good. For those of you who have been reading my writing for some time, you might recognize this masher.

Before you start, add in some melted butter and a splash or two of milk.

These are much easier to mash than unripened pears.

Step 7: Put everything together in a big dish

Pour your delicious meat and vegetable hodgepodge into a dutch oven, pyrex, or something else that can go into the oven and not melt. Smooth it out evenly so that you can added a layer of your mash potatoes on top.

Pre-potatoes, it should look like this:

Halfway to piedom.

Pre-heat to 400 degrees (or 204 Celsius if you have some kind of weird oven). Next, add a thick layer of your newly mashed potatoes to the top of your meat layer.

I tried to get fancy at this point. Using a pastry bag, I attempted to make adorable little  swirls of mashed potatoes, mainly for dramatic culinary effect.

Attempted. Attempted and failed. Miserably. When you leave lumps and skin in your mashed potatoes, they don’t flow very well out of a pastry bag. They kind of plop and splat. The result is not overly appetizing:

I’m sure it tastes fine, it just looks not-so-fine.

Step 8: Bake your creation

Everything is cooked at this point, so this final bake is just to seal in the juices and infuse the potatoes will all sorts of vegetable yummy flavors. Pop the pyrex into the oven for ~20 minutes. You can also briefly broil the potatoes to get that “browned peaks” look.

Now is a good time to clean up the dirty dishes – or – drink your beer. Whichever seems more important.

Step 9: Enjoy!

Inauthentic recipe, authentic deliciousness.

 

Review: Flying Dog Old Scratch Amber Lager

Old Scratch lives in your refrigerator.

His body is part tiny dog, part flea, part amber colored lager, all unfiltered childhood nightmare fuel.

His grotesque form creeps out of darkness, only visible when the door is closed and the light goes out.

He crawls and stalks and eyes your food, watching, waiting, for his chance to feed.

He is the curdler of milk. He is the molder of bread. He is the rotter of eggs.

His gaze is fixed on all that is good. His is the life of spoiling and defiling. When you want a sandwich, pray Old Scratch has not been at home.

He was not always bad. At one point he was of the purist malts and yeast. He was crisp and friendly and loyal to his masters. But he had a scratch he could not itch. The flea in him bit and dug and infested his soul.

Soon the itch took over. The good in him was replaced by a desire to scratch. Scratch and scratch and scratch and scratch. Soon he was no longer good. All he could think of was the itch.

The warmth in his life disappeared. He retreated from all he knew. No longer did he ride the neighborhood animals, no longer did he find joy the warm fur of dogs and raccoon and lazy house cats.

He found his way to your fridge. The cold of the icebox matched the cold of his soul. As his skin numbed, the itch faded, but never disappeared.

He takes his pain out on your food.

If you want to keep your food safe, keep this tasty amber ale in a fridge with nothing else. Or leave him out to warm up.

Maybe he’ll be a little nicer. Maybe he’ll get worse. The only thing to be sure of with Old Scratch is that he has an itch, one that can’t be scratched.

8 out of 10.

Amber + Lager = Amblager – or – Lamber!

Next up: Sam Adams East-West Kolsch!

I Ate a Taco

After class on a weekday. Late. Gotta eat.

Chipotle? Closed. Wendy’s? Nah. Burger King? Meh. Taco Bell? Uh, I guess?

I could always cook something, but I’d probably fall asleep midway through and burn my house down with a smoldering pot of pasta.

I stared at the menu like it’s some kind of alien lexicon. I hadn’t eaten Taco Bell in a long time. I considered a burrito, but had flash backs of college. And tequila. And finding cheese and tomatoes in my bed on a Sunday morning.

In a moment of panic and desperation, I picked the most absurd thing on the menu.

I can’t believe I’m going to admit this. I actually ate the Doritos-shelled monstrosity from Taco Bell.

Two of them.

I swear I’m normally healthier than this. I swear.

The Doritos Locos Tacos – The only thing loco is that the Yum! Brands, Inc. marketing team thought this was a good idea.

Disclaimers:
1. Yes, I know that Taco Bell “beef” is mostly wood pulp and cat litter.
2. Yes, I know I probably took a year or two off my life by eating this.
3. No, it doesn’t come in a pre-opened fun-sized bag of Doritos like on the commercials.

The Verdict:

Ignoring how disgustingly unhealthy it probably is, this thing isn’t so bad. After you get past the bright orange, Dutch-soccer-team color of the taco, it tastes exactly like you’d expect it would. Sort of like dipping a Dorito into seven-layer dip, minus guacamole and beans and all the other wonders of seven-layer dip.

It has all the advantages of a taco (portability, crunchability, gas) with all the disadvantages of a Dorito (“magical cheese dust” on your fingers, corn after taste, gas). I find that the flavors don’t enhance each other, but don’t detract from each other either. It’s the Switzerland of fried corn-based foodstuffs: neutral as hell.

I probably won’t ever eat one again. I’m really worried about what this has done to the longevity and functionality of my digestive tract. I feel sullied, and not in the good kind of way.

I can’t recommend it, but I can’t tell you not to try it. This kind of ambivalence is hard to achieve. I guess you should try it if your morbid curiosity compels you to. I guess you shouldn’t try it if you have a weak stomach.

I can only really recommend that you not go to Taco Bell at all. It’s for the best, really.

I tried to take a picture of the taco, but the goblin inside my camera refused to capture anything more than an orange blur. Instead, here is a relevant meme:

"Good news everyone! You're now reading this in Professor Farnsworth's voice."