Friday, January 9, 2009

My Wife is a Brewer

Rachel brewed her first solo batch of beer last Sunday: a 2-Liter yeast starter. It only took me six years to emerge victorious. She enjoyed herself, but claims it's because the cleanup was easier than full-size batches.

The starter was for a batch of Cardamom Coffee Stout that I brewed with Kevin Revolinski on Wednesday. The idea was Kevin's - he wanted to brew the beer equivalent of Arabic coffee - but I'm willing to steal it for commercial gain. Cardamom is beastly stuff; one gram in the 5-gallon batch seemed like plenty when we tasted the post-boil sample. I'm going to add whole espresso beans directly to the beer early next week. Cold infusion flips the bird at sanitation, but it's the best way to impart a beautiful coffee flavor without any harsh bitterness. Drink a bottle of Oscura if you don't believe me.

2 comments:

Shane said...

Good job at recruitment. Let her know that she's avoiding the one huge hassle for homebrewing: cleaning 12 oz bottles.

FYI, try this: mix 1 lb ground coffee to 11 cups of water, let steep cold overnight. Filter (french press) it out, and you have coffee concentrate. 1 part of this to 2 parts water, add ice.

Best. Iced coffee. Ever.

Joe Walts said...

Dogg, I have bottle prep down to an art. After you drink a beer, rinse the bottle with hot water. When you're ready to bottle, run your bottles through a dishwasher high-temp cycle with no soap. Cleaned and sanitized!

My French press probably holds two cups of water, but I'm not gonna let that stop me. I bet that would make a mean iced mocha too.