Pumpkin Ale – Recipe and Notes – Mid-October 2009

There is no point in rehashing the post from 10 days ago about the Pumpkin Ale. So then lets dive in head first into the nitty gritty from this brew session.

Last Saturday morning I headed out to the farmer’s market to pick up a butternut squash, after a quick walk around to gauge what was available for purchase. I found a vendor that had a 5.5 lb butternut for $2.00. Consider it sold! Now with the butternut in my possession, it time for all the prep work.

I already had a yellow neck squash from the end of season harvest in the garden. I had no idea what to do with, so I though that I might as well use it along with the butternut. After prepping both squash (peel, de-seed & dice), I tossed all the squash with 1/4 cup of light C & H brown sugar (4oz by weight), before putting it under the broiler. It turned out to be just enough sugar to coat everything evenly, but not so much that I had leftover sugar in the bottom of the mixing bowl.

I roasted the butternut/yellow squash under a low, then high broiler for about 90 minutes. After about 45 mins of no broiling action under low, I cranked it up to high so that it would actually roast. Now with that bit out of the way, here is the complete recipe:

Jack-off Ale Recipe (Powers Brewery format at the bottom)
6 lbs – Pale Malt (6 row) USA
2 lbs – Munich Malt – 10L
.25 lb – Chocolate Malt (UK)
1 lb – Caramel/Crystal Malt 20L
1 lb – Flaked Barley
.25 lb – Light C&H Brown Sugar

Wyeast American Ale – 1056

~5 lbs of cleaned Butternut squash – 75 mins

Fuggles – 1oz pellets- 4% AA – 60 mins
East Kent Golding – 1oz pellets- 5% AA – 15 mins
Fuggles – 1oz pellets- 4% AA – 3 mins

Spices added during final 30 mins of boil:
2 tsp – Nutmeg
2 tsp – Cinnamon
1 tsp – Allspice

Other info: Mashed for about 90 minutes at 150-154F with 3 gallons of water; batch sparged with 1.5 gallons of boiling water & 3.5 gallons of 170F water; First running was 2.75 gal and the second/final running was 3.75 gal; 90 minute boil; 10 days in the primary, OG 1.048 @ 80F.

I actually spent some time this go around, looking at how the Powers web page was set-up. And after making a couple of adjustments for the dead space in my mash/lauter tun, I basically hit the recipe right on the nose, both in OG and final volume, which is a first for me. Now for the hardest part…..waiting to drink the final product.

RO^Jack’off Ale^October 17, 2009^94^75^5^60^9^4^73^100^8.8^0.3^0.1^0.4^0.4^0.25^72^72^6^64^64^2^41^41^0.25^31^31^
1^7^7^1^0^0^0^0^0^0^0^0^0^45^45^14^1^60^0^1^12^1^15^0^1^14^1^3^0^1^0^0^0^0^1^0
^0^0^0^1^0^0^0^0^1^0^63^153^1.2^^^^~5 lbs of cleaned/diced/roasted Butternut squash, coated in
4 oz of Light C&H brown sugar; All spices added during final 30 mins of boil, Nutmeg 2 tsp, Cinnamon 2 tsp,
Allspice 1 tsp.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^5^5^5^0^0^0^0.1^

Jalapeno Hot Sauce – v1 – Oct 2009

I really like the jalapeno version of McIlhenny Tabasco sauce, more so then the original version. My favorite use of Green Tabasco is on scrambled eggs (now surpassing ketchup.) But it is also great as a condiment on a wide spectrum of Mexican inspired dishes, as you would expect it to be. But being the mad cooking scientist that I am, I’ve been tossing around the idea of trying to make my own version of that oh so delicious green hot sauce. With a tip of the hat to JRR for sending me the link to this hot sauce recipe from Tyler Florence over at Food Network, I was off and running. Here is my adaptation of Tyler’s recipe: Continue reading

Canning a batch of Pickled Jalapenos – v2 – Oct 2009

After I made the first batch of jalapeno rings, I started to think that I might want to try and make the jalapeno rings a totally different way. In case I run into any issues with the first batch (such as the rings being too salty). Don’t ask me how, but somehow I ended up on the website for  Backwoods Home Magazine, and they had an article about canning peaches. Well within that page they had a link to “The USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning” on the Penn State University web site. Continue reading

Picked up Oct/Nov 2009 Wine Club Shipment from Domaine Carneros

This months wine shipment sounds exciting. Yeah I’ve got the usual red (2007 Avant Garde Merlot) & sparkling wine mix, but for the sparkling wine they shipped out something very intriguing, a 2006 Blanc de Noir.

From reading Domaine Carneros’ flyer this month, I guess that this is only the second time that they have released a Blanc de Noir, which is basically a white wine made from black grapes. There first release of Blanc de Noir was in 2001, but it seemed more like an experiment from a stand out Pinot Noir Cuveé. It wasn’t until 2006 that they had another Pinot Noir Cuveé that to quote them “wanted its own recognition.” So I’m pretty excited to give this sparkling wine a try, and at a list price of $33 and a club price of $29.99 a bottle (even lower when getting half case and up), a pretty reasonable price point to boot.

In some other exciting wine news, in about 2-3 weeks I should be getting my Magnum Society shipment for the year. I’ll post more info in that shipment when it arrives.

Drying Basil in the Box Fan Dehydrator

Now that I have the box fan dehydrator built, its time to dry something. And I just got a bucket full of basil from my farmer neighbor, at first I thought about making it into pesto and freezing it into ice cube trays. But why not put the box fan through its maiden voyage, to work out any kinks.

Well it turns out that the type of filter you use can be a major kink in using a box fan dehydrator. The filter that I started with was a cotton style filter with a MERV 8 rating. The problem with using a filter with that high of a rating was that the box fan wasn’t strong enough to blow its air capacity through the filter. So a majority of the air ended up bouncing off the filter back though the box fan. So what was supposed to take a day to dry out ended up taking five days. So for next time I’m going to use one of those blue furnace filters that has a MERV 2 rating, since a MERV 8 is just overkill in this application. That is unless you are a dust freak/germ-a-phobe, then maybe a MERV 8 is the way to go.

Box Fan Dehydrator – Good Eats style

I’ve wanted to make a box fan dehydrator for a long time. With a long time being, since I saw the episode of Good Eats, where Alton Brown was making beef jerky with his box fan dehydrator. I already had a box fan in the basement, I just needed to find those cotton filters that he used in the episode. After about a month a searching around town and coming up empty. The project got tossed onto the back burner. Continue reading

Brewing Pumpkin Ale this Weekend – Mid-October 2009

Since I really don’t have anything lined up this weekend, other then swapping the battery in my truck. Why not brew up another batch of beer, since I’m starting to run low on the dry stout and IPA down in the kegerator. This time I thought that I would brew up something totally different, but very fitting for the Fall Season, that being a Pumpkin Ale. I’ve had a couple different pumpkin ales over the years, with the most notable being the Pumpkin at Lakefront in Milwaukee.

Yesterday I stopped by the LHBS to get all the raw materials, now I just need to stop by the farmers market on Saturday morning to get a large butternut squash. I talked with the guys at the shop, and one of the guy said that if I was going to roast the squash in the oven that I should toss it in a little bit of brown sugar to help the butternut caramelize when broiled. Plus the brown sugar will add a little bit to the gravity, but I only plan on use a couple of tablespoons. So the gravity difference will be negligible.

Wish me luck, and I’ll post the recipe after the brew session.

Happy 100th Post!!!!

This post marks a milestone for miia monthly, in that this is the 100th post to the site!!! WooHoo!!! Who knew that it would only take 6 months? Personally I never thought that this “blog” would have lasted a month, let alone 6 months. But I’ve started to use this website in a strange way myself. In that I’m using it to look up my own recipes so that I don’t have to remember all the details (pictures, words, everything.) This is a big enhancement from my old method of writing down my recipes (and cooking notes) on a note card. Plus if I’m traveling, I’ll always have my recipes available.

So I hope that you enjoyed the first 100 posts, and hope that you stick around for the next 100 posts and beyond.

Thank you.

End of growing season – Killing Frost – 10-10-09

I thought that I would be able to get a couple more weeks out of the growing season, but Mother Nature had a different idea. I knew that it was going to be cold on Friday night (it was right around 37F.) But whatever didn’t get clipped by the weather on Friday night, got a second round on Saturday night (right around 29F.) So most of Saturday afternoon was spent picking everything that was left in the garden, ripe/un-ripe it didn’t matter. What I ended up was a whole box of vegetables, with half of it being green tomatoes. My hand was forced due to the weather, but it least I’ll be able to final try out some fried green tomatoes this week.

Garden – White Potato Harvest – 10-03-2009

Talk about a weak potato harvest, I barely have enough potatoes to make a single batch of mashed potatoes for dinner. But it seems like I’m not the only one that had a weak crop this year. I’ve talked to a couple of people and this doesn’t seem to be an isolated occurrence. From the people that I’ve talked with, they also had low yields (about 3 potatoes per plant and small potatoes at that.) I guess better luck next year!