Bourbon Barrel Sour Cherry Porter Tasting

A strong dark beer isn't most people's ideal summer beverage, but tasting a dark sour seemed like a good excuse to drink down in my (now temperature controlled) barrel/bottle/fermentation room.  When I bought my house in 2009 I was hoping the basement would stay at a relatively moderate temperature during the summer, sadly now (well into my second summer here) I've come to accept that it needs a bit of help a few months of the year. So I installed a small A/C unit in the one window the room has.  I'll do a more complete post about it once I install additional insulation.

I posted a tasting of the straight version of our group's second bourbon barrel beer a month ago.  This portion of the batch sat on just under 1 lb of sour cherries per gallon for two months before bottling.  Audrey used the other bag of sour cherries I froze last summer to make a delicious cherry pie (great pairing).  I need to get down to the farmer's market before the sour cherries are gone for another year (or get serious and go to a pick-your-own orchard).

Bourbon Barrel Sour Cherry Porter

Appearance – Beautiful dark brown beer (the sad thing about adding cherries to a dark beer is that you don't see their color contribution). Pours with a two-finger tan head, which recedes slowly leaving some lacing behind.

Smell – Cherries, chocolate, slight oaky/bourbon, leather, touch of sourness. Complex, potent, really captivating aroma.

Taste – The sour cherries have a slightly cooked, but mainly fresh character. The sourness is well balanced, tart, not sharp or aggressive. The bourbon barrel porter flavors comes through in the finish, mocha roast, with well integrated barrel character.  The funk is minimal, but I wouldn't call it clean, just restrained.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, the sourness keeps it from seeming thick or stodgy. Moderate-low carbonation, just enough.

Drinkability & Notes – Couldn't be happier with the way this beer came out, the cherries lift the beer up adding complexity without getting in the way of the other flavors. Despite the heat the sourness keeps this drinkable.

Eggs Benedict: Bacon Grease and the Brunch of Champions

We decided to mix things up a bit last week by doing a brunch instead of a lunch. Mike wanted to get things moving because he would spending the rest of the day with his father, ripping up the old damp floor boards in one room his new basement (which, he reports, he hopes to convert into a walk-in cooler once it is waterproofed). Indeed, it served as the final such Sunday farmer’s market meal in the old apartment. We hope to reorient ourselves to the Takoma Park farmer’s market and the bounty of fall fruits and vegetables in the next few weeks.

The idea this week was a riff on a brunch staple: Eggs Benedict. We opted to go all-American, though, replacing the traditional English muffin and Canadian bacon with a local whole wheat bread (a think loaf with a cross-hatched top whose label read: Multigrain Bruschetta) and some thick-sliced bacon. We also slipped in some homegrown tomatoes for a bit of bright contrast. And, just for Dan, we made a batch of creamy, heartstoppingly rich Hollandaise sauce.

Farmer's Market Booty
Multigrain Bruschetta (Bonaparte Breads)
Farm Fresh Eggs
Cantaloupe

Pantry Staples
Tomatoes
Butter
Bacon
Black Pepper
Salt
Sugar
Lemon
Distilled Vinegar

Bacon grease is your friend. And here’s why…
To get started, we fried the bacon, three thick slices from Niman Ranch (which Mike had left over from the previous week’s tarte flambée). Once the bacon was crispy, we used the drippings to fry two Texas-Toast-thick slices of the multigrain bruschetta (Is there anything that isn't improved by some bacon drippings? Mike says beer, but notes that Brooklyn Brewery is nonetheless putting out a bacon flavored barleywine shortly… I refuse to be the guinea pig for that one!). Once the bread got a little color we moved it to the toaster oven, on low heat, to get it out of the way.


With the pan vacant we cut thick slices of a couple tomatoes, freshly picked that morning from the planters on my back porch, and added them with a little olive oil to the pan (sadly, the bread soaked up a lot of the bacon grease while pan-toasting). The tomatoes are an heirloom variety that never gets past a reddish-pink, but they are very solid and sweet.


I bought the tomato plants as four seedlings at the beginning of the summer when I only had $2 to spend at the Adams Morgan farmer’s market. Sadly it took considerably more than that to purchase the necessary potters, soil, stakes, and such, though they have done a great job producing throughout the summer (and thankfully, the planters and dirt can be reused next summer).


Next, on to the poached eggs! I was particularly wary of this step never having poached an egg and worried that every effort would result in protein-clouded water and broken yolks. Hence, Fearless Mike led the way on this one. We filled a non-stick pan with several inches of water and brought it to a boil. We stirred in a tablespoon of distilled vinegar, which lowers the pH and encourages the proteins in the white to set quickly. Once the water was boiling, we turned off the heat, and gently poured the eggs into the pan (this is easiest if you crack them into cups or small bowls first). After 4 minutes with the cover on they were nice and oozy, but not too runny.

Before the poached eggs, we actually started the Hollandaise sauce, the recipe for which we took from Good Eats, which, though it sounded easy enough, caused quite a bit of panic as we worked to time the egg poaching and Hollandaise whisking so that neither was done too soon or late.


For the sauce, you whisk the three egg yolks with a bit of water for as long as it takes for your arm to feel as if it fall off (weakling that I am, this only took about three to four minutes). When the yolks will become light yellow and frothy, add a touch of sugar (the small amount helps to fight curdling by getting between the proteins… though we still ended up with a few tiny yellow dots in ours).


Heat the yolk mixture in a double boiler until it begins to thicken, then slowly add 1.5 sticks of butter whisking constantly. Once all the butter is incorporated into the emulsion, add salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.


Finally Mike assisted in a quick assembly: layering a slice of the toast with bacon, tomato slices, a poached egg, and finally a “drizzle” of the Hollandaise (we really just spooned the stuff on, and it was wonderful).


The meal was delightful and rich, salty from the bacon, and tart form the tomatoes, crunchy bacon-y toast… once the stress over trying to cook five different things at once wore off. The ingredients all played very well together and the rich butter sauce really helped to bring all of the elements together. Our only mistake was starting the toast a bit too early, and placing it in the toaster oven to keep it warm, so it ended up a bit on the dry side (nothing a little dip of Hollandaise couldn't fix, though—shameless!).

In the absence of pie (and in lieu of nutritional content of our meal), we rounded out the hefty meal with a couple of sweet, simple slices of cantaloupe.


To compliment all these elements, we went with a bottle of the Lemon Pepper Single we brewed a few months back. It has really dried out since Mike reviewed it, and the carbonation has come around. The subtle lemon flavor matched well with the Hollandaise and the crispness fended off otherwise rich, fatty flavors.

Chick-N-Brick

On a schedule of alternating weeks, last Sunday was Mike's turn to decide what we would make for lunch. Chicken-Under-a-Brick is essentially butterflied chicken, pan roasted under something heavy so as to encourage a deep, crisp browning on the skin. A much quicker mode of cooking than, say, roasting a whole chicken, the butterfly cut levels out the flesh to cook evenly and quickly. Accompanied with a simple salad and some roasted roots, this Sunday's lunch was comforting and filling without being too heavy for the summer heat.

Farmer's Market Booty:
One Whole Chicken
Tomatoes (a rainbow of heirlooms)
Carrots
Potatoes
Arugula
Parsley
Fresh Garlic (distinct in intensity and flavor from the kind with dried outer layers)

From the Pantry/Refrigerator:
Black Pepper

Red Pepper Flakes

Kosher Salt
Turbinado Sugar
Olive Oil
Lemon

If you have some extra time you can brine the chicken for an hour (which we did). The chicken was submerged in a solution of 1/4 cup of kosher salt and 2 tablespoons of turbinado sugar dissolved into 2 quarts of water. This process both seasons the meat and allows it to retain more moisture over the course of cooking leading to juicer meat. If you want to flavor the meat you could certainly add some crushed garlic, herbs, or spices to the brine as well, but with such a high quality free range chicken it didn't seem worth it.

For Mike to prepare the chicken, Audrey had the pleasure of witnessing the sickening crunch of bones and spine removal a la Mortal Kombat (nerd alert: it was a Deadly Fatality!). Butterflying a chicken can be intimidating, but is actually a pretty simple procedure once you have done it a couple times. First cut out the backbone (this can be done either with a knife or kitchen sheers), then flip the bird over and apply pressure to the breast to flatten it (enter sickening crunch here). Finally flip it back over and make a shallow incision in the membrane that covers the keel bone that separates the breasts, and leaver it out with your finger. Such butterflying as this makes for much faster cooking as well as easy serving at the table.




Butterfly chicken can also be grilled outside, but in the heat of mid-August (and living in an apartment), we opted to stay indoors and make good use of the stove and oven. Dry the skin, then lay the entire chicken down in a lightly greased pan (we used cast-iron, but anything oven-proof would work) and set either two foil-wrapped bricks, or (as we did) a heavy cast-iron dutch oven, lightly greased, directly onto the exposed flesh. The pressure helps to keep the skin in contact with the pan, increasing browning and deliciousness.


After about 5 minutes, we began to smell the familiar waft of frying chicken skin, but we kept it there for a good 15 minutes total before performing an amazing feat of chicken-acrobatics. We moved the chicken onto a plate, drained out most of the grease from the pan, laid down the potatoes and carrots (any root vegetable could work here as well), and replaced the chicken, skin side up this time, on top of those (no need to replace the dutch oven/bricks this time as it goes into the oven which was preheated to 450 degrees).


Brush with a simple mixture of lemon/olive oil/garlic/red pepper flakes/black pepper. The brined bird will give up some salty liquid, so you may want to hold back on seasoning the vegetables until after they are cooked (in our case they needed a bit of salt).

Once the chicken hits ~150, go ahead and remove it from the oven and let it rest on a cutting board or plate. In our case, the chicken seemed to cook a little faster than the roots, so we poured off most of the liquid from the pan, and returned them to the oven until cooked through. To serve, we placed the carrots and potatoes in a bowl and topped the chicken with a good bit of chopped parsley.

While the chicken cooked we made a simple arugula salad, with a basic dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper (pretty similar to what was poured on the chicken). Being late summer, we of course could not leave the tomatoes off the menu, so we just chopped a couple of colorful ones to top of the dressed arugula.

For the beer we went with Mike's Hoppy Brown. The hop character is a bit over the hill now at seven months old, but the lightly roasted malt did a good job matching the roasted flavors in the root vegetables and chicken.


And finally, what is such a hearty meal absent dessert? Well, still pretty good, we assume, but with a good amount of blueberry peach pie leftover from a pretty fantastic potluck the previous night, we helped ourselves to a couple of fat slices.

Salad Farm-oise

For once, I had a solid idea in mind of the meal we would make before we arrived at the Dupont Farmer's Market last Sunday. I kept toying with the words "niçoise" and "salad," suggesting the outlandish twist of sausage in place of tuna (!), and "who has time for those fancy olives... and capers... and anchovies, anyway?" Mike insisted that this salad creation of mine, while perhaps loosely inspired by the original, was not in fact anything like a real Salade Niçoise.

In the end, we built a sound "niçoisienne" base of little gem lettuce (the diminutive bibb lettuce-wannabe of the Romaine fam), green beans, hard boiled eggs, potatoes, and a tangy, herby, slightly creamy vinaigrette. Atop we laid perfectly tender, juicy medallions of marinated, pan-seared pork tenderloin. And, though we don't by any means usually adhere to the schedule of a proper meal, the prospect of some bruschetta-type pre-salad course was too tempting to ignore. We "toasted" a few slices of French baguette (I use "toast" here because we may very well have used enough olive oil to technically be frying said slices) to act as spongy seats for our chopped tomatoes, garlic, and basil ("bruschetta" here loosely defined).

Now, les details. Below are two lists of food; the first containing those items we purchased at the market (not all, just those relevant to this meal), and the second, those items which we already owned and used at some point in the preparation of... LUNCH!

Farmer's Market Booty:
Potatoes - small, yellowy flesh, and with a reddish skin
Tomatoes - one pint of red-yellow mixed cherry tomatoes; two small black princes and two green zebras (at least I'm pretty sure that was the variety)
Green Beans - one pint of what seemed to be slightly more mature beans (or maybe some rogue variety, unfortunately I didn't get the name), which I didn't notice entirely until I got them home
French Baguette - from Bonaparte Breads, who thankfully make the trek to Dupont (and other markets) every week with the finest bread in all the land, pastries, and countless stacks of other buttery wonders. Seriously, for your own good, check these people out
Pork Tenderloin - About a half-pound strip of lean pork tenderloin, suggested by the nice man behind the table in lieu of my sausage idea (which would admittedly have overpowered the subtle flavors of the other ingredients)
Little Gem Lettuce - smooth, inoffensive, and buttery

Pantry/Fridge Staples and Such:
Olive Oil, Garlic, Shallot, Mayonnaise, Kosher Salt, Pepper, Dried Thyme, Basil (fresh and dried), Dried Tarragon, Sherry Vinegar, Coarse Brown Mustard, Eggs

While the ingredients for the bruschetta and the salad were prepared alongside each other until the very end (we ate the bruschetta while waiting for the tenderloin to cook and rest), for clarity's sake, I'll explain the basic procedure followed for each as a whole on its own, rather than what I did in chronological order (I was all over the place, but it worked!). For the bruschetta, I waited to cut the bread (on a hard bias, so as to increase the slice surface area) until I was ready to put it in the pan. Though it probably wouldn't reduce it to crouton staleness, you never know what might happen (meteor, dance party, tenderloin crisis, and so on) and before you know it, the bread's been sitting out for two hours. Given the quality of this baguette, though, it would probably take a lot more than an extra hour sitting out to come anywhere close to staling it out.

Now, the tomatoes = super easy. Everyone's definition of "bite size" is different, but I cut about half the pint of cherry tomatoes and my four other heirlooms into such approximate size into a colander resting on a plate (or bowl, or in the sink--just something to catch the liquid at the tomatoes drain). If you like the extra juice, no need to salt your tomatoes, but for our taste, mixing about a teaspoon of kosher salt into the cut tomatoes did a great job of pulling out the excess liquid and concentrating the sweet, rich flavor.


Once the tomatoes had rested with the salt about a half an hour, I got rid of the liquid (down the sink or down the hatch, whatever you please), and added 1-2 finely minced cloves of garlic, another small pinch of salt (you might want to taste a tomato first to determine the need), a couple grinds of the pepper mill (again, to taste, it's up to you), about a tablespoon of olive oil (not too much, since it's really best served as a toasting agent for the bread) and let it all sit and get happy in a bowl. I waited until just before serving the add the basil chiffonade so it wouldn't darken.


And of course, the bread. Some people might prefer to skip the liberal application of olive oil which aids so well in the pan-toasting process, but not us, not this time, being Sunday lunch and all. All it takes is a simple nonstick pan atop medium-heat, and a patient little wait of maybe 5 minutes on each side (no real timing magic here, we just constantly lifted the slices to check the progress until we were satisfied with the rich golden brown color).

As the toasts became ready, we placed them on a plate, and atop them, the garlicky-basiled tomatoes. It would nearly have sufficed as an entire lunch in itself...


...If it weren't for the amazing pork tenderloin that had been marinating for over an hour in olive oil, garlic (two crushed cloves), salt, pepper, dried basil, tarragon, and thyme. The photo may be a bit difficult to make out, but beneath the looming specter of olive oil, on the counter are the dried herbs and tenderloin.


While the tenderloin marinated in the fridge, the rest of the salad preparation was quite simple (if not mildly sweltering with all the boiling and no AC, though it's amazing the discomfort your brain ignores when it's in the cooking zone... but maybe that's just me). In no particular order, we: boiled eggs; boiled (in salted water) and then quartered potatoes (for fear they might get waterlogged if we cut before boiling); steamed green beans; and washed and tore up the lettuce. It should be noted that to none of this did we add salt, except for about two teaspoons to the water in which we boiled the potatoes and green beans. Given the delicate and fresh flavors of the salad components, and the distinct zip of the dressing, we thought it best to let them shine as themselves while also acting as complimentary vehicles for the subtle, succulent tenderloin.



The tenderloin! Not much to it after the marinade, really. We fired up the cast iron skillet nice and hot to get a good sear on the outside, making sure to remove any big pieces of garlic or herbs beforehand, and let it cook on all four sides for maybe 5 minute each. As you can see in the photo, we settled on only cooking the meat to medium/medium-well (around 140 degrees F), and it was well worth the risk (so far...? anyone know how long trichinosis takes to show up?). Be sure to let the meat rest for about 5 minutes after removing it from the heat before cutting it, as well, as it gives the juices a chance to cool down and settle, magically keeping them from running out all over the place, and resulting in disappointingly dry meat.


For such a simple, lean piece of meat marinated in a really uncomplicated mixture (believe me, if I can make it up, it's not that difficult), the final product kind of knocked my socks off and was almost delicate enough to match the service tuna normally pays to a Salade Niçoise.

Next-to-last step was to mix up a vinaigrette containing sherry vinegar, a tiny amount of (real) mayonnaise for a little creaminess, coarse brown mustard, kosher salt, pepper, chopped basil, and olive oil. The trick, it seems, to a decent vinaigrette is saving the oil component to be whisked in, very slowly, until last. At that, if you've not added any real emulsifying components to the vinegar (mustard, egg yolk, etc.), making it essentially water, the oil droplets are going to quickly coalesce at the top. Additionally, though it may seem counterintuitive to add salt to such a strongly flavored component of the dish, believe me, it's one of those things that you'll miss if it's not there.


Finally, we placed all the ingredients together on our plates -- lettuce in the middle, green beans sprinkled on top, eggs and potatoes each lining one side, a drizzle of vinaigrette, and the tenderloin medallions down the middle.


Beer Pairing:
Mike chose Orchard White, a dainty wheat beer from the Bruery folks that has only recently become available in the DC area, and supposedly with smacks of lavender, though we only got a pleasantly faint waft here and there. Mike adds: The firm carbonation and light character did a good job keeping our palettes fresh between the different components of the salad. It was delicate enough not to trample on the greens or the eggs, but still had enough herbal complexity to match with the pork (although probably not as well as something a bit of darker malt would have). The Bruery is one of the most interesting breweries to open in the last couple years. Most of their beers are delicious Belgian inspired brews (I am particularly fond of the Saison De Lente). The only knock on them is that their quality control still has room for improvement; I had a badly infected bottle of Black Orchard a few weeks back.

I hope you all enjoyed my first actual post. This is very much a process in progress, so please don't hesitate to let me know what you think can be added or improved for future posts.

New Kid on the Blog

Food connects people. Toasted baguette with soft, salty butter and seedy strawberry jam with hot coffee; an ear of sweet, fresh July corn plucked from the boil, my dad typewritering through his before I even finish applying the requisite butter-salt-pepper; the spicy bite of the soft, bouncy crumb cake from my grandmother's recipe. All of these tastes, textures, and smells I have indelibly connected to memories of place and people. Whether with close friends, neighbors, family, or complete strangers, our rituals of food, whatever form they take in time and circumstance, are evidence that food feeds more than our bodies when we make and share it with those around us.

So, you may be asking: Just who is this "Fermentationette"? In reality, she is the diminutive version of the Mad Fermentationist (from here, Mike) in a few key respects, being: far shorter in stature; much less learned in the fermenting arts (fermenter-in-training, I believe is my official title); and less measure-y about, well, most things.

What I may lack in stature, mad brewing (fermenting) skills, and detail to numbers, I hope to make up for by contributing a witty, once-weekly post recounting our (Mike and I) latest culinary collaboration; in addition to a beer pairing, likely supplemented with vocabulary and measurements from this blog's creator. For each, I'll do my best to estimate the amounts of time, kind, and temperature as necessary for each stage and ingredient. Keep in mind, though, that we basically make it up as we go, so consider our rough recipes more as guidelines for your preference/imagination.

The forces at work in these weekly adventures revolve around the caffeined collaboration of Sunday (and occasionally Saturday) morning treks to the farmer's market. We make our way seeking what's new, what's fresh, and most importantly, what looks good; ingredients we slowly weave into the haphazard balance of flavor and texture, for some lunch we've dreamed up in our brains.

The idea for such a weekly posting was borne from the fusion of a few well-timed ideas:

First, that people who appreciate and make beer also almost inevitably appreciate the experiment, accompaniment and sharing of food;

Second, that our Sunday food spectacles -- whether a resounding success or "still-technically-edible" -- warrant a record for both progeny's (and our own) enjoyment and learning; and,

Finally, that Mike wants to grow this blog by cultivating new contributors, recognizing the premise that people -- for all their habits and idiosyncrasies -- are as diverse as they are creative; and as hungry as they are thirsty.

Audrey

Book Review: The Brewmaster's Table

The Brewmaster's Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food is pretty much the definitive book on pairing beer and food. It was written by Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery (and one of the all around classiest brewers out there, I don’t think many other brewers ever wear suits). The book is aimed more at the general beer nerd audience than it is a homebrew audience, but I think pairing homemade beer with homemade food is plenty of fun.

Content: The book starts out with a couple chapters on brewing ingredients and the history of beer. These chapters are fine and well written, but if you have read a couple homebrew books most of this will be a rehash.

The third chapter lays out the basic principles behind matching beer to food. This is a inspiring chapter, with the author's pairings for a week’s worth of dinners particularly stimulating (like cassoulet and Sam Smith's Nut Brown Ale). The overall message is to decide to use the beer to either compliment or contrast the dish. For example complimenting a spicy dish with the spiciness of a Belgian Ale or contrasting a rich dish with a light/cleansing beer. One of the most radical sections of the chapter is on why beer is a better match for many foods (like chocolate, spicy food, or eggs) than wine. This chapter also covers matching beer with cheese, which is something I have really enjoyed.

Almost the entire remained of the book covers different beers and what foods pair best with them. Pretty much every major beer style as well as most of the minor ones are covered. Each of these chapter covers a group of styles (Belgian Ales for example) starting out with a general overview of the common elements. After that each chapter covers the styles individually in more depth. The book gives a brief rundown of each style including the history/ingredients/culture behind it, followed by a couple pages on the best foods to pair with it (including most importantly the ideas behind the pairings), then finally a paragraph each on some of the most notable commercial examples of the style (and which foods pair particularly well with them). The lists of commercial examples aren't particularly in depth, but I think the idea of the book is to teach you the basics so you can figure out other pairings for yourself.

The final chapter of the book covers proper beer service. This includes subjects like proper glassware, temperature, and tasting order. If they published this chapter as a pamphlet it would be perfect to give to a restaurant that puts plenty of thought into their wine selection/service only to offer a list of three beers served out of the bottle (or in chilled pint glasses).

The very last section of the book is a terrific 7 page list of foods with the best beer styles to pair with each. It covers everything from mundane every day foods like burritos (American pale and brown ale, altbier, smoked beers) and chocolate (Sweeter fruit beers, imperial stout, stronger American stout, Baltic strong porter) to more opulent fare like foie gras (Sweet doppelbocks, sweet barleywines, off-dry strong dark Trappist or abbey ale, off-dry framboise and kriek, stronger Flanders red and brown ales, strong Scotch ales) and pheasant (Biere de garde, dubbel, strong dark Trappist or abbey ale, old ale, strong British bitter (ESB)). I often take a look at this list before picking out beers for a dinner party or just when grabbing a beer to have with a dish that I have never tried with beer. Certainly not every pairing I have tried from the list is sublime, but it does provide good general guidance (different examples of a style and preparations of a dish will pair better/worse with each other).

The book also contains several very well done sections of photos interspersed throughout. Many of the photos feature foreign brewmasters, or beautiful shots of food and beer pairing from restaurants that take both seriously.

Recipes: Sadly there are no recipes, but it is a pretty thick book already. It would be nice to see another book tackle cooking with beer at the same range of simple to sophisticated that this one brings to pairing (too many beer cook books revolve around beer can chicken, or beer boiled brats, not that there is anything wrong with either of those things but they have been done to death).

Accuracy: No complaints on the accuracy, it is a very well edited book, and I have not noticed any inaccuracies. Flavor and pairing are such personal things though that different people might think the suggested pairings are better/worse than I do.

Readability: The book can be a bit dense to just sit down and read, but the reference at the end and the general structure make it easy to reference. After brewing a beer I often read the section on the style to give me some ideas of things to pair it with. The book is well written in general and just has a passionate feel to it.

Overall: The Brewmaster's Table will make you excited to pair beer with food, even if you are just having takeout Chinese. I think this is a great book for anyone who wants to know more about pairing beer with food, beer nerds, homebrewers, or foodies just getting interested in beer. Are there any other great beer and food books that anyone else would recommend? I have plenty of cookbooks that have a few beer recipes, but not one that focuses on it.

The picture is of a frisée salad with some awesome bacon (the dressing was just leeks cooked in the bacon drippings with a splash of sherry vinegar), poached egg, and some roasted tomatoes and potatoes. I went with Victory's (100% Brett) Wild Devil, a beer with enough dryness to cut through the richness of the egg and bacon and some bitterness to compliment the slightly bitter frisée. I thought the pairing worked well, but the beer was a bit more bitter than I think is ideal with a salad (even one as flavorful as this).

Sauerkraut, Weisswurst, and Mustard

Well my first shot at sauerkraut hit pretty close to the mark. For my first real tasting I had it hot with a a couple of weisswurst (delicious, fresh, veal sausages), some grainy mustard (featuring Sierra Nevada Stout) and pumpernickel. Warming sauerkraut drives off some of the acidity, making it a better compliment to more delicate foods. To wash down the meal I had the new Sam Adam's Longshot Dortmund Export, one of the three beers that won Boston Beer's homebrew contest last year.

The sauerkraut is good, rather sour with that classic mildly sulfury cabbage goodness. It isn't too salty, but I really enjoy salt, if it was too much you could always give it a rinse before eating it. The texture of the kraut is much crisper than any commercial sauerkraut I have had, partially because I cut it pretty thick but also because it has not been pasteurized or treated with any chemicals. I think I gave it about the right amount of time before I bottled it and put it into the fridge, if it was much more sour it would overpower any other food it is served with.

The only problem I am having so far with the sauerkraut is trying to keep the cabbage submerged in the brine during storage. I guess I packed it in there tighter than I should have, as I take sauerkraut out I have to force the remaining cabbage back into the brine. Not sure if there was a way to avoid this besides using more containers and not packing in the sauerkraut in.

Next time I do a batch of kraut I will certainly put more effort into getting the cabbage sliced into about 1/8” slices (this batch was closer to 1/4”).