Epic Brewing - Smoked Porter Release #14

Smoked beers are among the most interesting beers.  Before the invention of electric kilning, all beers would carried this flavor from the wood fires used to roast the malt.  Some of these beers are aggressive and weigh heavy on the palette.  Others are light and refreshing.

Epic's Smoked Porter pours with an inch-or-so of head. It maintains about 1/4 inch of head as it laces down the glass.

This beer, perhaps, is midrange on the smokey scale. Many smoked beers need to be pared with food. But this beer goes down nicely on the palette without becoming overtaxing. Although, I'm not sure I could drink two in one sitting without a major palette cleansing in between.  By the time I finished the 22oz bottle, my mouth was holding onto a serious ashy aftertaste.

Thanksgiving Turkey Fry Homebrew Brining Wort

Crushed Grains for Wort and Grain Bag

It will have been two years this Christmas since I received my turkey fryer.  The ostensible reason for asking for it as a gift was to make the move to all-grain brewing and to move my homebrewing out of the kitchen and into the garage.

It was just before Thanksgiving last year, when my wife and I were planning to host both our families at our house for the first time, that I realized I could use my turkey fryer to actually fry a turkey.  We ended up frying three turkeys last year:  thanksgiving, christmas, and another one for fun sometime in March.

Turkey Frying - Safety

What time is it?  TURKEY FRYING TIME!!!

The most juicy turkey I have ever ate is deep fried turkey.  Frying the turkey really doesn't add much in the way of calories to the turkey either.  Because it isn't breaded, when the turkey is lowered into the pot, the hot oil instantly sears the surface of the meat closed.  All the moisture that was in the turkey before it went in, stays in.

They purpose of this blog post is to detail safety tips you will want to keep in mind if you decide to fry your own turkey.  In subsequent posts, I will chronicle this Thanksgiving's turkey fry.

It is awesome.

I know they show scary videos of fryer fires every year.

Don't be afraid.

Buoyancy Test

I don't want to minimize the danger, because what you are doing is using an open flame to heat up a flammable liquid (cooking oil) that you are going to use to cook the turkey in.  The trick is to keep the flammable liquid away from the open flame.  You accomplish this and there will be no fryer fire.

There are three main reasons turkey frys can turn into turkey fryer fires.


Fire Cause #1:  Too Much Oil
How do you avoid putting too much oil in the turkey fryer?  Its simple:  do a buoyancy test.  Days before the turkey fry, take the frozen turkey and put it in your fryer pot.  Fill the pot with water until the level reaches the top of the turkey.  The first thing this does is give you an idea how full your pot will be when you are frying your turkey.  If you have very little freeboard on the sides of the pot above the water level, you will probably want to get a bigger pot or a smaller turkey.

Fruit Smoothies

Another thing I've been working on over the past few weeks has been fruit smoothies.

Between work & home-life stress and some weight gain over the past couple of years, my blood pressure has risen into 140/90. So I'm trying to exercise more and eat better.

Part of eating better has been cutting back on the beer intake. Calories are calories and alcohol raises blood pressure.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not replacing craft beer and homebrew with smoothies. I'm using the smoothies to ensure I'm getting proper nutrition. This is the basic recipe I've been working with:

1/4 cup vanilla yogurt
1/4 cup 2% milk
1 - 1.5 cup fruit (preferably frozen)
3 or 4 ice cubes if the fruit is not frozen

Place all in a blender and purée.

Fruit combos I have tried:
Strawberry - banana
Blackberry - banana
Raspberry - banana
Pineapple - banana
Apple - banana
Raspberry - apple
Mango - banana

I know there is a lot of banana on that list. Banana is blood pressure reducing. Also, when frozen, it gives a milkshake quality to the smoothie.

The yogurt is to give it a little more sweetness. Choose the flavor you like.

If it ends up more chunky than smooth, add more milk.

Finally, you will want to have a blender that can blend ice. I purchased a Ninja for about $50.

Squatters - Big Cottonwood Amber Ale

I was wrong. I found one more Squatters bottle lurking in my cellar. I totally did not know what to expect with this beer. I didn't even check to see the style before opening it.

This dry hopped American Amber manages to maintain an off-white half inch head. The alcohol comes in at a nice 5.75% ABV. The dry hop is a nice citrusy and floral Cascade. Color is a darkish tan to faint red.

Except for the color and maltiness, this beer sort of presents itself as a pale ale. And it does have a nice maltiness. I've written before how that doesn't seem achievable in a 4.0% ABV beer.

If you really get your nose in the glass and take a deep whiff, you can smell brown sugar and caramel.

Moose Drool Brown Ale by Big Sky Brewing Company

An update: first I came down sick for a couple weeks. After that, I decided to enjoy some of my homebrew. I mean, I could literally sing "100 bottles of beer on the wall" in my cellar. Mostly, I've been enjoying the double hefe.

Tonight I dug out a bottle of Moose Drool. This is a seriously enjoyable beer if you are a dark beer drinker.

The Brown Ale is an under appreciated style. If you like Stouts and Porters, you should really give Brown Ales a try. Mild Ales too for that matter.

Seriously, broaden your beer horizons any chance you get. Even if you try a beer and you didn't like it, give it a couple more chances. Make sure you don't like it and try to figure out why.

Moose Drool is as dark as many porters but it not completely opaque if held up to a light. It's a little roasty but tastes primarily of chocolate and caramel malts.

Hops consist of Kent Goldings, Liberty, and Willamette. The hops are just strong enough to be noticeable and balance the sweetness of the malt. From the hops, I mostly get a little spice and flowers. Kent Goldings, and Willamette are two of my favorite hops.

Wasatch Evolution Amber

If there is one thing that hoppy and malty beer drinkers can almost always agree upon, it's that Amber Ales are an acceptable alternative. When I think of a perfectly balanced beer, it's Ambers that I think of.  And when someone isn't sure exactly what to drink, Ambers are what I advise.

This beer uses Tennanger hops.  It has a reddish brass color and maintains a slight head.  The flavor comes across as lightly toasty, slightly spicy, and has some estery/fruity and floral notes in the background.

My overall conclusion: its a lawn mower beer -> light bodied, thirst quenching, and sessionable.

The main fault of this beer comes back to the Utah Beer 4.0% ABV requirement to be sold on draft or in grocery stores. It's tough to make a beer malty at 4.0% ABV. It ends up a little hollow or watery on the mouthfeel.

Undecided Voters 2012 Election

As I sit here drinking a beer and thinking about the 2012 election coming, I became inspired to write something about the so called "undecided voters". What these people should be called is "low information voters."

I had the misfortune of knowing an undecided - low information voter 8 years ago. I want to relay this story not because of the politics involved, I have very political opinions but I don't want to use this space for that. I want to relay this story in an election year to help people understand that these people are not logical.

We will call this former friend 'C'.

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In 2004 my wife and I when over to C's house for dinner. After dinner the discussion moved to politics. C announced that she just decided she was going to vote to reelect Bush.

I thought this was a bit weird. She is socially liberal, supported gay marriage, supported abortion rights, she wasn't wealthy, and she wasn't anti-tax or anti-government.

I said, "Really? Why?"

She said, "The war in Iraq is really screwed up. I think Bush deserves the chance to fix his mistakes."

I stared at her for a few seconds then said, "You think the war in Iraq is screwed up?"

She said, "Yes."

I said, "You think if Bush is reelected, he will take that was a sign that he needs to do something different in Iraq?"

She thought about it and said, "Yeah, I think he will fix it."

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Undecided - Low Information voters are people who feel voting is part of their civic responsibility but don't care enough about news or politics to follow them closely. And most importantly: they are not logical.

Logical people will think "If A and B, then C." Undecided - low information voters think, "I want X. I want Candidate Y to give it to me, even if they say they are against it."

When a politician is reelected, they take it as a sign of voter approval, not disapproval. They take it as a sign that voters want more of the same, not something different.

But that was a concept that C didn't grasp.

Another example is a twitter exchange I had with someone complaining that the health care industry was "too regulated." His solution to rising health care costs included banning DTC advertising of drugs and regulating pharmaceutical company's profit margins.

I asked him, "Isn't that more regulation?"

No reply.

The good news, I suppose, is there are fewer of these people in this election cycle. The bad news is billions of dollars are being spent trying to alter the gut-feelings and fantasies these people have when that money could be put to a more productive and beneficial use