Vegetarian Vietnamese Cold Rolls.

Yes, you're right. It's not yeasty, it's just tasty goodness.

Fear not - I have not become of that strange fraternity - "The Vegtarians". I was just looking for a fast and tasty alternative while making dinner the other evening.

Alternative to what? Vegetables. I'm becoming a little bored with certain kinds of vegie dishes and wanted to mix it up.

In short, it's tasty, fast and fun.

If you're into serving food that is delicate and complete, you can assemble these prior to serving. Something that's more fun is for everyone to assemble their own at the table.

Sorry, no pics this time. My hands were wet and busy mostly as I was making the evening meal.

Here's the recipe to make only 8 pieces. You can scale it up quite easily as eight is really only enough for two people as part of a meal.

The roll and filling:

• 1 small carrot (15 x 2 m), peeled and julienned
• Bean shoots
• 1 medium Chinese Shallot
• 15 g finely chopped mint (Vietnamese mint is preferable, but spearmint or common mint can suffice)
• 30 g finely chopped coriander leaves (it's OK to leave the stems in if you like)
• 1 Lebanese cucumber, peeled, seeds removed, thinly sliced then chopped in thirds
• Vietnamese fish sauce to taste
• Packet of rice paper sheets.

The dipping sauce:

• 15 ml squid sauce (like fish sauce, but much milder)
• 5 ml line juice
• 10 ml Thai sweet chilli sauce.

Toss all ingredients together for the roll (except the rice paper you ninny!) and allow to sit for about thirty minutes in the fridge. This will help draw off some of the excess moisture.

While that is happening, make the dipping sauce. The recipe above is not hard and fast. You can adjust any or all of the ingredients to suit your own taste. I tend to increase the lime juice by 50% and add a freshly chopped peri-peri / bird eye chilli as I like a bit more bite

To assemble, pour some cool water into a wide shallow dish so that you can easily wet the whole paper in one go. Slide a paper in, wiggle it for a couple of seconds, remove and shake off the excess moisture. It will feel slightly firm as you being to fill and roll it, but trust me - it will be soft and limp and tasty in no time flat. Do it one at a time and assemble each one, one at a time. You can't pre-wet all the wraps or you will end up with a gooey mess. 

Add a spoonful of the mixture to the wet rice paper about one third in from the edge. Roll.

Dip.

Eat.

Repeat.

Enjoy.


And remember, "vegetarian" is Australian for "shitty hunter".


Cheers!!

Flour quality.

So many baking articles talk about the need for strong flour or special bread making flour. They cry out that you can't make bread without these special flours. Lies. Damned lies.

While it is more difficult and it does take a little more effort to get a decent loaf out if you're inexperienced, it can be done. In fact I can assure you that all the loaves shown in this blog to date do not use strong flour, special flour or anything more than yeast, salt, water, oil and occasionally extra grain left over from brewing or decorative grains that I use in other cooking anyway. The results have been pleasant, flavoursome and very inexpensive.

Think of it this way - 'Defiance' brand flour is up to $3.80 per kilo for plain flour. It's nothing special. It's just flour. Various brands of bread flour are north of $5 per kilo. If you're spending that much on flour then you're not saving any money by making bread at home.

What do I use? Generic plain flour. $0.96 per kilo.


Here's a quick price comparison for a loaf of bread including all ingredients and electricity:

Supermarket plain white loaf	$3.00 (can be as low as $2 or as high as $4)
Premium brand plain flour	$2.20
Bread flour mix	$2.80
Generic plain flour	$1.30

I think we have a winner, ladies and gentlemen!


While baking bread with plain old cheap flour can be done and has been done successfully, by making a small change you can improve the result dramatically.

Plain flour sold in the supermarket is very weak and low in gluten. It has been made as a 'one size fits all' product. After all, it's not just for making bread - it's for making cakes, biscuits, pastries, thickening, etc, etc. It needs to be softer. As a result, rather than getting a good rise, the dough can tend to spread more like cake batter than a firm dough.

Those special flours don't have that problem. They are higher in gluten which assists in giving the dough more structure and therefore more resistance to spreading. This is especially important for free-form loaves. In other words, if it's being baked on a stone or a sheet and doesn't have side-walls holding it up then gluten is the main key to a better result.

I don't like spending money needlessly and I'm sure you like to keep your hard-earned a while longer too. I can only see these flours as an expense which influences how I think about baking. My first priority is quality and less adulterated ingredients. This is achieved. The second priority is cost.

Here's the cheat you need to save money and still have 'strong flour': gluten. Go to the health food shop and buy gluten flour. If you add only 30 grams per loaf (i.e. 60 g per kilo) then you've improved the flour from a basic soft flour to something far closer to a flour made from hard wheat - the wheat which makes high gluten flours which are more prized for bread making. About $6 for 500 grams - enough for 16 loaves.

Experiment. Have fun and enjoy the smell of fresh bread baking in your home.

Cheers!!

Perfecting your extract brewing technique

Brewing your own beer, hand made beer, is one of the most rewarding and inexpensive creative hobbies you would ever hope to find and could ever hope to enjoy.

Using basic techniques derived from brewing K&K and K&B there's a big chance that you're going to develop a non-optimal work flow and tire yourself of the hobby. The reason for this is that between the hop boil, the steep and the malt boil it's quite possible to over-work yourself. I was guilty of it, but by taking a moment longer to think the process through it's possible to reduce your workload, reduce the total boil volume and therefore shorten the time to cool the concentrated wort to pitching temperature.

Here's a concise technique that will save you time and money:


The Hop Boil
Obviously, as an extract brewer (or a partial dude or an AG'er), hops are a critical part of the process. However, this is where time and effort can be trimmed and enhance your result.

First off, extracting the hops - the prime purpose of the hop boil - works better is they are boiled in a mini-wort of around SG=1040. The easiest way to achieve that is to put 100 grams per litre of liquid malt (or 80 gm per litre of dry malt) onto the boil and then commence your hopping schedule. Higher SG meads to less efficient extraction, lower is better but 1040 is a happy number that is proven to work. Adjust it to suit your preference through experience.

If you do this with say two litres of water (you could even use one litre if you're a watchful chap as the evaporation can be a bit severe at smaller volumes) and 200 gm of liquid malt, then it's a far smaller thermal mass to deal with and you have the chance to strain out the hops when you pour off the completed boil to your main boiling pot (the big one!).

It can take quite a while to get your malt to the boil. After all, 3.5 kg of liquid malt is quite a big job for small gas burner or an electric stove. So while your hop boil is in progress, weigh out your malt and start the heat under it gently. Strain off the hop boil result into the malt and increase to full heat to get it up to the boil.

Which brings us to...


The Steep
This is just the stage where you steep any specialty grains (Carapils, etc) and then sparge (rinse) those into your big pot.

Usually, this is about twenty to thirty minutes at around 70C. If you bring your water up to say 72C, add the grain, put the lid back on the pot and turn the flame off then you're on a winner.

Just like the hop boil, strain out the liquid into the big pot with the malt and then sparge with warm water to wash out any remaining sugars and desirable elements. Don't use boiling water for the sparge as you may introduce tannins to the wort. Tannins are that mouth-drying, puckering sensation you get from overbrewed tea and some some red wines. Not a good thing in beer.



The Boil
By now, the pot containing the malt, hop extract and the steep should be coming close to the boil. Keep a lid on it so that it can reach the boil sooner and so that you don't get caramelisation of the malt. Stay near by and check it often as when it hits the boil with the lid on it can and usually does try to exit the pot in a column of sticky, sticky foam. Let my mistake be your advantage.

Let the whole lot boil for fifteen minutes so that you can be certain that it's all nice and sterile.


At the end of the boil, you have somewhere between 7.5 and 12 litres of boiling, sticky liquid. Using some other methods, you could have more than 15!

You can either let it cool naturally or you can help it along. It's up to you. There are practical advantages and risks in both approaches, but we can talk about that another time.


Happy Brewing!!

Cheers!!

Proper drunk.

I've heard of a tale (as in the link below) where someone got so drunk that they required medical amputation of their legs.

It wasn't the drunkenness that did it. It was the immobilisation of the legs for an extended period while they slept it off.

In a UK motorcycle rag a few years ago, the tale of a fellow patient was related by one of the journos who, well, crashed a bike and ended up in hospital. The other patient, a Yorkshireman if I recall correctly, had been on a binge and had passed out with his legs tucked underneath him very reduced circulation. End result, amputation.

I had thought the tale to be made up, to put it mildly.

Well fear not! For what they can in northern England they can do in the USA too.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/strangebuttrue/woman-sues-over-drinkfuelled-leg-amputations-20091210-kkeq.html


So remember - enjoy your drinkies this Christmas, but consider lying down flat or stay standing (hah!) while you sober up. Drink, but not to excess.


Cheers!!

Those nutty Japs and their crazy beer.

I love beer. I kinda like Japanese beer. I'm really fond of Sapporo. And no, I'm not sponsored by Sapporo but I sure wish I was, especially at around $7 a tinnie!





Sapporo now sells 'space beer'. It's made from barley that was sent out to the International Space Station and stayed there for five months.

At around AUD$20 a bottle, it's a costly drop. Mmnnn - gamma irradiated goodness!


Check it out here: http://www.sapporobeer.jp/english/kenkyu/bio/space.html

and here: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/sapporo-breweries-reveals-space-barley-a-beer-grown-from-space-seeds/story-e6frfhix-1225807838417

Commercial beer coming in plastic soon.

As home brewers, we've all known about the use of plastic (PET) bottles for quite some time.

It's an obvious safe choice for us owing to over-priming risks when we're starting out. Not only that, but it's light weight and there's no danger of dropping or bumping one off the counter when we have a bench full of bottles.

However, there seems to be some perception in the commercial marketplace that beer in PET is a bad thing. People make all kinds of non-positive assertions about it, claiming taste difference among other gripes.

If we, the discerning hand made beer crowd can choose it as an economical and environmentally sound option, what's wrong with the average Joe drinking megaswill from it?

After all, it has been a very long time since soft drink and fruit juice were sold in glass bottles in the majority, isn't it?

So the same fools who swill a buddy of Coke with their fatburger with extra preservatives, chemicals and emulsifers for lunch are bitching about a beer in a PET bottle?

I don't know what the world and the hypocrisy of the people is coming to...

Check this out:

http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/brewery-gives-plastic-beer-bottles-another-shot-20091203-k879.html


Cheers!!

Yeast Comparison: S-04 and S-05 - Side by side.

Yes - it's more about yeasty goodness!

This time, we're doing a true side by side test of Fermentis' S-04 English Ale Yeast and their S-05 American Ale Yeast.

I've been brewing for a touch over a year now and have completed around forty or so brews successfully. They have included a wide range of English and European ales and ciders and some other experimental and speciality beers.

The character of how each yeast behaves in the fermenter, its influence on how fast or slow the ferment is, whether it's a top fermenting yeast or a bottom fermenting yeast, how fast it flocculates out and many other characteristics is very individual. Using the right ingredients with the wrong yeast can render a batch to be like ordinary homebrew made by a novice. I've used some very ordinary ones that came with the cans of goo when I was starting and I've used some delicious exotic White Labs vials that have made for some very surprising successes from some really crap ingredients.

Obviously, one of the first few things you can change when you're getting started is the yeast. That's why I'm taking a closer look at S-04 and S-05 and sharing the results with you.

Here's where you can find the data sheets on each type:

S-04: http://www.fermentis.com/FO/pdf/HB/EN/Safale_S-04_HB.pdf

S-05: http://www.fermentis.com/FO/pdf/HB/EN/Safale_US-05_HB.pdf


>From my point of view, S-04 tends to be typical of an English Ale yeast. Fairly quick ferment, reasonably temperature tolerant (up to 24C according to the pack), willing and ready to make good ales, porters and stouts. As and English style yeast, it tends to accentuate the malt flavours and tends to be a medium to high flocculator, leaving a rather clean and clear product even at the end of primary fermentation.

S-05 is a bit different. As with a lot of global perception of all things American, this is definitely a bold and brassy yeast. It tends to favour the hops moreso than the malt, giving a sharper, cleaner finish to the taste and making the flavouring and aroma hops more pronounced. Sadly, it's not a big floccer so it leaves the beer rather cloudy by comparison to S-04. However, there are clarifying techniques that we can talk about another time to overcome this issue - the simplest of which I will tell you now: time. Leave it sit a few weeks or a couple of months and it will be reasonably clear, excellent tasting and better mellowed.


The yeast can be pitched either by rehydrating it into a cream or sprinkling the dry yeast onto the top of the wort. Either method is rather easy and in my experience equally effective.


So - on to the testing!


So that the comparison is completely fair, the wort and fermentation needed to happen at the same time so that every part of the process would be exactly equal. The style of ale had to be something reasonably 'normal' so that there were no additional complexities which would interfere with the yeast being compared fairly.

Here's the recipe for the wort:

400 g Cracked Carapils steeped @ 70C for 30 minutes
7.9 kg Liquid Light Malt Extract
30 g Pilgrim Hops (10.8% AA) @ 60 minutes
25 g Fuggles Hops (6.1% AA) @ 30 minutes
25 g Fuggles Hops (6.1% AA) @ 15 minutes
... made up to 50 litres.

This gives: OG = 1049, IBU = 34.3, EBC (est.) 14.9, IBU/SG = 0.719.

In plain English, that means an ale that will finish up around 5% alcohol, with a pleasant balance of bitterness and sweetness but leaning slightly toward the sweeter end of the spectrum.

The wort was made in one big batch, cooled to 20C, stirred to homogenise it, divided equally between two fermenters and topped off to 25 litres in each fermenter.

Yeast was pitched, one sachet of each yeast type into each fermenter. Rather than just allowing it to find its way into the wort, it was stirred in aggressively in order to introduce as much oxygen into the wort as possible.

Fermentation was four days at 22C.

FG = 1011.


Here is a pic of the beer drawn off from the fermenter prior to bottling:

Don't you love my high-tech laboratory glassware? :)

As you will notice, the beer on the left is very cloudy indeed. That's the S-05 yeast. The one on the right is S-04.

While this pic might cause you to leap to conclusions about which one you would choose, take a moment to ponder out a few more points:

• The nature of the S-05 tends to create a hoppier, more lively tasting beer which more of the market is accustomed to. It tends to have a slight bite to it. Even at this stage out of the fermenter without bottle conditioning, it's certainly the spicier of the two.
  
• S-04 tends to flocculate out faster and produce a cleaner beer sooner. However, as I've mentioned earlier in this article, it does tend to be more malt driven so you should take this into account and increase your first hopping accordingly to gain more bitterness and let the malt drive the flavour and aroma.
  
• As you notice, the two beers both have quite different colour profiles. The S-04 is a good copper colour and the S-05 is a brighter amber colour. I'm not one to care much about colour but about taste, especially in these beers at the lighter end of the spectrum.

So - what yeast to choose?

That depends on personal taste and your intended "grain to brain" schedule.  

S-04 If speed is your thing and you're OK with a young beer, then I would choose S-04 and a hops schedule to suit. The above hops schedule does not suit. If anything I would increase the first hops either by weight alone or by both weight and boil duration, depending on your taste. I prefer an ESB with an initial hoppy bite, mild aroma and let the sweetness be a lingering afterthought.

As far as speed goes, a fermentation around 18 - 22C would last around four days and after five days of secondary fermentation / bottle conditioning, you're pretty much good to go. Flocculation continues in the bottle and results in a rather bright and clear beer that only improves with time, out to about two months. If you keg, then this is the one to go for. Clean and clear in a hurry.


S-05 If you can spare a month for a rather good, modern style beer that is reminiscent of some of the west coast USA craft brews then S-05 is your yeast. It will take a couple of weeks at least for the yeast to drop out of suspension. Drinking too early while the yeast is still suspended tends to lead to bottom-ripping farts and runny poo. You have been warned.

Again, the fermentation time and temperature is much the same as S-04, but longer secondary fermentation / bottle conditioning will really reap rewards.


In both cases, if you allow a day or two in the fridge prior to drinking you will find the result much better than if you rapidly chill the beer in the freezer for an hour or so and then keep it in the fridge. The technical aspects of this have been explained to me, but I don't recall those in detail. Suffice to say, it works. Try it.


This article is already far too long and probably boring to anyone who isn't a beer nerd, so I will put the pics and tasting notes into another post in a few days.

Take care and happy brewing.


Cheers!!


EDIT (09/12/09): No pics of the finished product, sorry. Drank it. Yummy. :)

Tactical Nuclear Penguin

As with many brews before, the irreverent lads at Brewdog Brewery in Scotland have come up aces with another winning brew.

This one is called Tactical Nuclear Penguin and comes in at a whopping 32% ABV. That's thirty-two percent.



Tactical Nuclear Penguin from BrewDog on Vimeo.


Here's a link to their product blog posting: http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=214

As far as I can tell, it was originally fermented as an Imperial Stout, albeit a strong one, which was then aged in wooden casks for around a year and a half to give it depth, mellowness and smoothness. Then, by freezing to remove more of the water content, the alcohol level was raised to the mighty 32% giving it the title of World's Strongest Beer.

First batch is already sold out but there is more on the way. Oh - and it's thirty-five pounds a bottle. Not a session beer at all.

Good on you fellas!