Orange Pineapple Whiskey Sour

Ok, in honor the new season of Mad Men, we're bringing you a tasty cocktail today. It's not exactly a whiskey sour, but we didn't have a better name for it. We think it's pretty tasty, no matter what you call it.

Here's what you need:
2 oz whiskey
2 oz pineapple juice
2 oz orange juice
2 marachino cherries
ice

Here's what you do:
Pour two the whiskey over half of the ice in the glass. 

Add the pineapple juice and stir together. 

Next, add the rest of the ice and top off with the orange juice. 

Garnish with cherries.

Enjoy!

Wine Faults: What's Wrong with Your Wine?

Along with a couple of our friends, we attended a course put on by the local community college's adult education division. It's a small class by design, because it's held in the back of a local wine shop and taught by their wine buyer. Our instructor walked us through the characteristics of wine faults and how to know if the wine you buy has gone bad.


Now, since the internet doesn't have a scratch and sniff feature, we'll try to describe what we smelled for you.




Corked wine - "Corked" wine does not mean that it has a cork in the bottle. Screw-top wines can be corked as well. A corked bottle has a fungus that has either infected the cork, barrel, or winery equipment. It smells like wet, musty cardboard. Think grandma's basement. The flavor of the wine will be flat and lack the fruitiness that we all love so much about wine. No harm will come to you if you drink a corked wine, however, it won't taste how it is supposed to. We learned that about 5% of the wine in the world is corked. 


Cooked wine - "Cooked" wine occurs when the wine hasn't been properly stored or shipped and has been subject to high temperatures. Basically, the heat stews the flavors in the wine and they taste very muddled and not fruity. Apparently a lot of wineries will not ship wine in the summer months to make sure that this doesn't happen. This one you can sometimes tell by looking at it. Check out the cork before you buy it. If it feels raised, then move on to another bottle. Even that doesn't always work, however. If you get your wine home, pop the cork and notice that some of the wine has traveled up the side of the cork, chances are, it's cooked. 


Oxidation - Oxidation occurs when a bottle has been exposed to too much oxygen. Oxidized wine will have the scent of burnt caramel or cookies. Not bad smells at all, but not how your bright, fruity wine should smell. Take this one back to the store.


Volatile Acidity - All wines are acidic - it's the nature of grapes. "Volatile" acidity smells like nail polish remover or vinegar. You'll know somethings wrong the minute you take a whiff. This happens because of the presence of acetic bacteria and oxygen during the winemaking process before the bottle is even in the picture. 


Excessive Sulfur Dioxide - Sulfur is a natural preservative used in wine. Excessive sulfur, however, is a bad thing. It makes the wine smell like burnt matches or burnt rubber. Not exactly the most appetizing scents. Apparently there is one exception to this rule, however. Syrah's from the Northern Rhone region have a rubbery element that is characteristic of the grape. So, keep that in mind if you're drinking French Syrah.


Corked, cooked, oxidation, volatile acidity and excessive sulfur dioxide are all the "really bad" wine faults. If you discover any of these in your wine and you bought it from a winery or wine shop, you should be able to take it back to the store you bought it from and get a refund or exchange. 


We have more to share, but we think this is probably enough information for one blog. We'll check back in another time with the less egregious wine faults.

Image courtesy of http://www.judiciousspirits.com

The Old Fashioned

We both enjoy a good cocktail now and again. Our new favorite drink is the Old Fashioned. It may have something to do with our obsession with Mad Men. And when we say may, we mean it totally has something to do with it. 


Of course, we had to figure out the proper way to make the drink. We're a little obsessive about getting things right sometimes. Just a little. Sometimes.




Here's what you need:
2 oz of your Bourbon of choice (or your favorite whiskey of any variety)
A couple dashes of bitters (we used Angostura)
1 orange slice (cut in half)
1 marachino cherry
1 sugar cube
water
ice
muddler




Here's what you do:
Drop the sugar cube into an old fashioned glass. (See, the drink is so good, they named a glass after it).

Pour a couple of dashes of bitters over the top of the sugar and let it soak in for a few seconds.

Crush that up with your muddler to make a nice sugary paste on the bottom of the glass.

Top that with a splash of water.

Drop in your orange and muddle it in with the sugar and water. Crush up the sugar more as you go.

Toss a couple of ice cubes in the glass, and pour one ounce of bourbon over them.

Give that a good stir, and then add some more ice and another ounce of bourbon.

Top it off with some more ice and stir it up again.


And finally, add in your cherry and the other half of your orange. Michelle likes to add a splash of cherry juice at the end. Zack, on the other hand, is an Old Fashioned purist.

Enjoy!

Home Brewed Beer: The Smoked Porter, Part 3

When we last left you, we were storing our beer for a week to let it ferment. After a week in the primary fermentation, we racked it to the secondary fermentation bucket. Basically, that means, we siphoned the beer from one bucket to another. Don't forget to sterilize everything before transferring!

We left the beer in the secondary for two more weeks, letting the remaining yeast do it's thing. 

After that, it's time to bottle. You want to give your beer a couple weeks in the bottle to carbonate. Bottling was was pretty simple.

Sterilize everything one more time. Don't forget the caps!

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil and add the the priming sugar to the water. 

Let that boil for 5 minutes.

Remove that from the heat and let it cool completely.

Once that cools, add it to your newly sterilized bucket.

Now, siphon the beer from your secondary bucket back into the other bucket. You want to get the beer off the remaining dead yeast at the bottom.

Give the beer and sugar a good stir.

And, check your final gravity. This tells you the actual amount of alcohol by volume.

Now for bottling...


We soaked our bottles in soapy water, then ran them through the dishwasher on heated dry.

Using the pour spout on your bucket, fill the bottles to about an inch to an inch and a half from the top.

Using the handy cap crimper tool, pop the tops on your wonderful concoction.

After that, let your bottled beer hang out for 2-3 weeks.

Zack would like to add that if you do buy a kit and decide to bottle your own home brew, ignore the timeline for fermentation in your instructions and follow our timeline. One week in the primary, two weeks in the secondary, and at least two weeks in the bottles.


Enjoy!

Home Brewed Beer: The Smoked Porter, Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of our beer brewing experiment. If you missed the first part, you can view it here.


We left off with adding the second round of hops to your bubbling beer. Now, we get to rapidly cool it down.


During one of the long stints of waiting for the beer to boil, throw two large bags of ice into a big tub and then add some water. You're going to place the pot of beer in this. Don't worry - it floats.

Stir around with the thermometer while you wait for it to cool to 150 degrees F.

Once your beer comes to the correct temperature, pour 2 gallons of water into your 5 gallon bucket. Be sure to sanitize the bucket first.

Slowly pour in the beer from the pot. Ideally, you should run this through a mesh strainer. We may have forgotten about that, but we used a wire mesh splatter screen. It mostly worked.

Be thankful that we didn't show you the sludge that was left in the bottom from the hops. Eww.


Now use the hydrometer to measure your originating gravity. You use the originating gravity number to calculate your alcohol by volume percentage. Your instructions will tell you what range you want to be in. Add water very slowly if your number isn't in the right spot.

Once you get your chemistry right, pop the lid on and give it a good shake. We're serious, shake vigorously.

Next step, open up the lid again and sprinkle the yeast over the top.

Seal it up again and place it in a 65-75 degree area for a week.


Stay tuned for the rest of the process. We will demonstrate the transfer and bottling process.

Home Brewed Beer: The Smoked Porter, Part 1

You may remember us telling you about how a lot of our friends are home brewers. When we have tasting events, we have generally been responsible for food. Well, we have decided to join them in their beer making ventures. We have the space now to keep a vat of beer while it bubbles away. We asked our friend, Nathan (a fellow brewer), to help us with our first beer experiment.


The party we are brewing for is Darktoberfest, where everyone was asked to brew either a porter or a stout. Zack loves all things smoked (food and drink, we mean) so, of course our first beer would have to be smoked as well. Michelle talked him out of adding the peat smoke that he loves (and she despises). We went with just a regular smoked porter. Because of the length of this process, we're splitting the posts up into at least two. We're sure you'll be on the edge of your seat waiting to read about the ending.




Here's what you need:
1 brewing kit
1 beer recipe with grains/malts/hops included
water
1 5 gallon stainless pot (ironically, we purchased this to make Beer Sausage for another tasting party)
Sanitizer
2 large bags of ice
1 large tub
1 mesh strainer


Here's what you do:
Start off by convincing your wife/girlfriend/significant other that you should make your own beer. After that, the rest is cake.


Sanitize everything that will be touching your beer. You don't want any bacteria to have a chance to contaminate your beer and grow mold. 


Heat 2 1/2 gallons of water to 150 degrees F. We used a candy thermometer to keep an eye on the water temp.

While that's heating up, spread the cheesecloth that comes in your kit over a medium bowl and pour in your grains. Mix it up with a spoon to make sure everything is evenly distributed.

Tie this up and continue to wait for the water to come to the correct temperature.

Once your water is ready, immerse your grains in the water and tie to the side of the pot. You don't want them to rest on the bottom of the pot because there's a chance of them burning. This first process is essentially like making tea.

After about 10 minutes, you actually feel like you're making beer, because you end up with this:

Pull your teabag of grains. Let it drip out all of the liquid you can get, but don't squeeze the bag. First of all, it's hot. Second, you don't want any extraneous grain hopping back into your beer.


Place it back in the medium bowl you used to fill it. You won't need it again, but it makes quite a mess and you'll want to let it cool before throwing it away.

Now, turn up the heat and let that come up to a boil. This will take a while, so get comfortable.

Once you have a nice rolling boil going, pour in your malt extract. Someone will need to be stirring constantly and making sure that the malt doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot. If it does, it will burn and ruin your beer.

Now, let that come back up to a boil. More waiting... 


Did we mention our friend Nathan helped us with our first beer? Well, he did. Now you know.

Aha! Boiling!

Now, add the pellets of hops to the boiling beer.

Result: green foam and pungent hoppy smell. Michelle is not a fan.

Bring it back up to a boil. Add your second packet of hops.

And that, kids, is where we take a break. Stay tuned for the next installments of our Smoked Porter.