Kobold Fighting Monk (Homebrew Review)

Months ago I brewed my first ever batch of beer. Then I bottled it. My first two, small, all grain batches are currently fermenting in the closet so I figured it was well past time that I get to talking about the results of my first batch. Since there are only a few bottles left I should probably get to recapping this experience.

Most of my family and friends, whether they wanted it or not, were the recipients of at least a bottle or two of my first brew.



The first bottles were consumed on Thanksgiving Day with my father-in-law who, despite its Belgian style, gave it a good review. A week or so ago I decided to actually taste it critically and take some notes. This particular pour looks a uncharacteristically clear toward the bottom of the glass given the time the bottle had to settle. You can see a little murky haziness seeping down from the bottom toward the end of the pour.



It ended up having a large head about three fingers high which hung around for a while. There was a small amount of sediment in the glass but I've had more in previous bottles. This one must have just settled for a longer amount of time.

In the flavor I caught a little over ripe peach or strawberry on this particular bottle. I don't recall this in previous bottles but I wasn't really paying as close attention before. I'm not sure if age could have brought this out.

It was a light bodied, thin textured beer with lively carbonation and a slight chalky finish. There wasn't much sweetness or bitterness to speak of but a little bit of acidity to it.

It measured in at 6.7% ABV and 20 IBUs.



There's nothing that I intentionally did to cause it but the beer had excellent lacing. It's probably the best feature of this beer. There wasn't much of a hop aroma, not surprisingly. There was a slight malty biscuity taste with a little toffee. From the yeast I got a slight soapy smell. If I hadn't smelled this on so many other beers I would have been worried that I didn't allow the sanitizer to evaporate enough. No one has died (yet) from consuming this beer so either I did a passable job or the effects of its poison are very slow moving.



While the beer was fermenting I decided to name it after a childhood memory of fighting kobolds in Dungeons & Dragons. In honor of its attempted Belgian style I decided to name it Kobold Monk. It ended up turning out a little more like a French farmhouse style ale in my opinion but the name was already decided.

Now I just needed to find someone to draw a kickass kobold for the label.



I met a man in a back alley who gave me a tip that lead me to meeting Anna at Shoot The Sea, an artist who specializes in drawing kobolds. While I'd asked for a monk, I had not specified the pious, brewing sort of monk. She interpreted it as a warrior monk a la Shaolin.

This was a happy accident and thus Kobold Fighting Monk was born.

And now only a few bottles of this limited edition brew remain.



Jen has twin buns in the oven and I have twin brews in the closet. It's like my version of a sympathetic pregnancy except it's easier for me to get on and off the couch.

Unless, that is, I consume too much of my own creation.

Cheers!

Like Butter for Babies

I threatened Jen with another stew tonight as winter winds down. She reluctantly agreed but asked that it be our last stew for a while. I suspected that two stews in a row might be a bit much but I'm all about pushing the envelope here.



I started off with this salad which I made with butter lettuce from Gotham Greens, sliced beets, Manchego, sliced shallot, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I was on the fence about adding balsamic glaze but opted to go simple on this one.

The greens were quite nice. Who knew you could get decent greens in March that are grown right in New York City? This is a triumph even though one of my greatest annoyances in life is people referring to New York City as Gotham. I'm not quite sure why it annoys me as much as it does. Probably because people who refer to New York City as Gotham are just so pleased with themselves when they do so.

The Manchego in this dish is there to represent the cheese-eating grins of the jerks who still insist on referring to New York City as the city where Batman lives.



In a surprise twist I did not stew the chicken! We had dinner the other night at Delicatessen and I ordered the roast chicken which has become something of an obsession with me lately. I was impressed with the way they roasted it in eight cuts so I figured I would try a take of that at home.

I highly recommend Delicatessen, by the way. Even though it's not actually a delicatessen.



After roasting the chicken I served it with some pan roasted Brussels and canellini beans that I cooked with some rendered bacon, some of the pan juices from the chicken, and some freshly chopped parsley.



Tonight, to accompany dinner, I had the last of my Christmas present beer varieties from my bother and sister-in-law, this Best Brown Ale from Bell's Brewery, Inc.

Sadly Bell's only had distribution in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Florida, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, Iowa and Puerto Rico. Nothing in New York.

Wait, Puerto Rico? They load up their beer in a plane and fly it over New York to Puerto Rico?

This is why American beer distribution is so annoying. It does make for some charming regional differences and makes things very interesting while traveling but it doesn't really make any sense beyond that.

This was a fine nut brown ale. It reminds me of college when I last had a Newcastle. It makes me wonder if Newcastle is actually this good. Probably not.



As I remember from one of my favorite episodes of Oz & James Drink to Britain Oz Clarke was less than impressed with the old classic even though he too enjoyed it as a student though I would wager a guess that he and I were not students at exactly the same time.



Naturally, when a beer is this good, I like to share it with my dinner. In this case I added a little to the white beans as I cooked them.



After properly chilling in the fridge the spent grain peanut butter chocolate bars I made were feeling a little more photogenic today. I sliced up a couple of chunks of this. The chunks were actually tiny which is good because I think this recipe is about 50% butter by volume. It will probably take us the next month to eat all of it so it probably won't be too detrimental to our health.

I'm just hoping the twins are not born with cardiovascular disease.

Lentil Lundi (Round 2)

I'm not very good at legumes. I often have the idea that I should eat more of them but then I get bored and make some sausage or something instead. A while back I instituted the new idea of Lentil Lundi whereby we ave lentils on Mondays. That was kind of a miserable failure as tonight is only the second time that I would honor that proclamation.



If were were going to have to have lentils I was at least going to start the night off right with some Manchego, grapes, and ciabatta from Hot Bread Kitchen.



This winter was kind of a bust. Normally I take great pleasure in the below zero temperatures as it gives me ample opportunity to huddle indoors, run the oven all day, make hearty stews, and drink lots of heavy beer and spirits. This winter has been very forced in all of these regards so, to honor that fact, I made this "End of Winter" stew with garlic, onion, celery, carrot, sweet Italian sausage, kale, cooked lentils, a little chicken stock, salt, and pepper. It was a pretty tasty stew even if it was in the sixties today.



For a drink I opened this bottle of Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale from Stone Brewing Co. I've been hearing about how good their regular Arrogant Bastard Ale was for the past fifteen years but, surprisingly, I've still never had it. The Oaked version was pretty good but with nothing to compare it to I felt like something of a poseur.

A poseur enjoying an oaky ale from California! Heyo!



For dessert I served up two delicious slices of cranberry bread that Jen made last night which is quite easily the best batch she's ever made. I tried desperately to capture the flaky, cake-like goodness of this bread in the picture but I don't think it quite did them justice. This was the perfect cap to this meal as well as a way to finally use the cranberries I'd purchased back in November that have been sitting in the fridge ever since Jen vetoed my idea of making some sort of kale dish using them. At the time I was annoyed but now I am very glad they waited all that time to be used in something far more delicious.

After dinner we relaxed on the couch while Jen read Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography and told me a bunch of information about Ozzy that I've known since 1991. I also got a chance to look at some sweet pictures of Tommy Aldridge from the early 1980's.

Tommy Aldrige is one fine-looking man.

Brewing and Babies (But Not Brewing Babies)

It's probably about time that we let you all know something: Jen is pregnant. That's right. However, since we always make more than we need we've decided to have twins. Yes, we decided to do it that way. It was in no way a surprise to us at all.

However, since no one is interested in reading a blog about babies or parenthood (you can find virtually none on the entire internet) I had to be creative about how I could related this development to food. This was easy given that there are about four hundred web pages devoted to comparing the development of your unborn baby to produce.



While Jen uses a different chart I am fond of the Baby Size Fhart from TheBump.com. According to this chart Jen, at eighteen weeks, is currently the proud carrier of two sweet potatoes.



Naturally it seemed like a good idea to make a themed meal around our announcement of this occasion. Sweet potatoes didn't seem particularly seasonal given that the weather forecast predicted temperatures in the 70's today. However, since it was only 41 degrees this afternoon I found it would be a safe day to have some sweet potatoes and run the oven.



I took advantage of the entirely seasonal cold snap to also brew two recipes from the Brooklyn Brew Shop recipe book Jen got me for Christmas. I brewed the Tea & Toast and the Chocolate Maple Porter. I'm tired of all these large scale breweries I've been enjoying beers from. They're so commercial. These recipes will both yield between nine and twelve bottles each. Any batch of beer that produces more bottles than that is just out for profit. My first batch of beer made 55 bottles! Back then I was only in it for the money.



For tonight's main course I made this sweet potato gnocchi which I boiled and simply tossed with olive oil, butter, salt, and pepper.

To make the gnocchi I started off by baking the two sweet potatoes in the oven along with one Russet potato. When I removed them I felt an incredible sadness when I remembered that they were supposed to be symbolic of my unborn children. "What have I done?" I cried. "My beautiful boys!"

After taking a few minutes to remind myself that these were merely tubers I got to work in peeling them and passing them through a food mill.



I topped the gnocchi off with this Bella Lodi which is kind of like Parmiggiano-Reggiano except it has a black rind and is slightly cheaper. That's $1.00 a pound less that's going straight into the college fund. That's $1.00 per pound per baby!



It was a sad day, however, in that our trusty salt mill (given to us by Jen's Mom) was broken. Actually it broke about a week ago.



I ordered a replacement in and was excited to finally get back to grinding until I realized something depressing.



The one I ordered was intended to run on batteries. Yes, that's right. Batteries!



While pondering why anyone would want such a device I was further enraged by the fact that it took six -- six! -- AA batteries to operate this salt grinder. I'm going through enough batteries in my battery-operated forks in knives. I don't need to add to that expense for a salt grinder.

Now if they came up with a battery operated pillow then that would make sense. I'd definitely pay money for that.



I figured, to keep with the baby theme for tonight's dinner, I'd go with a milk stout. I couldn't decide between these two milk-themed beers so I figured I'd just have both!



The first was the Milk Stout from Left Hand Brewing Co. in Longmont, Colorado. I was very happy with this stout. It was rich and creamy with a very faint liquorice flavor and a quality that I like to call "imaginary chewiness" which is one of my favorite characteristics in a beer.



The second beer was this Mother's Milk, a slightly more local stout from Keegan Ales in Kingston, New York. I had this beer once before, on tap, on my birthday last year. This was extra fitting considering how my birthday just happened to fall on International Stout Day.

This beer scored extra points for having the word "mother" in the name of the beer.



After brewing beer with all grains you have a tremendous amount of spent grains at the end. Even with these small one gallon batches I had all this grain. Luckily there were some really nice recipes on the Brooklyn Brew Shop website.



After stumbling across a recipe for Barley & Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars it became clear that this was definitely what I was making.

I made a crust out of the spent grains, some pretzels, a little granola, some brown sugar, and butter. After it was done I topped it with a mixture of peanut butter, powdered sugar, melted butter, and chocolate chips then topped it with melted chocolate and milk.

This recipe is actually remarkably similar to my peanut butter chocolate bars, the first recipe I ever wrote down from my Aunt Vivian as a teenager.

The bars were predictably delicious. After drying out half the grains in the oven all night I put the second half in before bed in hopes that we would awake in the morning with all of the grains completely dried and ready to use for more recipes. My only hope was that we would not burn the building down in doing this. If we could overcome this fear all would be well.



Now we only have to get over the fear that one day Oprah will eat our babies.

Leftovers and Tasmanians

Last night we returned to our mission to empty the freezer. This mission had been going so well, as it often does, until I foolishly bought and prepared an immense amount of food to add back to our limited freezer space. My goal for this week is to work once again at emptying our freezer so I can once again fill it with food we do not need.

It's the American way.



But first I started out with this Pleasant Ridge Reserve Uplands Cheese. It's made with raw, grass fed cow's milk and it was pretty tasty, though a tad expensive. And, get this: it's made in Wisconsin of all places! Who knew they made cheese in an obscure state such as Wisconsin? I mean, it didn't even achieve statehood until 1985!



To start off I made a salad with heirloom lettuce, grape tomatoes, feta cheese, blanched almonds, avocado, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I was wondering when I'd get a chance to use up that lettuce that was handed down to me from my great great grandmother.



I was able to clean out the freezer nicely with this pasta dish. I boiled two lobster tails, then removed them from the water and cooked some leftover dried linguine in the same water. This actually imparted a very nice lobster flavor to the dish, even better than I'd expected. In a pan I cooked some crushed garlic and shallot in butter and olive oil. To that I added some of the chopped up leftover pink peppercorn crusted pork tenderloin. Then I added some frozen peas and the chopped lobster tail before adding the cooked linguine along with some of the pasta water and salt.

Before serving I tossed in some chopped parsley and green onion.



To accompany this seafood dish I had this Tasman Red Red IPA from Samuel Adams. I'd received a recommendation on it and picked it up a while ago. At $4.99 it was an amazing deal and a very nicely made beer. I'm not a huge Sam Adams fan but this beer was a real winner. It had a nice molasses maltiness in conjunction with the hoppy character you'd expect from an IPA.

Plus it had an insane looking (presumably Tasmanian) man on the label, perhaps to honor the Tasmanian hops used in its brewing.

This beer is the first in Samuel Adams's "Small Batch Series" and if it's any indication of what direction they are headed with this series then I look forward to picking up some more from this line.

At $4.99 a bottle it seems like I can't afford not to try more of this series. However, what is the cost of Jen's anger when my beer collection continues to swell? My guess is: high.