Grumkins and Poppers

My oldest son was home from college this past week. He had never had my homemade Jalapeño Poppers, so I thought I'd better make some.

If you need the recipe ... see Jalapeño Poppers. They are awesome, and everyone should make them from time to time.

I had some of my Grumkins and Snarks Oatmeal Stout while grilling the poppers and chicken.

If you follow along on my Brewing Notes on the Grumkins and Snarks recipe page, you probably read that I have really been enjoying this beer.

Ginger Beer

Remember my Ginger Bug post? If not ... feel free to go off and read it.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Obviously, I didn't make the Ginger Bug for the sake of making Ginger Bug. 

I had to do something with it. Hopefully I'll make several things with it.

I decided to start with Ginger Beer.

I mentioned the @FermentationAdventure Youtube Channel in the Ginger Bug post, and they have lots of videos where they use their Ginger Bug to make homemade sodas.

For my version of Ginger Beer, I decided to use lemonade / limeade as a base.

More Chicken in the Vortex

Well ... like I mentioned in Whole Chicken in the Dutch Oven, I was pretty sure that next time I grilled a whole chicken I would do it in the Vortex ...

... Like I did in Whole Chicken in the Vortex ...

... and ... Another Whole Chicken in the Vortex ...

Lots of people say spatchcock is the best way to cook birds, but I have not found spatchcocking to make my birds turn out as good as cooking the whole thing upright like beer can chicken.

Cooking the bird upright on the kettle brings the top of the chicken close to the lid of the kettle, so at some point I decided to try to cook on the charcoal grate rather than the cooking grate.

The Vortex (or the Dutch Oven) protect the meat from too much direct heat while allowing the bird to be down with the coals.

S is for 6 and 40 Brewery

Well ... if I'm counting correctly, we only have 8 more letters in the alphabet to finish up round 4 of our little A to Z Denver Breweries series of posts.

We're flying through the alphabet!

We posted A is for A Bit Twisted Brewpub mid-June of 2022 and a little over a month ago we posted R is for River North Brewery.

And ... now ... of course we needed an S brewery ...

The Colorado Brewery List has tons of "S" breweries to choose from. 

But when it came right down to it, there was really only one I thought we should visit.

S is for 6 and 40 Brewery

2021 BCJP Styles to Brew

So you know that as of 17B. Old Ale, I have successfully brewed at least one beer in all 2021 BJCP Categories.

Well ... actually, since "I Lied" ... this isn't technically true, but let's pretend that we're still in the days where we didn't really realize there additional categories past 27. Historic Beer. I promise that I'll get to 28. American Wild Ale and 33. Wood Beer at some point this year. 

But ... I spent the time typing up this post before I realized that I Lied, and I hate to think I've wasted that effort.

Looking through the guidelines, there are still lots of individual styles I'd like to brew, so I think I'm going to start seeing how many I can get through before the next version of the Guidelines come out.

I don't think I want to brew one of every style because there are a couple I don't really think I'd like to drink.

If I'm counting correctly, there are 42 styles of beer (see below) that I need to brew to have one batch of each in the guidelines (WOW!).

For now, I'll remove Historical Beers, Sours, and 3 "Specialty" IPA's that I don't really like to drink.

I'll also remove Eisbock and Rauchbier for now.

If my math / counting is correct ... that leaves 25 styles of beers to brew. That will almost certainly take me over a year, especially because I won't JUST be brewing these.

But ... here are a list of styles that I have not brewed yet ... 

Ginger Bug

So ... after my Ginger Kombucha post, I have gone down a few youtube rabbit holes which have lead me to being interested in homemade sodas.

This lead me to making a Ginger Bug starter last week.

Considering how long I've been border-line obsessed with fermentation, I'm a little surprised I have not come across ginger bug until last week, but I had not heard of it until I started watching youtube videos on Ginger Beer.

What is Ginger Bug?

A ginger bug is a wild-fermented starter culture made with sugar, ginger, and water. It takes about a little less than a week of daily diligence to make one, and you can use it to make probiotic, naturally bubbly soft drinks, sodas, herbal beers, and tonics.

 

I lied

I lied!

As of 17B. Old Ale, I claimed to have successfully brewed at least one beer in all 2021 BJCP Categories.

Well, apparently, I completely missed entire categories after 27. HISTORICAL BEER.

For some reason, I thought the Historical Beer category was at the end. There were a couple more pages to go:

17B. Old Ale

After brewing Grumkins and Snarks Oatmeal Stout (Batch 326) and Doodle Bop Belgium Single (batch 328), I have successfully brewed at least one beer in all 2021 BJCP Categories.

In Followup on BJCP 2021 Style Guidelines, I also wrote that I also needed a beer in Category 17, Strong British Ale.

However after a little research and thinking about it some ... I decided that I have actually satisfied this category with some of my bottled X-Mas Ales from previous years.

Specifically ... 17B. Old Ale.

"A stronger-than-average English ale, though usually not as strong or rich as an English Barley Wine, but usually malty. Warming. Shows positive maturation effects of a well-kept, aged beer.

Deep amber to very dark reddish-brown color, but most are fairly dark. Age and oxidation may darken the beer further. Clear, but can be almost opaque. Moderate to low cream- to light tan-colored head; retention average to poor."

Pressure Fermentation (sort of) Fail

As I'm typing this blog post, I'm drinking the Mardi Bock that I brewed on Super Bowl Sunday. 

You may recall (if you read that article) that this is the first (and so far the only) batch on which I've used my new 7.9 Gallon Fermenter King Chubby.

I got the "Chubby" because I thought it would be fun / interesting / educational to try Pressure Fermentation.

Pressure fermentation is the process of fermenting beer inside a closed and pressurized vessel. 

Typical fermentations allow CO2 to escape the fermenter through an airlock or blow-off tube. In pressurized fermentation, the fermenter is sealed and the CO2 produced by the fermentation is trapped inside.

You can't just let all the pressure remain in the fermenter, you need a valve that allows pressure to escape above a certain psi. This valve is called a "spunding" valve.