Testing Exotic Woods with Bourbon Whiskey April 12, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in Adventures in Beer, Homebrewing.Tags: aging, barrel, beer, bourbon, exotic wood, Homebrewing, oak chips
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Bourbon aged in exotic woods
Soon after my previous post on Homebrewing with Exotic Woods, Amanda and I discussed how we would evaluate the flavor of the various woods we had acquired. It is simply not worth risking a whole batch of beer on an unknown factor!
We went back to an idea Amanda had when I was brewing my batch of Fig-Cherry Barleywine. Some commercial brewers are not just aging beer in oak barrels; they’re aging beer in oak barrels that used to contain other alcoholic delights. Why not apply this same technique when brewing at home?
The strategy was simple: instead of adding the oak chips directly to the barleywine, first soak them in bourbon for 2 or so weeks to simulate the “bourbon barrel” effect. Then add the soaked chips to the beer and see what happens.
Well, what happened to my barleywine is that it didn’t carbonate, most likely because I left it on the oak chips too long and it was too high of alcohol for the irish yeast I used. However, when we removed the oak chips from the bourbon we were left with some disgusting-looking black liquid that I was about to dump into the sink until Amanda bravely volunteered to drink it. She said it was amazing, and that we should re-age all of the bourbon in the house.
Flash forward to my set of 10 wood chips from Maine Grilling Woods. What better way to test their flavor then to subject several shots of Bulleit Bourbon to their influence?
Amanda took a small chip of each of the woods, did a medium toast in the toaster-oven, and dropped it into a small vessel with a shot of bourbon. These were labeled and left to sit for 2-3 weeks before the taste test commenced.
Taste testing the bourbons
Similar to my Great American Beer Challenge, the tasting was done blindly so we didn’t know which wood we were tasting. The good news is that only one of the woods went bad, and that it was much better to find this out with a shot of bourbon than 5 gallons of beer. Otherwise each of the woods lent noticibly different flavors and aromas to the bourbon that will hopefully exhibit themselves in beer as well. On with the results:
1. Acadian Oak
I found the acadian oak to have a fairly mild but pleasant flavor. Amanda wrote about brown sugar and maple flavors. So overall the standard aging wood earned a passing grade.
2. Downeast Hickory
The hickory had a rich wood flavor that I really enjoyed. Amanda wrote that it was not as sweet as the oak, with strong evergreen and floral notes. Also she said it tasted a bit like paint thinner.
3. Golden Alder
Watch out Mr. Yuk!
Mr. Yuk
This is the one that went bad. I didn’t even taste it after Amanda had to spit it out.
4. Mountain Mesquite
This one was another winner, with its dark rich wood taste. Amanda picked up on pine and molasses flavors.
5. Northern Nutwood
I found the nutwood to be buttery and rich. Amanda found a mild sweetness with hint of caramel. It also had a bit of smokiness.
6. North Atlantic Olive
The olive had a raw wood but sweet flavor. Amanda found vanilla and evergreen notes, but did not taste the same sweetness.
7. Sugar Maple
The maple had a very mild flavor that may not exhibit itself at all in beer. It was not clear if the bourbon took on any different flavor because of this. It had a clean and crisp finish.
8. Black Cherry
Black cherry had a great vanilla scent and flavor. I picked up on a bit of raw wood flavor as well.
9. White Cedar
You know that cedar chest that your grandma has? Your beer can taste just like that. I found the cedar to be bitter and tannic, with a hint of buttery. Amanda thought it had the most strongly imbued wood character.
10. Wild Apple
The apple was a little bit sour and raw. Amanda tasted a hint of pecan or other sweet nut. There were hints of sweet/fruity and astringent as well.
Conclusions
The bourbon taste test let us eliminate a couple of the woods that would perform so well (Golden Alder, Wild Apple, Cedar) and let some others percolate to the top. My favorites of the night were the hickory, mesquite, and nutwood. I also liked the olive and cherry quite a bit. Amanda preferred the oak, nutwood, and cherry.
My next batch of beer is going to be a chocolate brown porter, which will be aged with one of these lucky chip varietals!
Ultimate Towel Competition: ShamWow vs. REI April 12, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in Uncategorized.Tags: comparison, rei, shamwow, towel, vince
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ShamWow Towel and Box
Vince Shlomi’s enthusiasm has elevated a set of ordinary absorbant felt rags to cult-like status. Ever since seeing him on TV wearing the head microphone, soaking up spills like no one has ever seen, I’d been clamoring for my own set of ShamWows. An article earlier this year explaining Vince’s adversarial relationship to scientology only feuled my desire, and his recent arrest for battering a prostitute has done nothing to assuage it.
(As an aside, I’ve threatened to completely turn over this leaf and buy every “as seen on “TV” item possible: from the venerable snuggie and the pet nail trimmer, to Vince’s other product the “slap chop”. But Amanda has counter-threatened to leave me if I proceed with this plan.)
My longings were finally answered on my birthday when I received a set of 8 ShamWow towels from Amanda. They were purchased from Bed Bath & Beyond for $30. But were they everything I had hoped for?
Of course the only way to find out is to run a moderately rigorous comparison between the newly acquired towels and a likely contender: the REI MultiTowel. The REI towel is what we use on backpacking and camping trips to dry off. It offers lightweight drying capabilities and dries quickly afterwards, perfect for the trail.
REI MultiTowel Weighs In
The REI towel is 27″x15.5″ and weighs 58 grams dry. The ShamWow towel is 23″x18.5″ and weighs 69 grams dry. I chose these sizes for their roughly equivalent area 419 sq in for REI, 426 for ShamWow.
Soaking the ShamWow
The next step was to get the towels wet. I submerged and massaged them until they were completely drenched, and then pulled them out of the water to let them drain until no drips remained. It was at this point I realized my first qualitative difference. The ShamWow was much quicker at absorbing water than the REI towel. It basically acted as a sponge, whereas the REI towel took a bunch of manipulation and coaxing to fill with water.
Weighing the Partially Dried REI MultiTowel
When fully saturated (wet but not dripping), the REI towel weighed 312 grams. This means it took on 254 grams of water (1.08 cups), holding 4.4 times its own weight.
Weighing the Partially Dried ShamWow
The ShamWow was even more impressive. It weighed 720 grams fully saturated, taking on 651 grams of water (2.76 cups), or 9.4 times its original weight.
In his famous commercials, Vince demonstrates how easy it is to wring water out of the towels. I did two wrings with each towel. This extracted 167 grams of water from the REI towel (65.7%) and 513 grams from the ShamWow (78.8%). However, because the REI towel held less water to begin with, its wrung weight of 145 grams was only 150% of its dry weight. The ShamWow’s wrung weight of 207 grams was 200% of its dry weight. I also noticed a second qualitative difference here: the REI towel felt drier to the touch than its Sham-cousin.
Hanging the Towels to Dry
Then I set about air-drying the towels to see how long it would take them to return to their original dry state. Interestingly (at least to me), the towels both dried linearly. The REI towel started at 150% of its dry weight and lost about 27.0 percentage points per hour. It was dry after 5.5 hours. The ShamWow started at 200% of its dry weight and lost about 29.5 percentage points per hour. It was dry after 6.5 hours. It did take longer overall to dry, but it also held more water and dried slightly faster on a grams-per-hour basis.
It was fun to see my newfound toy in action! ShamWows are not miracle workers of course, but the performance was rather good compared with the REI towels. I know these camp towels are great at what they do, so the ShamWow should do well also at it’s more mundane household tasks.
The only downside of the ShamWow is that you aren’t supposed to put it in the dryer. I’ve already violated this Law of ShamWow once by accident, sending two of them through this gauntlet. They look fine, and there was not lint everywhere, but I haven’t tested them.
Hard Cheese: Farmhouse Cheddar April 4, 2009
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Food.Tags: cheddar, cheese, cheesemaking
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Cheddar cheese in red wax
Or, “What other foods can I prepare in my bathroom?”
With the success of my Cream Cheesemaking Adventure fresh in my mind, I set about one auspicous January day to begin my second cheese: farmhouse cheddar.
This is supposedly the first step in the hard cheesemaking world. These are the cheeses that require an aging period: at 55 degrees up to 2 years for some varietals. Since we don’t have a cellar built in to our condo (the unit below ours was not for sale, otherwise we may have bought it and put a hole in the floor to climb down), we don’t have a natural 55 degree place. This of course prompted the purchase of a wine fridge (Wine Enthusiast Silent 28-bottle) as a belated Christmas present for myself.
The farmhouse cheddar is simpler in terms of preparation, and can be tasted after just 6 weeks, so it is a great place to start. The process starts rather similarly to the cream cheese: warming the milk and adding bacteria.
Separation of curds and whey
Then things started changing. Once the bacteria had turned the milk into a custard I sliced it with a chef’s knife into 1/2″ cubes and began to increase the water bath temperature. This caused the curds and whey to separate and the curds to shrink as the liquid left. This went on for an hour or so, after which time I strained away the whey.
Draining the curds
Draining the curds went the same as the cream cheese. From there I had to salt them and pack them into the new 2lb mold I had purchased.
Salting the curds
Placing the cheese in the mold
Hard cheeses get pressed at increasing time intervals with increasing levels of weight in order to extract as much moisture as possible. It starts at a simple 10lbs and 15 minutes but quickly progresses to 50lbs for 12 hours. Of course you could buy the $250 contraption to do this, or you can put all those arm weights and excess dining room chairs to good use and do this:
Homemade cheese press
I know what you’re thinking: my that looks stable. At least that’s what the cats must have been thinking when they decided it would be fun to explore underneath the chair. At any rate the homemade cheese contraption worked and survived the night, pressing out a surprising amount of whey from the cheese.
Once the cheese was removed from the press, it sat at room temperature for a few days to develop a rind, and then I waxed it so it looks like a babybel. Six short weeks later we had our first cheese tasting.
Cheese plate with farmhouse cheddar
Unfortunately I have to admit to disappointment. Maybe it just needs more time to age, but it was not really like cheddar at all. It was very sharply acidic, and almost tasted like chevre. The texture was a little bit chalky, not creamy like I had wanted. There was a bit of mold underneath the red wax so I had to scrape that off. It may be that it was starting to go bad because there were air bubbles.
There are a couple things that I may have done wrong that contributed to this:
For one, the curds never really solidified as much as I thought they should have when I added the bacteria. I had to wait a long time to get it to a point where I could even cut it, but it was still not firm enough.
Secondly, after removing the cheese from its final pressing I cut it in half. I didn’t want to have to eat it all at one time! I wanted to have some after 6 weeks, and some after 6 months. However the cut ends took too long to dry out so I left the cheese at room temperature about twice as long as I should have.
Anyway I still have one round of this cheese to try in a couple of months. I need to do some more research as to what might have contributed to the cheese flavors I don’t like. I want to get started on my parmesan next because that takes a couple years to age!
