Basic Vegan-Friendly Sandwich Loaf
My family’s weekly sandwich loaf. This recipe is as simple as I can make it and vegan friendly as well! The recipe is flexible enough to dial up/down the whole wheat flour to your liking and oat milk can be replaced with cow milk if desired. I have found this particular shaping and baking method key to consistently shaped sandwich loaves. Happy baking!
Ale Tales - Bohemian Pils
I decided to start my pilsner journey with a known recipe this time from Brewing Classic Styles. Putting my own preferences aside this recipe is solid ground to build upon (obviously). I adjusted the malt and hops to better fit my brewery utilizations, specifically I toned down the hop additions and decreased the base malt. The beer turned out fantastic and it won’t last long. Unfortunately I’ll need to wait another 4-6 months before I can brew pilsners again!
Weekday Sourdough Bread
A weekday sourdough bread recipe that follows the same schedule as my daily yeasted loaf except for an overnight preferment. The preferment is important for yeast vigor and taste. Because the dough isn’t left to ferment a long time at cold temperatures, the sourness is subdued and “rustic” might be a more appropriate descriptor. The recipe is dead simple to make during the week, it just assumes you already have a healthy sourdough starter.
Ale Tales - American Pale Ale
This is the second beer on my journey to finding a house American Pale Ale. What I’m looking for in an APA is a beer that first pleases my eyes and nose; for me that means a clear golden to copper colored beer, nice tight white head, and mostly floral and tropical fruit notes on the nose. Though I like tropical fruit, I explicitly steer clear of hazy or “juicy” style beers.
Practice Makes Perfect - Hopefully
I’ve determined that I need to practice around the greens if I’m to consistently shoot in the 70s. A couple of statistics gathered from The Grint confirmed my suspicions as I haven’t made a single putt outside of 5ft in three rounds. According to The Grint, from 5ft I only make 50% of my putts. To confirm I spent about an hour on the putting green testing myself from 6ft and the results were depressing.
Our Daily Bread Updated
I’m updating my daily bread recipe as it has drifted a bit over the past year. The changes I recently made were minor but significantly improve the loaf appearance. Since sometime last year, I’ve increased the baking temperature to 475F to darken the loaf. I’m much happier with the look of the loaf now, especially the burning around the ear. I’ve also doubled the amount of olive oil to half a cup.
Ale Tales - Festbier
All I want to drink are lagers, but good german style lagers are hard to come by in Vancouver. So, taking matters into my own hands I’ve started a journey to create a festbier. This recipe is beginning life as something between a marzen and munich lager. The intention is to let it drift over time, most likely however it will end life pretty close to a modern festbier: golden in color, 5.
Brew Day Standard Operating Procedures
I recently began utilizing standard operating procedures for my brew day: step-by-step instructions of everything I need to do on brew day from setting up and filling my kettle to cleaning it and putting it away. I recently started this practice after forgetting to treat my sparge water. While not a critical step to the brew day, it nonetheless highlighted that left to own devices I will inevitably forget steps. Apart from fixing my forgetfulness, having a written set of instructions has had two unexpected but welcome side effects: first, by having the mundane written down my mind is free to focus or wander as it pleases and second, it has sped up my brew day considerably.
Grainfather - Lessons Learned
This post documents a couple problems I’ve had with the Grainfather. I also document my attempts to overcome those problems. To be clear, the Grainfather is a slick homebrewing appliance that automates away a lot of the mundane work of brewing. I absolutely recommend one if you have some extra cash burning a hole in your wallet. It does come with its own sets of quirks though and these two are the primary quirks causing me most grief.
Back to Homebrewing
I have rekindled my love for homebrewing. I’m once again back in a house with space and I have room for all the toys and necessary equipment. In my giddiness I couldn’t help myself and purchased all new brewing equipment. As is common with hobbies I went completely overboard and upon receiving this last month’s credit card bill I felt a tad guilty. However, after a brew day under my belt and my first keg of Founders Breakfast Stout clone kegged and carbonated, I feel vindicated in my irresponsible purchase decisions.