grillin’ up some cornbread

As any good american does, I crave me some good old cornbread now and then. Unfortunately this fine treat knows no friends here in the old world. Cornmeal is not a common commodity in Belgium. However, a couple weeks ago I bumped into some cornmeal at the supermarket on a shelf of clearance items. Apparently there are not enough Americans on this side of Brasschaat to keep the limited choice of US specific products in rotation. The other Delhaize in town doesn’t seem to suffer this problem as everytime I am there I hear at least two American families. From the clearance shelf I picked up one bag of cornmeal and a couple jars of molasses. The molasses will either finds its way into some cookies or into some beer.

Now I know it’s simple, but I have never made cornbread before so I had to consult the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook (We have the newest edition but I wish we had the 1968 version that my mother has. 60’s food photography had a certain something that I find nice, odd but nice). Anyways, the recipe for basic cornbread was very simple:

1 cup flour

3/4 cup cornmeal

2-3 tbsp sugar

3/4 tsp salt

2 1/2 tbsp baking powder

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/4 cup cooking oil

Long story short, I threw that all together and poured it into a greased pan. Yes I know, all you cornbread purists are shouting “you have to use a hot skillet you idiot!” Well, simple answer is that I don’t have one (but I do want one). The pan went right in the middle of the cooking grate with the coals stacked up on two sides of the grill. The temp was right around 200C (392F). After about 15 minutes on the grill I started checking with a toothpick to see if it was done. I didn’t keep the time well but I think total cook time was about 20 minutes. I was worried that maybe the sides of the bread that were facing the fire would have over cooked but it ended up with a nice even golden brown on the bottom and sides. Unfortunately, the top of the cornbread did not become nicely golden. I guess, like my first pizza on the grill, I need to get the bread higher into the dome of the kettle where the air is warmer.

Why exactly would you want to do this on the grill?… well, why not? I like the idea of baking with wood or charcoal, it just sounds right to me. It will also be nice to have extra dishes to round out a meal that I can just through on the grill while I’m doing a long cook. Plus, a small touch of smoke can do wonders in baked goods. This time I didn’t use any wood, just neutral coconut briquettes, but I plan on adding a touch of wood next time.

The flavor of the cornbread itself was alright, but could be much better. It definitely wasn’t bad, just a bit mild. The flavor needs to be kicked up a notch next time. The cornbread I know gives you a heart melting dose of american home cooking, this one just taunted me. The amount of cornmeal needs to be kicked up and the sugar kicked down, or out. Maybe I’ll have to try the recipe I saw on the homesick texan (a very delicious source of recipes that I just now discovered). I’ll probably also add about a cup of corn kernels to the batter next time…. and that next time may be very soon… I still have the craving! Oh, and I like my cornbread with hot melted Lee Morgan

duck, duck, beer

This past weekend my extended family in-law took their yearly trip down to a big rental house in the Ardennes. Despite there being 35 in-laws, it is always a good time. A really beautiful area with typical grey stone buildings set amongst green rolling hills. Being november it usually rains most of the time we are there, but in that setting I don’t mind. Mrs. Smoking Bottle thinks its all a big grey depressing mess but I tend to see the pint glass as half full… at least there I do.

Each year I try to plan one thing for the family during our weekend stay. Either a brewery visit or a good charcoal cooked meal. This year I decided on another brewery visit rather than trying to keep an 11 month old girl, who is practicing walking, away from daddy’s fire… and cooking for 30+ people is a lot of work. Also, since the in-laws are wine people, I take it upon myself to try to educate these lost belgian souls about their beer heritage. There are a lot of breweries in Wallonia, unfortunately the area that we visit has fewer options. So far I have taken the in-laws to Achouffe, Fantome and this year Brasserie Les 3 Fourquets.

 

Les 3 Fouquets resides in an inviting old stone farm house in Courtil, about 5km from the Luxemburg border. It was started up by one of the founders of Brasserie D’Achouffe after the sale of that brewery to Duvel Moortgaat (I think thats how it went). The modern shiny brewhouse is quite small and squeezed into one small section of the rather large farm house. The main part of the building usually houses the restaurant and bar. I say usually because they currently have no cook. They plan on re-opening the restaurant again next summer but they need to find a head chef. Currently they produce only one beer, Lupulus, but in the past have dabbled with a few others. You can definitely taste and smell the Achouffe heritage in Lupulus. The brewery began with the Achouffe strain of yeast, but over time the yeast has somewhat mutated (according to Julien, our guide). Cloudy light orange brew with a yeast and citrus nose. Grassy, lightly citrus hop aroma but not aggressive. Pretty well balanced in the mouth with sweet pale malt and enough grassy bitterness to stay interesting and dry enough to be refreshing. I personally think that this would be a brilliant beer if it was around 5-6% ABV instead of the 8.5% it is.

Last year I opted for the cooking route instead of a brewery tour. With the help of one of the uncles, we cooked up duck breasts for 32 people. We didn’t yet have a daughter so we had room to pack up the WSM and take it down to the Ardennes with us. The duck was lightly rubbed with brown-sugar, coarse salt, fresh ground pepper, sage and a dash each of onion powder, garlic powder, cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. Sounds like a lot but it was lightly rubbed on. The fillets were placed in the smoker fat side up for just over an hour (till about 115F internal). They were cooked over lump charcoal with a chunk of pearwood and a touch of hickory chips. After being smokedthe meat was thrown fat side down on the gasser and brushed with a glaze made from beer jelly (homemade with some of my homebrew) and butter. Served with cranberry sauce, pears poached Boon kriek and croquettes. We also made a very nice sauce with onion sauteed in some of the trimmed duck fat, some cranberries, a good slosh of Boon kriek and an unhealthy amount of cream. Run through a sieve and lightly drizzled onto the glazed duck breasts.

That was the most meat I have cooked in one time on the WSM. We only served half a breast per person but in order to fit 16 breasts on I had to take a grate from one of my kettles in order to add a third cooking surface in the smoker (on feet made from stainless steel threaded rod and some nuts and washers). That worked well and I had room to spare! I did try to take some photos of the process. Unfortunately while plating up the food for all those people we forgot to snap a photo of the sliced up duck with all the trimmings. Maybe next time. You can see photos of that cook here.

 

When the moon hits your eye

Like a big pizza pie, that’s amore!

Last night I decided to test out the new pizza stone. For my first trial I just wanted to take a look at the cooking technique itself so I bought a pre-made pizza dough. I didn’t want to put in all the effort of making dough and sauce and then end up burning it. For the sauce I just used a good quality passata. Add some mozerella and some chorizo and there you have it.

As I said, I’ve been wanting to do this for a while so I have been reading up on the different ways to do pizza on the  grill. The keys I picked up were that you want a scorching hot grill and you need to try to get the temperature above the pizza high enough that the toppings will cook before the bottom of the crust burns. There are some pretty interesting setups I have seen posted on forums like TVWB and Pizzamaking.com. What I decided to do (and had seen from others) was to try the get the pizza as high up into the dome of the lid as possible, since that is where the air is the hottest. This should help the toppings cook well. To do that I took the charcoal ring out of my WSM and placed that on top of the cooking grate with the pizza stone on top of that. With a full chimney of briquettes lined around the perimeter of the kettle the air should be pretty hot up there. I assumed the stone would still heat up pretty well in this configuration. Please excuse the poor quality photos. Mrs. Smoking Bottle was away with the camera and all I had was my iPhone.

I kept checking the color of the crust by looking through the vent holes with a flashlight. I took the pizza off when the crust looked like it was going to start getting too dark. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite long enough for the toppings. They definitely weren’t underdone but I was hoping for a touch more browning of the cheese. Total cook time was about 9 minutes. From what I’ve been reading a lot of people say that ideally it should be around 4 or 5 minutes. Sounds like I’d really need to crank up the temp more with more charcoal. I don’t really care about the time though. It seems that the faster you cook the pizza the less influence the grill would have on flavor. I want to pick up some of that fire-kissed flavor and aroma. Just a guess but 10 minutes sounds like it would accomplish that better than 4 minutes. I think the setup worked out really well. Now I just need to get some more heat on top of the pizza. Perhaps I need to stack up the coals closer to the outside than I did. Suggestions are welcome.

What are you looking at?

When this blog was started, I thought that most of the posts would be about barbecue. Afterall it is easier and faster to tame that firey passion then it is to scratch the brewer’s itch. There is also a problem of volumes. I do not brew that often since I am usually solely responsible for the disposal of said beer and I also have a commercial beer buying habit. It is great to have a cellar stocked full of goodies covering a far greater range of styles than I could ever brew. However, The Smoking Bottle has been leaning more towards the Bottle and less towards the Smoke. This got me thinking about who is reading this (besides the ones that feel obligated to endulge in my fantasy world) and where their interests lie.

If you have a spare moment (if you have read this far then you do) please take part in the following poll.

feeling the funk

No, not that funk. Just a quick brewing update. I have probably mentioned before that I want to get more experimental with my homebrew and walk on the wild side of fermentation. From now on most of my brews will be fermented, at least in part, by critters such as Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus rather than traditional Sacchromyces strains. To start this new love affair off, back at the end of April I racked batch one of New Addition to secondary and added a smack pack of Wyeast Lambic Blend . Being impatient, I popped it open and took a sample. It’s now at 1.014 and has a very light brett character with hints of sour cherry and some cola, but overall the bugs have not had too much influence yet. It definitely is going down the right path, but the path seems to be long. At least a pellicle just started to form. That will be fun to watch (for a beer geek like me).

Hop Nest batch #2 was brewed last Sunday. The recipe was modified from the original test batch. Rather than 100% Munich I added a touch of Aroma malt. The hopping schedule stayed the same but I slighlty lowered the amount of Amarillo and upped the amount of Nelson Sauvin. So where’s the funk? Well I split the batch into two fermenters. One received the same US-05 yeast as the original recipe but the second fermenter received a large pitch of Wyeast Brettanomyces Clausenii. This is supposed to be the “cleanest”, and possibly fastest of the Bretts. I hope it will give me some of the pineapple aroma that is can produce, although the reported success of this seems to be spotty. After 48 hours I wasn’t seeing any activity in the Brett fermenter. I read from several people that they were seeing lag times of 3 days, but I was still worried. Thankfully I was greeted by an enthousiasticly bubbly airlock when I came home from work on the third day. Reports say that this brett can ferment out a beer in 5 weeks. I hope thats true because I intend on serving this beer at the Alvinne International Homebrew happening on Nov 7th, next to the “normal” version.

Further, I plan on starting with the Grand Funk… Lambics. I figure each year I will try to brew one Lambic and then in a few years I can start to play with blending a Geuze. Also in the pipes is a series of 100% Brett beers with all the other Brett strains I received from Chad. Maybe my imperial stout will also get the funky beat with some critters and oak thrown in after primary fermentation.

- The Funk Soul Brewer

and the winner is…

There is something nice about waking up early, getting into a car and setting off on a day of beer discovery. The world just seems a little brighter, friendlier and tastier. First I was off to Heule, near Kortijk, for the “introduction day” for the 2009-2010 brewing class at Brouwerij Alvinne. I think more educational institutions need to cater to the needs of the humble student like Glenn does. No sooner had I walked in the room than I was handed a beer. 9am is not too early is it?. We had a thorough tour of the delightfully small brewery and then got down to the serious business, tasting a range of Alvinne beers. Now don’t get the wrong idea, we will be learning the intricacies of the brewing process, but for this first lesson we had to learn what Brouwerij Alvinne is about, and that needs to be tasted.

Off to my next destination, Kessel-lo (near Leuven). Today was the first gathering of the Vlaamse Hobbybrouwers Forum. Organizer Marc put together a well planned event. Again, the beer samples were tasty and the beer talk flowed freely. Unfortunately I had missed all of the early activities since Heule and Kessel-lo really aren’t close to eachother. This event also included a homebrew competition which I had entered. The judges were locked away in a tent in the corner of the yard, away from prying eyes. We knew that the beers must have been good because it seemed to be taking the judges longer than planned. So, who ending up winning? Well, the winner of the first “Flemish Homebrewer’s Forum” homebrew competition was an American, me! The winning beer was Hop Nest which you will be familiar with if you follow this blog. Besides the obvious prestige, I won a 6-pack of Westvleteren (always nice to have) and a stack of good looking beer books to add to my library.  Unfortunately I had to then immediately leave. It would have been nice to stick around and get to know everyone and their beers a little better, but the timing just wasn’t right and I wanted to get back to see my baby. Many thanks to Marc and everyone who helped put together a wonderful event.

I have to say that today was a very good day.

a well brewed vacation

Time to get back at it. Summer vacation is over and there are many things to be grilled and brewed. Vacation was family oriented so there is not a whole lot of news on the BBQ or Beer front, not to say that it was completely void of these activities, but it was not the focus. Family was the priority. However, my brother was able to show off his rib making skills. He received his WSM in March and he’s been smoking up a storm since then. I have to say that his ribs are pretty darn good. I still have yet to master the rib myself. The only outdoor cooking I did on holiday was a stack of Delmonico steaks. Turned out really nice. If anything, I would say they were too juicy… is that possible?

While in the states I picked up a couple of useful accessories to help fuel my charcoal obsession. A new Maverick ET-73 wireless dual-probe thermometer will allow me to see the temp of the meat I am smoking and also the temperature of the cooker itself while I am working around the house. To help protect the probe wires from being crimped and damaged I also bought some probe eyelets from the BBQ guru to install on the WSM. Lastly, before I left on vacation I bought a pizza-stone to use in my new grill. I can’t wait to try it out. There will surely be posts on that in the near future.

On the beery side, there were many a fine brew enjoyed on vacation. Just to name a few of the standouts, Jolly Pumpkin E.S. Bam, New Holland Oak-aged Dragon’s Milk and Southern Tier Mokah. I also met up with TimO from Tastybrew.com over at The Michigan Brewing Company. I brought him some tasty treats from Belgium as well as some homebrew. All was well received by the man who just a few days before had shattered his leg in 6 or so pieces falling from a ladder. He laid off the pain meds just so he could meet up and have some beer. Now that is dedication!

Thats about it really for the Smoking Bottle portion of my vacation. The rest was baby photo after baby photo… and we loved it!

de eerste vlaamse hobbybrouw meeting

A quick note for any homebrewers in flanders who may read this. The Vlaams Hobbybrouwers Forum is organizing a homebrew gathering on the 29th of August in Kessel-lo. There will also be a small homebrew competition along side other events. In order to take part you need to sign up with Liemingbrouwer over on the forum. For more information (in dutch) go to the forum post here. Tell them Brewsader sent you.

economic stimulus

Right around the corner from our house (about 150 meters) is a small hardware store that recently put a 22.5″ (57cm) apple-green One Touch Platinum in their window. The OTP has been my dream grill for a long time and realizing that this is a discontinued model, in my favorite weber-offered color, I was drooling all over the shop window. Out of nowhere, my wonderful wife surprisingly offered to pay for a part of the grill as a late birthday gift and upcoming anniversary gift. I couldn’t resist an offer like that since this could be the last time I find a green OTP in a store. So doing our part for both the US and Belgian economies we wheeled the already assembled grill over to our house. It almost didn’t fit through one of the doors since this thing is a beast, but it now happily resides in our “under-construction” back yard. Now, with this grill and my WSM (old model) I think I am set for life. I am even going to give away the smaller grill I used to use at home.

So, how does an American living abroad celebrate the Fourth of July? By buying an american made kettle grill and breaking it in with a nice big salmon fillet! Now that I have the perfect grill, I can work on my grill accessory christmas list. I may have an idea of what I want.

hop nest

That’s the name I have given my munich malt IPA (still working on the label). This brew has turned out to be quite a fantastic, balanced IPA. It has the necessary hop bite, tons of hop flavor and a dreamy aroma. It does not have the harshness and finess of a sledgehammer that so many IPA’s do. This could be the beer to turn me to the hop side. So really, how is the beer? Well, I will try to give it the good old ratebeer analysis.

The beer pours a hazy deep copper with orange edges. A tall slowly fading creamy yellowed head sits proudly on top. Pungent hop nose with grapefruit zest and some musty pine resin. Some indeterminate fruitiness blows in as the hops dance around. Very complex hop notes that are a bit hard to nail down. Heavenly if you like the smell of hops! I can pick up something that you could describe as “winey.” Could this be the famed character of the Nelson Sauvin hops or am I just looking too hard for it? No, as it warms up that character comes out more. A touch of simple sugar and malt make their way upfront after a while, but the nose is definitely hop forward. First impression in the mouth is a good stiff bitterness coming from deep with some grassy notes. Not astringent at all but definitely assertive. Some malt and thinned out caramel try to work there way upfront but are pushed back by waves of citrus hops. Some pine is noticed in the throat. Good lightly fruity tones. Quite nice. Malt does finally make its way forward and join the grapefruit and “wine” for a decently long finish. Medium to light mouthfeel with a dry finish. CO2 level is just right.

Score: aroma 8/10, appearance 4/5, flavor 8/10, palate 3/5, overall 16/20: total score 3.9/5

This is pretty much exactly what I was shooting for. The only thing that I would like to change is that the beer is just a touch too thin. That is not really surprising since this was an experiment with only munich malt… nothing to build mouthfeel. I have already adjusted the recipe in BeerAlchemy to include a touch of crystal. It will definitely be brewed again. I am also now in love with Nelson Sauvin hops!