Golden Goblets 2011

2011 was yet another great year. The highlight was obviously the addition of a second little one to our family. This blissful year didn’t really carry over to the blog though. I have a back-log of grilled treats I would like to share since the grill was fired up quite a lot (not so much in the last few months). On the beery side though I really didn’t accomplish much, and my Golden Goblet picks reflect that. I had to drop several categories from last year because I simply couldn’t come up with any winners due to a “lack of entries”.

• Best Belgian Beer – Orval (see pub of the year)
• Best International Beer – Verdi imperial stout
• Best Homebrew I made in 2011 – Road Runner Rebel Stout
• Best Beer induced Experience – working at the Alvinne Craft Beer Festival
• Best Beer Graphic(s) – this was a tough one but I ended up going with the overall look of Red Brick Brewing’s new packaging. Too bad they didn’t carry these new graphics over to all parts of their brand, like their website. Work on that guys.
• Worst Beer Graphic(s) – Westvleteren Brick
• Pub/Bar/cafe of the Year – Melkerij. This is not a cafe you will find in any beer guide or hear about from any other beer geek. Its just not that kind of place… But in 2011 it was exactly what I needed. Its in the deep dark woods, has lots of outdoor seating and a massive playground. Yup, I said playground. With a baby and a toddler it wasn’t easy to get away and explore far off specialty bars, but when you can see your little girl having a ball on the slide while you and your baby sit in the dappled sunlight enjoying an Orval, those specialty bars just seem a bit ridiculous
• Beer Festival of the Year – Alvinne Craft Beer Festival
• Beer Retailer of the Year – Dranken Geers. They have really done a good job in getting some of the better rare stuff and some great non-belgians. All for a good price too.
• Best Beer Blog or Website – Oh Beautiful Beer
• Food and Beer Pairing of the Year – Pulled Pork, RodenQue sauce, and Rodenbach Grand Cru
• Beer I’m most looking forward to in 2012 – New addition 2011
• In 2012 I’d Most Like To – like last year, Brew on a real brewery system… perhaps another collaboration?
• Open Category – This year the Open Category is awarded to the brewer who has done the least in 2011 and who really needs to get things going in 2012. I’m calling it the “Get your ducks in a row trophy,” and the winner is… (drum roll)… me!

Hope you had a good 2011 and hope you have an even better 2012!

The proof is in the barrel

I’ve had a few chances to play around with the Gueuze barrel chips now and thought I’d share my findings (on both grilling use and beer use).

The Beer side: When I first opened the bag of chips I immediately threw some into starter wort to try and grow up the critters living on the chips. Not surprising, the bugs did get going pretty quickly. Also not surprising it developed some green mold. It looked and smelled decent for about 4 or 5 days and I thought that it might end up being usable. Then the aroma really went down hill and the green monster started growing. Oh well. I still haven’t dumped it out (too afraid) and I was thinking that I could possibly pull some of the beer out from under the mold and try to culture that up… but really, I’m too lazy for all that. Plus I like the reliability of buying pure strains and mixing them myself, or culturing up dregs from bottled beers.

The Fire side: The chips have been used to add some smoke to pork, fish, and numerous chickens. Result… Shocker, the smoke flavor is just like oak! Well, to be fair I think there may be a slight difference that I haven’t yet been able to nail down, but unless you are going to do a side by side oak vs gueuze barrel (made from oak) smoke test, I don’t think anyone would pick up on a difference. I actually do plan on doing that some time though (Bourbon barrel chips vs Gueuze barrel chips).

That being said I do actually like using these chips. In general, they are chipped quite small and don’t need to be soaked too long before throwing on your fire. That makes them ideal for quickly adding smoke to items that aren’t slow-cooked for 60 hours. Also handy if you are “planning-challenged” like me and realize that you forgot to soak your chips as you’re about to throw the meat on the grill.

Conclusion:

• Gueuze Barrel chips are great for a quick burst of smoke when grilling
• Don’t bother using them for long smokes
• Keep them out of your homebrew (just culture up dregs from a bottle if you must)

I wonder if barrel chips from a good kriek would offer anything extra? Hey,Peter De Clercq,  how about that? I’ll help test them out for you.!

Beer and Mood #1

Every once in a while I feel like writing something a bit different. I could hop on the beer trend bandwagon and do pieces on beer and food pairings, but I find all that a bit ridiculous. Not the beer with food, that’s just logical to me, but everyone seems to be making this a “new” idea. Plus I kind of throw some of that into my cooking posts anyways. How about Beer and Mood pairings? A look at enjoying beer and matching it with a mood, atmosphere, event, music or whatever floats my boat. This will not be a regularly scheduled series of posts, I will just write something up whenever the mood strikes me (read that as probably not too often).

Beer and Mood # 1 – The secret delicacy
“So what is your favorite beer?” It’s the dreaded question for most beery types. Many have some lame answer along the lines of “the next beer,” or “I haven’t tried them all yet,” or even worse they go off on a diatribe about beer styles. I don’t really mess around anymore. I throw out a couple commercial beers and a homebrew. One beer that always gets mentioned is Oerbier Reserva from De Dolle Brouwers. Despite my favoritism for lower ABV beers, this 13%ABV brew always tickles me in places I probably shouldn’t admit.

Oerbier Reserva is a complex dark sour ale. Each vintage has its own variation on a theme of utter brilliance. I am always surprised with the all around balance, layered tart and funk, and the way it dances around my mouth doing back-flips off my tongue. Dark fruit compote tainted with rich balsamic vinegar, infused with a hearty bordeaux, prodded by autumn spice, poked with tannins, and at times sprinkled with cocoa. That only begins to describe some of the aromas and flavors you have the privilege of discovering when drinking this beer. More simply put, it’s a damn fine glass of beer.

Oerbier Reserva vertical @ De Kulminator

Normally, big beers like to strut their stuff in front of a group of beer snobs, while they talk at length about its many facets and compare the various vintages. While I have definitely enjoyed a vertical tasting or two of this beer with like minded nerds, this is not the best way to enjoy it.

Mrs. Smokey has a day job that involves thinking and all that smart stuff that I don’t have to worry about. Due to this daily brain-drain she tends to watch the more mindless programs on TV in the evening. The kind that normally make me fearful for the future of mankind… I’m talking to you Kardashians! While I detest these shows, it is at this time when I find my own bit of beervana. After making sure Mrs, Smokey has her cola I sit down in the corner of the couch and begin to pour the beer. Already the world starts to get a little foggy. As I lean back and put one arm around my wife and stick my nose in the glass, the world completely falls away. The only things left are the beer, my tastebuds, my wife and an occasional glimpse of the TV. At this point I can actually appreciate the hilarity of the intellectually challanged rich celebrity on TV (normally they just make me angry). It’s a bit of a secret moment. Since Mrs. Smokey doesn’t drink beer I feel no need to share or talk about the beer. Its all mine. No beer geekery to get in the way or take away from my moment of pure enjoyment. Brain-off, beer in. The flavors intermingle with the comfort of the couch and the warmth of Mrs. Smokey while the lighter side of life floats on by. One of the beer world’s greatest achievements paired with the worst that pop culture can throw at you. A real double rainbow moment in my head.

New Addition 2011

I recently had my last brew day as a father of one child. The beer was brewed to mark the very closely approaching arrival of child number 2 (I’ll have to think of a better name than Child Number 2). When the first lil’ Smokey was born I brewed New Addition 2008. Not only was  “New Addition” a nod to my baby but also the first time I had added any wild bugs to my beer. The idea was to brew something between a Porter, a Flanders Red and an Oud Bruin. A Flanders Oud Porter? For New Addition 2011 I needed to find another interesting ingredient that I had never used, but always wanted to. This time it’s Belgian cocoa powder. The base recipe has also been altered, but the “feeling” is the same. I want the New Addition beers to feel like they come from the same family but each one has its own distinct personality.

Knowing that I am not always the most patient person, and fearing the possible heart-attack caused by two children that won’t listen to me and just get into the car so I can buckle their seatbelts and get out of the rain, I’m trying to be more “zen.” With that in mind I decided that coming into brew day I wouldn’t have a fixed recipe. I did have a clear idea of what I was going to do but I wanted to just wing it a bit and go with the flow. It seemed to go well because the wort sample tasted great!

The cocoa powder was added with 10 minutes to go in the boil. With 15 minutes to go I tapped off a little of the hot wort to mix with the cocoa powder and make a paste. I thought that it would be a little easier to incorporate into the boil without clumping up.

On the yeast side, I am again adding some critters on top of the normal brewers yeast. In primary I pitched a mixed starter of Wyeast1762 Belgian Abbey II and Wyeast Roeselare Blend. This will hopefully kick up the funk a bit more than in New Addition 2008. Those Belgian yeasts are great, but since my babies are half Belgian and half American it needs some American Funk too. For that I will be adding (into the aging vessel) part of a starter of Jolly Pumpkin’s Lambicus Dexterius (batch 1), their 100% spontaneously fermented beer. It also has the nice bonus that Dexter, where Jolly Pumpkin is located, is very close to where my parents live so the beasties in the Lambicus Dexterius will literally add a touch of home.

New Addition 2011:

• Volume: 20 liters
• OG: 1.064
• FG: we’ll see but I hope around 1.008
• ABV: should be around 7.3% – 7.5%
• IBU: 22 (rager formula)

Fermentables:

• 66% Pale Ale
• 13.5% Munich
• 9% Aromatic
• 5.3% Flaked Oats
• 3.5% Chocolate Malt (900 EBC)
• 2.7% Roasted Barley

Mash:

• single temp infusion @ 68C (154F)

Hops:

• 30g East Kent Goldings for 22 IBU (60min from end)

Extra:

• 75g Belgian Cocoa Powder (10min from end)

Yeast:

• Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey II (in primary)
• Wyeast Roeselare Blend (in primary)
• a bit of a starter made from the dregs of Jolly Pumpkin’s Lambicus Dexterius (during aging)

Notes:

June 13th 2011 – Brew day was very smooth. First time using my drill with the Barley Crusher… man thats quick!

June 15th 2011 – Fermentation was rather slow to kick off. I think the Roeselare blend may have lowered the starters pH too quickly for the somewhat old WY1762 and that didn’t grow as much as it should have. Fermentation is going though.

stick your wood in it

Belgium can be a bit of an outdoor-cooking wasteland. When the sun comes out everyone does love to run out in the back yard and blacken some meat, but it is rarely taken seriously and is never combined with the idea of high quality food. Often if I talk about cooking a very nice cut of meat on the grill I get the response “Aww, thats a shame.” Because of this attitude it is rare that Belgium offers something unique to the outdoor-cooking world. Perhaps it was born from a pure marketing idea or perhaps it came from a genuine search for new flavors, but never the less, woodchips made from Gueuze-barrels is an interesting and uniquely Belgian product.

I was surprised to find these wood-chips but I was flabbergasted that they were at my local grocery store, not some obscure online barbecue specialty store. Peter De Clercq, Belgiums one and only outdoor-chef, has been trying to bring grilling to a higher level here and is the man behind this new idea. Thanks Peter! Now I just need to see if they are any good. Hmmm, what would go well with Gueuze smoke?

Not only am I excited to throw these chips onto the fire but I am also wondering if I can inoculate some beer with them. According to the package the chips come from barrels at Timmermans that were either at the end of their life, or broken. I am not sure of the conditions in which the wood was “chipped” but I tossed a handfull into some starter wort to see what happens. The chips should be full of brettanomyces, pediococcus, kloekera and hopefully saccharomyces (among many other critters). I flushed the starter with CO2 to try to prevent any acetobacter from taking hold. As long as I don’t get any black or green mold I should be able to start up a useable culture, or at least make some interesting vinegar. Of course it would be a lot easier, and probably more fruitful, just to use the dregs from a bottle of Gueuze… but then I couldn’t say that I stuck my wood in it.

Rebel without a clue

After a week delay, thanks to my not-so-local homebrew shop, I brewed up another fun experiment. This time I am bringing the funk to a darker level. A stout fermented with Brettanomyces Lambicus and Lactobacillus. A stout with a beat you can dance to. Road Runner, Rebel Stout.

Ever since I took a slight step back, as I mentioned last time, brewing has become easier and even more enjoyable. This brew day was smooth even though I was introducing a new piece of equipment (an electric HLT) and the process with this beer was a little different. I hit all my numbers and had amazingly clear and quick run-off. In the boil is where this brew day was different than usual. Since the beer is intended to be partially fermented by Lactobacillus, the IBU’s from the hops would be a problem. Lactobacillus rolls over and dies at the mere mention of hops. To get around that I ran off 5 liters of beer after 15 minutes of boiling and before the first hop addition. This was then chilled and had Wyeast Lactobacillus thrown in. The rest of the wort continued to boil and receive two additions of East Kent Goldings before being chilled and pitched with a good starter of Wyeast Brettanomyces Lambicus. If my hillbilly math works out the OG should be 1.058 after blending (5 liters @ OG 1.050 + 15 liters @ OG 1.060).

One of the things I wanted to accomplish here is to see what a real lactobacillus fermentation will produce compared to the lactic acid laden Acid malt I used in the last beer. Obviously this stout will have a bunch of other flavors in the way but I still think I should be able to pick up on the complexity of the lactic character and be able to compare that aspect. We’ll see.

Road Runner – Rebel Stout

• beer after blending: 20 liters
• OG of total blend: 1.058
• Expected FG: 1.012??
• Expected ABV: 6.1%
• Expected IBU: 27
• Expected Color: 69.5 EBC (35 SRM)
• Boil duration: 60 minutes

Fermentables

• 40% Pale Ale
• 40% Munich
• 8% Aroma
• 6% Roasted Barley
• 6% Dehusked Chocolate (800 EBC)

Hops

• 30g East Kent Goldings @ 45 minutes
• 20g East Kent Goldings @ 10 minutes

Mash

• Single infusion mash @ 68°C (154°F)

Yeast

• 5 liters un-hopped wort – Wyeast Lactobacillus
• 15 liters –  Wyeast Brettanomyces Lambicus

If it doesn’t turn out well I may have to change the name to Dead Duck – Drain Pour Stout

Brewed on April 3, 2011

Update April 8, 2011: Despite pitching a large amount of brett L and Lacto, there was no sign of activity for the first three days. After 72 hours there was some positive pressure in the airlocks but no real sign of fermentation. Now almost 5 days later there is still no krausen and not much activity in the airlock. Getting worried.

Update May 4, 2011: pretty much right after my last update the beer really took off. That was the longest lag time I’ve had on a brett beer. Fermented nicely and the two are now blended together. The brett portion was at 1.020 but will continue to slowly come down (I expect it to stop around 1.014). The Lacto portion is not so easy to measure since the lactic acid it produces is actually denser than water so a hydrometer is useless (I should have taken pH readings before and after). The sourness developed very nicely on the nose and in taste. A bit of appley balsamic flavor with a bright crispness underneath and slight vegetal. Went well with the chocoalte notes in the beer. Tasted different ratios of the two portions but surprisingly enough 1/4 lacto portion to 3/4 brett portion tasted the best. So all 5liters of lacto portion went into the brett batch. Now the beer needs to sit a couple-few months.

a duck on my calendar

Imagine if there was a sort of chart with all the days of the year listed in order. Now imagine that you could plan future events and then note these events on this list of days.  Sounds great doesn’t it? Well, much to my surprise this magical list already exists and there is even one hanging on the wall in my kitchen! All, joking aside, I am trying to get over my fear/lack of planning. Last year I had a serious problem of having to ditch brewing and barbecuing days because they weren’t planned far enough ahead for life to comply. It seems to be going better now. In fact I just had a  brewday this past Sunday, and there is a serious pork smoking session planned in a couple weeks, and the next brewday is planned in March.

Enter the Ugly Duckling:

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, but smells a bit funky, then it must be the Ugly Duckling American Sour. Sunday’s brewday was another venture into sour beers. A funky and tart sessionable beer with citrus hop notes. Well, that is the idea anyways.

There are several ways to get lactic tartness in your brew (Lactobacilus, pediococcus, sour mash, pure lactic acid) but I decided to try something simple I had heard about from a few pro-brewers, a relatively high percentage of Acidulated Malt (or Acid Malt). This malt is a Reinheitsgebot way of controlling your mash pH but using higher ammounts will also give you some lactic flavor (see this link for some more info.. scroll down to “Berliner Weisse from Weyermann Acidulated Malt”). It won’t be as complex a lactic character as some other methods, but for what I want in this beer it should be good. Especially when considering this will be a 100% brett fermented beer. Oh, and brett favors a lowered pH to do its thing, so win win.

Ugly Duckling American Sour:

• Wort volume after boil : 20 liters
• OG: 1.048
• Expected FG: 1.010 – 1.012?
• Expected ABV: 4.8% – 5%
• Expected IBU: the math says 36 but with mash hopping my experience says it will seem lower
• Expected color: 11 EBC (4.6 SRM)
• mash efficiency: 76%
• Boil duration: 60 minutes

Fermentables:

• 56.5% Pale – 2.2kg (4.85 lb.)
• 30.5% Munich – 1.2kg (2.65 lb.)
• 9% Acid malt – 350g (.77 lb.)
• 4% flaked oats – 160g (.35 lb.)

Hops:

• 35g (1.2 oz) Amarillo – mash hop

No kettle additions. After aging for a while I will dry hop this with more Amarillo.

Mash:

• single infusion mash at 67C (153F) for 60 minutes

Yeast:

• Wyeast 5112 Brettanomyces Bruxellensis

Ugly Duckling was also a bit of a process re-working for me. Over the years I have tried playing with my process  to raise efficiency, cut time, or just look cool. In the end I wasn’t happy with the stuck or slow sparges, the running around and the extra worry. This time I re-evaluated my technique. I even turned back the adjustment on my grain mill a bit. In return I had a great brew day! It was very easy and relaxed and I was even able to pull off a brew in less time than before. My efficiency was slightly lower (76% instead of 80%), but I was expecting that.

Notes:

February 13th 2011 – brewed: Brew day went very well. It was perhaps my most relaxed brew day to date.

March 15th 2011 – racked this over to secondary so it can age a while before dry-hopping. It was sitting at 1.010 SG. I’m finding these all brett beers are best after about 5 months or so.

July 17th 2011 – dry hopped this beer with 30g Amarillo whole leaf hops. The aroma before dry hopping was quite funky. Good barn-yardy notes!

July 29th 2011 – The duck is in the bottle! FG went a bit lower than expected 1.006! Bottled 17 liters (damn dry hops soaked up my beer) primed to get me 2.7 vol CO2 carbonation. Beer is tasting quite nice. Big orange notes. A good lactic  sourness with big fruity brett and amarillo all combining to a sort of orange and lemon juice combo.

another 2010 list

Its that time of the year when every beer blogger comes up with their  ”Best Of” lists. I generally avoid such listings on my site, and I also avoid doing much beer reviewing since there are a thousand others doing that and they can actually write. However, for some strange reason I thought I’d give it a go this year. So it is time to unveil the inaugural 2010 Golden Goblet Awards! Some of you may be thinking that this sounds familiar, but I can assure you that any resemblance to other yearly blog-based awards is purely by coincidence. Sure there is that thing called the Golden Pint Award, but that’s completely different. First of all it’s British, and then there’s….. ok, it’s plagiarism, thievery, flattery or whatever you want to call it,

Hopefully some fellow Belgian beery-types will follow suit and post their Golden Goblets online as well. If you would like to participate, either add your winners in a comment here or post them on your own blog and post a link here. Feel free to add, delete, or change the categories and have some fun with the open category at the end.

…And now for my winners!

• Best Belgian Draught/Cask Beer - Saison Dupont… its just so damn drinkable! Alvinne Wild Undressed was a close second
• Best Belgian Bottled Beer – Oerbier Reserva This beer knows how to please me!
• Best International Draught/Cask Beer – Tough one, but perhaps Marble Decadence. I really enjoyed all the Marble cask beers at the Borefts Bierfestival… Damn fine beer
• Best International Bottled Beer - Tied betweren Jolly Pumpkin Madrugada Obscura and Haandbryggeriet Dark Force
• Best Beer based/induced Experience - Nocturnal Brew and BBQ at Alvinne
• Best Beer Label – Odell’s St. Lupulin (I know it actually came out in 2009 but I didn’t see it then) Odell’s labels are great in general with their screen print style graphics. I’d love to have some large prints for my wall.
• Best Belgian Brewery – Alvinne. Maybe it’s because I took a class there, maybe it was the collaboration brew I did with them, maybe it’s for all they do for craft beer in Belgium, maybe it’s because thery’re real good guys, or maybe it’s just because they brew some good beer and don’t mind taking a risk. Expect big things from them in the future.
• Best International Brewery – Jolly Pumpkin
• Pub/Bar of the Year – Moeder Lambic Fontainas
• Beer Festival of the Year – First place goes to Pre-ZBF (from now on called the Alvinne Craft Beer Festival). Second place, De Molen’s Borefts Bierfestival
• Beer Retailer of the Year – Alvinne. not only do they brew beer but they have a shop filled with gems from around the world… and that doesn’t happen in Belgium
• Best Beer Book or Magazine – Pete Brown‘s Hops and Glory (again, I was late with that one)
• Best Beer Blog or Website – First place- The Mad Fermentationist (great source of brewing inspiration). Second place- Thirsty Pilgrim (that boy can write)
• Most interesting online pressence for a brewery: Real Brewing at the Sharp End with the 52 brews project.
• Food and Beer Pairing of the Year – Alvino 2009 with smoked Pork Tenderloin
• Beer I’m most looking forward to in 2011 – Brasserie Dupont’s Monk’s Stout
• In 2011 I’d Most Like To…  Brew on a real brewery system… perhaps get a true Birdsong beer out there.
• Open Category – I’m calling this the “Get On That” trophy (Goes to any beer or beer related thing that showed a lot of promise but just seemed to miss the mark. Also known as the “Better luck next year” trophy): unTappd. Far from perfect but this little app has been getting some use on my iPhone. It allows you to quickly post what you are drinking and where you are drinking it. If only it had a bit more social interaction and the ability to add a simple rating to ratebeer if you so desire… oh yeah, and throw in a dash of Pintley‘s reccomendations and Beercloud‘s food pairings, then you’ll have a winner (They all offer something, but none offer enough). So get on that unTappd peeps!

fermentation for the lazy

I Finally got around to bottling my two 2+ year old dry meads. That is the nice thing about mead, it needs time to age before it’s really ready. Ok, that’s also the bad thing about it, but as long as you have enough beer around you should be able to just forget about it for a year… or more.

These two Canola honey meads were fermented with Wyeast Bordeaux and Kitzinger Tokaj. Both ended around 0.990 (coming down from almost 1.080), are very clear and are almost colorless. They are tasting nice but lacking something. I am starting to think that the drier a mead ends up, the more it needs some tannins from oak aging. Unfortunately neither of these received any oak. Lesson learned.

I’ll do a grand mead tasting somewhere in the future but right now I’ll just say that I quite like the character I am getting from the Tokaj yeast. I wonder what this would do in combination with some bugs in a sour beer? Perhaps a good candidate for a Test Pilot brew.

I also racked over my most recent mead. This Linden blossom mead marked my first attempt at a sweet mead. I took the approach of making a massive mead in hopes that the yeast would reach their alcohol tolerance and just give up, leaving behind unfermented sugars. Unfortunately the Kitzinger Bordeaux yeast took it down to 1.005 already and I expect that it will end even lower. So we’ll be looking at a massive 17%ABV dry mead!?! Oh well. I racked half of this mead onto Noorderkrieken (sour cherries) and the other half will be getting an addition of chipotle chilis in a couple of months. Then part of those two will be blended into an unexpectedly dry and boozy cherry-chipotle mead. Looking forward to that one!

testing testing

As previously posted I will be supplimenting my all-grain brewing with some quick extract batches in the hopes that I can experiment more often. Well, after a friend (one of the few Mexicans in Belgium) handed me a bag of Chipotle peppers straight from the mother land, I knew my first experiment had to be a Chipotle pale ale. Chipotle peppers are not exactly common here in Belgium so I was very happy to receive these. I know I’m not the first brewer to throw some peppers in a beer but I’ve never done it and thought it was time to try it myself. Time for the innaugural “Test Pilot” brew!

The things I want to test with this 10 liter (2.6 US gallons) batch are:

the handling and amount of peppers to use in a beer

the combo of Nelson Sauvin and firey spice

smoke (from the smoked peppers) in a pale ale

only using late hop additions (30 min or less in boil)

chipotle peppers and hops

I kept the malt extremely simple. I did however use some old extract I had in the cupboard as a portion of the total DME bill…. hmmm, maybe that wasn’t the best idea though. A touch of chocolate malt was steeped in the kettle before adding the malt extract and boiling. The roasted malt will hopefully support the smoke and give a touch of earthiness. Since extract has already had the snot boiled out of it in it’s creation, a full 60 minute boil is not needed, and since I was only adding late hops I only boiled for 30 minutes. I added the small amount of chipotle peppers with 5 min to go in boil and let the wort sit for 20 minutes before cooling. The sample I tasted did show a very low spice level in the back of the throat and a nice level of smoke. We’ll see what the yeast does with this. If the final flavor and spice level seem to be a going in the right direction than I do plan on brewing a more “serious” all-grain version. Man, I really hope that old DME won’t get in the way too much. Damn my cheapness!