Today, I am drinknig O'Dell Brewing Company's Lugene Chocolate Milk Stout, and I am pairing it with the chipotle bacon chocolate cake that I made yesterday.
The pour:
I poured Lugene into a tulip glass. the beer is intensely dark, nearly black, with a caramel colored, somewhat thin head, which dissipates fairly quickly and leaves little to no lacing.
The nose:
Dark, toasty, almost coffee notes, with a hint of chocolate below. Smells delicious
The palate:
Sweet with a hint of dark chocolate and coffee biterness. Smooth, with ery littel lingering aftertaste. A great dessert beer.
The cake:
As anyone who follows my FB feed probably knows, I made this cake yesterday. I followed the recipe that can be found here: https://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipe-details.aspx?id=8108 , but with the following changes:
1) I used retained bacon fat instead of vegetable oil.
2) The local store did not have the Special Dark Cocoa, so I used regular Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder.
3) I added eight strips of bacon, baked hard in the oven and chopped medium coarse. In retrospect, it could have used more, and cooked it even harder.
4) I also added 4 teaspoons of chipotle powder.
The cake was frosted with the recipe on the same page, except that I again substituted regular cocoa for Special Dark.
Honestly, by most measures of cake, this one is amazing--dense yet moist, richly chocolate. The only way to improve that aspect of the thing is probably to use the special dark cocoa (Maggie will disagree with me--she prefers milk chocolate). It even stands up to my experimentation well. The downsides to this cake are just that--my experimentations. I have been wanting to make a chocolate chipotle cake for a few years now, and when the idea hit me to add bacon to the mix I had to do it. The effect I was going for would have more bacon, however, and more texture from the bacon, and less chipotle. More of a hint of spice under notes of smoky bacon, rather than vice versa, as it is now.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013
Surprise Review: Surly Pentagram
I bought a bottle of Surly Pentagram on a whim today, largely due to the fact that it is (sort of) a beer-wine hybrid, which is an area of drink that I am very interested in. At $35 per bottle, its not terrible, but I don't think I will be picking it up again. I applaud Surly for their creativity, but so far have only found myself to be liking this particular brew. Furious is much too hoppy for my taste, and The Darkness was all kinds of bad, for reasons that I will not get into in this post.
Pentagram is a dark beer aged in red wine barrels that is fermented by a yeast strain called Brettanomyces, according to the back of the bottle. "Brett," according to Wikipedia, is a wild yeast strain most often found on the skins of fruits. It was discovered in the early part of the 20th century in a study of causes of spoilage in English ales, and has since become important in both beer and wine making for the flavor compounds it impairs (apparently, when grown in glucose, it produces large amounts of acetic acid), and as such it is used in some red wines meant to be drank younger to impart an aged, complex character. In the beer world, it is most commonly viewed as a contaminant, though traditional Belgian lambic styles make use of it (being spontaneously fermented by wild yeast).
I poured Pentagram out of its 750 mm bottle into a tulip glass. It was dark enough to be opaque, and it had a highly fizzy head (actually making a fizzing noise like a Coca Cola), which left no lacing on the glass at all. The nose is predominantly sour, with slightly fruity undertones. The palate is not as sour and gamey as the few unfruited lambics I have tried, but does have more than a hint of that same flavor. The mouth feel is thinner than how I remember a lambic, as well, more like a lager. The bottle claims that it has notes of sour cherry, oak, and tobacco. Honestly, my palate is not refined enough to pick up on them. All I know is I quite like it, I just don't like it $35 a bottle. If they brought it out at a lower price point, it might become a more regular stock for me.
As far as food pairings go, I would probably treat Pentagram as I would a reasonably affordable red wine--it would make a very interesting substitution. . .though really, with a flavor profile this distinctive, I am much more likely to drink it by itself.
Pentagram is a dark beer aged in red wine barrels that is fermented by a yeast strain called Brettanomyces, according to the back of the bottle. "Brett," according to Wikipedia, is a wild yeast strain most often found on the skins of fruits. It was discovered in the early part of the 20th century in a study of causes of spoilage in English ales, and has since become important in both beer and wine making for the flavor compounds it impairs (apparently, when grown in glucose, it produces large amounts of acetic acid), and as such it is used in some red wines meant to be drank younger to impart an aged, complex character. In the beer world, it is most commonly viewed as a contaminant, though traditional Belgian lambic styles make use of it (being spontaneously fermented by wild yeast).
I poured Pentagram out of its 750 mm bottle into a tulip glass. It was dark enough to be opaque, and it had a highly fizzy head (actually making a fizzing noise like a Coca Cola), which left no lacing on the glass at all. The nose is predominantly sour, with slightly fruity undertones. The palate is not as sour and gamey as the few unfruited lambics I have tried, but does have more than a hint of that same flavor. The mouth feel is thinner than how I remember a lambic, as well, more like a lager. The bottle claims that it has notes of sour cherry, oak, and tobacco. Honestly, my palate is not refined enough to pick up on them. All I know is I quite like it, I just don't like it $35 a bottle. If they brought it out at a lower price point, it might become a more regular stock for me.
As far as food pairings go, I would probably treat Pentagram as I would a reasonably affordable red wine--it would make a very interesting substitution. . .though really, with a flavor profile this distinctive, I am much more likely to drink it by itself.
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