|
If ever there were a drinker's holiday, St. Patrick's day would be it. We wanted to do something special this year. While there's nothing wrong with a traditional pint of Guinness, a Black & Tan or a pint of Harp, we thought we could come up with some more interesting variations for your St. Patricks day. We've come up with some interesting drinks along with a special recipe to start your St. Patrick's day off right.  Samuel Adams Irish Red Ale
Every St. Patrick's day needs a good session beer. Lets face it, St. Patrick's day is about drinking endurance and this new offering from Sam Adams fits the bill. Appearance: Red... duh. Tan head, about an inch.
Smell: Little sweet malt... not much, pretty mellow.
Taste: Mellow. A little malt sweetness... Just enough hops that you can taste some flowery taste, but that's it. You gotta look for it.
Why we like it:
1. Super drinkable... which is great for St. Patrick's Day
2. Nice malt flavor.
3. Easily available, and lets face it, it's St. Patrick's day so you need plenty for you and your friends!  Hop King - Black & Tan
You didn't think we were just going to give our normal list of beers did you? When we sat down to figure out what we wanted for this article we knew we had to do a twist on a black and tan. We came up with what we've come to call "Hop King", a 50/50 blend of Victory Hop Devil & Victory Storm King. Sure it doesn't layer all nice like a Guinness and Harp, but we guarantee you'll like it.
Appearance: Dark dark dark brown... almost black. This won't stay separate, though. It did for a second... but then no. But who cares, let's try it!
Smell: Roasty hops... not roasted hops, because that'd be gross... or would it? (Yes, it would) We smell roasted barley and lots of hops. Mmmmm.
Taste: Bitter chocolate and piney hops. The roast comes through in the finish, but if you burp, you'll burp hops.
Why we like it:
1. A Craft Beer take on a classic St. Patrick's Day favorite.
2. Goes down way easier than you'd expect this combo to. The Stout and IPA round each other out making them easier to drink together than separate.
3. Hops are green. St. Patrick's Day is green. Coincidence... or fate?  Butternuts Moo Thunder Stout
Looking for a Guinness alternative? This stout by Butternuts brewery in upstate New York is the perfect session stout. Just the right amount of malt bitterness with a nice easy mouthfeel that lets you have a few. Appearance: Almost black, turn to dark ruby around the edges.
Smell: Chocolate milk.
Taste: Chocolatey, smooth and kind of sweet. Why we like it:
1. Can drink it all day.
2. Awesome artwork... It's a cow being struck by lightning on a can?! Plus you get to say Butternuts all day.
3. Great alternative to Guinness Stout   Around the World in 60 Minutes - A Craft Beer Irish Car Bomb
Another beverage we knew we needed to tap was the car bomb. Traditionally a pint of Guinness with a shot of 1/2 Jameson and 1/2 Bailey's Irish Cream dropped into the pint. At the outset we knew we weren't going to make a beer drink that you chugged, but the idea of a shot glass dropped in gave us some ideas. What we've come up with is a new take on some classic Dogfish Head flavors. For this drink pour most of a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA intoa glass then pour a shot of Dogfish Head World Wide Stout (18% alcohol) and drop into the pink. Drink at a pace of your choosing, but know that it tastes REALLY good, so you may find yourself sipping to savor. Appearance: Golden, with black swirling. Head swells after dropping shot glass in.
Smell: A little sweet, and definitely hoppy!
Taste: Just a touch boozy, a little roast and some hops. We wouldn't drink it all day, but we'd drink one or two for sure! A great blend of St. Patrick's Day and Craft Beer. Why we like it:
1. It doesn't curdle... you can actually enjoy it instead of chugging like you were a freshman pledge.
2. Adds a nice malt backbone to the much loved Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
3. Blending beers is fun! (By the way, yeah, that's dust you see on the World Wide Stout bottle... It's been aged a year and a half.) Ok so we promised a recipes as well. This is a DrinkCraftBeer exclusive developed by Devon. We don't leave Guinness out of our day, we just eat it! Guinness Waffles with Bailey's Whipped Cream 2 cups flour
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup room temperature Guinness (fresh, though, open the can right before you add, do not use Guinness from the bottle)
1 1/4 cups milk
2 eggs
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
Use in your favorite waffle iron and enjoy!
For whipped cream just use your favorite whipped cream recipe and whip in Bailey's Irish Cream to taste. Don't try using whipped cream from the can, it won't work. Cheers! Devon and Jeff |
|
 The Ale Pail In this article, though, we’re going to run through step-by-step how to brew in a small kitchen setting. We know many of you live in apartments (we do), and we’ve heard too many people say they can’t brew because of this. You can! We know this, because we do it. We’ll show you how to go about brewing your first batch. Plus, we’re including pictures to really show you how it’s done. So, let’s get brewing! Step 0: Yes there is a Step 0, before you brew you need to decide what you want to brew and how you're going to brew it. Are you going to brew "all-grain" or "extract?" All grain brewing is how your favorite craft breweries make their beer. This process starts with malted barley, and you actually convert the starches to sugar yourself. You get more control over the final product, as you control everything that goes into the beer, and the process of the mash. That being said, with extract somebody has basically done the mash for you, then dehydrated the resulting wort for ease of transport and use for you. Either way works just fine and will yield a great beer with the right recipe. We started out on extract. Once you get the process down you can move up to all-grain pretty cheaply. That being said, this article will show you how to do all-grain. If you are brewing extract, just shoot down to Step 7. From that point on, it's the same process. You just get to skip some steps. Now, it's time to decide what type of beer you want to brew and a recipe. This is actually easier than most make it out to be. Just choose a style you like and go for it. We recommend using BeerTools.com to get your recipe. Also, you can get info on grains for your recipe here: http://www.beersmith.com/Grains/Grains/GrainList.htm. BeerTools.com offers a great resource for recipes and allows you to easily craft your own as well. Most basic recipes will, and should, use “2 row” or Pilsner malt as the base grain. You want to make sure you mill your grain before you brew. Your local homebrew shop should have a mill. If they don’t you may need to invest in a mill or order online where you can order pre-milled grain. Only mill what you need for this recipe, as the grain will last much longer un-milled. Do not mill the grain too much; you just want to break the hull and expose the starchy inside that will be turned into sugar. Also, the hull will later act as a filter, so if it’s crushed to much it will not perform this function well and you could get a stuck sparge (more on that later). Special note: We realize that not everyone has access to a home brew shop. If this is the case for you, you can still brew. Milled and un-milled grain as well as malt extract is available online, we recommend Beer-Wine.com. You can buy your grain or malt extract, hops and yeast there. BeerTools.com allows you to construct recipes using extract as well. If you choose to follow the malt extract method skip to Step 7. Malt extract brewing is also a good way to start and get some of the fundamentals down. You can always move on to all-grain later for very little money. This is what we did. What You’ll Need: - 5 gallon pot
- Bottling bucket
- Fermentation bucket or glass carboy
- Phil’s False Bottom
- Tubing
- Stopper
- Clamp for the tubing | - Auto-siphon
- Hydrometer
- Glass beer bottles
- Caps for the bottles
- Capper
- Bottling wand
- Iodophor (for sanitizing) |
THE MASH The mash is the first step in making beer after your grain is all set. In malted grain, there is starch and enzymes that can convert this starch in sugar. These enzymes are active at the temperatures you will mash at. In this way, you get sugar from the grain, which is food for the yeast to later produce alcohol and carbon dioxide for your beer. The grain will also give your beer it’s flavor and color.  Boiling Water Step 2: Heat water to 160 degrees. Once you reach this temperature, add your grain. This is called “mashing in.” The consistency should be that of thin oatmeal. If the mash it too thick, you will not have the enzymes moving around enough to convert the starch to sugar. If the mash is too thin, there will not a high enough concentration of the necessary enzymes to convert the starch into sugar. Once grain is added temperature will drop to around 150 degrees.  The Mash
The hotter you mash at the more body your beer will have. This is because, in the higher temperatures of this range, you are producing more unfermentable sugars. Don’t worry too much here, you really can’t screw your beer up too much at this point as long as you stay within this range, for most beers, Pale Ales, IPAs, regular stouts you want to be around 144-152. For a stout or any beer with more body, go up a bit. Do not keep your mash above 155 degrees for the entire time, as your beer will most likely end up overly sweet and very thick, with few sugars that yeast can turn into alcohol. Step 4: Heat up the mash to 170 degrees Fahrenheit, while stirring constantly to prevent the grain from scorching. At 170 degrees, you end the process where the enzymes convert starch into sugar. This is called “mashing out.” You have now completed your mash process and now it’s time to sparge. THE SPARGE During your mash process you introduced water to your milled grain. The heated water and the enzymes from the grain converted the starch in the grain into sugar. Now we need to remove those sugars. The sparge process helps remove sugar water (known as wort) from the grain/water mixture you have made. These sugars will later be converted to alcohol by the yeast.  Phil's False Bottom
a) Insert Phil’s False Bottom attached to stopper and hose
b) Fit stopper to hole in bottling bucket
c) Clamp off hose
Step 6: First, you will add 170 degree water to your lauter tun, filling to at least 3 inches above the Phil’s False Bottom. This will help prevent a stuck sparge.  Water into the Lauter Tun Once the full contents of your mash tun have been added you can begin the sparge process. We highly recommend you use a sparge arm at this stage. A sparge arm distributes water lightly and evenly over the grain you just added (preventing a stuck sparge)... We don’t have one, though, and we’ve done fine. You can now open the clamp on your hose slightly. You want a slow and even flow back into your brew pot (which you rinsed out after putting the contents into the lauter tun). Releasing too much liquid too fast will result in a stuck sparge, to put more simply, the water will leave too fast and the grain will go dry creating a stuck gooey mush (there it is, that’s what a stuck sparge is!).  Transfer to Lauter Tun  Collecting to Recirculate  Recirculating Wort  Collecting Wort You will need to have extra hot water around, at 170 degrees, as you don’t have enough liquid in the mash to sparge (we usually have 2 gallons). Using a sparge arm you will slowly add this hot water (if you have no sparge arm, just pour in the water lightly and evenly). You don’t want the grain/liquid mix to get too cool here, or it will runoff slower and the risk of a stuck sparge will increase. The liquid you are extracting at this stage is called your “wort.” You want to recirculate your wort a few times to make sure you’ve extracted all the available sugars from your grain. Do this until the worst runs clear (without grain particles in it), then you can fill your brew pot with your wort. THE BOIL Ok it may seem like its taken a bit to get to this point, but we promise it’s easier than it sounds. Really anyone can do this... People have been doing this for thousands of years and they didn’t have anyone telling them what to do, so you’ll be fine. You now have a brew pot full of wort and it’s time to start brewing. Right now, the wort is just sugar water. You’re going to boil it to sanitize it and to boil off some chemicals that will lend your beer an off-taste. Also, you’ll add hops in this stage to balance the sweetness of the beer. IMPORTANT NOTE: Anything that touches the wort after the boil must be sanitized. Follow the directions on the Iodophor bottle for this. Anything you don’t sanitize that touches the wort may introduce an infection into your beer.  Starting the Boil
 Hot Break Step 8: Once you’ve passed the hot break you can now add your bittering hops. Start your timer here and your boil will last 1 hour. (90 minutes if it’s a high gravity beer over 8% abv). These are the hops that will make your beer bitter to counteract the sweetness which beer naturally has. They won’t really impart any flavor. Compounds in hops, when boiled, isomerize over time which turns them from volatile smelly oils into stable and bitter compounds.  Adding Hops
Step 10: At 55-59 minutes into the boil you will add your finishing hops (aka aroma hops) (85-89 minutes for a high gravity beer). This addition will leave all the volatile oils in the beer. This will be the hop smell you get.  Cooling the Wort  Transferring Wort to Fermenter
 Pitching the Yeast
If this is your first beer, the fermentation time may seem like forever. This is the most important step, though, so don’t rush it. The sugar you created in the mash is now being eaten by yeast, who are expelling alcohol and carbon dioxide. IMPORTANT NOTE: Sanitize everything your beer is going to touch. This includes tubing, bottling bucket, bottles, caps, siphon… everything. Step 13: Add yeast to your wort, aerate vigorously and secure a blow-off tube into a bucket of sanitizer. You are now fermenting your beer. Congratulations! Leave your beer alone until you hit your Final Gravity (FG) (two weeks is usually a safe bet on beers under 8% abv). If you think you’re close, use a sanitized auto-siphon or beer thief to take a sample and check gravity. BOTTLING Now that the yeast have eaten the sugar in your wort… YOU HAVE BEER! Congratulations! Now, you’re almost there. It’s time to bottle. This step will carbonate your beer (nobody likes flat beer) and give you a way to transport it. You can also keg, but we’ve never done that. There are some books that will tell you how to do that.  Sanitizing Bottles Step 14: For 5 gallons of beer, dissolve 2/3 of a cup of white sugar in just enough water to leave no sugar grains, and boil for 10 minutes. Add this solution to your bottling bucket. In primary fermentation, the yeast converted all the fermentable sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide just escaped into the air, though. Adding this little bit of sugar will give the yeast some more food, which will provide them with the fuel to produce more carbon dioxide. Because you will cap your bottles of beer so that air can’t get out, this carbon dioxide will carbonate the beer. This is known as bottle conditioning, which means the beer was naturally carbonated in the bottle. Also, this means your beer is a living thing, as the yeast will continually work to condition the beer, cleaning up certain fermentation by-products. Step 15: Once the sugar is added, use an auto-siphon to siphon your beer into your bottling bucket. Do this gently so you don’t oxidize your beer. Once all your beer is in the bucket and the sugar is evenly dispersed about your beer you can begin bottling. Insert the bottling wand into each bottle and fill. You’ll want about an inch of space left after you pull the wand out. Do a few and you’ll get the hang of it. Cap each beer as you fill them using the capper that came with your brew kit.  Siphoning to Bottling Bucket  Filling Bottles  Capping Step 16: Wait 1-2 weeks or so and open a beer. Do you hear a hiss? Pour it. Does it foam? If you answer “yes” to both these questions, congratulations, you’ve now just made homebrewed beer! Drink and enjoy! Post your success stories on our forum or email us to let us know. Cheers! Still have some questions? Click here to go to our official home brew help post in the forum and ask! |
|
Drink Craft Beer, Eat Craft Chocolate
 A few months ago, Jeff happened to stop by the Wine Gallery in Brookline when there was a tasting of Taza Chocolate paired with wine. He got to talking with the representative from Taza who was there, and loved the story of the company: they're traditional, organic, fair trade and work directly with small co-ops in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. After he tried the chocolate/wine pairings, one thought struck him... This chocolate would go amazingly with beer! It's less sweet, has fruity notes and is more raw. Wine isn't the best pairing, beer is! This, in turn, is what brought us to Somerville to speak with Alex Whitmore, the head chocolate maker at Taza Chocolates.
We found out about how Taza Chocolate is made. Quite an amazing process, they have control of the process from bean to chocolate. The process is pretty interesting (especially when chocolate is in the air all around you). Surprisingly, it's very close to brewing as well! Winnowing and milling are similar. Then it's ground and put into a kettle. It's processed in the kettle for a while. There's piping moving the chocolate. Temperatures are important. This tour really showed us how making good artisan food and drink are quite similar in the care devotion you have to put into it. Check out the full "how it's made" feature on the right. After the tour, we sat down with Alex to really find out more about Taza, what drove him to start the company and, most importantly, taste some beer! DCB: How did you decide this is how you wanted to make your chocolate? Alex: Basically the idea behind the company is to make a kind of chocolate that isn’t made in this part of the world. In Mexico there’s a tradition of drinking chocolate they way we drink coffee. Down there’s there are places with mills all over the place and you can bring in ingredients and they can grind for you and give you the cocoa so you can go home and make your chocolate drink. And every family will have their own recipe. Sometimes people will add cinnamon or almonds if they are wealthy. I saw this and it blew me away. That’s one of the reasons why I started this company and I wanted to incorporate these mills into the company. They do very minimally refine the chocolate, it’s not a very highly refined European style; even in the bars which we refine using the granite stone roller mills, which we can dial in so they are really close and really tight. The chocolate cycles through the rollers for about five hours to refine the particle size of the sugar to where we want. It passing through the air kind of helps release some intense acids that are remnants of the fermentation process. I didn’t talk much about the stuff that goes on at the farm, but the fermentation of the bean on the farm is very important. We like those acids, they’re precursors to the final flavor but we want to release some of the less desirable ones. Very similar to conching, which we don’t do, it’s a traditional part of the European way that we don’t do (Conching is a process where the chocolate is put through a container containing metal beads which break down the sugar particles from anywhere between 4 and 72 hours). The whole point is to minimally refine the bean, we lightly roast and keep a lot of the natural tropical flavors of the bean.
Anyways…I want to drink some beer. DCB: Alright let's do it. So what we did is took some beers that we thought would go well... but you know chocolate. Alex: I hate it when people pair port with chocolate and the flavor is sweet and the chocolate is sweet and it’s too much sweet. DCB: That’s what’s fun about beer, there’s so many flavors so we’ve got a little bit of sweet, some roasty flavors all sorts. Alex: This is fun, I’m into this! I love food in general. So our tasting commenced! We ran through a number of beers some great some not so great. What we have to share with you now is the results of our tasting with Alex. We have what we believe are some fantastic beer and chocolate pairings where we felt the chocolate and beer truly worked together to bring out new flavors in both. Before we go on to the tasting notes, let us say an article like this is great to read about, but we wanted to do something special this time. For those in the Boston area, we’ll be hosting a tasting of all the beers mentioned in this article at The Wine Gallery in Brookline, MA (on Route 9, right near the Brookline Hills T Stop of the D branch of the Green Line). We’ll be pouring samples of each beer along with samples of each of the chocolates on Thursday February 7th from 5-7pm (a week before Valentine's Day). For those that can’t make it down check out Taza’s website at http://www.tazachocolate.com/shop.php and order a bar or two to try yourself. Without further ado…the beer…and chocolate. Taza makes four types of chocolate, three of which are the same recipe with varying percentages of cacao: a 60%, 70% and 80% cacao bar. The other is their Mexicano, which is a Mexican style drinking chocolate made with cinnamon. Because the chilled beer can mess up the texture of the chocolate if you're not careful, there's a certain way you'll want to try these pairings. Make sure you let the chocolate melt in your mouth before you drink the beer. Otherwise the temperature will cause it get a little chalky and you'll miss the great flavors than can come out. Also, letting the chocolate warm up is similar to beer, this is when all the volatiles come out. This will allow you to taste the berry, almond and other flavors that are left in because of the process that Taza employs to make their artisan chocolate.  Hoppin' Frog B.O.R.I.S. the Crusher Imperial Stout with Taza 60% Cacao Chocolate
We set out thinking this would be the perfect pairing with the 70% chocolate, but this is where having Alex from Taza around really helped. The 60% proved a much better pairing with this beer. The beer is deep, viscous and rich with heavy roasty flavors and dark malt tones. Pair this with some of the sweeter 60% Taza bar and, after a sip, the roastiness transitions into a brilliant smooth chocolate mocha. The finish of this beer becomes a roller coaster of rich flavors finishing with the smooth sweetness of the Taza 60% Chocolate
 BBC Coffeehouse Porter with Taza 70% Cacao Chocolate
BBC Coffeehouse Porter has always been a favorite of ours and the 70% chocolate proved to be one of our favorites from Taza. Pairing the two just seemed to make sense. The BBC Coffeehouse Porter offers a smooth fairly light mouth-feel with light mocha notes and a roasty coffee finish that’s a result of cold pressed Dean’s Bean’s coffee being added to the beer. Alex found this to be one of his favorite beers of the tasting. The combination of these two essentially enhances the flavors in each. The 70% chocolate is a bit less sweet than the 60% and has some deeper roasty flavors. Combining this beer and chocolate gives you a rich mocha porter flavor that each product by itself just doesn’t deliver. We can’t see anyone not liking this pairing.
 Verhaeghe Echt KriekenBier with Taza 80% Cacao Chocolate
This is Taza’s darkest chocolate and it’s quite different from anything we’ve ever had. The chocolate itself has a slight sourness, complex roasty tones, slight berry and almont notes with a very unique light sweetness. We knew we had to find a beer that not only stood up to the chocolate but played off these flavors to give you something exciting. Echt Kriekenbier proved to do just that. A traditional Flemish sour ale fermented with cherries, it has vanilla and brandy tones along with the sour cherry taste. Local sour cherries are added to this beer while it’s aging and the final beer in the bottle is a mix of various aged version of the beer. The combination of Taza 80% and Echt Kriekenbier is a sublime chocolate covered cherry sensation. We’re openly not huge fans of fruit beer but we were careful to choose a beer that wasn’t just any fruit beer. This beer is fantastically complex and when paired with the chocolate turns into a decadent dessert. The KriekenBier definitely serves to mellow some of the harsher flavors in the 80%, while the chocolate is a fine counterpoint to the sourness of the beer. Pairing these two provides a definitely different experience than either one alone.
 Stone Smoked Porter with Taza Chocolate Mexicano
The Chocolate Mexicano was our other favorite from Taza. Made only with Mexican stone mills (molinos), this chocolate is very simple and is made with roasted cocoa beans, cane sugar, and cinnamon stick. The cinnamon used is incredible as we got to sample some at the factory. This was Alex’s favorite pairing, and ours as well.
The Chocolate Mexicano can be whipped into milk or water to create Taza de Chocolate Mexicano (try this, it’s amazing), or eaten as is. This chocolate has a very different texture than any other you’ve most likely tried. It’s processed less so the sugar is a bit grittier and it melts in your mouth differently than most other chocolates. It's also the sweetest of the Taza portfolio. The subtle cinnamon notes provide a smooth spice that begged to be brought out by a good beer. We had a hunch the mild smoke flavor found in Stone’s Smoked Porter would accomplish that, and we were right. The Stone Smoked Porter has just a hint of smoke which is why this beer works. Many smoked beers suffer from an overwhelming smoke aroma or taste, but here’s it’s part of a broader flavor profile. The pairing with the chocolate brings out the spiciness of the cinnamon while the roasted malt in the porter helps to balance the sweetness of the chocolate. The end result is a smooth rich experience unlike any other pairing we’ve done. Good food and good beer belong together and we hope this article has helped you think a little bit differently about what both chocolate and beer can be and how they can work together. We had a blast putting this together for you all and we hope those of you nearby can come taste each pairing for yourself. We want to give special thanks to Alex Whitmore from Taza Chocolate and The Wine Gallery in Brookline, MA. For those who can't attend, everything in this article can be purchased at Wine Gallery in Brookline or Kenmore Square (Wine-Gallery.com ), and the chocolate can be purchased online from Taza's website (http://www.tazachocolate.com/shop.php). Until next time! Cheers, Devon and Jeff | Taza - How It's Made
 First, it starts in places like Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic where Alex and his partner buy the cocoa beans straight from small farmer co-ops at above fair trade prices. This allows them to maintain a distinct flavor profile, as the regional terroir of the beans is maintained. The beans are lightly roasted to preserve flavor. Cocoa beans, after all, are a tropical fruit, and they have a flavor indicative of that before roasting. Taza's beans are actually roasted right in Jamaica Plain, MA using J.P. Lick's coffee roaster (the roast their own coffee, so Taza uses the machine when coffee isn't being roasted). 
From here, the beans are put through a winnowing machine. This separates the chaff (the shell of the bean) from the nib. The chaff is a by-product that is either sold to tea companies or given away as mulch to community groups (we made some tea with the chaff, and it's amazing! Nice cocoa aroma and a good earthy flavor).  The nib is collected and then put through Molinos, which are the Mexican stone mills that Taza uses. They reconditioned the mills, shipped them up to Somerville from Mexico and rebuilt them. The nibs are dumped into the Molinos and, if you’re using any vanilla or any cinnamon in the recipe, you grind it right through the mill. It gets completely pulverized with the nib. The way it works is there’s two stones with one that rotates. The product gets run between the two and it’s like a thousand scissors shearing the particle size down and then it shoots out the edge of the stone. It’s flowing liquid at that point. Most people think it’s going to be powdery but it’s not. Just like if you imagine grinding peanuts into peanut butter it’s the same thing. It’s a very oily seed, the cocoa bean. The grinding releases all the oils and shatter the cellular structure.  This cocoa liquor (it’s what the industry calls ground up winnowed cocoa beans) is collected into buckets and dumped it into the chocolate tank. In their 300 lb chocolate tank they mix in the sugar. Of course, they use only organic cane sugar which is has a golden color with a natural flavor. All of their ingredients are organic. Once the sugar is mixed in, you start calling it chocolate. The sugar is then refined within the liquor as it passes through rollers. This finished chocolate is then tempered, put into molds, chilled and wrapped by hand. They make 600 lbs of chocolate this way, not including the Mexicano, which is ground using a different process. Alex goes on to tell us about the next steps: "Once the particle size is down to the level where we want it to be it’s done. We then add any additional cocoa butter. We don’t use very much here, just a little to reduce the viscosity a little bit to make it more normal to people’s mouth feel. We then pump our chocolate and pump it into the tempering tank. You ever open a chocolate bar and see a white sheen on top? That means the chocolate is not in temper and the cocoa butter has separated. It's still fine to eat but the texture might be a little off and it’s not that pretty. This machine takes the chocolate and promotes it’s crystallization and solidification. If you were to just melt chocolate and let it cool at room temperature it would be bendy, it wouldn’t have a good snap and it wouldn’t have a pretty glossy finish on it. That’s because chocolate is polymorphous, one of the many issues with working with chocolate. [The tempering machine] takes the chocolate to about 150 degrees then down to about 85 then back up to about 90-95 degrees. The chocolate is done at this point, poured into molds and cooled to be hand wrapped by our wrapping team." Taza offers four different chocolates:
| |
|
|
Sure you can have a glass of champagne on New Years Eve, but that's what everyone does. So this year why not change it up a little bit. We've put together five beers for New Years Eve sure to impress when you pop that cork. Each beer also comes in a 750ml bottle, perfect for sharing with your friends!  Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca Batch 233 & 234
Appearance: Slightly hazy, golden color, white puffy head
Smell: Light sweet funk... hints of wheat, slightly yeasty. A little banana.
Taste: Fruity, a tad sweet, a little funky and sour (in a totally good and mild way). Quite light and easy to drink. Pretty carbonated... Not overly so, but higher than normal. If you've had other Jolly Pumpkin beers you'll probably enjoy this. This is one of their lightest offerings that makes it great for a beverage later in the night. It's crisp, light and refreshing.  Unibroue La Fin du Monde
Appearance: Hazy... gets hazier towards the end of the bottle. White, fluffy head... again.
Smell: Mild smell... little sweet, little yeasty.
Taste: Slightly sweet with a medium body and nice subtle orange notes. Pour with care as the yeast is easily stirred and can change the flavor from glass to glass in a notable way. It's very carbonated which helps lighten the overall feel of the beer.
Note: In case you're not up on your French, La Fin du Monde translates to "the end of the world." [Yeah, cue REM music] Wouldn't be a great New Years Toast beer... aside from the loud "pop" when opening, just like champagne! But it'd be good for earlier in the night. A good solid beer that can go with any kind of food you may be eating. It's a tad heavier than the rest in our list and for that reason it might not be best for later in the night. It is delicious though  Brooklyn Brewing Co. Local 1
Appearance: Clear and pale gold with a white head. You noticing a trend?
Smell: Slightly lemony... dry. Like a lighter La Fin du Monde
Taste: You feel like it's going to attack you as the aroma is intense... but then it doesn't. This beer is very easy to drink, it's very smooth and light bodied, almost airy. The flavors develop and then fade quickly to a clean finish leaving you eager for you next sip...or glass.  Dupont Organic Foret Saison 7.5%abv
Appearance: Pours with about 2” of bone white fluffy head, Opaque orange
Smell: Smells pleasantly earthy…with a hint of spice
Taste: Tastes crisp and a little spicy with a slightly funky aftertaste found in most of our favorite saisons. For those not familiar with Saisons, they were historically brewed in Belgium during the spring for farm workers to quench their thirst. Because they were brewed before refrigeration this meant they were fermented at higher temperatures, causing a slight funk in the beer. Hell, if it was good enough to quench farm workers' thirst back in the day, it’s good enough to quench ours!  Allagash Interlude
Appearance: Clear copper with a bone white head
Smell: Barely funk... delicious... kind of musty (but in a great way... only because we know this beer tastes great)... sour sweet lemon.
Taste: Mmmm... funk. Medium body but drinks like a lighter beer. Very fine carbonation makes this feel light and less carbonated. Slight malt on the back... We hate to say this, but this beer is really complex. We could try to come up with a list of fancy terms to explain, but in the end it's just delicious. So, for real, just save up, buy a bottle and try it for yourself. Everyone likes this beer. We handed a glass to Jeff's roommate, having no idea what it was, who immediately responded "Wow, that's delicious!" We think you'll do the same. Price? Ok, it's $20, but seriously it's worth it.
|
|
|
Articles 
