Scottish Cow

Beer: Make Your Own!

That’s an order!  I’m not going to sit here and talk about the merits and wonders of beer – I don’t think it needs any help from me.  But homemade beer…that’s something else.  I’m not going to say it’s necessarily going to win a taste test against a store-bought beer, because there are so many great, interesting beers out there.  This is the 3rd batch I’ve made and none of them have been quite as good as my “commercial” favorites – but they have been fantastic, and they were mine.  The real goal here is to prove how easy it is and maybe convince a few folks to get friendly with some yeast.

So why make it at home when there’s so much good beer out there?  There’s a great feeling that (oh no, he’s about to get philosophical on the subject of BEER) comes from this kind of transformation.  It’s like being a little kid with a chemistry set, getting to play mad scientist with different combinations of ingredients, bubbling pots, tubes, strange instruments, and the eventual alchemy that results.  You’re also taking part in a serious bit of history.  Brewing has been going on for thousands of years, and there’s no end in sight.  It’s even been credited with helping jump start civilization as we know it.* 

The best part might be that every homebrew is different – there’s no homogenization whatsoever, so standardization.  My oatmeal stout is only going to taste like my oatmeal stout and even if I made the recipe again, I doubt it would taste the same.  I don’t think enjoyment would follow consistency for me – the sheer delight in cracking open the first bottle and not having any clue what it’s going to taste like makes the whole thing worth while.

Time to get specific.  First, this seems to be everyone’s favorite little nugget of beer of trivia, but there’s a reason – it’s a seriously cool.

The Reinheitsgebot – the German Beer Purity Law – some 500 years ago, a law was put on the books stating that the only ingredients that could go into the production of beer were barley, hops and water (they didn’t know what yeast was.)  Include the yeast and that’s really all you need.

I understand enough of the science to sum it up in a high level in a few sentences:  Barley is starch.   It’s soaked in hot water (“mashing”) to turn the starch into sugar.  The liquid drained off the barley (“wort”), which tastes unsurprisingly like liquid bread desperately in need of some salt, is boiled and hops are added at different stages for that floral and piney flavor/aroma.  After boiling and cooling, the hops are removed, the yeast is added, and the baby beer spends some time growing up.

The big choice to make when doing this all at home is how far to take the first step:

1) Using malt extract – the sugars are already extracted from the barley.  You just add to boiling water and go.

2) Using extract and some grains – do a small amount of mashing and supplement it with extract to get enough fermentable sugars – more flavor and body than option 1.

3) Go all out and do a full mash.  Start with the grains.

I’ve done both one and two, and it sure seems like it makes a difference.  I’ve made a basic brown ale with #1 and this time it was an oatmeal stout with #2.

One more note, and then a slew of photos.

The biggest biggest biggest thing to remember, the most important thing to do is keep everything clean.  Anything that is going to touch the beer after it stops boiling needs to be sanitized.  This iodine sanitizer gets diluted in water and everything gets soaked for a couple minutes minimum. It’s that easy and that important.

Here’s a mixed bag of grain in it’s raw form…

Here it is providing a nice background for the thermometer that’s there to remind you that temperature is very important when malting grains.

The grains get soaked for a time, and then water is slowly drained through them, basically using the grains as a filter.

Taking advantage of gravity and a canning pot…

The collected wort is brought to a boil (it seemed like a nice premonition at the time that it was starting to look like a nice heady beer already).

Going into the wort is the rest of the fermentable sugar in the form of malt extract oozing out of a foil bag.  It tastes like bread syrup.

HOPS!  Hops give the beer something to balance out the rich sweetness of the malt.  It’s that florally, piney aroma and bitterness.  If you’ve had an India Pale Ale, you know what hops taste like.  These are the flowers, dried and compressed into pellets. 

I have dreams of hop vines climbing our garage walls.

They go into the wort in a sack so they can be removed easier.  You don’t want soggy hop pellets in your beer.  Please ignore my slab of a hand.

While all that is happening, the fermenting bucket is in the sink, full of water and sanitizer.

Once the wort boils for about an hour, it’s cooled to a safe temperature for yeast, dumped into the now-sanitized bucket and the yeast is added.  Here’s a packet that has 100 billion yeast cells in it.  Crazy.

This lovely photo shows the beer as it’s fermenting.  The blue wrap is a heating belt to keep the beer toasty warm while the rest of us freeze.  The electrical device underneath it is a broken VCR with a Barney tape jammed in it – its job is to keep the spigot off the ground.

If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you and offer this reward:  A video clip of the airlock getting down to business.  I warn you, it’s hypnotic and seems a little inappropriate.

The first day is probably the worst, as you’re waiting to see the airlock bubbling – the only sign you’ll get that all those yeast cells are hard at work on the meal you’ve laid out for them.

After 2 impatient weeks in the first bucket, a second bucket gets sanitized, and the beer gets drained into it, along with some sugar to give the yeast another boost of food for the bottles.  Now it’s looking, smelling and tasting like flat beer.

 

The bottles are filled from the spigot or a fancy bottle filler, if you’re into that. ** 

35 pints of beer ready to go!

Almost.  They need at least 2 more weeks to get some carbonation and for the flavors to come together.  From what I understand, darker beers like this can benefit even more from some aging.  I can tell you that the first beer I made definitely got better after about a month in the cellar.

I write this about 3 weeks after the beer was bottled, and I will admit – it’s fantastic!  A nice, rich stout – sweetness from all the grains, very smooth.  I think I’d like a little more bitterness/dryness to it, but this is one easy drinking, delicious beer.

If you made it through all this, congratulations.  I’d like to have you over for a beer.

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*  A Scientific American article about beer and civilization – mostly fluff, but does feature the “Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing Science at the University of California, Davis.”  What?!

** Thanks to my mom for rescuing 2 milk crates full of these bottles with stoppers attached from their town’s recycling center.  Some crazy (albeit earth-conscious) bastard was going to throw them out.

Makin’ Bacon

 

A couple years ago Tina had some minor surgery that was major enough to require general anesthesia.  After waking up, the recovery nurses told her that she had the biggest, silliest smile on her face when she started stirring.  They asked what she was thinking about.  Tina replied, “I’m makin’ bacon.”

That’s my girl.

At that point she was probably having sweet thoughts of our store-bought bacon gently frying away on a Saturday morning…or maybe on a Sunday afternoon for a monster BLT.   What we’ve come to realize now though is that making bacon is almost as easy as makin’ bacon.

There’s a wonderful, wonderful book that goes by the name of Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.  Charcuterie is, as the subtitle implies, “the art of salting, smoking and curing.”  It’s an old, old art that was practiced once to allow people to make the most of their food, and continues now mostly because it allows us to make our food damn tasty.  There’s also a definite appeal in carrying on the “old ways.”  The book is overflowing with information and recipes regarding all sorts of cured and preserved meats, poultry and fish and running throughout the whole thing is a deep, appreciative love letter to the pig.

I’m not going to present a bacon recipe here, first, because I think the book is worth it’s weight in gold pork and second, because there’s a safety issue.  The book discusses a bit of the science of curing and has key points on how to do this in a way that won’t send your family to the hospital.  I’m not prepared to deliver that information – I’m just here to make you drool over photos of still-warm bacon.  Actually, I’d like to show just how easy it is to make.  You really only need two things that might require a little effort to track down, but I’m guessing that if you’re here, you’re willing to expend a little energy in the interest of porkiness.

1) Pink salt (also known as Instacure #1 and a few other names) – it’s regular salt with nitrites and pink color.  The pink color is so you don’t use it as regular salt and end up ingesting a bunch of nitrites.  Nitrites are bad to ingest?  Well, too much is bad, like just about anything else.  But some is good and necessary – it will help keep botulism away, keeping your bacon safe and delicious.  I’m lucky enough to live around the corner from one of the sources listed in the book – The Sausage Maker has all kinds of curing supplies, does mail-order/internet business, and pink salt is just as cheap as regular salt.  I’ve made bacon 3 times now, and I’m still on my first bag of it. Good news all around.

2) Pork belly – if you’ve seen a big slab of uncut bacon, you’ve seen pork belly – a “side” of bacon is really a big hunk of pork belly – the belly’s probably been trimmed some, but the shape and the components (the layers of fat and protein) are the same.  I’m guessing you can’t get raw pork belly at most regular ol’ supermarkets, and that’s probably a good thing.  If you’re going all out and making your own bacon, you might as well use good pork.  The nice thing about pigs is that they are all over the place.  I guessing you can find quality naturally raised pork somewhere nearby, and if you can’t, there are several places on the internet willing to overcharge you for it.

Once you’ve got those two, you’re all set.  You mix a cure with regular kosher salt, pink salt and sugar.  I’ve added both maple syrup and brown sugar to the batch pictured here as well.  I’m a sucker for the salty, sweet and smoky.  The first batch I did had coriander, bay leaves and some other more savory seasonings – also fantastic.  Options are endless.

Above is the bacon with its cure and in its bag – it needs to sit in the fridge for about a week, until it feels nice and firm.  You can flip it around and squish the bag to redistribute the cure nightly.  It’s good – you can feel as if you’re taking part in the magic.

Once it’s firm, it comes out of the bag, gets rinsed, patted dry, and set back in the fridge, on a rack, for a couple days.  At this point, it looks a lot like the original belly, just a little firmer.

At this point there’s a couple choices – you can just put it in the oven on a low temperature until it hits 150 internally, and you’ll have something that’s far and above your normal, thin, pre-sliced bacon (which we’ll all admit is still delicious).  If you want your bacon to achieve nirvana though, the best way is to give it some smoke. 

I don’t own a smoker, but I do have a charcoal grill (the trusty Weber Kettle) and that’s all you need.  Heat a chimney’s worth of charcoal and fill half the grill, with a pan full of water on the other half.  Take a couple big handfuls of wood chunks/chips that have been soaked in water for about an hour and put them on the coals.  On the top grate, put the pork belly above the water tray, opposite the coals.  Open all vents, close the lid.  I got about 45 minutes of smoking time, flipping the belly every 15 minutes.  After that, it can finish in the oven – with the added bonus of filling your house with the smell of smoky bacon.

This is after the smoke:

And this is after the oven:

So the results.  You’ve got a big slab of uncut bacon.  Possibilities:  Limitless.  You can cut out regular slices.  You can make cubes.  You can cut out little bacon octopi or even a big bacon Santa for the holidays.

Aside from bacon and eggs – there’s Spaghetti Carbonara (quite possibly the best pasta dish ever) and the obvious BLT.

More unusual options?  I’ve had the pleasure of sampling both bacon cookies (wonderful) and bacon infused bourbon (interesting), if you need some inspiration.

The best?  Well, it’s always goes back to the the simplest – make some eggs in your favorite style, a pile of toast, cook the bacon to a nice chewy, crispiness and never look back.

Kimchi!

OK, so the Kimchi has had a couple days by the leaky walls and door in our front hall, keeping it cool and dark.  There’s now a ton of liquid (it’s almost totally immersed) and you can spot the bubbles in it.  Fermentation was the goal, and we’ve got fermentation.

Why are so many good things fermented?  Beer, wine, bread (sourdough!), beer, kimchi, yogurt…it goes on and on….

I’ll layout the recipe I used in a minute – it was based on a slew of recipes out there, the two main ones being David Lebovitz’s and one on Kitchen Wench (both fantastic blogs if you haven’t seen them.)

A few thoughts:

- I didn’t have a chance to hunt down Korean chili powder, which is one thing common to all the recipes I found.  Additionally, it’s been about a year since I’ve had kimchi at a Korean restaurant, so my taste buds are not in prime shape for a comparison.  I used cayenne with some paprika added.  No clue if the heat/flavor levels were similar or not.

- Some of the recipes used rice powder for thickening.  I wasn’t sure about it at the start, but now in the presence of the spicy soup that the cabbage is soaking in, I see the purpose and will probably use it next time.  It would be nice to have some more clinginess in the sauce.

- It will be interesting to see how the flavors come together and maybe even mellow after some time in the refrigerator. 

Please, kimchi, if you have a heart, just chill out a little bit, because the fried rice I had with you earlier this evening is still punishing me.

It’s very strong – not just spicy (but it’s damn spicy) but the onions, the fish sauce, the sourness, it’s all there.  Tonight I just chopped some into some leftover rice that was frying, added a little bit of soy sauce and some shredded scrambled egg.

The recipe, and I stress, this is what I made based on other kimchi recipes out there – I’m not claiming any authenticity here:

- Take one big head of napa cabbage, cut off the base, cut it into 4-8 slices lengthwise and pull the leaves apart.  Soak in a gallon of water that has about 1/2 C of kosher salt dissolved in it.  I let mine sit for about 4 hours.  Drain, rinse and dry – I wrapped the leaves in paper towels and they spent the next 2 days waiting for me to do something with them.

- Put the cabbage in a giant bowl, and pile the following on top:

• 6-8 scallions (green parts cut in 1/2 inch pieces, white ends minced)
• 1/2 cayenne + 2 TB paprika – if you have Korean chili powder, which I will next time, use it!
• 1/3 C fish sauce
• 7 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 pear, minced
• Daikon radish, about 8 inches of it shredded with a cheese grater
• 2 tsp sugar

Mix the whole mess up and pack it into a nice clean jar with a tight lid.  As mentioned, I put it in a cool, dark place for 2 days and now it’s in the fridge.

How close I got to real, authentic kimchi, I don’t know. But whatever this is tastes great and I’m looking forward to a couple months of this jar of spicy, sour cabbage hiding in the fridge, waiting to attack.

The Making of Tomato Sauce

The Paper Chef entries are in and jeez, they look really, really good (not making my job very easy.)  They are still under consideration, so stop back in a few days for the results.’

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In the meantime, let’s talk about tomatoes.  This is the first time I’ve made a good ol’ traditional tomato sauce from scratch.  It might be second nature for someone like, oh, Tina, who was raised on the stuff.  Seriously, they just put it in her bottle when she was a baby.  You should have seen the contracts I had to sign before marrying into her family. All this legalese about hereforthwith honoring and respecting the sauce.

Anyway, Tina has some fond and some not so fond memories of the annual sauce making as a kid.  Being the one relegated to chief tomato-washer (there was only one), she woke on the mornings of sauce days with a sense of disappointment – the knowledge of losing her Saturday – and not from a warning the night before, but from the rich smell of the first batch of simmering tomatoes already filling the house.  Time to head to the cellar and get scrubbing.

Now, I think the reminisces (new noun, just for me) are mostly happy and she jumped at the chance to take a bushel of tomatoes from her father’s garden this year to make sauce in our kitchen (in the interest of full disclosure, we committed two of our tomatoes to the process as well.) 

Our final output was about 12 qts.  We decided to freeze it.  Her family used to make 10 times that amount, and they would be canned and processed.  The scale of the operation was clearly different but the tools were the same.  We inherited the food mill with the same ancient wood-handled corer and a butter knife in the box that Tina remembered from 20 years ago, used then and now to clean out the skins and seeds from the mill’s “exhaust.”

The operation itself was carried out according to the plans that were laid out  (I was legally prevented from any alterations, and in hindsight, I can assure you I doesn’t need any.) 

I have to say – and this is coming from someone who is admittedly not a huge fan of the “red sauce” and spaghetti and meatballs – this stuff is fantastic.  It’s an extremely flavorful, lightly seasoned, not-too-thick wondrous tomato concoction that would be great for sauce, soup, braising, stews and baths. 

Here we go:

1) Get some tomatoes – these were not “sauce” tomatos, typically Romas.  These were a mix of plain old round tomatoes with some beefsteaky-heirloom big ugly mothers thrown in too.  Much juicier than normal – but homegrown, that’s the important piece of information here..

 

2) Wash them there tomatoes.  The easiest way – fill up the sink, let them soak, pick one out and get to work.

 

3) Use a coring implement, or other spoon/knife type device to scoop out the core from the top

 

4)  Just soaking…

 

5)  A batch that has been washed and cored.  We had three of us working (well two adults, one kindergartner).  It worked well with someone continuing to wash and core while we got some of the tomatoes moved on to the next step.

 

6) Quarter the tomatoes (with a glove if you have cut) and collect them in a bowl.

 

7)  Behold the juice!

 

8)  On the stove, over medium/high heat, with a little water in the bottom of the pan to prevent burning.  Get them to a nice simmer, and stir every so often.  The goal is to soften them up and release some more juice.

 

9)  Once they were cooked down, we dumped them into a strainer and got some of the liquid out.  I’m not sure how much – we may have retained more than it needed.

This is what they looked like right before they met their destiny.

 

10)  This was their destiny.

 

11) The food mil in operation…What a fantastic machine.  The tomatoes go in the top, You turn the crank, it turns an auger that’s spring-loaded inside of a perforated tube.  The junk that doesn’t fit through the perforations (the skin and seeds) comes out the end of the auger.  The juice and pulp come out of the perforations and down a separate chute.

Molly had a blast pulling out the skins and seeds.

12)  Providing some motivation for the tomatoes…

 

13)  The mill in action…

 

14)  Once you’ve collected a big batch of skins and seeds, send them through again – lots of juice and pulp still hiding in there.

15)  The amazing powers of a pot of sauce.  Well, it’s not sauce yet.  Got all the collected pulp and juice back on the stove over medium low and let it hang out for awhile.  It cooked down a bit and thickened up.  I suppose you could let it cook all day if you want.  Ours ended up on the stove for a hour or two.

 

16)  Time for some flavor.  Big pile of basil with some parsley from the garden.

 

17)  Lots of olive oil, chopped onions, 2 heads of garlic and salt.  Cooked for a few minutes to soften.  Added the basil, stirred it up and ran it through the food processor until it was pretty smooth.

18)  Back on the stove.  Cooked it for a few minutes over medium – it was bubbling lightly.  You know you always wanted to make some green lava.

 

19)  Pesto up close

 

20)  Finally, we stirred the pesto into the sauce, added salt and a little sugar to taste, cooked for a little while longer and that was it.  Let it cool down and got it in some plastic containers for the deep freeze.

The flavor/seasonings are not overwhelming.  It’s still mostly tomato and can be customized for whatever you want to use it for.  So far we’ve done two things – last weekend when we made it, we immediately poached/fried a few eggs in a pan of it for dinner.  With some bread to sop up the sauce, it was ridiculously good. 

Yesterday we had some fish stew in it.  To bring this post full circle, it was similar to my Paper Chef 31 dish, but with halibut that our friend D.G. brought back from Alaska (he caught it when he wasn’t busy riding a motorcycle around the wilderness).  Outstanding!

We now have 12 quarts of summer, caught, bottled and preserved for when we’ll need it most…

Buffalo, mid-February, it’s been snowing for a week.  We’ve considered burning the TV for heat and Tina is walking around the house with 3 pairs of socks on and is wrapped in blankets like a mummy from Pottery Barn.

Hello Tomatoes.

Ours, All Ours

Yes!

For dinner the other night we had a salad composed entirely of stuff that grew in our dirt.  Our dirt!  I realize this isn't terribly novel or earth-shattering, but it was the first crop out of our first real family garden - so I'm allowed some excitement. 

For days Molly and I had been stealing lettuce leaves out of the garden when we were nearby, but then we noticed a red radish top sneaking out of the ground and decided it was time.  The following night, we headed out with the basket to collect.  The spinach is growing miserably - probably went in too late, possibly went in too close together, definitely wasn't thinned out.  So we've got about half of it in that basket.  The lettuce looks like a big leafy carpet, it having been seeded too closely also, but we've got a ton of it.  I'm guessing the leaves would get bigger if they actually had some breathing room, but who knows.  They are damn tasty in their current size, so I'm not complaining.

The arugula is growing like crazy too - it was a gift to Tina from another Buffalo blogger (thanks Josie!!) - so we had three different leaves, and some sliced radishes.

To go with that, we had a quick homemade vinaigrette and here's the plan for that...

A vinaigrette is supposed to be somewhere in the range of 3:1, oil to acid, with some salt and pepper.  That's the important part.  The rest is just adding additional flavors.  A little mayo or mustard.  Some garlic, chives, shallots, scallions and/or some herbs.  You can use a whisk (more work), a blender (more creamy) or an old jar (ah, just right).  This is how I always remember doing it, so sure enough, it's how I still do it. Put everything in and do the shake.

This one started with about 1/4 C of lemon juice and 3/4 C of oil (half grapeseed and half e.v. olive oil).  Olive oil has a lot of flavor, grapeseed helps tame it.  I love lemon juice.  I actually ended up adding a little rice vinegar because it didn't have enough acidity.  A couple good pinches of salt and pepper.  Some minced green garlic and chives.  And a little bit of mustard and a little bit of taragon.  It may not have needed all those additions, but it was nice and bright and full of flavor (and not full of whatever it is that keeps bottled dressing alive in the fridge for months.)  Just keep tweaking it until you've got what you want.

Here's it is, before and after the shake-a, shake-a, shake-a:

...

Not related, but for those that think the food writing in the Times is perhaps a bit snooty - they did a root beer tasting - I thought that was cool - their tastings are wine most of the time, beer sometimes (love those), but this was a first.  Like the author, I rarely drink soda, but when I do, a nice root beer is always good.  Yes, I said "soda."  Any comments from the "pop" drinkers will be moderated swiftly and appropriately.

Finally, there's three new links included at the side - Amber's Ambry, Turkey Cookies and Angry Chicken - three crafty blogs.  "Crafty blogs? WTF?!"  You say,  "Is he going soft?"  Nope, actually I've always been.  They are mostly focused on crafts, but all 3 often have thoughts about cooking, food and gardening as well.  Food and crafts.  There are some obvious parallels.  They are both all about the homemade.  They are both concerned with turning quality raw ingredients into something better.  Creation and experimentation.  Patterns and recipes.  Immense satisfaction.  Excessive and creative swearing when your equipment isn't cooperating.   

Most importantly these blogs are all very funny, well-written, and personal.  You get a real sense of the author through the words.  It's why I read them and why you might be interested as well.  Even if you, like me, don't get very excited about buttonholes and rolled hems.

Mmmm...rolled hams...

Homemade is Better

Talking about our food-philosophy a little bit today - I think the first, if not golden, rule is:

Homemade is better.

This isn't just true in the culinary world. My friend Paul is in the process of renovating his entire house, one piece of dusty lathe at a time. He could be buying his window and door molding at Home Depot, but he's not. He's out in his barn with his tools (in this case a router and a planer), making the molding himself. Each piece is composed of 3 separate cuts of wood, assembled for a totally custom and unique finished product. Why, when he doesn't have a shower yet (it's been over a year), does he insist on making his own molding?

Why, at this moment, at midnight, is Tina fighting with her sewing machine?

I think some of the answers are the same, whether it's bread or wood or cloth...

1) You have full control over what goes into it.

Crap in, crap out. Same as in the software industry, where I spend my days. If you're making something, you know what the ingredients are, and where they came from. A box... a can... a farm in California... a guy down the street with a chicken coop... your own yard... Whatever your definition of crap is, you can make sure it doesn't end up in the food on your table.

2) You alone are responsible for what comes out.

By that I don't mean that it will always come out well... but when it doesn't come out well you only have yourself to blame and you can bury the bodies where no one will find them. And when it does come out well, no one else has a claim to the credit.

It's like the cliche, "with great risk, comes great reward." There may not be great risk with making a nice mac-and-cheese from scratch, but it's certainly more rewarding then tearing open the box of Stouffer's*.

3) It's more than fun

We like to cook because it's fun. I'm writing this blog because I like to cook. You're reading it (is anyone reading it?) because you like to cook, so you understand what I'm saying. If we didn't have a good time, we wouldn't do it. Making dinner from scratch and sitting down to eat it is fun. But making a loaf of bread or a slab of bacon or a case of beer from scratch - that ain't just fun, it's intense.

The first time I had a slip of a homemade brown ale, it was an incredible feeling (no, not getting tanked), and once I finished off the bottle, there was some time to ponder. Being involved in a creative process that has been mostly lost to individuals and handed over to industry and mass production... well that's just awesome. It's also addictive. Once you've made one good loaf of bread, it's very hard to stop. You dream of impossibly chewy sourdough and baguettes that will spray crusty shards across your kitchen. Once you've made a great beer, it's up to you to drink the bottles as fast as possible so they can be refilled with the next batch.**

Along with the bread and beer, we've made some basic bacon, sausage, cheese, pickles, jams, and confits. Some alright, some terrific. There's more to come...

The photo at the top is a dwarf meyer lemon tree. Despite our freezing, drafty house and my shoddy tending to, this tree has been alive and thriving in Buffalo for over 2 years - this winter delivering its first fruit. It's not homemade, but homegrown, and that's just as good.

For homemade, try out this ridiculously good Meyer Lemon Marmalade recipe from Simply Recipes.

About to receive a lid...

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* Stouffer's mac and cheese was an absolute favorite childhood treat.

** The second batch, an attempt at a Belgian-style ale, was almost undrinkable. See rule #2.