For Christmas, Matt gave me a basket overflowing with hop goodness. Included were four large bottles of IPA, hop-flavored hard candy (really!), and a 4oz packet of "Zythos" hops. I've never worked with them before, but as Matt explained to me, Zythos are a proprietary blend of hops made by the Washington State-based company Hop Union. One benefit of these hop blends is that they help to meet the market demand for super-charged, high alpha-acid hops, but don't have to rely on a single hop cultivar.

A lot of products, from whiskey to olive oil, are regularly blended to produce a uniform flavor profile from year to year and harvest to harvest. To be honest, I had no idea this was done with hops, but as Matt told me, it's more of a recent development for homebrewing. Some craft brewers, however, have created their own "house blends" to keep their flagship beers hard to replicate.

So to test the Zythos blend out (which is named after the Greek word for beer), I brewed a simple IPA using light malts, victory, and a good amount of wheat to help give it a frothy head. I boiled for 60 minutes, hopping one ounce at 60 min, one ounce at 15, and the last two ounces in the final 5 minutes. Right now, it smells juicy and citrusy, with some big piney flavors somewhere in the back. I'm really excited to try this out in a few more weeks!

I think I was first attracted to this product because of the odd , prawn-headed humanoid on the can eating two sardines. Next was the oddly-worded description of "seasoning for macaroni with sardines." A baffling ingredient list of wild fennel, sardines (min 25%), onions, sardine puree, and black currants was enough to convince me to buy a can.In researching a bit, I found out this is one of the oldest dishes of Sardinia. I can't find the source again, but one wonderful description was, "by the time the new world's tomato came to Italy, the cuisine of Sardinia was already centuries old." It went on to explain that this was an traditional combination of ingredients native to the island. Opening the tin I found what looked liked a watery pesto. A quick stir turned up several whole sardines and, yes, the black currants.The "pesto" was from the pureed wild fennel, which is more frondy and less of the white bulb you find in cultivated fennel. I found the slightly fibrous ground fennel to be oddly reminiscent of the tiny, edible bones of the pureed sardines, which is actually more pleasant than it sounds in print. Tossed with spaghetti, I thought this was a very nice sauce, but still a canned version of what should be a homemade sauce served by a grandmother. The fennel was present, but muted. The sardines were pleasant and meaty, but not rich and oily. The black currants were soft and unremarkable.
I really think this would be an exceptional dish if made fresh. Lots of aromatic, anise-scented fennel, large slices of fresh, firm sardines, the occasional interruption of a sweet and chewy currant. I'll have to keep my eye out for fresh sardines to give it a shot. Bonne Bouche, however, might argue the sauce was perfect. As soon as I opened the can, I couldn't shake his little snoot poking and investigating around the kitchen.

It's three weeks into the curing process and the salami is looking great! It's taken on a deep garnet color as the sodium nitrate breaks down into sodium nitrite and cures the meat. The salami has also shrunk a good deal and gotten harder. The small, skinny ones feel very firm and dry, so I think they'll be ready to eat in a few more days. The thicker ones are on their way, but still need another 2 weeks or so.
Although I haven't tasted the salami yet, I'm feeling very positive about the process. I think for my next curing I would like to try some mangalitsa. I have a whole leg muscle in the deep freeze that I'd think would cure well. It's not a huge step up like curing a whole leg, but I'd like to try something other than another round of salami after this. The muscle isn't very thick, so I think it will cure evenly, without much additional difficulty than the salami. Although, unlike the salami, where I just blended in the salt with the meat, the whole muscle will need to cure in salt for several days to draw out the water and evenly infuse the salt throughout the meat. But with this new cold snap, I'm sure I'll find the time for some additional hobbying in the kitchen.

This is a "special edition" stout I brewed back in October as a little Christmas gift to my family. When I first started home brewing, my family suggested I make up my own labels for the different batches. I like the idea, but it would be a good amount of work, as I would have to soak and scrape off the old labels when I wanted to reuse the bottles for another batch of beer. But Christmas seemed like a special occasion, and with the help of my talented wife on the creative design end, we made up about twelve 22oz bottles of Bonne Bouche's Black Snout Stout.

Bonne Bouche is our 12 month old Golden Doodle, named after one of our favorite cheeses that has a particularly striking black ash rind. I brewed this beer in the style of a Russian Imperial Stout, which were originally made by Thrale's Brewery in England to be served for the Russian Imperial family of Catherine II. To make the journey from England to Russia, the beers were brewed to high levels of ABV, and loaded with additional hops, which preserve beer with alpha acids present in their buds/cones. Combined, these two factors helped the beer to arrive in Russian unspoiled, but also gave the RIS-style of beer the ability to age gracefully if stored properly.I used lots of debittered black malt and black patent malt in the recipe, along with roasted rye and wheat. The rye is to give sweetness, fullness, and a well-rounded flavor to the beer. The wheat also adds some fullness to the mouthfeel, but also helps to create a frothy, whipped head of foam on top of the beer. I also held back on hopping this beer too aggressively, as I do like the rich, full flavor of stouts and didn't want too much bitterness mixed in.

To start the beer off, I fermented it with a Irish Ale Yeast, which would help give me the rich, full profile I wanted. With so much malt and sugar in this beer, I didn't want the final product to be too cloyingly sweet, so after 4 weeks of fermenting with the Irish Ale, I added a Eau de Vie yeast, which can tolerate much higher alcohol %'s than the Irish Ale. This helped to eat up the residual sugars and dry the beer out, along with raising its final ABV.

Overall I'm very pleased with this beer. I did worry that added the Eau de Vie would give the beer an odd crispness or alcoholic rawness, but I think the naturally sweet flavors of the rye and wheat helped to keep the flavor in line. I'm very excited to see what it's like in a year from now!

A few years ago, my brother got me Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman. It has carefully and patiently guided me through making bacon, pancetta, sausage, and all manner of pates. Today, it helped me make my first dry cured salami.