swans berry ale | Love Good Beer

Does beer pair with strawberries and waffles – well, not really. With the short seasonal availability of fresh local strawberries, I have been trying to find ways of incorporating them into every meal, snack or a bored moment in my life. Eating out of boredom is healthy, isn’t it?

As I posted previously, yesterday was strawberry, waffle and beer day. Growing up, waffles were never a breakfast food, I was raised thinking that waffles for dinner was perfectly reasonable. Some people seem to find breakfast for dinner a bit odd, those people are truly missing out. Although eating waffles for dinner was a normal childhood occurrence, beer was never included.

We tried a myriad of different fruit beers with the waffles only to find that beer and waffles just do not work all that well together. We worked our way through Swans Berry Ale, Wittekerke Rose – “the fruity pink beer”, Lindemans Framboise, Morte de Subite Kriek, Lindemans Peche(Peach) and Morte de Subite Geuze. Unfortunately I was unable to find strawberry ale. Not one of the beers truly complemented the meal – the beer was either too grainy or too cloying. The Framboise was over the top sweet and overpowered the strawberries, in contrast Swans Berry Ale tasted too much like beer. The berry ale also had a distinct cheese flavour and reminded me of eating raspberry jam with processed Kraft singles on top of my grandma’s homemade bread – good memory, bad flavour. The top beer of the evening was Wittekerke Rose, described as “the fruity pink beer… with a sensual body” I kid you not; it really says that on the label. The beer flavour was subdued as was the fruit flavour – perhaps this is why it didn’t taste terrible with waffles and strawberries.

In hindsight, my approach for selecting the beer was critically flawed. When eating a sweet meal, fruit punch is probably one of the last drinks to reach for. Instead, a drink that helps to balance the sweetness, my choice has always been milk, is a more appropriate choice. Drinking a fruit beer with waffles is no different than drinking fruit punch with waffles.

I think it would be a real struggle to find a beer that works with a sweet fruity meal. Finding a beer that cuts through the sweetness of waffles and strawberries while providing a complementary contrast would be a struggle for even the most knowledgeable beer aficionado. This may be the one meal where beer stays in the fridge.

Cheers,

Erik

This past Saturday, Erik invited me over to brew a batch of porter with his good friend Brad. I had never homebrewed before, so this was completely new to me. I arrived at Erik’s house a while before Erik, who was running late, returned from Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies with the malt and hop ingredients. Luckily, I was really on time because Holly had just finished making lunch. I was already liking brewing by this point.

When Erik got home with the goods, the first thing we had to do was heat up some water for the first phase, mashing. Mashing involves mixing the malted barley (the recipe of which Erik can fill you in on) into hot water. Our malt mixture contained very little roasted chocolate malt (you could see the odd black fleck), which you might be surprised to find out is all that’s needed to give a beer that dark porter colour. The water had to be heated up to approximately 170F on the stove to get a temperature of 152F in the mashing vessel. How Erik knows this, I cannot tell. We used Erik’s fancy beer making software to figure out the ideal temperature of 152F. Apparently, anything three degrees above would lead to too many unfermentable sugers in the mash (leftover sugar means sweeter beer) and anything three degrees less would lead to too many fermentable sugars (not much leftover sugar means dry beer). After Erik had mashed in his barley malt and was ready to let it sit in the lautering process, we were dead on at 152F. Erik’s giant beer cosy system only loses 1F per hour, which I was pretty impressed with. Lautering is the process of letting the mash steep, to extract the fermentable sugars that yeast turns into alcholol.

Erik Mashing in the barley malt

Action Shot of Mashing in the Barley Malt

Lautering in the giant Beer Cosy

Now Erik would tell you that home brewing is easy, and it is fairly straight forward, but it is really only easy when you are me. It is true that while homebrewing, you do a lot of work in bursts and then wait around for an hour or so. Homebrewing is also fairly precise and requires a fair amount of careful sanitization, as well as a good chunk of knowledge (that Erik has and I don’t). For me, brewing consisted of playing a lot of frisbee with Luca, Erik’s dog, and drinking a lot of beer. Whereas Erik spent a lot of time tearing around, cleaning stuff, carefully measuring/mixing, and took part in a good deal of attentiveness. I had a great time though, because frisbee and beer drinking are pretty fun. We drank a lot of fantastic beers, including Mission Springs Fat Guy Oatmeal Stout, Swans Coconut Porter, Swans Berry Ale, and Anderson Valley Tripel. We also had Paddock Wood IPA, which I thought was more of a decent pale ale than a respectable IPA, and Granville Island Brockton IPA, finally a westcoast IPA.

Luca, good frisbee player

After an hour of waiting (drinking beer and playing frisbee), it was time to sparge. After draining the wort (unfermented beer) from the mashtun (Erik’s has a filter in the bottom), we poured hot water (hotter than the first go because we need no more extraction) through the mash to get more of the sugar out. We did this three times, stirring each time before draining more wort.

Erik draining the wort into the kettle

Wort going from the mashtun to the brew kettle

Chris stirring during sparging (one of my few tasks)

Bad, a good man

After we’d recovered the wort, it was time to fire up the brew kettle. Erik’s kettle is a turkey fryer that he heats with a potent propane burner. Bringing the wort to a boil was fairly challenging (mostly for Erik) because the wort wants to quickly extricate itself from the kettle. After achieving a boil, Erik immediately added the bittering hops for the hour long boil. After fifty minutes, the aroma hops were added. I do not recall the types of hops we use, but I seem to recall willamette being used for aroma. I’ll be honest, by the time the aroma hops were added I was out of beer making mode and into beer drinking mode. After the hour long boil, Erik cooled the wort using cold water running through a coper hose. Once cool, the wort was put into a carboy, to which yeast was added, and left to ferment for a week or so. After further ageing in the bottle for a few more weeks, we’ll have a tasty porter. Although, I fear my involvement may have somehow ruined this beer, but we’ll see. Erik, thanks for letting me make beer with you and I apologize if I somehow ruined it.