Beer and ice cream

It My birthday was a little while back and we ate at El Alma which is a fancier
restaurant from the El Chile people. I had duck mole enchiladas and they were
very good. The mole was a pasilla mole and was a little less sweet than what
you usually find around here and was noticeably spicy but not irritatingly so.

It is beer season. We went to the annual Texas Craft Brewer’s Festival. The
weather was much better this year in that it was about 10 degrees cooler and
overcast. It drizzled a little but did not actually rain.

The samples I had at the event were:
No Label: Forbidden Lavender Wit,
Texas Ale Project: 100 Million Angels Singing
Adelbert’s: Vintage Monks
Real Ale: Scots Gone Wild
Real Ale: Barrel Aged Blakkr
Texian: 1824
Saint Arnold: Divine Reserve #14
Grapevine: Lakefire

The Flying Saucer BeerFeast is October 25th and we’re going to that too. That
has been fun in years past but has always had some black mark on it for one
reason or another. The first year I went it poured rain for about an hour
turning the grounds into a muddy mess, for example.

Then, to top all that off Bill and I have started our fourth, and most
ambitious beer to date. It is a mini-mash version of “w00tstout“.
It has an astonishing amount of
sugar in it putting the Original Gravity at 1.108. If it ferments properly it
will be 13% when done. We took a very small sample from the fermenter last
weekend for measurement and tasting and the gravity is already down to about
1.035 after two weeks in primary and it tastes good but very alcoholic. I used
the phrase “Jet Fuel” to describe it. In addition to all of the various sugars
it was mashed with 8oz of toasted pecans, has 3oz of unsweet cocoa in it and
will be “barrel aged” in secondary by putting in 2oz of bourbon soaked medium+
toast oak cubes.

In addition to beer, it is also decorative gourd season. There are so many
good pumpkin recipes on the internet and I want to try them all but they’re
basically all terrible for you.

I have started with pumpkin ice cream. Ice cream has become much easier now
that I’ve learned to make the custard in the sous vide bath instead of trying
to temper egg yolks with hot cream like some kind of barbarian. I looked up
like 6 different ice cream base recipes and averaged them all out and the
added the pumpkin specific pieces. I came up with this:

1 2/3 cups heavy cream
1 1/3 cups whole milk
7 egg yolks
1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cups dark brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp Grand Marnier

It ended up very custardy. A bit too thick. I think one less egg yolk and
equal cream:milk ratio would be more ideal. It’s very tasty though. One pint
has some home made brownie chunks in it. Another pint has crystallized ginger
and the last pint is just pumpkin.

The next thing is to make another batch of coffee ice cream and I’m
experimenting with making some Earl Grey tea ice cream also.is beer season.