For the 10 Percent

Dan Woodske runs his nano-brewery, Beaver Brewing Company, not for the masses, but for the 1 in 10 who wants the unusual brews. He keeps his brews small, just 1.5 barrels at a time, and his distribution mainly to his facility, the first Friday and Saturday of every month. The small sizes let's him brew beers you won' find anywhere else, his Saison de Lavender, Chamomile Wheat, Basil Beer, and Kvass. 

Guest Blog: Baking with Booze

My birthday came and went recently, as my wife loves to bake I asked her to attempt a rum cake (what else for a tiki-phile?) and write up a post about it. You will see her post below and feel free to check out her blog Pgh Ink

Rum Cake

            Rum Cake, perhaps the most well known of our modern booze deserts, rum cake is one of those delightful concoctions that can be as strong as the baker dare make it.  Traditionally Rum Cake is thought to have descended from Holiday Pudding made by English settlers in the Caribbean in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  Much like English Pudding, Rum Cake takes well to having all sorts of things added to it including dried fruits, soaked in rum of course, and nuts.  In the US Rum Cake is usually served as a sponge cake designed to soak up as much rum as possible.  This was my first, though I am sure not my last, attempt at a Rum Cake and it turned out quite well.  Next time I will try adding spiced rum to give it a more holiday feel.  I strongly suggest putting the baked cake in a shallow pie pan prior to pouring on the glaze.  The sides of the pan help hold the excess glaze close to the cake which allows for more of it to be soaked up by the cake over time.  It also prevents the sticky glaze from running all over your counter and creating an even greater mess for you to clean up later.  I also suggest making this at least a day before serving to give the flavors time to fully develop and of course more of the rum glaze to be absorbed.  Here is the recipe I used adapted from several sources in books and online.  You can also use muffin cups or mini bundt pans if you wish to make individual servings for your guests.  Keep an eye on these smaller cakes however because the increased service area may cause the cakes to over brown if baked for the full hour.

Cake:

1C butter

2C sugar

4 eggs

3C all purpose flour

1 tsp baking power

½ tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1C milk

1 tsp vanilla

¾ dark rum (I used Myers dark rum)

Glaze:

4 tlbs butter

1C Sugar

½ C dark rum (again I used Myers)

Powered sugar for topping.

Preheat oven to 350˚ and spray a bundt pan and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar together then add the eggs one at a time mixing them in before adding the next one.

Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in one bowl. Using a fork will help break up the lumps in the flour and help prevent clumping when you add the dry and wet ingredients.

In another bowl mix milk, vanilla and rum.

Add dry mixture and wet mixture to batter and mix until everything is thoroughly incorporated.

Poor batter into prepared bundt pan and bake for 1 hour.  If using several small bundt pans or a muffin pan check after 45 min and pull if necessary.  Once golden brown and a tooth pick comes out clean pull cake and turn onto a cooling rack.  Allow cake to cool completely before putting on glaze.

Glaze:

Melt butter then add in sugar and ¼ C water.  Bring to a boil for 5 minutes string continuously to avoid scorching the bottom and making sure mixture will not boil over.  The bubbles will build up quickly so you need to keep a constant eye on it.  After 5 minutes remove from heat and very slowly add in rum.  The first addition of the rum will cause the glaze to boil up very quickly so continue string as you add rum.

Put cake into shallow pie pan and slowly drizzle glace over top and sides of cake.  Don’t worry if all the glaze is not immediately soaked up by the cake.  As the cake sits it will continue to absorb the glaze.  Cover and allow to sit over night.  Before serving sprinkle with powered sugar. 

On the Other Hand

Meg Yahner does double duty behind the stick. 5 days a week you can find her at Verde serving up tequila and sangria. The other nights she is over at AVA at the Shadow Lounge. Stop by on Mondays to see her on their live Jazz nights.

Brew History pt. I

My personal drinking history began somewhat late in my life compared to most.  Rather than getting wasted on whatever alcohol my friends and I could find in high school, I didn't start drinking until I was 21. (Yeah, I'm the one).  Because of that I don't have that one alcohol that I just can't drink because I drank an entire bottle of it when I was a Junior. The late start also means that I avoided the bad booze. With the exception of a drink of Natty Ice that I had by mistake, my first beer was one that a friend came back from Germany with a taste for, Erdinger's Hefeweizen. Following that I discovered Franziskaner, which is still my favorite beer.  I also started drinking things like martinis and throwing cocktail parties. 


In addition to drinking expensive stuff I started right in on making my own alcohol. My first attempts were at making mead. A friend and I split the expenses and went out to make 2 five gallon batches, 1 of regular mead, and the other a strawberry mead. Shockingly, with virtually no working knowledge of what we were doing these failed spectacularly, but what I had tasted during the process had hope. I had successfully made alcohol, it's just that the window of it being drinkable was about 2 days. These experiments my senior year at college, was the beginning of that period when homebrewing was just starting to become more mainstream. So for Christmas one year my father picked up a brew your own beer kit from a science themed gift store. 


Alas, this coincided with me beginning my wandering period of life where I had 7 different addresses over the course of 10 years. Also at no point then did I have a basement or an out of the way place to brew it. Finally after I had bought my current house (which has 2 basements!) I dug out the kit to see what I could brew up. This is when I learned that the expiration date of yeast is something to pay attention to. While this batch failed, it got me started back on the path of brewing that I'm currently on. 

Heavenly Drinking

By now everyone knows the story of Church Brew Works. Situated in the former St John the Baptist Church in Lawrenceville they have been crafting brews since 1996. Brewery Manager Steve Sloan has a long and impressive resume, taking him everywhere from The Saint Louis Brewery to New Zealand to Firestone Walker before bringing him to Pittsburgh and the Church Brew Works.

Grog Talk

I'm off in Virginia for a photo assignment shooting OpSail for Spinsheet magazine. That means that I'm going to be on one of these bad boys.

Naturally this has me thinking about what is probably the mother of all Tiki drinks: Grog. I'm not thinking of the classic Tiki drink Navy Grog. I'm talking the real thing, daily rum ration, lime juice to prevent scurvy grog.

No one know the exact recipe for grog, likely I suspect it's because there wasn't one recipe for grog. I've seen and heard many different versions of "original" grog recipes. Everything from "1 of sweet, 2 of sour, 3 of strong, 4 of weak," (which is patently wrong as this is a punch recipe) to 1:1 of rum and water.

Now a little history:

Up until 1972 the British Navy regulations specified 1 pint of ale per day per sailor. This was fine while they were sailing the cold and gloomy North Atlantic close to home. As they began expanding their travels the ale soon became impractical. It would often go bad before the men could drink it. So the Admiralty responded in perhaps a strikingly practical way. They allowed the ale to be replaced with whatever the local drink that they could procure. In the Caribbean that meant rum. That's the first ingredient for grog.

The second important ingredient was citrus juice. Scurvy was a huge issue for sailors going back at least to the Romans, probably earlier. As early as 1497 citrus was known to have a curative effect on scurvy, though vitamin C wasn't isolated and identified until 1937.  Thanks to Admiral Edward Vernon of the British Navy, (known to his sailors as Old Grog for the grogram cloak that he wore) in 1740 citrus juice was added to the daily ration of rum. At this point we can say that we have grog consisting of water, rum, and citrus juice. Sailors likely would have added whatever they had handy to make this drink more palatable.

Me being me I decided that it would be interesting to play with a drink based on the idea of grog that would have been Piratically inspired. So I decided to create the drink below with the idea of an English Privateer using what they had available from successfully taking ships in their own version of a trading triangle.

Pirate Triangle
1 oz lime juice
1 oz white grapefruit juice
.5 oz lemon juice
.5 oz pimento dram
1 oz vanilla simple syrup
1 oz brandy
1 oz dark Jamaican rum
.5 oz Lemon Hart 151
Shake with  crushed ice.
Garnish with fresh grated nutmeg

Growlin For You

 Scott Smith isn't your typical Brewer, if such a thing even exists, sure he makes good beer but that isn't the end of his efforts.  Scott seems to be everywhere these days either coming up with innovative funding methods like his Good Beer Investment Program or helping to raise funds for Aboard Autism Connection of PA and Bike PGH with the Keg Rides for the release of Pedal Pale Ale. East End Brewing Co's beers are at all the best tap spots in the City and will be at more once their planned expansion is completed. In the mean time, you can fill up one of their distinctive growlers at the Pittsburgh Public Market or at the brewery.