Rolling All 'Round my Brain

Today I'm thinking about cookbooks.

As I think I said earlier, I am considering committing the unpardonable yet glorious sin of combining Indian cuisine with pork. The idea of biryani-style pork chops stuffed with fragrant rice is driving me crazy. I may work on that today, although I am not sure it's unhealthy enough.

The other thing that's going through my mind is Belgian-style ale.

One of life's great pleasures--and one I discovered much too late--is cracking open a corked bottle of heavy Belgian ale with about 9% alcohol. These beers are loaded with complexity. They're sweet and sour and spicy all at the same time, and they give off scents like citrus and vanilla and caramel. Really nice. And you can brew them yourself, five or ten or fifteen gallons at a crack, which is a lot easier than paying six dollars for a fifth.

I don't know why they're so damned expensive. Even the domestic ones will run you five bucks, which is ridiculous. A Belgian-style ale takes a little more grain, but so what? Grain is cheap. If a typical five-gallon brew contains twelve dollars' worth of grain, a heavy beer might contain fifteen dollars' worth. What's the big deal?

Val is determined to pickle his insides with Budweiser, even when he gets free beer, but ManCamp's other full-time resident, Tommy, has bravely agreed to drink pretty much whatever I show up with. So I think a nice tripel--or my ale inspired by a tripel--is long overdue.

For the few beer nuts who read this blog, I'll post the recipe I'm planning to try.

5.0 lbs. wheat
4.0 lbs. Pilsner malt
2.0 lbs. 2-row malt
1.5 lbs. 60L crystal malt
1.0 lb. Munich malt
1.0 lb. candi sugar
0.75 oz. Nugget hops - 75 minutes
0.5 oz. Crystal hops - 45 minutes
1.0 oz. Crystal hops - steeped
White Labs WLP500 Trappist yeast

Estimated original specific gravity: 1.082.
Estimated final specific gravity: 1.019.
Estimated bitterness: 33.4 I.B.U.

Candi sugar is invert sugar, which you can make yourself on your own kitchen stove. But I am lazy and will probably buy it. I have been told you can get the same result using ordinary table sugar.

This ought to be pretty tasty.

The question is, what do I do with it? It will take Tommy and I at least three sessions to get rid of it. And right now, I have four beers in the indoor cooler and one in the garage cooler and ingredients for a sixth.

Maybe growlers are the answer to the problem. They're big ol' two-liter glass jugs with swing tops. Instead of dragging a five-gallon keg around, I could put the beer in ten growlers and take them out of the fridge as needed. Or I could break out the Tap-a-Draft system I bought a while back.

It occurs to me sometimes that the problems I face, while technically problems, are symptomatic of a fairly carefree existence.

All right. Time to sit back and let the wheels turn. Fall out.