… Into the mash. Presenting the Blood Bag Pale Ale #1
In an impromptu collaboration with Rafael Rios at Rios Family Farm, we decided to explore the world of alternate sugar sources. The fruits of this experience is an admittedly mediocre beer with an amazing color.
The last few months have been busy outside the brewery. After much consideration (and nine months of work on her part) AJ and I decided to bring an assistant brewer on board. He joined us in early September, and we’re just pleased as punch to have him with us. He hasn’t gotten his feet underneath him just yet, but that is just a matter of time. He’s already running the show, though, and we’re running around trying to keep up!
After talking about this idea for a number of years, I’ve finally worked on this crazy idea. We’ve hypothesized, we’ve designed the experiment, we’ve run it through to completion and now there is some data to parse. But, let us start at the beginning.
I’m a huge fan of cilantro. There’s a bright, green flavor in fresh cilantro that I can hardly get enough of. Salsa and guacamole of course, but also chimichurri, and a large part of my inspiration, phở , these delicious dishes all have that cilantro flavor that I want to harness. Being a brewer and an engineer, I of course looked out on the Internet to see if someone else had the perfect recipe for making this herbed beer. If someone else had a silver bullet method of infusing this flavor into an ale, I would have a starting point to experiment with. As it was, I didn’t find much out there in the Google, and thus had to then back up, with a touch of science and brewing art, what I’d been talking up with my brewing siblings. It was time to find the best way to infuse cilantro goodness into beer greatness.