Louis-Philippe Véronneau - recipeshttps://veronneau.org/2018-06-06T00:00:00-04:00Disaster a-Brewing2018-06-06T00:00:00-04:002018-06-06T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2018-06-06:/disaster-a-brewing.html<p>I brewed two new batches of beer last March and I've been so busy since I
haven't had time to share how much of a failure it was.</p>
<p>See, after three years I thought I was getting better at brewing beer and the
whole process of mashing, boiling, fermenting and …</p><p>I brewed two new batches of beer last March and I've been so busy since I
haven't had time to share how much of a failure it was.</p>
<p>See, after three years I thought I was getting better at brewing beer and the
whole process of mashing, boiling, fermenting and bottling was supposed to be
all figured out by now.</p>
<p>Turns out I was both greedy and unlucky and - woe is me! - one of my carboy
exploded. Imagine 15 liters (out of a 19L batch) spilling out in my bedroom at
1AM with such force that the sound of the rubber bung shattering on the ceiling
woke me up in panic. I legitimately thought someone had been shot in my bedroom.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-06-06/carboy.jpg" title="This carboy was full to the brim prior to the beerxplosion" alt="This carboy was full to the brim prior to the beerxplosion" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>The aftermath left the walls, the ceiling and the wooden floor covered in thick
semi-sweet brown liquid.</p>
<p>This was the first time I tried a "new" brewing technique called parti-gyle.
When doing a parti-gyle, you reuse the same grains twice to make two different
batches of beer: typically, the first batch is strong, whereas the second one is
pretty low in alcohol.
Parti-gyle used to be way beer was brewed a few hundred years ago. The Belgian
monks made their Tripels with the first mash, the Dubbels with the second mash,
and the final mash was brewed with funky yeasts to make lighter beers like
Saisons.</p>
<p>The reason for my carboy exploding was twofold. First of all, I was greedy and
filled the carboy too much for the high-gravity porter I was brewing. When your
wort is very sweet, the yeast tends to degas a whole lot more and needs more
head space not to spill over.
At this point, any homebrewer with experience will revolt and say something like
"<em>Why didn't you use a blow-off tube you dummy!</em>". A <a href="http://www.love2brew.com/Articles.asp?ID=279">blow-off</a> tube is a tube
that comes out the airlock into a large tub of water and helps contain the
effects of violent primary fermentation. With a blow-off tube, instead of having
beer spill out everywhere (or worse, having your airlock completely explode),
the mess is contained to the water vessel the tube is in.</p>
<p>The thing is, I did use a blow-off tube. Previous experience taught me how
useful they can be. No, the real reason my carboy exploded was my airlock
clogged up and let pressure build up until the bung gave way. The particular
model of airlock I used was a three piece airlock with a little cross at the end
of the plastic tube<sup id="fnref:1"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:1">1</a></sup>. Turns out that little cross accumulated yeast and when
that yeast dried up, it created a solid plug. Easy to say my airlocks don't have
these little crosses anymore...</p>
<p>On a more positive note, it was also the first time I dry-hopped with full cones
instead of pellets. I had some leftover cones in the freezer from my summer
harvest and decided to use them. The result was great as the cones make for less
trub than pellets when dry-hopping.</p>
<h2>Recipes</h2>
<p>What was left of the porter came out great. Here's the recipe if you want to try
to replicate it. The second mash was also surprisingly good and turned out to be
a very drinkable brown beer.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2018-06-06/hops.jpg" title="Closeup shot of hops floating in my carboy" alt="Closeup shot of hops floating in my carboy" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<h3>Party Porter (first mash)</h3>
<p>The target boil volume is 23L and the target batch size 17L. Mash at 65°C and
ferment at 19°C.</p>
<p>Since this is a parti-gyle, do not sparge. If you don't reach the desired boil
size in the kettle, top it off with water until you reach 23L.</p>
<p>Black Malt gives very nice toasty aromas to this porter, whereas the Oat Flakes
and the unmalted Black Barley make for a nice black and foamy head.</p>
<p>Malt:</p>
<ul>
<li>5.7 kg x Superior Pale Ale</li>
<li>450 g x Amber Malt</li>
<li>450 g x Black Barley (not malted)</li>
<li>400 g x Oat Flakes</li>
<li>300 g x Crystal Dark</li>
<li>200 g x Black Malt</li>
</ul>
<p>Hops:</p>
<ul>
<li>13 g x Bravo (15.5% alpha acid) - 60 min Boil</li>
<li>13 g x Bramling Cross (6.0% alpha acid) - 30 min Boil</li>
<li>13 g x Challenger (7.0% alpha acid) - 30 min Boil</li>
</ul>
<p>Yeast:</p>
<ul>
<li>White Labs - American Ale Yeast Blend - WLP060</li>
</ul>
<h3>Party Brown (second mash)</h3>
<p>The target boil volume is 26L and the target batch size 18L. Mash at 65°C for
over an hour, sparge slowly and ferment at 19°C.</p>
<p>The result is a very nice table beer.</p>
<p>Malt:</p>
<p>same as for the Party Porter, since we are doing a parti-gyle.</p>
<p>Hops:</p>
<ul>
<li>31 g x Northern Brewer (9.0% alpha acid) - 60 min Boil</li>
<li>16 g x Kent Goldings (5.5% alpha acid) - 15 min Boil</li>
<li>13 g x Kent Goldings (5.5% alpha acid) - 5 min Boil</li>
<li>13 g x Chinook (cones) - Dry Hop</li>
</ul>
<p>Yeast:</p>
<ul>
<li>White Labs - Nottingham Ale Yeast - WLP039</li>
</ul>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>The same kind of cross you can find in sinks to keep you from dropping
objects down the drain by inadvertance. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Holiday Beer Recipe - Le Courant Noir2017-12-24T00:00:00-05:002017-12-24T00:00:00-05:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2017-12-24:/holiday-beer-recipe-le-courant-noir.html<p>It's holiday season once again, and while I'm waiting for the deserts I made for
my family's Christmas party to finish cooking (I highly recommend <em>Bon Apétit</em>'s
<a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bruleed-bourbon-maple-pumpkin-pie">Brûléed Bourbon-Maple Pumpkin Pie</a>), I opened one of the beers I brewed
recently.</p>
<p>And oh boy, what a success. </p>
<p>I've been brewing …</p><p>It's holiday season once again, and while I'm waiting for the deserts I made for
my family's Christmas party to finish cooking (I highly recommend <em>Bon Apétit</em>'s
<a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bruleed-bourbon-maple-pumpkin-pie">Brûléed Bourbon-Maple Pumpkin Pie</a>), I opened one of the beers I brewed
recently.</p>
<p>And oh boy, what a success. </p>
<p>I've been brewing beer with 2 other friends for a few years now, and while we've
brewed some excellent stuff in the past, I feel <em>Le Courant Noir</em><sup><a href="#note1">1</a></sup>
- a blackcurrant witbier-inspired ale - is my most resounding achievement.</p>
<p>This was my first time brewing with fresh fruits, and I'm very happy with the
results. The beer has a very pleasant, sharp nose of blackcurrants and esters.
To the taste, the blackcurrant comes through, but is counterbalanced by the malt
and pretty high alcohol content (~8% ABV). The result is a tart, ever so
slightly acidic fruity beer. I love it.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-12-24/courant_noir.jpg" title="A glass of Courant Noir" alt="A glass of Courant Noir" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>So yeah, I thought I'd share the recipe in case you want to try replicating it.
Try to get fresh blackcurrant, as what you are looking for is the tart taste of
the blackcurrant. Using syrup, you're bound to get some jelly-like aftertaste.</p>
<h2>Recipe</h2>
<p>The target boil volume is 25L and the target batch size 20L. I'm mashing with a
pretty low efficiency (70%), so if you use a proper mash tun, you might want to
use a little less grain.</p>
<p>Mash at 67°C and ferment at 19°C. Add the blackcurrants whole once the primary
fermentation is over.</p>
<p>Malt:</p>
<ul>
<li>2.8 kg x 2 row Pale Malt</li>
<li>2.8 kg x White Wheat Malt</li>
<li>1.0 kg x Munich Malt</li>
</ul>
<p>Hops:</p>
<ul>
<li>35 g x Saaz (4.4% alpha acid) - 60 min Boil</li>
<li>25 g x Saaz (4.4% alpha acid) - 30 min Boil</li>
<li>15 g x Saaz (4.4% alpha acid) - Dry Hop</li>
</ul>
<p>Yeast:</p>
<ul>
<li>White Labs Belgian Witbier Ale Yeast - WLP400</li>
</ul>
<p>Other:</p>
<ul>
<li>25 g x Coriander Seeds (crushed) - 10 min Boil</li>
<li>1.7 kg x Whole Blackcurrant</li>
</ul>
<h2>Pie</h2>
<p>Here's a bonus picture of the pie I referenced earlier.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-12-24/pumpkin_pie.jpg" title="Pumpkin pie in the oven in a cast iron pan" alt="Pumpkin pie in the over in a cast iron pan" height="100%" width="100%"></p>
<hr>
<p style="font-size:95%;"><a name="note1">1</a> - Amongst other things, "courant noir"
is the French word-for-word translation for blackcurrant. It's also a very bad
translation pun Ⓐ ⚑.</p>Elderberry Syrup and Autumn Preserves2017-08-30T00:00:00-04:002017-08-30T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2017-08-30:/elderberry-syrup-and-autumn-preserves.html<p>It's been a while since I wrote anything here. To be honest, the last few months
have been quite hectic (I was busy organising <a href="https://debconf17.debconf.org/">DebConf17</a> with some friends)
and only now am I finding the time to do <em>real</em> stuff, like pickles and jams.</p>
<p>I'll be damned if I miss …</p><p>It's been a while since I wrote anything here. To be honest, the last few months
have been quite hectic (I was busy organising <a href="https://debconf17.debconf.org/">DebConf17</a> with some friends)
and only now am I finding the time to do <em>real</em> stuff, like pickles and jams.</p>
<p>I'll be damned if I miss the pickle season. Autumn is slowly showing its nose
here in Montreal and with that comes a season of abundance.</p>
<p>I know it sounds <em>cliché</em>, but it gets cold quite quickly here and nothing grows
for a while. To me, the end of summer is a very special time where most of the
food we eat is actually grown here too, and not in a far away USA industrial
desert.</p>
<p>Anyway, it seems that as the years pass, I find more and more wild plants I just
need to harvest and transform. Not that it makes me sad, on the contrary.</p>
<h2>Elderberry Syrup</h2>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-08-30/elderberry_syrup.jpg" title="A small jar of elderberry syrup I made" alt="A small jar of elderberry syrup I made" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:right"></p>
<p>This year's addition to my preserve schedule is Elderberry Syrup. Sambucus
canadiensis - the shrub that produces elderberries - is quite common in Montreal
and it looks like no one is harvesting the berries. It seemed a shame to let all
that good stuff go to waste, so I decided to make some syrup.</p>
<p>I harvested 1 kg of berries and after freezing and thawing them to break them
down, I cooked the berries 5 minutes in a pot, added 1 kg of sugar and the
juice of one large lemon and boiled the syrup for around 20 minutes.</p>
<p>The result is a little more than 1 liter of elderberry syrup. I don't think I
had tasted elderberries before and I have to say I like it very much. To be
honest I'm thinking about going back and making some more, as I think it would
make good gifts for the holiday season.</p>
<h2>Staghorn Sumac Lemonade</h2>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-08-30/pink_lemonade.jpg" title="A bottle of homemade pink lemonade" alt="A bottle of homemade pink lemonade" height="30%" width="30%" style="float:left"></p>
<p>During the summer of 2009 I worked in a vineyard, mostly trimming vines and
taking care of the apple orchard there. Most of the time I was working with an
agricultural engineer in training and even though it was hard work and the days
were long, I have fond memories of that summer.</p>
<p>Amongst a few things this guy taught me was that the fruit of the staghorn sumac
- another common shrub in Quebec - is edible. Most people don't know it, but you
can make tart and sour pink lemonade by letting them macerate in a large pot of
water for 24 hours.</p>
<p>Add a little sugar, and you have a deliciously refreshing tart beverage. Bonus
points for it being pink! I normally go out and harvest a large bag of it at the
end of August, but this year my freezer is already full so I don't think I will
drink it a lot.</p>
<h2>Pickles and Sauerkraut, round 4</h2>
<p>It's hard to believe, but it's now the 4th year I'm making pickles and sauerkraut.
I guess I still haven't learned my lesson though, as my latest sauerkraut batch
is too salty to my liking.</p>
<p>I think the main error I'm making is that I'm calculating the amount of salt to
add based on the cabbages' weight, instead of using the total weight of the
cabbage and liquid I'm adding. My fermentation crock is quite large and I always
have to add a good 5 or 6 liters of brine to top it up.</p>
<p>The pickles are not ready yet, but I'm curious to see what that method will
yield for them. I've used a 4% salt to pickle-and-brine ratio, as recommended
by the neat fermentation book I bought a few months ago.</p>
<p>I have to say this was not an easy task, since you need to salt the brine before
adding it to the crock, but you can't know the amount of brine you'll end up
using until you've actually poured it on the pickles... I ended up making a
guess and removing a liter of brine, adding more salt to reach the 4% mark
and adding it back. I just hope it won't stay at the top and will mix with the
rest of the brine.</p>
<p>For convenience, here's the salting table my book recommends. The percentage is
based on the total weight of the fermentables and of the brine combined:</p>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Brine<br>(salt/kg)<br></th>
<th>2%<br>(20g/kg)<br></th>
<th colspan="2">4%<br>(40g/kg)<br></th>
<th>10%<br>(100g/kg)<br></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="3"></td>
<td rowspan="2">All vegetables not mentioned in this table<br></td>
<td>Pickles<br></td>
<td>Beets<br></td>
<td>Olives<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Hot peppers and hot sauces<br></td>
<td>Jerusalem artichokes</td>
<td rowspan="2">Umeboshi plums<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Citrus</td>
<td>Citrus</td>
<td>Squashes</td>
</tr>
</table>Chestnut Cream & Poppy Seeds Cake2017-04-20T00:00:00-04:002017-04-20T00:00:00-04:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2017-04-20:/chestnut-cream-poppy-seeds-cake.html<p>Hmmm, chestnuts. Who doesn't like them? Eating a cone of hot roasted chestnuts
has to be one of my best memories of Europe. Buttery, savory, filling chestnuts.</p>
<p>Out of the multiple recipes my father does, he's always been very proud of his
rolled chestnut cream cake. Even though I like …</p><p>Hmmm, chestnuts. Who doesn't like them? Eating a cone of hot roasted chestnuts
has to be one of my best memories of Europe. Buttery, savory, filling chestnuts.</p>
<p>Out of the multiple recipes my father does, he's always been very proud of his
rolled chestnut cream cake. Even though I like it very much, this post is not
about that recipe.</p>
<p>I've never been fond of super sweet stuff and sadly, my father's roulé falls in
that category. Instead, let me blog about my take on a old recipe my great-aunt
gave me a while ago. It originally comes from a recipe sheet they gave her way
back when the general store she went to at Halles Saint-Jean in
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu was still open. Anyway, you get the point, an old
grocery's recipe.</p>
<p>I think what I really like from this recipe is actually the poppy seeds. It
gives this cake a very pleasant mouthfeel.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, I'm putting this here because I'm afraid to loose the sheet
my great-aunt gave me and since she gave me the original, it's not getting any
younger. That and friends asked me for it.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-04-20/chestnut.jpg" height="100%" width="100%" title="Chestnuts" alt="Chestnuts"></p>
<h2>Ingredients</h2>
<p>It's quite hard to describe accurately how much cake this recipe makes, so let
me try a few things:</p>
<ul>
<li>Last time I made it, the 9 people around the table all had a reasonable but
not ostentatious piece</li>
<li>In my 14" x 7½" cast iron mold, it makes an 1½" thick cake</li>
<li>Total cake volume is 2.5 L</li>
</ul>
<p>Sorry for the derp units, Canada still isn't using the SI system for cooking
recipes -_-'. Anyway, here's the ingredients list:</p>
<h3>Cake</h3>
<ul>
<li>1 cup of milk (the fatter the better)</li>
<li>½ a cup of poppy seeds</li>
<li>¾ cup of salted butter</li>
<li>1½ cup of white granulated sugar</li>
<li>4 eggs</li>
<li>2⅓ cup of flour</li>
<li>3 teaspoons of baking powder</li>
</ul>
<h3>Glazing</h3>
<ul>
<li>1 can (500ml) of chestnuts cream</li>
<li>½ cup of salted butter</li>
<li>3 tablespoon of maple syrup</li>
<li>1 egg yolk</li>
<li>2 tablespoon of some fragrant hard liquor</li>
</ul>
<h2>Baking steps</h2>
<h3>Cake</h3>
<p><strong>1 -</strong> Mix the milk and the poppy seeds together in a bowl. Reserve.</p>
<p><strong>2 -</strong> Cream the butter and add in the sugar until fluffy. Realise how great
plain white sugar and butter tastes.</p>
<p><strong>3 -</strong> Add 4 egg yolks.</p>
<p><strong>4 -</strong> Slowly add in the flour and baking powder. Make sure everything is well
mixed.</p>
<p><strong>5 -</strong> Add in the milk and poppy seeds mix.</p>
<p><strong>6 -</strong> Whip the 4 egg whites until you can make solid peaks. Fold in the cake
batter carefully. Eat some batter directly and appreciate it.</p>
<p><strong>7 -</strong> Bake at 350°F for around 30 minutes. Time depends a lot on the size of
your mold, so watch your cake. I like it slightly moist, but you can
check that by putting a knife in the middle. I like baking in a cast
iron mold since it creates a nice golden crust and does not stick.</p>
<h3>Glazing</h3>
<p>The original recipe calls for splitting the batter in two, baking in round
molds, adding the glazing in-between and glazing the whole thing afterwards.</p>
<p>This is both painful to make and adds little value in my opinion. I prefer to
bake the cake in one single mold and let people add the glazing themselves as
they like. This also has the advantage of giving people the liberty to deciding
how sweet they want their cake. Your call.</p>
<p><strong>1 -</strong> Cream the butter.</p>
<p><strong>2 -</strong> Add everything else and whip the glazing until smooth and consistent.</p>
<p>Voilà! I forgot to take a nice picture of the cake, but here's a beautiful
picture of a poppy field taken from Wikimedia.</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-04-20/poppy_field.jpg" height="100%" width="100%" title="Poppy Field" alt="Poppy Field"></p>Holiday cookies2017-01-01T00:00:00-05:002017-01-01T00:00:00-05:00Louis-Philippe Véronneautag:veronneau.org,2017-01-01:/holiday-cookies.html<p>Holiday season once again! Each and every year, I struggle with the gift ritual
in my family. Everyone (especially my closest relatives) feel obligated to find
some special gifts to give and spend a lot of money on that. I loathe it.</p>
<p>Either it ends up being some useless crap …</p><p>Holiday season once again! Each and every year, I struggle with the gift ritual
in my family. Everyone (especially my closest relatives) feel obligated to find
some special gifts to give and spend a lot of money on that. I loathe it.</p>
<p>Either it ends up being some useless crap I'll never use or it's stuff so
expensive it makes me feel bad about it. Anyway, I used to simply not give
anything in return and mumble, but I'm now at an age where I'm supposed to start
taking part in this ritual.</p>
<p>So this year, instead of joining the general capitalist frenzy that everyone
partakes in, I decided to bake cookies for my loved ones. Cookies are nice,
everyone likes them, they are relatively cheap and rely less on exploiting
people in the global South than your typical gifts.</p>
<h1>Honey Oatmeal Cookies</h1>
<p>I received a lot of honey at the end of the summer from a friend who has beehives
and I don't really like honey by itself. I prefer the taste of maple syrup.
But honey being thicker and having a stronger flavour, it makes a great way to
replace processed sugar in a lot of recipes.</p>
<p>I also wanted the cookies to last (we eat enough baked goods during the Holidays
as it is), so I wanted them to be hard cookies. He's the recipe I used:</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-01-01/cookies.jpg" height="100%" width="100%" title="Homemade cookies in a cookie tin" alt="Homemade cookies in a cookie tin"></p>
<h2>Ingredients</h2>
<p>This recipe makes around 50 big cookies. Sorry for the derp units, it's quite
standard for recipes here...</p>
<ul>
<li>3 cups salted Butter</li>
<li>2 2/3 cups Honey</li>
<li>8 cups Oats</li>
<li>3 1/2 cups whole Flour</li>
<li>3 teaspoons Baking Powder</li>
</ul>
<h2>Baking steps</h2>
<p><strong>1 -</strong> Melt the butter until fluid. Remove from the heat and add the honey.</p>
<p><strong>2 -</strong> Stir in the oats and baking powder.</p>
<p><strong>3 -</strong> Stir the flour in.</p>
<p><strong>4 -</strong> Grease a cookie sheet and flatten balls of dough into 2 inches cookies
(the cookies won't expand or change shape a lot during the baking
process, so make them the size you want them to be).</p>
<p><strong>5 -</strong> Bake at 375°F for around 35 minutes. This time depends a lot on the size
of cookies you made, so watch your first batch and iterate from there.
Your cooked cookies should be golden and hard.</p>
<h1>Preserved eggs</h1>
<p>In October 2016, I <a href="/for-the-love-of-goddamn-pickles.html">made pickled beets</a> and had a lot of
liquid left from the process.</p>
<p>I has previously used pickle juice to make preserved eggs, so I decided to use
some of the pickled beets juice this way!</p>
<p><img src="/media/blog/2017-01-01/eggs.jpg" height="100%" width="100%" title="Homemade cookies in a cookie tin" alt="Homemade cookies in a cookie tin"></p>
<p>A dozen eggs fit nicely in a 1L mason jar and the eggs were ready after
approximately 1 week. Don't throw your pickle juices!</p>