Happy Caturday!

We Learned a New Brew Trick!

It's time to dry hop! Our latest brewing adventure takes us to the world of pale ales. Much of the popularity of pale ales revolves around the layering of hop flavors. Our friendly neighborhood home brew store suggested we dry hop for this batch of beer.

Dry hopping allows you to add more aromatic hop layers without increasing the bitterness of the beer. Dry hopping is often used when brewing pale ales and IPAs.

For home brewing, the best time to dry hop is during the secondary fermentation period (see our fermentation post). While boiling our wort, we set aside 1 oz of Cascade hops. We made sure to seal our dry hop hops in a baggie and store that baggie in the fridge. When we racked to the secondary, after 2 weeks, we added the extra hops.



When dry hopping Make sure to use a grain sock or nylon bag to keep the hops together. You don't want to have to strain out the hops later (unless you have some filtration procedure, which we do not). It is important to use a sanitized 'hop holder' so you don't introduce 'bugs' to the beer. Once you are done with the secondary fermentation, just toss (garbage, compost, etc.) the hops.

Happy Caturday!

Best Baguette

I was first introduced to the Vietnamese sandwiches, known as Banh Mi, while living in Oklahoma City. It took some convincing from several co-workers before I was brave enough to cast aside my daily PB & J and venture to Saigon Baguette (aka Milk Bottle Sandwiches) for my first ever taste of the glorious Banh Mi sandwich - it was love at first bite. These sandwiches vary slightly from store to store but generally they are comprised of thinly sliced pickled carrot and daikon, cilantro, chili peppers, some kind of sauce, and meat or tofu all in a soft but chewy french baguette roll. I enjoyed several variations of these sandwiches at various restaurants in Oklahoma City, but Saigon Baguette was by far my favorite. I also should note that these sandwiches are usually priced around $2 or $3, which makes for a great cheap meal. So when we left Oklahoma City for the bright lights (ok, light rains) of Portland, I was sad to say goodbye to Saigon Baguette, and hoped that I would be lucky enough to find a new Bahn Mi to fill the void.

Well my wish was granted when one day while driving to the library I saw sign that said it all...Best Baguette. I mean come on! That is a bold statement and I knew I had to see if in fact it was the best. So we stopped in for a lunch one day. I ordered the vegetable sandwich with tofu and Peter order the grilled pork sandwich. The sandwiches are pretty darn good, not sure if they are the best because I'll always be partial to Saigon Baguette, my first Banh Mi love. Best Baguette bakes their own baguettes so the bread is always fresh and few times we have been lucky enough to have sandwiches on very fresh, still warm bread. They load their sandwiches with lots of veggies and meat/tofu, so the sandwich itself is plenty to make a meal. The sandwiches are all under $3 (take that Subway) and worth every cent. We do hope to keep trying various Banh Mi restaurants in the area, but for now Best Baguette is our favorite.

Trek In The Park

Over the weekend we decided to boldly go where no man has gone before. Ok that's not totally accurate several men, women, and even children have been here before but we haven't, so we boldly went where we had never been before. Anyway I digress, we ventured to the east side of Portland to witness a massive gathering of nerds known as "Trek In The Park". "Trek In The Park" was the brainchild of the Atomic Arts group founded by local Portlanders. For 3 weekends they put on a live rendition of a classic Star Trek episode. This year they brought the episode Space Seed to Woodlawn park. If you are unfamiliar with this Star Trek episode or simply need a reminder wikipedia has a great write up of the episode here (gotta love nerds). To put it simply, Space Seed is the episode where Kirk and Khan first meet. Their cast was small but very talented, and you could tell that the actors as well as the audience were having fun. It was super crowded, and kind of hard to see. So if we go back next year we will try to get there earlier to stake out a better viewpoint. "Trek In The Park" is just so Portland (white and nerdy), and we are so lucky we get the opportunity to experience it. Below are a couple of pictures we took (the lighting wasn't great), and then a list of the cast members.