The French Press Experience
Let’s picture the situation…
You’re in lockdown, you have reduced your essential shopping experience to the bare minimum. When you go to the beer store – which made it to the essential survival short list – you pick a couple large 12, 15 or 24 packs and you go. No more touching and reading every pack to find your experimentation of the week.
Worse than that. As you open the first can you realize the freshness is not what it used to be. Rotation has slowed down and as much as you have empathy… this is frustrating.
I’ve got your back. You want to add a bit of zing ? Some powerful citrus aroma’s ? Some fresh coriander notes ? Even better, you want to customize your beer and treat it like a mixologist ?
Tips and Tricks
Before we talk recipes, here are a few tips and tricks to maximize your experience:
Carbonation: French pressing your beer will strip away most of the carbonation. Pouring, muddling, swirling and ultimately pressing … you fizzy-ness is gone. The best way to work around this is to use ½ a bottle in the French press and to top up in the glass!. This adds nicely to the ritual and add back enough carbonation to enjoy your beer.
Fresh Herbs: In most home made mojito… your host will put a lot of effort to totally pulverize the mint. Not only it creates a kind of aquarium full of tiny green fishes but more critical it releases plenty of bitter tannins from the inner parts of the leaves. Don’t do that. What you want here are fragrant oils which are on the surface of the herbs. A gentle muddling is doing the job. Bartenders often simply “tap” herbs. They put them in the pal of their hand and clap 1 time with the other one. In most cases this is enough to smash open the glands containing the oils.
Dry herbs and seeds: Coriander, Fennel, Pepper,… all can be crushed with a pestle and mortar. Again you may not want to reduce them to powder as you’ll have to filter everything out at the end but a good crush will release the oils trapped inside.
Zest: Many recipes below make use of citrus zest. My first advise … use organic fruit. The zest is the most exposed and possibly the part of the fruit retaining most of the pesticides so… you don’t need much, opt for organic. Then be sure to only use the zest, the colored fraction of the rind. This is where the oils are stored. The white part of the rind just below is not fragrant and bitter. Use a peeler, it’s the most convenient tool or this job!
Infusion: When you have your beer (half the bottle) and your spices/herbs/… in the press, close the press leaving like 1 inch of headspace above the beer. Swirl your press, do a couple pumping and muddling with the press. I usually don’t leave it more that 1 minutes. It’s a cold infusion and the oils will dissolves very quick.
OK, are you ready to experiment and have fun ? Feeling like a mixologist ?
Customize your Stout
There are many types of stouts. Sweet, Dry, Light, Strong… but they all have in common some roasted, coffee, dark chocolate character with sometime a slight touch of smoke.
Your simplest experimentation could be a “Cold Brewed Stout“, infusing your stout with 1 or 2 tea spoons of freshly ground coffee.
Here are 3 ways to may your Stout shine like never. A Custard Stout, adding brown sugar and vanilla, a Mole Stout, exploring the dark and spicy flavors of a Mexican Mole and a Red Fruit Stout, somehow like a molted chocolate cake cake an a strawberry!
Customize your Wit beer
Most Wit beers are brewed with orange peels and coriander. It’s a Belgian legacy. Yet a bit more of it doesn’t hurt. Also Wit yeast typically release something kind of spicy, herbal, medicinal in the back, leaving the door open for some experimentations.
You could simply infuse with some citrus peels (actually Belgian Wit are often served with a wedge of orange garnish, Shock top anyone ? ).
Here are 2 very nice build on this Belgian classic. A Super Wit (got the wordplay? Super-8? … no? ok). Boosting your Wit with more of what inherently creates a wit. I usually add extra spices. Fennel seeds are marvelous. Then an infusion that in inspired by gin. a… Gin Wit with proper juniper berries and cardamom.
Customize your IPA
If there’s one beer style that suffers aging like no other… it’s IPA. You could think that it’s so powerful that flavors would stand the distance. The reality is that what IPA lovers do love in IPA’s… it’s that juicy freshness, that breeze (or punch) of citrus, pine, peach,… Unfortunately more often than less IPA in small packs are passed their prime. So here is a very cool way to play with these remaining cans in your fridge to give them a new life!
The Ultra IPA is a big play on grapefruit zest with some layers of sage. Woodstock IPA dial in rosemary and rosebuds on top of fresh orange oils. Together they reminds me of rosewood oils. If you want to try the Spruce IPA, now (May) is the perfect time to crop spruce buds. Go outside, find resinous trees and rub their buds. You’ll be amazed by the variety of aromatics, from Christmas tree like to orange, violet,.. Spruce was used in the 17th to cure scurvy thanks to it’s load of Vitamin C. Finally I wanted to boost the stone fruit character that some hops can deliver. I ended up muddling peach wedges along with some blackberries and lemongrass. The result was awesome. This is Stone Fruit IPA
What next ?
Sure I’ll drop some more recipes soon here or on my Instagram page @beerisaconversation but think about what could be next ?
Love the coconut character of Sabro hop? How about infusing an IPA with toasted coconut ? How about doing the same with a stout ?
My next set of experiments will be with Saisons… Stay tuned!
And don’t forget to check my previous posts (last summer I dry hopped in the fields with my french press)
