So, after pouring their beer for seven hours against 31 other ingenious beers, Tracy’s Golden Oak got second place for Judges’ Choice.
Congrats to my brilliant wife, to Danny of Rogue Brewery, and Jesse of Lange Estate Winery for turning out such a fantastic beer.
Yes, here I am at Mt Angel’s Oktoberfest, surrounded by fabulous, rare German beers, looking for wine.
For over 50 years, Mt Angel has hosted 350,000 tipsy, wanna-be bavarians intent on eating, drinking, and watching weiner dogs race.
We fuel up on schnitzel, spätzle, and pretzel shipped from Munich, along with a lovely dunkel lager.
Polka plays and luck smiles upon me as I enter the Weingarten.
The choices, honestly, are innexpensive and hardly earth-shattering. However, my eyes fall on a grape called Acolon.
Like Sisyphus, Germany continues to chase the ever-ellusive, smooth, full bodied red in their cool climate by endlessly crossing hardy grape with hardy grape. This struggle will continue unless they give up or their climate drastically changes. Thus, Germans created the Acolon grape by crossing Blauer Limburger and Dornfelder in 1971. Only 1.3 kilometers grow it.
Wachtenburg Winzer is a cooperative winery of 58 families in Western Germany in the Pfalz. Their labels look horridly dull. But nothing brilliant ever came by committee.
Through my wee plastic cup, the APPEARANCE looks a clear, medium plus intense purple cored, ruby-framed red. AROMAS moderately smell of beet juice, red grapefruit, pepper, and cheese. The PALATE feels off dry, with pinging high acidity, medium tannins, medium body, and a rounded, fine sand texture. FLAVORS taste spicy, with tart bramble berry jam, blue cheese, and black pepper that lasts a medium minus length.
Watchenburg Winzer’s Acolon is a good (3 of 5), honest, functional red. It is red, chunky, but cannot hide its cool climate enamel-etching acidity. The malolactic fermentation kills some of the fruit’s character in an attempt to compensate. Yet, sometimes, such cheap wines allow one to learn the basics about a grape variety.
Well, back to beer then…
My wife’s beer, “Golden Oak” nears completion. Inspired by Lange Estate Winery’s iconic, barrel-fermented Pinot Gris, Jesse Lange lent her a barrel to ferment her Belgian Golden Strong (read about the journey here). After two months it has absorbed all that magic Pinot Gris from the barrel. It looks clear and golden, smells sunny, fruity, yet tastes lightly grassy and mildly grainy, like a clean Belgian beer. The problem: it is flat.
Well, Willamette Week’s Fourth Annual Beer Pro/Am competition is this Saturday, October 15th in Portland, Oregon (tickets: here). So a few weeks ago, time called to keg and carbonate it. To avoid oxidation and awkward barrel-tipping, Tracy gets a pump:
With barrel hooked up to keg, she fills it with ease.
Belgian Golden Strong ales show best with a high level of carbonation. Her Golden Oak would seem too wine-like without fizz. So getting the CO2 level right will make or break this beer. Worried, she kept sampling it over the last few weeks.
Will it be good enough for the Pro/Am?
Then, by chance, John Maier, founding head brewer of Rogue Brewery came to town. Tracy has his wife try it, who then drags John over. Quietly, he smells it, tastes it, then drinks it.
He looks at her, serious, and asks when is Rogue bottling it. She explains it was a one off small batch just for the Pro/Am. John looks confused at why this isn’t one of Rogue’s production beers, finishes it, and smiles. It is very well balanced he says.
Whether Tracy wins at Willamette Week’s Pro/Am or not, getting the blessing from the father of Oregon craft beer is enough.
So go, taste, and vote for Tracy’s “Golden Oak” at Willamette Week’s Fourth Annual Beer Pro/Am competition is this Saturday, October 15th in Portland, Oregon (tickets: here).
I have made moderately terrible wines from grapes. I have made a few lovely beers with my brewing wife (thanks to my wife). I have never toyed with hard apple cider. With Fall upon us, nature throws an emergency-opportunity my way:
If you have baked an apple pie, you know sweet apples for eating will not work. You need tart apples. Hard cider similarly requires these “sharps” for acidity, as well as “bitters” for structure.
I have no clue what type of apples these are. So I cheat. I pick them while underripe. My morning harvest yields over 60 pounds.
Chopping apples and cutting out worms sucks. After an hour of ear-ringing I read the gravity (sugar density for potential alcohol).
Once the fizz settles, it reads 10 Brix aka a mild 5% if it ferments completely dry. Fine. Curious, I check the pH with a fancy meter.
3.3 pH, roughly the acid of white wine. Good. I chuck in a packet of Mangrove Jack M02 Cider Yeast, a strong English strain favoring attenuation and fruity esters.
My one regret: I should have picked over one hundred pounds however. The only fermentor I have is for five gallons. 
That tub on the right has an egregious amount of head space. Will the yeast produce enough Co2 to shove out oxygen? Or will I have apple vinegar?
After two weeks in the dark, cool closet, apple juice has become hard cider. I rack clear juice off of the sludge below into a keg. It looks and smells clean, tastes dry, mouthwatering, with flavors of granny smith apple juice, wax, clove, with a mild alcoholic warm.
We could stop here. But we love for sparkling French ciders. So, I borrow my wife’s Co2 tank to carbonate the keg.
Then our cooler breaks. I add bags of ice but in vain. Without refrigeration to slow time and oxidation, the lovely hard cider has gained a slight sourness. It is still quite drinkable, but now a bit wild. Lesson learned: temperature control makes or breaks a product. Time to buy a new cooler.
My wife craves black pasta: an Italian specialty dyed dark with squid ink. Coastal Italians call it “pasta al nero di sepia”: black squid pasta. Instead of mixing it with seafood, she wants it simple. So I clash cultures by browning it in butter and shaving Greek Mizithra cheese atop (Spaghetti Factory frequenters will sympathize).
But what wine will work?
Mizithra is mild sheep cheese. Squid ink pasta tastes like, well, pasta with a slight brine note. Big reds and aromatic whites will overwhelm it. An Alsatian Pinot Gris or Blanc? A coastal Albarino? Maybe a zippy Picpoul de Pinet? Or a fizzy Cava or Brut Prosecco?
Nope.
Sunny days persist. It may be September, but I want to continue to live the lie that Summer remains. And nothing says languishing seaside, basking in sunshine, watching passers go by, quite like French rosé.
But Provence rosé is too fat, mellow, too silken for this. I want a slight edge. So I go for salmon-colored Sancerre. My earth-friendly, biodynamic choice is Pascal Jolivet’s 2015 Sancerre Rosé (under $20):
First, cold wine cleanses and contrasts the dish’s heat. The pasta’s slight savory, dark, mineral nature plays off of this Pinot Noir pink beautifully. The wine’s light strawberry and rhubarb notes wink back at the pasta’s blackness. The browned butter melds with the rosé’s silken texture and feather of residual sugar. But the dry, powdery texture and light lemon of the Mizithra matches the rosé’s tart acidity and whiff of chalk minerality and texture.
They should put this pairing on a Euro. Italy, Greece, France, and (let’s pretend the butter is from) Germany somehow work together amazingly. The day’s heat washes away. The Darkside has a love child with the Jedi. I digress…
Experimenting in the kitchen need not be complicated to amaze. And when in doubt about wine, try rosé.
WAYWARD WINE 