Cooking Under the Influence: Ginger Bread Brown French Dip

Anyone who has a slow cooker knows how nice it can be to out everything in, set the timer, walk away, and come back at the end if the day to dinner being ready. Normally I use it a lot during fall and football season, but since it's been unseasonably cool lately, I decided to pull it out of the pantry.

I always like a simple recipe. For one thing there's an ease in the kitchen who you keep things simple. Another nice thing is that it allows the food to really shine, as long as it's cooked well. This recipe has very few ingredients, and it's one that The Big Guy has requested become a more regular part of the rotation. That's how I know I got this one right.

I took a recipe that I found on Pinterest and added some delicious local beer to it. I went with some Ginger Bread Brown from Triton. The flavors in the beer were a really nice complement to everything else that was in the slow cooker. I kept everything else very minimal.

Ingredients

• 3 pound beef roast (such as a rump or top round)
• 1 (12 ounce) bottle of dark beer
• 2 cups beef broth
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• French baguette, French rolls, or other crusty bread for serving
• Slices of provolone

Directions

1. Trim excess fat off of roast and place in a large slow cooker. Add all of the remaining ingredients to the slow cooker and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours or longer if you can. More time gives all those flavors a better chance to blend with each other.  
2. Split open your rolls (and spread with butter, if desired). Heat in a toaster oven until toasted or bake in a regular oven set to 350°F until warm and toasty (about 10 minutes).
3. Slice meat across the grain and pile on top of toasted rolls. (Our roast pulled apart once it was done so we didn't need to slice it all.)
4. Place cheese in rolls and add meat to create sandwiches.  
5. Serve hot sandwich with a small bowl of reserved au jus for dipping.

 

I served the finished dish with some Brussels sprouts roasted with garlic and pepper.

Click here to view the original recipe.

Chocolate Cake

When you're a beer geek even your romantic side likes a good brew. Valentines Day just came and went and in the spirit of the holiday I got the wife chocolates, roses and chocolate cake beer by Sun King Brewing Co. That's right, you can say it, "Playa, play on!!!"

Chocolate Cake is an incredibly dark Brown Ale with 14 IBUs and 6.5% abv. It is so dark and chocolatey I thought for sure it was a stout until I checked out their site.

This beer pours super dark brown, verging on black. Whatever head may have been there quickly disperses and turns into a very light brown or tan lacing. It has a roasty cocoa aroma. There is chocolate and just a hint of smokiness.

The beer was not as big as I expected. I thought this was going to be closer to a really dark imperial or something like the Bourbon Country Brand Stout. Take that out of your head because it messed up my taste buds when I first went into it. It is not, it is a Brown Ale- more like a super amped up version of a Newcastle. The flavor is not too sweet, with bitter chocolate and slightly dark toasty malts. It is rich and smooth with less bitterness than I expected. This beer could have had a very crisp bitter finish, that would have rounded it out more but Chocolate Cake had almost no hop flavor. I guess with 14 IBUs I shouldn't have expected too much more. The mouth feel was moderate to, lighter on the tongue than a stout would be, but still very solid.

 

Since it was a holiday, my wife and I each enjoyed some Godiva chocolate truffles. The beer goes great with the sweet milk chocolate and gooey fillings. The bittersweet flavors of the beer blend well with the sweet candy and the light mouth feel helps to not override the creaminess of the tasty treats. The beer was good, but I've come to expect at least good from Sun King. I would drink it again without question, and my wife totally loved it.

 

I give it a 3.5

Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale

Rogue Brewery decided to do something different. You know its different right away when you buy it because the beer comes in a pepto pink bottle. You cannot miss it mixed in with all of the dark colored craft beers on the shelf. Rogue did their own collaboration not with another brewery but with Voodoo Doughnuts a doughnut shop known for pushing the boundaries of flavors. I love a good doughnut. I love beer. I should really love this stuff.

The Bacon Maple Ale was 30 IBUs and a reasonable 5.6% abv. It poured out a mahogany brown with a small tan head that went away pretty quickly. It smelled like breakfast... There were huge notes of bacon and hints of maple that could only make me think of bacon and pancakes. The aroma was so potent that every time I went to my glass I got a big ol' wiff of it in my face.

The flavor was very sweet and malty but it had a huge smoked flavor which was different. There were notes of caramel in there, but most of it was drowned out by the heavy sweetness of maple. The smoke and the maple were like two titans fighting above the mortal world drowning everything else out. I thought the flavors may get clearer as they warmed up, but that was just wishful thinking. No new notes came out and the smokiness still overwhelmed the rest of the beer.

It had an almost greasy mouth feel that seemed to coat your tongue and teeth. There was a bitter aftertaste that stuck around as long as the sticky coating did.

The beer was a neat experiment, but not something I am dying to buy a case of. Good for Rogue for going out on a limb, but not my favorite.

I give it a 1.5

The Deuce

Indianapolis's Sun King Brewery has gotten together with Oskar Blues from Colorado to create The Deuce. It is their second CANlaboration, and it is a limited release that you can only pick up at Sun King and select liqueur stores. The Deuce is a hopped up brown ale. The beer was made with signature ingredients from both breweries (Sun King used their pop corn from the Popcorn Pilsner).

The beer pours out a dark mahogany brown with a lacy tan head. It has a hoppy smell similar to the black IPA that Sun King has had on tap.

The Deuce has an ABV of 7% and 69 IBUs. That is a bunch of IBUs for a brown ale.

The beer has a citrus hoppy start followed by some maltyness with a hint of smokeyness in the body of it. The hops close it out with a clean finish that lingers just long enough. 

All in, the hops totally dominate this beer to the point of drowning out most of the sweetness. 

The beer is about $18 per 4 pack of pint cans. It was pricier than I would normally go for something with this sort of flavor profile, but when Sun King puts out a limited release, I have to jump on it.

   

I give it a 2.5

Judy Blue Eyes

Judy Blue Eyes was put together by Bier Brewery. I had a taste of this in their taproom. It was fantastic. I had to take some home with me for the guys.

This is an imperial brown ale. It is 21.3 IBUs and 8% abv.


Everything about this beer is bigger and better than your average brown. Imperials are standard beers that have had added malts to increase their abv. Normally the brewers then add hops to make the beer more balanced. Everything has been amped up, and micro breweries are doing it with just about every style.

I have had a few different imperials in my time but this one was great. It was as dark as night and sweet as sin with an angelic white halo of head. The head basically disappeared before I even started drinking it.

This had strong caramel and chocolate flavors with just a hint of nuttinesss. There was a smokeyness to the malts. It was subtle and well balanced so as to not overwhelm the flavor of the beer. It reminded me of  s'moore at a campfire. It had a nice clean hoppy finish that was a nice sharp bite on the tongue.

I give it a 4. Well done Bier.