Malt Liquor Time

Yesterday was pretty much awesome. I ordered an old Charlie Papazian book, “Home Brewer’s Gold” from some biscuit and book store (?) in Georgia and it finally arrived.

You may be asking yourself, ”why is this so awesome?”. For starters it has the fucking recipe for Olde English “800?.

I have been on the lookout for a good malt liquor recipe for a while now. My searching started off with St. Ides and then went to Colt .45 but nothing turned up. Rumors that a recipe for OE was included in this book were flying around a few beer nerd message boards. I opened up the book like a kid on Christmas day, went right to the table of contents and quickly flipped to the Gold Award winning entry for American Malt Liquor…

My eyes widened as I quickly made my way through the recipe. I whispered “yesssssssssss” to myself knowing that I have access to all of the ingredients and equipment required to brew this masterpiece.

So the homies and I are going to cook some of this shit up in the next few weeks. In the meanwhile, check out some of the absolutely amazing reviews of OE at beeradvocate.com while I try to find a way to put this crap in old 40 oz bottles. I need to find some 40′s that don’t have the twist-off caps and that would have required a bottle opener but I have a feeling they don’t exist.

EDIT: Here’s the all-grain recipe taken from the book for those wanting to try it out on their own:

Olde English 800
5 Gallons

OG: 1.055 (13.5)
FG: 1.004 (1)
ABV: 7%
Color: 4.5 SRM
Bittering Units: 14

3.5 lbs. American 2-row pale malt
3.75 lbs. American 6-row malt
3 lbs. flaked corn
2 HBU (56 MBU) American Cluster hops (pellets) – 105 minutes (bittering)
1.5 HBU (43 MBU) American Nugget hops (pellets) – 105 minutes (bittering)
1/4 tsp. Irish moss
Wyeast 2007 Pilsen Lager yeast

A step infusion mash is employed to mash the grains. Add 10 quarts (9.5L) of 130-degree F (54.5 C) water to the crushed grain and flaked corn, stir, stabilize and hold the temperature at 122 degrees F (50 C) for 30 minutes. Add 5 quarts (1.9 L) of boiling water. Add heat to bring temperature up to 150 degrees F (65.5 C). Hold for about 60 minutes.

After conversion, raise temperature to 167 degrees F (75 C) water, lauter and sparge with 4 gallons (15 L) of 170 degree F (77 C) water. Collect about 6.5 gallons (25 L) of of runoff, add bittering hops and bring to a full and vigorous boil.

The total boil time will be 105 minutes. When 10 minutes remain, add Irish moss. After total wort boil of 105 minutes (reducing wort volume to just over 5 gallons), turn off the heat, then separate or strain out and sparge hops. Chill the wort to 65 degrees F (18 C) and direct into a sanitized fermenter. Aerate the cooled wort well. Add an active yeast culture and ferment for 4 to 6 days in the primary at 55 degrees F (15 C). Then transfer into a secondary fermenter, chill to 50 degrees F (10 C) to age for two more weeks, then lager for two to four more weeks at 40 degrees F (4.5 C).

When secondary aging is complete, prime with sugar, bottle or keg. Let condition at temperatures above 60 degrees F (15.5 C) until clear and carbonated, then store chilled.

Double Jucy Lucy Matts Bar mpl

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the double Jucy Lucy from Matt’s Bar in Minneapolis:

Your basic Jucy Lucy is a 7 oz. hamburger with cheese inside the patty. After cooking on the grill that cheese gets really fucking hot and will burn the shit out of your lips if you get into it too early. Add the optional grilled onions and this shit is pretty tasty.

Let’s talk about the first time I had one of these hoes. It was 2006 and I was in town for Dre Day. We stopped at Matt’s Bar and Mike 2600 wanted to show us what was up. We all had a Jucy Lucy, I burned my lip, and then we stopped by the Mall of America where Mike was feeling really ill and DJing at some bullshit clothing store. I had the awesome opportunity of being on the toilet 6 or 7 times shitting my pants off. After that incident I swore off the burgers but Mike has since convinced me that they are ok and the shitting episodes were a one-time thing.

So I got off the plane last Friday really buzzed from the excessive drinking that took place while I waited for for 6 extra hours in the airport because President Bush came to town and brought lightening, along with all of the outgoing flights, down with him. My shit got cancelled and they put me on another flight which was also cancelled so I headed to the Jose Cuervo Tequileria where I drank rum and cokes and ate carnitas. After that I headed towards the gate but came across the Budweiser Staduim Club so I stopped and had some bullshit Belgian wheat beer they had on tap. On the plane I had a couple more rum and cokes so when we landed I was ready to take on this bitch.

We headed toward the 5-8 Club or whatever the fuck it’s called where I planned on starting some shit about how they “allegedly” invented the burger but it was a pain in the ass with traffic so we ended up going to Matt’s Bar where we consumed the only Jucy Lucy of the trip.

pic

The waitress arrived and we placed our drink order. Mike had a water and I ordered a Sierra Nevada ESB. As the drinks arrived I asked if they would make me a double Jucy Lucy (not on the menu) and the waitress was confused at the concept but finally after a while Mike did what he’s good at and broke out his pen to draw an illustration of what she proposed. She said a regular Jucy Lucy with a cheesburger on top would be better, I begged to differ and asked them to stack two of the burgers on top of each other.

The food came and my burger could barely be wrapped in the wax paper. It was pretty big, probably 15 or so ounces of beef before cooking and about the size of the Big MacChicken. It smelled amazing.

pic

Mike got a regular Jucy Lucy and we split a giant basket of fries.

This time I waited a few minutes before taking a bite, it was greasy and delicious. The optional onions really took this shit over the top and it reminded me of something I would make at home.

Dipping fries in this pile of cheese/grease was amazing.

After we left Matt’s we stopped at an art gallery for an opening that Mike’s homie, Todd Bratrud, had going on for his green women in lingerie with lizard tails and shit. They gave away some fresh t-shirts and shades

It was fly and Mike’s moustache DJ’d for a few hours while I drank some Summit Pale Ale and shit (only once!) in their basement. Bitch Ass Darius picked me up and we headed over to Get Cryphy! at First Ave. where Plain Ole Bill yelled directly into my ear all night whenever I played something he liked.