Chile beer? Hold, please....

Finally some traffic from brewers! I was getting a swelled head about how many hits I got this week until I traced pretty much all of them back to a homebrewing forum's interest in those Kathy Ireland pics. (Sigh...and here I thought it was my legs that you loved.)

Well, welcome Kathy-obsessed homebrewers, because the upshot for me so far has been a helpful tip--thanks, Ron & Brenda--with regards to my current batch of would-be chile beer. It seems that chile oils wreak havoc on head generated by barley malts, so you're best off adding some wheat or Cara-pils, a.k.a. Dextrin malt.

Anyhow, the English Pale Ale I had hoped to dry-hop with chiles during the secondary fermentation stage didn't contain either of these head retainers, so I decided to keg it just as it was yesterday. I then dug around in a bunch of old Zymurgies until I found a wheat-containing, contest-winning recipe for 'chili' ale, as well as one for that (Belgian) saison-style I'd been wanting to make. Things are getting a bit more complicated, as I had to go beyond my usual supplier to find the specific yeasts these recipes require. (Can someone please explain to me why there is no brew supply store anywhere in the five boroughs?!) I'm also about to have my first experience with liquid malt extract and yeast. Meanwhile, New York is finally starting to heat up, and the witbier, my current light offering, is going fast--so I have a hunch that I'll be glad to have the plain old English Pale to fall back on with so much experimenting going on.

Chicks Brew, Too

Several weeks back, I received a 52-lb. package from BrewUnc#1, containing almost 20 years of back issues of Zymurgy, the official magazine of the American Homebrewer's Association. One of Zymurgy's editors is Charlie Papazian, who founded the group and authored its Bible, and is pictured holding the plaque (to the left) and hanging out with Kathy Ireland (above). Admittedly, all of the pictures here came from the same 1988 issue, but brewing remains a demographic that gives facial hair a bad name (& I even like facial hair!). I wound up throwing out about half of the issues after discovering that a complete article cycle is about 8 years long and that the older issues are b&w and way too fascinated that Chicks Brew, Too. The Kathy Ireland cover story killed me, though, so I kept that one: just imagine how many mustaches twitched to learn that Kathy was 'a beer enthusiast with the same fantasies that inspire most brewers.' (Did you know about her line of home furnishings, btw? Me neither.)

Anyhow, I've got a lot of reading to do, and just in time: the last of my pre-packaged kits is in the fermenter and I'm fixing to move to the level of (other people's) recipes next. I'm browsing for a creamy, chocolaty Porter for th'husband, and a frisky Saison for me. Any suggestions?