Happy Purim!

Is there anything better than a holiday that demands both drinking until you can’t tell the difference between the main characters in the Purim story AND requires cookies? 

No – of course not. So to get into the Purim spirit, Elianna and I set about making Hamentashen, filled with with some special homebrew-inspired fillings. We made a total of three types – Blood Orange and Kumquat Marmalade with Belgian Pale Ale, Stout Wort and Dark Chocolate, and Poppy Seed – from a can.  Only one of these ended in epic failure.  Let’s start out with the good ones, shall we?

For the marmalade, Eli took the lead, and assembled the jam.  It turned out to be very easy – kumquats, blood orange, and a little ginger, sugar, and some homebrewed Belgian Pale Ale were all combined in a pot and allowed to reduce.

 

  

 

 

 

 

The natural pectin in the fruit thicken the sauce, and the pale ale made a perfect compliment.  I had brewed it with Galina hops, which provided a nice citrus nose to the beer.  The sugar in the marmalade stood up to the reduced hops, which provide a nice hint of bitterness in the background.  We made out dough, rolled it out, and stuffed some ‘tashen.

 

 

  

 

 While Elianna was making the marmalade, I was hard at work making the filling for my stout chocolate filling.  I started with about 2 pounds of grain, which I mashed at 155 degrees.  Inside was about a pound of pale malt, and a mix of chocolate roast,  black malt, some carapils and a bit of oats.   This was a lot of work for something that ended in an epic fail, but you live and learn.  

 

 

 

 

After forty five minutes of mashing, I strained out the spent grains, and reduced the sweet wort down into a syrup. 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the resulting wort syrup was mixed with Scharffen Berger 70% dark chocolate, and then stuck in the fridge to set.  When combining them, I simply poured the hot syrup over the chocolate and whisked, since I knew I wouldn’t want to expose the chocolate to high direct heat. 

 

 

 

The resulting “Chocolate Stout Ganache” is OMG, I-need-to-change-my-shorts delicious. The dark malts combined with the chocolate create a very toasted, just-barely shy of burnt flavor to the chocolate that is rich and indulgent, but not too sweet. I just can’t seem to leave this stuff alone. So I decided to go ahead and ruin it by stuffing it into Hamentashen.

Everything went well, until after about ten minutes in the oven, my beloved chocolate malt mixture boiled in the cookies, burning the chocolate, removing much needed moisture, and generally ruining my day.

 

 

 

See how the pools of chocolate that spilled over are still there, on the cooling rack?  That’s because it set up to a rooftop tar like consistency. Luckily, the poppyseed filling ones came out perfectly. So the new goal this Purim is to drink until you can’t tell different type of Hamentashen apart.  Go to it! 

I still a have lots of the stout chocolate ganache left – I’m thinking Chocolate Stout truffles?  There’s also more of my stout wort syrup – suggestions for what use to put that too this week?  A glaze perhaps? Other ideas? 

Tags: Hamentashen, homebrew, purim

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.