Pumpkin Bread in July

I know it's the last day of July, but our apartment smelled an awful lot like Thanksgiving this afternoon. The other day Jason was cleaning out the freezer and discovered some pumpkin leftover from last year, and then yesterday after the brewing he boiled down leftover wort (basically sweet, dark-colored malt water with sugars and flavor extracted from barley) and turned it into syrup. A really thick syrup, kind of like molasses.

malt syrup

And with pumpkin and this new ingredient in the house, I had to try it out. So I took my favorite pumpkin bread recipe and modified it (see my recipe at end).

It's sadly addicting, but I've only had two pieces so far.

So I know most people don't have this stuff on hand, but I think using molasses or molasses and honey (or even just honey?) would be really good, too.

Malty Pumpkin Bread

• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1/2 cup barley malt extract
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1-1/3 cups flour
• 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• If no spice in pumpkin puree, add cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, etc.

Mix liquid ingredients together, then add dry ingredients and stir everything in. Bake in a greased and floured bread pan on 350 for 45-50 minutes. (If you like things sweeter, up the syrup to 3/4 cups or use 1 cup of sugar.)

Brewing Adventures - Honey Brown

On Saturday, our friends Tasha and Casey came over to help us brew a honey brown. Here are some pictures showing the all-grain brewing process. (Thanks, Casey, for taking most of these!)

It took about five hours, but was fun and there was plenty of time to snack and play games while things were sitting/boiling.

preparing the wort

all the sugars coming out

leftover grains

cooling it down after the boil

adding it to the fermenter

Why Beer & Basil?

My husband brews his own beer, and since our apartment balcony is pretty much covered in pots of tomatoes and herbs, it's not surprising we decided to throw some basil in one of the last batches. Of course, the basil we used wasn't actually from our garden -- it was cheap, store-brand dried basil. But it still tastes good.

I'm becoming partial to Jason's experimental beers. He doesn't just do all-grain brewing now (where you extract the malt from grain yourself rather than buying the already-processed malt sugar), but he also makes his own recipes. I like the basil pale ale that's on tap now, but one of my favorite beers ever is his pale ale with lime, lemon, and grapefruit peel. The grapefruit and hops had a surprisingly taste: a burst of tartness/hoppyness at the beginning and then a smooth, non-bitter finish.

We like basil in more than beer, too. Our $2 plants from K-Mart are growing like weeds and we have to trim off the biggest leaves every few days. So now fresh basil goes with everything from pizza to lemonade. The only thing that hasn't turned out is when we tried making infused olive oil with it, but the leaves were covered in white stuff (mold?) after only a week, even in the fridge. Some experiments are just doomed to fail, I guess.