Guinness Stout Brownies

Our friend Jeff at Wort's Going On Here just added a post about Guinness cupcakes, and I thought I would share with you a Guinness-based desert that I recently had the pleasure of making and of course, enjoying:

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons unsalted room temperature butter, cut into cubes
• 8 ounces dark bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 3/4 cup white chocolate chips
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup superfine or granulated sugar
• 1-1/4 cups (10 ounces) Guinness Extra Stout beer (see Note below) - I used a DaveDave Chocolate Raspberry Porter instead
  
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/8 cup (about) confectioners' sugar for dusting

PREPARATION:

- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13-inch baking pan with nonstick foil.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, and salt until evenly combined. Set aside.
- Melt butter, bittersweet chocolate, and white chocolate chips in a double-boiler over very low heat, stirring constantly until melted. Remove from heat.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add melted chocolate mixture, beating until combined.
- Beat reserved flour mixture into melted chocolate mixture. Whisk in Guinness stout beer. The batter will seem a bit thin. Drop semisweet chocolate chips evenly on top of batter (some will sink in).
- Pour into prepared baking pan. Bake 25 to 30 minutes on center rack in the oven, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean.
- Let brownies cool, uncovered, to room temperature. Dust with confectioners' sugar before serving.
- Note: The beer should be at room temperature. This recipe uses a little less than a standard 12-ounce bottle of beer. Do not include foam in the measurement. Either spoon off the foam or let it rest until the foam subsides.

I made these for a party later in the week, so I froze them for a few days and let them thaw in the fridge the day of - they were awesome. INcredibly rich, though - you'll need a fresh brew to help finish them off, of course. The DaveDave Chocolate Raspberry Porter went great with the recipe. The raspberry flavor just squeaked through in the end, but added a very nice touch to the brownies. Also - be liberal with the chocolate; what's just a bit more going to hurt??


Check out the original recipe page here

more beer than your mom can handle

a couple of quick updates on some brews that have been created in the past few weeks here at davedave. first, we had a double brew day in the end of january - man.2 and the spicy orange witbier. after three weeks of hard work, man.2 was bottled and set aside for conditioning this past sunday, the 17th with a record setting 62 bottles capped. we also took an immediate post-primary taste of man, and it is to the best knowledge of this brewery that the finished brew will be even better than the original - which was pretty damn good in itself. man.2 will be ready to drink around the first week of march, and will continue to age well long after that.

the spicy orange witbier is currently still in the primary stage, and may be moved to secondary this week with more spices added and then let sit for a few more weeks.

surprisingly, god is NOT FINISHED. can you believe it? after around two months of aging with whiskey soaked oak chips, the gravity readings on god were not low enough. in fact, they were still higher than most original gravities of beers that i've brewed. over a month ago we did a partial reboil of god, added more and more malt and hops, created a "starter" carboy (approx 1 gallon) into which we pitched another round of the super high gravity yeast, and then after 4-5 days, added the rest of the remaining batch. that was 3 weeks ago, and it's still going strong. the carboy has been bubbling at around 8 sec. apart consistently for the past week and hasn't slowed. so maybe we'll see god sometime by 2009...

the chocolate raspberry porter has been bottled for around 16 days now and is getting pretty good. i realize now that it was a mistake to add the additional semi and bittersweet chocolate to the boil, and should have relied on the chocolate malts to bring in the chocolate flavor. this is definitely a correction necessary for the future. the raspberry flavor has rounded out and is lost a little in the beer - hopefully a few more weeks and the flavors may re-emerge

also, emma and i attended the stone brewery beer tasting at jungle jims last friday and were able to come away with 6 boxes of the bottles used at the event. since we've only got around 30 left on the shelf, this couldn't have come at a better time. now the capacity is back up, to around 150 beers worth, which works well considering the three brews that are currently in primary: as mentioned, the spicy orange witbier, god, and BLEEDING HOP BUCKET.


THAT'S RIGHT - WE NAMED A BEER, 'BLEEDING HOP BUCKET.' As i've mentioned in the past, we've been looking for an IPA to knock us on our asses for some time. we want something that will make us bleed hops when we drink it. we've attempted before, with The Hop, and Batch 11, but neither of those will compete with what we've done over the weekend. Bleeding Hop Bucket (what i would like to call a TRIPLE, or rather - imperial...) IPA was brewed with not 5, not 10, not 15, not even 20, 25 or 30 ounces of hops. we used 33, that's right THIRTY THREE OUNCES of hops in one 5-gallon batch. on top of that, there are 7 ounces of fresh hop leaves on reserve waiting to be dry-hopped in secondary come a few weeks from now. this was one of the most intense brews ever attempted by davedave, and it was a valiant success. look for more updates on this brew in the future.


dave