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 The Northwest winter rains are here and the shortest day of the year is getting close. This Thanksgiving Chef Joel suggests we spice up our turkey dinner to warm us up. You can make an easy rub for your bird and bake it off in a solution of beer broth. The directions are easy enough, give it a try a see how you like it:

Directions for a 20 Pound Turkey

1 cup of mixed dry basil, thyme, and oregano

1/3 cup dry red chili flakes

1/3 cup chopped fresh garlic

1/3 cup Paprika & chili powder mixed

Salt and Pepper to taste

½  pound Melted butter

Mix melted butter with all ingredients to make into a paste. Rub and massage all over bird (show it the love!). Set aside for 30 minutes.

Set Turkey in a roasting pan on a rack (if you don’t have a rack make a bed of carrots, celery, and onion to put it on)

Mix together and pour over turkey:

16 oz Chuckanut beer (or any low hopped beer)

1/3 cup chopped garlic

1 cup of water

Bake covered according to directions but in the final 20 minutes uncover so the skin gets brown and crisp.

Make gravy with the pan drippings to finish off your holiday bird.

Serve your turkey with any Chuckanut beer, light or dark! We feel lucky and grateful to have so many great Chuckanut beers on tap this holiday season! And we’re also grateful to all of you Chuckanutters for supporting us throughout the year!

 This year we’ve brought back two old favorites that were produced in the past. It was 3 years ago that Chuckanut Brewery brewed its Schwarz (black) Bier and Bock. Many of our fans have asked us to produce these old time favorites again but we didn’t have the tank space to make them. Now that we have more tanks we’re back at it again.

Schwarz Bier won Silver at the 2009 GABF but we rarely brewed it since. This year we are trying something new by making our Schwarz with ale yeast instead of lager yeast.  The resulting beer is a medium bodied black beer with lots of roasted barley, coffee flavors similar to a Stout. Schwarz finishes smooth with a hint of bitterness and is a beer that’s great on a wet, cold night with roasted meats or something like our woodstone oven roasted burgers!

Brewing Bock requires an investment in time. Our Bock has been in the fermentation tank for over 2 months! We’ll be kegging up this beautiful beer in a couple of weeks after aging 3 months in the tank. Served in a special glass to highlight its unique personality, Bock is a strong, malty, rich beer with full body and toffeeish flavors. High in alcohol this beer is great with desserts, by itself, or with our meatloaf entrée.

We don’t know when we’ll be brewing these beers again so if you see them on tap make sure to give them a try. As for the Bock we’ll probably be keeping it to serve exclusively in our Kitchen because we want to make it last as long as we can, and we’ll be serving it at our Dec 2 Beer Dinner in the brewery for a special treat. Make sure to stop by for a glass of Bock and you’ll easily realize how special this beer is and how lucky you were to drink it at the source!

 Your mouth is filled with thousands of taste buds that sense a variety of flavors. Some people are much more sensitive than others explaining why you might think a dish spicy and your friend doesn’t think it’s spicy enough! When tasting beer many factors come into play. Not only are the sensitivities within your mouth of varying degrees but what you ate before you tasted or what you didn’t eat before you tasted will have an effect on how you perceive flavors. When tasting it is helpful to clear the palette and come to the glass with an open mind. Off flavors exist in some beers due to fermentation considerations or packaging situations. At Chuckanut we work hard to bring the purest of flavors to your palette. We work from a sensitive point of view and take special care in the fermentation of our beers. By keeping the beer at near or just below freezing temperatures fermentation is slow and steady in order to keep ‘off flavors’ at a minimum.

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Carbonation can have an effect on how we interpret the flavor of a beer as well as serving temperature. One of our newest beers, the American Dark Lager, gives the sense that the beer is spicy but there are no spices added to the beer, the natural carbonation (CO2) on the tongue translates to a spicy flavor.  Enjoy tasting your beer and broaden your pallet by drinking a variety of beers. Skol!