Spent Grain Meatballs

I think I've found a recipe for the Homebrewers' Guild potluck this year.

Ingredients:

• ~600g lean ground pork
• 2-3 teaspoons of dry tarragon
• 1 1/2 cups spent grains
• salt & pepper to taste

Grains left from making a dark beer, like my own Sarcastic Doorman, are preferred.  (Recipe for the latest batch of Sarcastic Doorman this weekend sometime, maybe.)

1. Run half of your grains through the food processor for a while.  They don't have to be smooth, just mushed-up a bit.
2. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix thoroughly with your hands.
3. Roll into 4 - 6cm diameter balls.
4. Arrange balls evenly in a low baking dish which can be covered with foil.  Cover with foil.
5. Bake in a 190C oven for 15 minutes.
6. Remove foil, turn balls over carefully with tongs.
7. Bake 15 minutes longer, un-covered.

They're pretty great!  Somebody who prepares meat more often than me might improve on the cooking times, maybe, but I'm comfortable with them as is.

Oh, yeah...  And I did stand-up on Monday for the first time.  That was also pretty successful, so I'll probably be doing both these things more often.

Cynic Ale

Smashton & Parris started a beer series over the summer, themed around famous philosophers.  The first entry, the awkwardly-named "The Horror of Wit-Kenstein ('s Monster)" (no one has ever actually called it that, but it's on the label) was a dark buckwheat pseudo-witbier with American yeast and LOTS of citrus.  It was pretty successful, but too much work to do the same way again.  Maybe there'll be a Bride of Wit-Kenstein ('s Monster) someday, without quite so much mandarin orange zest in it.

There are plans in the works for a couple of other entries, but the first follow-up is a very small batch of "Riogenes the Cynic", an ESB of sorts brewed with flaked rye, oats, and Nugget hops.  It just went into bottles today, and unlike the last one, I think I actually will brew more of this one, because the pre-carbonation sample was pretty good and it doesn't involve grating all my fingers off.  It could be maltier, but it's easy enough to adjust that.

Anyway, I ran out of tape, but here's the one bottle that got labeled:

Not bad, eh?