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Spanish Cock Ale Guy
Lancaster Anyone who’s read Charlie Papazian’s The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing knows about the Spanish Cock Ale—an obscure European beer for which he gives the recipe, admitting that he had never tried it before. The recipe he gives is actually a little vague, but when my friend, Jeremy Hinton, and I heard that Papazian himself was coming to Little Rock to conduct a taste test of local homebrew, we knew we had to try it, if only because in the book he admits never to having tasted the “barbaric” concoction. Here’s the recipe we used—and not only did it win first place, but it didn’t give us botulism, so you can trust it. Boil approximately six pounds of amber malt extract in two gallons of water. When it reaches boil, throw in two ounces of German magnum hops (may want to use a little more if the current year’s batch is rather low on alpha acids). While that’s going, take half a fryer chicken (free-range—no hormone-laden Tyson stuff) and boil it well, removing all the fat and skin. Then crush it with a hammer, breaking the bones. Take the crushed chicken pieces and put them in a cheesecloth sack, along with twelve ounces of raisins, a teaspoon of nutmeg, a few ounces of whole cloves, and a pinch of mace. Tie off the bag and soak it in 1.5 liters of dry sherry—don’t use the expensive stuff. Let it soak there for two days. Once you have let your wort (the malty mixture above) boil for a sufficient length of time, pour it into a plastic, lidded fermenter containing two gallons of cool water. When it has cooled to room temperature, pour in your yeast—recommend white wine or champagne yeast, either in liquid or dry form (though be sure to prime the dry yeast). Let it bubble away! After two days, pour the sherry and the sack containing the chicken and other items into the fermenter. Note—leave the sack tied off. You do not want any actual chicken bits getting loose. When the beer is finished bubbling, remove the sack from the fermenter and bottle as usual. What you will have resembles something of a Christmas beer with its spiciness—and there will be no hint of chicken if you did everything correctly. The Spanish Cock Ale will afford you many hours of drinking enjoyment, as well as the fun of coming up with marketing campaigns for it: “Ain’t nothin’ my woman loves better....” Cheers.
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