Tag Archive: torpedo

The garden has come along swimmingly.

So I had two cucumbers ready (maybe, they may have been a little under-ripe) and some hops.  Roughly 0.1 oz of Columbus (wet) and more Tettenang and Cascade.

The original reason for growing cucumber was hopped pickles, which my wife first heard about on The Chew TV show.  In looking it up, a good sounding recipe is here (yeah, she has blue-green hair, but she also has great taste in beer!).

I cut the recipe to 1/4 of the amounts.  I didn’t have any pickling salt, so I used sea salt (per another internet search) and I used a few sprinkles of ground mustard instead of mustard seed (and added both to the list of things to buy at the grocery store next week).  I used 0.1 oz of wet Columbus and 0.25 oz of wet Tettenang.  I used a Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA, which has a nice hoppy flavor that should go well with the recipe and add enough bitterness to be similar enough to Hopslam, as Ms. Porter used or Dogfish 90 minute IPA, which is what you can purchase commercially.  Hopslam is 70 IBU, and 90 Minute IPA is 90, Torpedo clocks in at 67 IBU.  In all three cases, there is quite a bit of hop aroma from late hops/hopstands/dry hop additions.

I love it when I cook with beer and it leaves enough of the bottle to drink!

In the jar, I threw a cascade cone into the jar with the smashed garlic clove, 1/4 oz of peppercorn, half a fresh de-seeded and de-veined jalapeno.  Everything else was to the directions (1/2″ headspace, 15 minute process in boiling water).

Hopped pickles!

So this was done on August 29.  The recipe says “a few days” for flavor, but I’m thinking I want to give these two weeks, which is consistent to other pickled recipes I’ve used.

Cheers!

EDIT: I tried these after a few weeks.  The strongest flavor is garlic, but the hops are in there and they are GOOD!  I may try another batch with no garlic and see what happens.