Beer and Bread: A Merry Christmas from C'est Bon Biere

First of all, we at C'est Bon Biere would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy new year.

We had a wonderful year brewing beer while learning about new beer styles and recipes. It has always been a mission of ours to create "his and her" beers, a friendly competition between beer recipes created by husband and wife. By a 3-1 decision "her" beers were the fan favorite at festivals.

Some of the "hers" fan favorites this year included Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Milk Stout, Just Peachy Sour Peach Ale, and Blueberry Bread Pudding Barleywine. Some of the "his" fan favorites included the Belgian Missile Crisis Belgian Wit, Night Shift Porter aged in a whiskey barrel, and Hakuna Mahopa Black IPA aged in a whiskey barrel.

Overall this year, we brewed about 15 different styles of beer, and have refined some of our favorite recipes. We love going to beer festivals and getting all of the positive feedback from our fans and beer enthusiasts alike.

This weekend marked the last brew of the season. We capped off a great year by brewing the Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Milk Stout and a new Pilsner-style Saison we are calling Jolie Blonde.

SPENT GRAINS

One question we have been asked at many brew days is what do we do with our spent grain? Many commercial breweries produce enough spent grain to create a partnership with local farms where the grains are used to supplement cattle feed. This is a great idea, not entirely practical for home brewers who only produce 10-20 pounds of grain with each 5 gallon batch of beer.

Spent grains from the stout.

We finally decided to do something with our spent grains (granted a small portion of them). We made our very first batch of  Pain Ordinary, or French bread. After all, beer is still referred to as "liquid bread". We added some spent grains from our chocolate stout into the dough to give the bread a touch of roasted flavor.

Two of our delicious rolls of home-made bread

Our home-made bread is delicious, and it pairs well with any of our beers on tap. Making bread from scratch is pretty time consuming, but the results are so rewarding. Beer brewing and bread making are more alike than we thought. Maybe we will start calling bread "solid beer"!

Don't Drink and Drive, Bike and Brew!

So its been a while since our last blog post. I hope everybody is enjoying their summer so far. We finally got the chance to spend some time with the homebrew club on a weekend bike ride. Check out the St. Tammany Trail to see all of the areas you can ride. It was a great time getting to meet other fellow homebrewers, and drink some beer in the process.

So the group met in downtown Mandeville on a Saturday morning. Half of the people brought bikes, and the other half of us rented bikes from the Shiver Shack, a great place to get everything from bicycles to snowballs. There was one tandem bike for rent there. Can you imagine riding one of these things!

Kermit makes it look so easy!

Thankfully, we all had separate bikes, and began the ten mile ride to Abita Brewing Company. Everyone there had been on the tour before, so it was nice to enjoy their beers on tap again. From Abita, we made our way back towards Mandeville, stopping at Chafunkta Brewing Co. We got a private tour from the owner, and got to grill him with questions about opening up his own brewery. He still has a full time job, and brews part time on nights and weekends. A huge time commitment!

It was also interesting to learn that the brewing equipment used at Chafunkta was handed down from Parish Brewing. The owner at Chafunkta has plans to upgrade his brewery to brew at a larger capacity, and pass down the old brewing equipment to the next up-and-coming brewery in Louisiana. Then it will be considered "third generation" brewing equipment for start-up breweries in the state. The tour of Chafunkta was great, because we got to spend time with a professional brewer and hear his story of starting up a brewery (Something that you know Sam and I are passionate about).

Finally, we finished with beer and lunch at Old Rail brewpub, recently named one of the top new bars in the New Orleans area! [Insert article from old rail FB] We were lucky enough to meet the head brewer at Old Rail, who gave us a tour of their brewery. The layout of the restaurant is interesting, because the brewery is visible from anywhere in the building. Old Rail recently received a silver medal in the US Open of Beer for their Extra Special Bitter (ESB) called Echo Sierra Bravo.

We had a great time riding bikes with fellow homebrewers, and meeting some professional brewers in the area. It's great to see the craft beer industry growing in south Louisiana. Remember to keep drinking local, support local craft brewers.

As for C'est Bon Biere, we have the Belgian Missile Crisis bottled (let me know if you would like to try some), and brewing our award winning milk stout Guilty Pleasure within the coming weeks. That will be ready by the end of summer, when the weather starts getting cooler. Thanks for reading, and keeping up with us here at C'est Bon Biere. Who knows, maybe someday we will inherit the same brewing equipment used by Parish Brewing, Chafunkta Brewing, and whoever else is lucky enough to begin their own brewery.

Bataille des Bieres Results

Recently, the Lafayette homebrew club, Dead Yeast Society, put on a homebrew competition. There were 4 categories of beer: Light Hybrid Beer, American Ale, Stout, and India Pale Ale.

Sam and I decided to enter our Guilty Pleasure Milk Stout. There were 19 entries in the stout category. Here are the results:

Pretty good for our first competition!

SILVER MEDAL!!! We are both very excited about the results. The stout had the most entries in it of the four categories. So to those of you who have tried this beer, thank you for your positive feedback. For those of you who have not yet tried this brew, don't worry, we will definitely be making it again.

You will notice there are three styles of stout listed here. If you want to read more about different styles of beer, mead, and cider, here is a good link explaining all of them:  http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/catdex.php

On another exciting note, we are finally engaged!

She almost cried!

For the wedding, we will be serving our homebrewed beer. Hopefully by then we have a few more award winners. Until then, Cheers!

Don't Criticize me Bro! (Guilty Pleasure Milk Stout)

There is no right way to drink a beer. Some people chug their beer, some people nurse their beer. Others spill it on ping pong tables while listening to the newest music from Mumford & Sons. That is the true definition of alcohol abuse!


I used an eCard in the blog.. All time low!

When people are trying our homebrew for the first time, I like to be there to walk that person step by step of how they "should" drink the beer. It's almost like my baby that I don't want to be mistreated. Sam and I have referred to our beer as "our baby" while it ferments in the closet. I don't want to dictate how to drink our beer, I just want people to get a full appreciation for it. I am sorry to anyone who I have annoyed for doing this to you.

Here is what I look like when someone tries our beer for the first time, and likes it:



A "Friends" GIF... this is going downhill fast

Sam and I recently submitted our Guilty Pleasure Milk Stout to a homebrewing competition in Lafayette, LA. This means that our beer will be critiqued and criticized (constructively, of course). Here is what I look like waiting for the homebrew competition results:


SpongeBob is a little better...

  Hopefully we get some positive reviews, but the best part is that we will get a some great tips on improving this brew. It turned out to be a huge hit this winter, so improving it will be an exciting project. I will say that I did not expect people to be open to such a dark, thick beer. It turns out, people were more intrigued by the complex flavors of chocolate and coffee in a drink that was still considered beer. Whether it is chocolate, beer, or both, everyone has a Guilty Pleasure.