Beer Batter Breakfast

Full Thicket Double IPA

Whew, it's been awhile. I actually have a few backlogged posts that I just haven't bothered to get to, so shame on me.
Giggity?
In honor of Madison Craft Beer Week 2014, I've decided to spend a little time getting back on track and there's some other exciting news coming once the new home is ready to be announced. In the meantime, though, we have a delightful Double IPA from Furthermore called Full Thicket. Full Thicket is a Wisconsin-hops-based Double IPA chock full of Cascade and Mt. Hood hops with enough malt to balance it out. The beer itself is delightfully well-balanced, and as a non-IPA fan, I still enjoyed it.

Prep/Cooking:

Yep. Looks like batter.
Full Thicket pours a smooth, light amber color with bountiful head and crisp, slightly sweet aroma. In batter form it's just as light as pretty much any other beer, but the taste was quite remarkable. The light sting of hops you usually get in the beer totally dropped off once it mated with the batter, and some of that latent malty sweetness that was being held back by the hops really came through. I was quite surprised at this batter, and it might be one of my favorite batters. 

Results:

#foodporn
Wow, again I was quite surprised by these pancakes. They were kind of flat in texture and just as light in color as you would expect from the beer/batter, but the flavor really blew me away. Again, no real hop presence in the pancakes at all (at least not from a bitterness standpoint - I fully believe the flavor profile of the hops lead to this magnificent pancake), but the pancakes themselves were delightfully sweet with a hint of the wheaty goodness you tend to see in more traditional wheat beers. Maybe it's something about them local ingredients, but boy were these great.

The Ternary Scale:

Pancakes: 3 - definitely go get some Full Thicket (which should be widely available) and make these pancakes. Way better than the beer if you ask me.
Syrup: 1 - Honestly syrup kind of killed the subtleties and the delightful crisp sweetness of the pancakes. It just turned into a big sweet mess.