BetterBeerBlog

The idea for Beer Pong stemmed from a conversation with Mario from Brewed for Thought. The basic premise is that one blogger will pose a question and each participant will take about 2 rounds of emails to state their opinions. The resulting conversation would then be posted on the participant’s blogs.

This week was my turn to pick a topic and my question was: How would you go about introducing craft beer to people who aren’t familiar with them?

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

I agree, food and beer is a good way of opening people’s minds.  When I’ve thrown pairings at home for my wife and her friends, her non-beer drinking friends come for the cheese or desserts, but find a couple beers that they really like.  But that also takes me back to giving them something exceptional.  One of my wife’s friends who would typically drink the fruit wheat beers chose Bear Republic’s Hop Rod Rye as her favorite beer of the night when we had a Bear Republic tasting.

Trying to convince strangers to try something new is always difficult.  If you’re sitting next to someone at a bar, offer to buy them a beer if it matters than much to you.  Who turns down a free beer, right?  If you’re tending bar, and this is becoming increasing common, pour a little taste for the customer.  Bars that feature a selection of fine ales will always benefit from a more educated customer.

For me, Boont Amber was my introduction to craft beer.  It blew me away not because it was familiar, but because it was so different from anything I had tasted before.  Soon I was trying every beer available at the bar, then the grocery store.  The seed had been planted in one malty, hoppy sip.  If that pint had been any of the beers in that inner circle of Pete’s guide, I don’t know if I would have been so motivated to discover beer.

Go big or go home!

This past Wednesday marks the third week Sammy and I have been going the BJCP study group held at the More Beer! store in Los Altos headed up by BJCP Grand Master John Watson. I managed to convince Sammy to join me this time around although it didn’t take much convincing on her part. She has always expressed an interest in learning more about beer and this class presented the perfect opportunity for her to do so. I just need a reason to study so I can retake the test and hopefully move up a rank.

For those who don’t know, the BJCP is an amateur organization of people who undergo a strict testing and evaluation process in order to judge beer. Mainly on a homebrew level although the professional level is not uncommon. BJCP stands for Beer Judge Certification Program and it’s core beliefs can be summed up in these three points:

1. Promote Beer Literacy
2. Promote the appreciation of real beer
3. Recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills

It was about this time last year that I took the BJCP class the first time. Other than the similar timeframe and the material being covered, there is almost nothing similar between the two classes. The group we have now is much larger than last time around. I attribute this to the ever increasing world of craft beers and the people who are discovering them. This group also is a little more “chatty” in that they are more free and willing to offer their opinions on beer than the last class I was in. It helps that there are multiple BJCP judges in the class to begin with as well as the majority of people are homebrewers.

Another thing that is different is that inbetween beers, we spend time reading outloud the BJCP specifications for the next style of beer we will be judging. The first time through, there was a lot of dead time between beers and if you wanted to read up on the next style, it was all on you. It’s very helpful that everyone is into sharing and reading outloud and that the other homebrewers interject anecdotal stories here and there to support whatever style we’re on. Sammy seems to learn more from the anecdotal stuff than from the actual study guide.

Unlike last time, I will not be doing a complete write up of all the beers we tasted. Instead, I’ll just give a brief list of the styles we covered and what I took away from it. This post is more catch-up as 3 sessions have already gone by.

If you are interested in reading about what beers we tried specifically for each style, leave a comment or shoot me and email and I will go back and amend this post to show what we drank for each style, in case you wanted to play along at home. : )

Week 1:

This, by far, is the worst session of all the sessions. We covered the American Lite Lager, Standard Lager, Premium Lager, and Munich Helles before switching gears a little and then tasting examples of a German Pilsner and Bohemian Pilsner.

While the European Pilsners were very good, I spent a good chunk just trying to get through this first day. The American Lager family is not my favorite group of beer styles. I find them to be shadows of their European counterparts and “subtly” flavored.

On the plus side, I am now more familiar with how pils malt tastes like. I just don’t drink enoug Pilsners to really familiarize myself but it’s all starting to click together now.

Week 2:

Finally, more flavorful beers. This week we covered the following beer styles: Vienna Lagers, Oktoberfest, Dark American Lagers, Munich Dunkel, Schwartzbier, Maibock/Helles Bock, Traditional Bock, Doppelbock and Eisbock. That’s alot of beers to have to taste and scrutinize. In case I haven’t told you before, having to judge a beer takes a lot of the joy away from enjoying a beer. You tend to over analyze things and it take a mental toll on you as well.

Despite all that, I walked out of class today with a greater understanding of what Vienna and Munich malt tastes like as well as the nuances between the styles. In the case of the Schrwartzbier, I rediscovered this style and it would seem the way I though about this beer was incorrect. I used to think a Schwartzbier was a lager version of either the porter or stout when in fact, it’s much more delicate and subtly complex than either two.

Week 3:

Last night the group was able to delve into a set of beers many in the class was highly anticipating: the pale ales. We covered the following beer styles: Standard/Ordinary Bitter, Special/Best/Premium Bitter, Extra Special/Strong Bitter (English Pale Ale), American Pale Ale, American Amber Ale, English IPA, American IPA and finally, Imperial IPA. As you can imagine, we went through a lot of beers.

What was most interesting about this week’s class was that we had some homebrewed beers to try as well as commercial versions. As much as I enjoy drinking commercial versions, the true value of the class doesn’t appear until we begin to sample and judge homebrewed beers. Unless they’ve been stored in the most horrible of conditions, commercial examples tend to be in good shape and finding any flaws becomes difficult. You can nitpick them to death but sometimes, you’re just never sure as any flaws have been minimized greatly.

Having homebrew examples on the other hand, opens up into a completely different world of tasting. Because many homebrewers do not have professional equipment the flaws in their beers, if any, are more noticeable and soon the group is all on the same page. All of a sudden, we all know what “oxidized” tastes like. That’s a cool feeling when you look around the room and the proverbial “lightbulb” is lit above all of our heads.

Specifically talking about myself, I realize that I do not drink enough English beers to really call myself an expert on the subject matter, let alone knowledgeable. It’s one thing for me to read about the style characteristics and quite another to recognize them on my tongue or in my nose. American Pale ales and IPA I’m good with but I still have a lot of work to put in to understand English ales (German lagers, Scottish and Irish ales by extension).

Just in from my email, Russian River Brewing Company will be releasing their new beers in the near future. Here’s a list of the beers they’re talking about:

• The ever-popular Valentine’s Day Belgian-style black ale, REJECTION
• Cabernet barrel-aged sour beer with black currants, CONSECRATION
• And the long-awaited PLINY the YOUNGER

Rejection is currently on tap at their brewpub. Consecration will be available on February 2, 2009 and sold in 750mL bottles. Pliny the Younger will also be available on February 2, 2009 but can only be sold either by the glass at the brew pub or by the 1/2 gallon growler. They don’t ship growlers so you’d best be ready to pick up a few while you’re there.

Update: I’ve set up an event’s page for the Beer and Dessert Tasting Event. You can view it here. All the major event details are listed on that page, especially how to reserve your spot! As the event draws closer I will be releasing more details such as the menu so check back regularly.

It’s official! The committee at SF Beer Week has approved my request and now the team at BetterBeerBlog will be working with the nice folks over at Wine Affairs to bring to you another south bay SF Beer Week Event. I have been working with my team for the past couple of weeks designing a dessert menu around some of the beers they carry at Wine Affairs and I think we have a pretty nice 4-course event planned out for you.

I will be creating an event page tonight along with the full menu of desserts and beer. Needless to say, we are all very excited and look forward to hosting this event! Check back late tonight or early tomorrow morning for the event details.

This past Saturday Sammy and I were able to get out of the house for a few hours and head up north to San Francisco’s Speakeasy Brewery, located near Candlestick Park, or whatever it’s called nowadays. Despite the foul weather, heading out for some beers at a brewery I’ve always wanted to visit was a good idea. I would not have heard about this event if it were not for Facebook and the people from Beer by Bart who forwarded the invitation to me.

For those unfamiliar with Speakeasy Ales and Lagers, they’re a microbrewery out of San Francisco. In my opinion they brew pretty good beers that come in unique and memorable packaging. As the name alludes to, they have a prohibition-themed “look and feel” about their packaging that is a graphical representation of the Prohibition era. Their signature graphic though, is a simply drawn pair of menacing eyes.

The event is named “End of the Dark Ages” party/celebration thrown in honor of our new President, though most importantly to commemorate the end of the Bush era. The event itself is free but if you wanted to drink any of their beers, you would need to purchase drink tokens to do so.

As soon as we purchase our drink tokens, we made our way around the corner and found ourselves facing a packed brewhouse. A band was deafeningly playing on a stage to our left while the crowd sprawled out in front of us. I took a moment to take a photo and in those few seconds Sammy was off to redeem one of her tokens. I made my way through the crowd and finally caught up to her. It’s at that moment I heard my name being yelled by a group of people to my right. I look over and I see Gail and Steve (from Beer by Bart) as well as Jessica (the Thirsty Hopster) and her boyfriend Scott. We are all smiles as I greet each of them with a friendly hug.

Hunter’s Point Porter, 7.5% ABV

When Sammy joins the group beer in hand, I take the time to pick up my first beer of the day. It’s a chilly day and I order a pour of Hunter’s Point Porter to warm me up. Hunter’s Point Porter is a very dark brown, almost black beer with a brown head. It has a sweet malt aroma rooted in a deep, roasted malt vein with coffee and chocolate character. The flavor is similar with the addition of a noticeable alcohol note, which isn’t surprising considering this is a 7.5% ABV beer. Hunter’s Point is medium-high/high in body with medium carbonation and a slightly creamy texture. I’m liking this beer and I hope I can go back for seconds.

The rest of our time there is spent catching up. Gail is telling me about her brewing experiments, she’s now focusing on sour beers. Very adventurous for a very new homebrewer but more power to her. I’ll eventually get there. Jessica is regaling to us the challenges of working in the beer industry for Firestone Walker Brewing Company. Unfortunately, her and her boyfriend cannot stay much longer as they have a wedding to attend. Sammy and I spend the rest of our time just hanging out and enjoying the scene.

Prohibition Ale, 6.1% ABV

Prohibition Ale is the next beer I pick up. This beer pours a clear brown with amber highlights and a beige head. This beer is a balance between clean malt flavors and hop bitterness. The hop bitterness is medium in intensity, smooth, pleasant and not lasting on the palette. The malt flavors are toasty and on the sweet side. This beer is medium bodied and medium carbonation.

Big Daddy IPA, 6.5% ABV

Brilliantly clear gold in color with an off-white head. The malt aroma of this beer is bready while the hop aromas are citrus in nature. The flavor of this beer leans strongly towards the hop side with the hops flavor exhibiting a floral and citrus charcter. The hop bitterness is high but it isn’t sharp or harsh and sits on the palette comfortably. This is a pretty nice IPA.

Double Daddy Imperial IPA, 9.5% ABV

What a way to end the day. My last beer is Double Daddy, an Imperial IPA. Basically an Imperial IPA (Imperial anything really) is just a bigger version of whatever style it is. In this case, Speakeasy says they’ve doubled the malt and hops for this beer and as a result, you have a higher gravity beer with much more aggressive flavors and character.

Double Daddy pours out dark gold in color with an off-white head. It is a clear beer. This beer has a pronounced sweetness in it’s malt flavor and aroma while the hop characteristics are citrus in nature with a little bit of pineapple sweetness. Hop bitterness is high but, as in Big Daddy, doesn’t linger nor is it harsh. This is a very good beer and Sammy wishes she could drink more but she’s driving us home. Thankfully, she stopped after 1 and a half beers.

Overall Sammy and I had a great time at Speakeasy. The crowd was very mellow, friendly and family friendly as well. We also took the time to take photos with our newly minted President Obama. Apparently he is a huge fan of Speakeasy Ales and Lagers and was gracious enough to make an appearance. If there were any Secret Service Agents there, I didn’t see them.

I get to watch a lot of TV. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine. I particularly enjoy shows where I get to learn stuff, so you can imagine I watch a lot of HGTV, Discovery Channel, TLC, and the Travel Channel. Inspired by shows such as No Reservations and Bizaare Foods, I decided to call up a small group of my most adventurous friends to have a “Weird” Food Dinner Party at my house. I’ve toyed with the idea for a number of weeks, bouncing the idea between friends, when I finally put a stake in the ground and said we’re holding this today!

As we called our friends to invite them over, Sammy and I had to set a few ground rules:

1. One dish per person, minimum. Bring the “weirdest” thing you can think of.
2. You had to at least try everything.
3. You couldn’t say what you brought until after we ate it and talked about it a little bit.

With those simple ground rules, the stage was set and all we had to do was wait until the players showed up to play their parts. That being said, here are a series of photos from that night with my own thoughts regarding the dishes. I must warn you that some of these foods are truly for the adventurous. Try not to puke on your keyboards.

Pork Pulutan

This dish was brought over by my buddy Joey. He didn’t remember what the dish was actually called so I’m just naming it Pork Pulutan. It’s a Filipino dish and as the name would suggest, it’s made from pork. Pulutan is tagalog and is loosely translated as “picked up”. Basically, this is finger food; you eat it with your hands. Not necessarily a main dish, this is more in the vien of tapas, if you will and meant to be consumed when drinking.

Since I don’t know exactly what this dish is called, I can only guesstimate how it’s prepared, but I’m pretty sure this is just pork skin pulled off of a lechon, chopped into little bits and tossed with a sauce made from liver. This is an extremely flavorful dish, super high in fat and cholesterol, that has a very chewy sort of texture that may be off putting to a lot of folks. I thought this dish was pretty damn good but you just can’t eat a lot of it if you want to live a long and prosperous life.

Picked Pork Skin Salad (I don’t remember the real name)

This dis was one of three that Jason and Crystal brought over. It’s a Mexican dish that they sort of described as like a ceviche.

The pork skin is basically taken from the pig right after slaughter and pickled, there’s no cooking involved. Crystal was saying that in Mexico, it’s not uncommon to be served this dish and find the bristle still attached to the skin. Gives it a little added texture, I suppose.

They served this pickled pig skin is tossed with diced tomatoes, onion, garlic and peppers and served on a tortilla chip and garnished with sour cream and Tapatilo (hot sauce), if you so desired but I believe the “authentic” way to serve this dish is on a tostada. The pickled pig skin has the look, texture and flavor of jelly fish. I’m not into pickled food but this was tasty and fresh.

Chicharrón Prensado (I don’t remember the name but I think this is it)

This is a pretty simple dish made from chicharrón, or deep-fried, seasoned pork rind. Normally, chicharrón are light and crunchy (the rind type, anyway) but in this dish, they are much, much softer and probably closer to their original texture.

From what I remember, Jason said her prepared this dish using chicharrón and cooking it with a green chili sauce, or salsa verde. This is another soft and chewy dish where the texture may be very uncomfortable with people. The flavor is rich but tempered by the green chili sauce. I believe this is supposed to be served in a hot gordita. If you are able to get past the extremely chewy and soft texture, this is a very good dish. My mom makes something similar but uses Filipino spices and adds bittermelon as well.

Nopales

Nopales is a dish made from the pads of a cactus. As with the chicharrón prensado, it’s a stew. The cactus is cut up into smaller strips and then stewed with onions and other spices. This happens to be a specialty of Jason’s so he didn’t divulge all his secrets. That’s a good thing as if he taught me how to cook this, I’d never have to invite him to the house again.

The flavor is slightly tart but their texture varies greatly depending on how you cook them. They can be slightly crisp or soft and runny like snot, like okra. This is actually a very good dish, flavorful and spicy, but some people can’t get past the texture of the cactus. Too bad, more for me!

Deep-fried Stuffed Intestine

This was the dish my wife brought to the table. She didn’t actually cook it, it’s take out. Still, it qualifies as “weird” food so we’ll allow it.

I believe the intestines used are cow intestines and they are stuffed with a stalk of green onion before they are deep fried. While simplistic in execution, the prep time for this dish may be lengthy as you will need to thoroughly clean out the intestine of it’s original contents before stuffing it and frying it.

This dish is has a crunchy exterior and a chewy interior that is punctuated by the mild bite from the green onion. It is savory, fatty and oh-so-good. Many of the people at the table compared the flavor to duck. Sammy’s nephew loves this dish but only because he thinks it’s duck. If we told him what it actually was, he’d never eat it again.

Pinapaitan

This was the dish I contributed to the dinner. It’s a traditional, north Filipino dish called pinapaitan (aka papaitan). This loosely translates to “make bitter”. This is a dish that I grew up eating and I love it. It’s a rich and savory dish that can be face-crushingly bitter (depending on who makes it) but I made this dish more balanced.

This is poor people food. People used whatever meat they could get their hands on, most often water buffalo or goat. In my version, I used lean beef, pork liver, and beef stomach seasoned with diced onions, garlic and ginger. As I mentioned earlier, this is a bitter soup and the bittering agent I used is bile. Bile is an incredibly bitter substance our bodies make and secret into out intestines to emulsify and aid in the absorbtion of fats. It’s natural color is green. In fact, if you are ever sick to the point where you’ve thrown up so much your stomach is empty yet when you puke but your vomit is all green and bitter tasting? The green and bitter tasting is bile. Learn to love it. Embrace it.

To balance out the dish, I use vinegar. Two things surprised me the most when making this dish. First, it was waaay easier than I though. Second, the sourness of the vinegar, when juxtaposed against the gamey, stomach-churning aroma and bitter flavor of bile, brings out a sweetness to the soup.

David, one of our guests, thought the soup tasted so good and just inhaled the contents of his bowl. His view quickly changed though after I told him what the secret ingredient was. Crystal, Jason’s wife, is not a huge fan of bile but tried the dish anyway.

Blood Pizza (The folks who brought this couldn’t accurately translate the Vietnamese name of this dish into english and Blood Pizza was the closest thing they could find)

In my opinion, this was the most adventurous dish we had at the table. Many would argue the Pinapaitan was but just based on look and texture alone, this tops the cake.

Blood Pizza, as it was called, is actually a thin layer of coagulated duck’s blood spread over your serving dish. This is garnished with a mint, some peanuts and a sesame cracker and served with additional spices you can add to flavor. From how it was explained to me, this is another “drinking dish” to be picked at while downing a few brewskis with the homies.

What surprised all of us was just how red the blood was. It was a seriously bright red. If I didn’t tell you what it was and you just looked at the picture, you might think it was some sort of vegetable pureé. David didn’t tell us how it was prepared but know that the blood was not cooked. Not. Cooked.

As horrific as the dish looked, it wasn’t half bad. I expected this dish to be tinny, iron-like but the flavor was very mild and difficult to describe. The texure varied from gelatinous to straight runny. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Bun bo Hue

Bun Bo Hue is a Vietnamese noodle soup that is as similar to the ubiquitous Pho as the night is to day. Bun Bo Hue is a more similar to Thai and Cambodian soups in the use of lemongrass and spices. The level of spiciness of the base soup has much more heat, I believe, and more often than not, this dish is served with more questionable meats such as oxtail and pig knuckles.

One of the special ingredients I like most about this soup are the blocks of pig’s blood that have been coagulated into a cake looking thing. The blood is a very dark purple-ish brown in color, has a texture similar to a soft, yet crumbly liver and tastes… well, tastes like cooked blood.

By far, the best Bun Bo Hue place in San Jose is located in this little strip mall where a Taco Bell was once the “anchor” business. The Taco Bell is still there but there are much better restaurants to eat at now. While not listed as a traditional meat, ox penis (yes, I did just write ox penis) is often used and is featured at this restaurant that specializes only in this dish. In the above photo, you can see a bit of ox penis being held in the chopsticks. Ox penis has a flavor and texure very simlar to tendon, only slightly more crunchy.

This is a great soup and you can order it from many places sans penis. Although I recommend the “schlonged” version as the more authentic version.

Rambutan

For dessert, my wife brought out some fruit. This particular fruit is called rambutan and is related to lychee and longan. They look like hairy balls, luckily they don’t taste like it. While popular in Asian countries, rambutan are expensive here because they all have to be imported. Our climate isn’t suite for growing the unless you go all hydroponic.

Like many fruits, you do not eat the skin. The spiny, “hairy” skin can easily be broken open to get to the fruit within. The actual part you eat is grey-ish white in color and has a soft texture. Depending on when you harvest the fruit, they can be really sweet to only mildly sweet. The texture is soft to the touch but a little slimy in the mouth.

So there you go, a rundown of all the dishes we ate at the inaugural instance of the “Weird” Food Dinner Party. What better way to celebrate the Inauguration of a new President than through an inauguration event of our own? Everyone who showed up for dinner tried everything, even if only a little bit. We’re all looking forward to the next session and I have a few more dishes up my sleeve. If we’re going to expand this by inviting more people, I suggest the following rules:

1. Everyone should bring a dish. Bring something you genuinely like to eat and not something just for shock value.
2. Everyone must try everything on the table. No exceptions, unless you’re deathly allergic. The whole point is to try new things and share thing with other people. If you’re not down to eat everything then you probably shouldn’t show up.
3. No one can reveal anything about the dishes until the very end. We should all sample the dishes on their own merits before we let our personal preferences and filters change the way we viewed the dishes.

If we follow those simple rules, I think we’ll be fine. So who’s in?

A few months ago I was invited to The Trappist for a tasting event to help celebrate their 1-Year Anniversary. It was a very fun time and I got to reacquaint myself with some people I had met there a few times now. Before I left though, I picked up a pair of beers from their Holiday Beer collection.

I had been wanting to drink these two for a while now but as we all know, the Holiday Season is a busy season and instead of chillin’ at home sippin’ on these beers, I was out shopping. Or even if I was home, we’d be trimming the tree, or wrapping presents or something Christmas-related. Now that all the Holiday uproar is at an end, I can finally sit back, relax and sample these two rare beers.

Winterkoninkske, Brouwerij Kerkom, 8.3% ABV

The Kerkom Brewery is located in the center of Haspengouw, Belgium. It is (or maybe was), an area known for its agriculture, specifically orchards and fruit plantations. They brew a line of beers called “Bink” but I will be focusing on their Winter seasonal beer, Winterkoninkske.

Winterkoninkske pours out a dark brown with deep red hues and a beige/tan head. The aroma is primarily malty, like toasted bread with raisin and prune notes and a noticeable alcohol character. The flavor is very similar to the aroma. The malt is on the sweet side and is reminiscent of toasted bread, raisins and prunes. The hop character is low and there’s a slight spiciness that could be a result of the alcohol. The hops are subtle and only show up in the finish of the beer. Winterkoninkske is a medium-high/full bodied beer with medium carbonation and a slight warming sensation from the alcohol.

According to the brewery’s website, Winterkoninkske was brewed with seven types of malt, rolled oats, two types of Belgian hops, brewing liquor and yeast. I have no idea what brewing liquor is so if anyone out there knows, I’d love to hear about it. This beer is also unfilted, unpasteurized and bottle conditioned.

While it doesn’t really say what this beer is on the label, I would have to guess that is it either a dubbel or a Belgian Dark Strong Ale. As this beer warmed up, the malt character really started to shine though, growing more complex with each increase of temperature. I am certainly going to look for this beer next time it comes out next winter.

Solstice d’Hiver, Brasserie dieu du Ciel!, 9.8% ABV

From my understanding, Brasserie dieu du Ciel! is a Canadian brewery out of Montreal. In trying to find more information about Solstice d’Hiver, I ran across their beer list and I must say that if I ever make it to Montreal, I will make it a point to stop by their brewpub. If the exclamation point in their name wasn’t enough of a draw, this brewery has an extensive list of beers they brew on a regular basis that sound interesting (One Night Stand, anyone?) to say the least.

Solstice d’Hiver is a dark brown beer with pronounced red hues and a nearly non-existent off-white/beige head. The aroma is malty with a pleasant and smooth floral component and noticeable alcohol quality. The flavor starts off malty, but not sweet, which quickly gives way to a robust and unexpectedly intense hop bitterness that lasts well into the finish. This is a full bodied beer with low carbonation that has a warming sensation in the finish.

I was surprised by the level of hoppiness of this beer. It really caught me off guard. I was also surprised to learn that Brasserie dieu du Ciel! is a French-Canadian brewery and not a Belgian brewery. While this may help to explain the strong hop character of the beer, it certainly didn’t prepare me for the flavor. Wow, what a beer! If you’re into hoppy barleywines as your winter warmer, then find yourself a bottle of Solstice d’Hiver and give it a shot.

I managed to make it to the Bistro on Saturday night to meet up with friends Mike and his wife Diane. I met Mike at Beer and Winemakers of America homebrew shop one afternoon. It was a fun time and we decided to go out for some beers on Saturday.

The Bistro is a great little beer bar that mainly caters to a more local crowd. They are mainly known for their epic Double IPA Festival and IPA Festivals. In the time we were waiting for Mike and Diane to show up, I noted to Sammy that this could possibly be the first time we’ve been to the Bistro when it wasn’t a festival. While it was fairly slow when I first arrived, it was getting loud and packed by the time we left.

I had just finished tapping my Milk Stout the night before and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to put down some really hoppy ales but thankfully they had some other types of beers there as well.

Steelhead Bourbon Extra Stout, Mad River Brewing Company, 7.0% ABV

Black, nearly opaque beer with a tan/brown head. Sweet “caramel-ish” aroma that is a combination of roasty malts, black coffee, wood, bourbon notes and slight alcohol. The flavor is pleasant, smooth and similar to the aroma with deep roasted malt flavors, coffee, bourbon and a slight sourness in the finish. The bourbon character is noticeable but not very hot or harsh. This beer is medium-high in body with low/medium-low carbonation.

Unfortunately, the link above is only for the Steelhead Extra Stout. The bourbon version of this beer was specially made for the Bistro’s Wood Aged festival. I didn’t get to try it at the time of the festival but I’m glad I was able to have glass that night. If you enjoy bourbon flavors with your stout then I’d recommend this beer to you.

Old Scouter Barleywine, Bear Republic Brewing Company, 9.7% ABV

Still not wanting anything really bitter, I scan the beer board in hanging over the bar and settle on Old Scouter Barleywine from Bear Republic Brewing Company. This was another beer that participated in the Bistro’s Wood Aged Beer Festival. It was aged in for 6 months in an American Oak barrel that used to hold a Cabernet Sauvignon.

This beer pours out a very dark brown with reddish highlights and an off-white head. Sweet malt aromas, spicy notes, some floral notes, powdered, dark chocolate and slight alcohol notes are in the aroma of the beer. The beer is initially malty sweet with spicy, chocolate notes which give way to a medium-high/high hop bitterness that lingers into the finish. The beer is medium-high/high in body with medium carbonation. According to the beer sheet from the Wood Aged Beer Festival, there should’ve been a slight sour hint in the flavor but I didn’t pick it up.

Winter Ale, Black Diamond Brewing Company, 7.2% ABV

Black Diamond Brewing Company is a brewing company based out of Concord, California. They used to be in Walnut Creek as a brewpub but shut down the brewpub and continued on as a brewery.

Winter Ale pours out brilliantly clear, reddish brown in color with ruby highlights and an off-white head. Spicy, peppery, clovey aromas are primary with malt aromas secondary and a slight alcohol note. The flavor is a peppery and spicy in a Belgian yeast sort of way that gives out to a slight malt sweetness afterwards. This beer is medium/medium-high in body with medium carbonation and a slight dry finish.

Brewed with Belgian malts, candi sugar and using Belgian yeast, Black Diamond intended this beer to be brewed in the style of a Dubbel. While not a bad beer in it’s own right, I don’t think it’s much of a Dubbel. I am missing out on a lot of the complex maltiness that is a signature of the style and the spiciness is more reminiscent of a Trippel. But as the label says, it’s a Dubbel-style beer and not a Dubbel.

Good beer to have if you’re into malty beers, while the higher than average alcohol make it a pleasant choice for the colder winter evenings.

While I’m here reviewing…

I was able to finally tap my Milk Stout on Friday night. I had brewed this beer in early November and I am now reaping the benefits. I really like this beer. It’s pretty close to the BJCP standard, and save for a few flaws, it’s pretty darned good. Click here to view the original post where I’ve put down all the final details for this beer.

With a name that comes right out of a geriatric porno, Old Chub caught my eye as I strolled down BevMo the other day. What really captured my attention, besides the name, was that this beer is canned. It used to be that canned beer was synonymous with bad beer. Not only was canned beer fairly weak in strength and flavor, they often tasted metallic.

Times are changing, canning beer is becoming en vogue again with craft breweries. New Belgium, 21st Amendment, Maui Brewing and Oskar Blues all can their beers, and for good reason. Cans are superior to bottles in that cans give beers longer shelf life, protect the beer against light and gets colder faster. New, plastic lining in cans have eliminated the metallic taste most commonly associated with canned beers.

So what’s the beef with canned beers? I think that canned beers have garned such negative equity over the years that it will take some really good beers put into cans to shake that image. Maybe a double blind taste test pitting canned, bottled and draft beers against each other. At the end of the day, no matter if it was served in a can or a bottle, it’s all about the beer. A bad beer is a bad beer, regardless of how it was packaged.

Old Chub, Oskar Blues Brewing, 8.0% ABV

Thankfully, Old Chub is not a bad beer. Old Chub is brewed and canned by Oskar Blues Brewing Company out of Lyons, Colorado. This beer pours out a dark brown with ruby hues and a tan head. The beer is initially pretty dark and nearly opaque. The aroma is predominatly malty in nature with slight melanoidic characteristics and alcohol notes. Old Chub’s flavor is malty sweet, savory with melanoidic notes and noticeable alcohol flavor that comes off as a slight spice. I think I can even pick up a little smokiness in the finish. This is a full bodied beer with medium carbonation that I find to be savory. Highly recommended!

Old Chub is brewed in the Scottish Ale style. Scottish ales tend to me malty in both flavor and aroma while being low hopped. Some sweetness may be a result of kettle caramelization while any smokiness or earthy qualities are the byproducts of the traditional Scottish yeasts versus brewing with any smoked malts.

Historically, Scottish ales were brewed this way largely because that is what was available. Scotland was able to grow it’s own barley but had to import hops. Hops, much like today, were very expensive and as a result Scottish beers are low hopped.

Beer Pong is the brainchild of Mario from Brewed for Thought. He approached me one day with the idea. Basically, one person poses a question and the two people participating go back and forth via emails. The resulting email conversation is then cut and pasted onto their respective websites in the hopes of generating a dialogue amongst their readers.

Mario is a great guy I’ve had the pleasure of throwing back a few beers with. We regularly email back and forth about anyway so this was the next logical step.

Anyway, here’s the result of this first edition of Beer Pong, let me know what you think. Better yet, let the conversation continue by posting your comments below, I’d like to see what other people think about the topic.

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

Hey Pete,

So I found this article talking about the what to expect in 2009 in the culinary world.  Specifically, I noticed the top trend had to do with beer:

Flavor & The Menu’s Top 10 Trends for 2009:

Top Culinary Trend - Tapping Beer’s Potential: Now that beer is the new wine, thanks to a flood of new craft beer products and imports, chefs are creating menus that match beer lists in their complexity and casual-yet-sophisticated approach to pub food. Beyond the usual pretzels and peanuts, these post-modern pub menus present hearty food that’s designed to pair with beer.

This seems to be referring to pairing foods with beer.  I love the idea of properly matched food and beer, but my knowledge is fairly minimal on the subject.  Can you shed some light on some of the basics of pairing, maybe even share some of your favorite pairs?

Personally, and I tell this to anyone willing to listen, I am crazy about carrot cake and a big West Coast IPA.  I know it sounds like a bit much, but the big hop flavor of the IPA really emphasizes the sweetness of the carrot cake and the richness of the frosting.  It is a quite decadent dessert.  I know this might not be a culinary pairing as I think a trip to Safeway for their gourmet carrot cake and a bottle of Racer 5 make for the prime pairing, but it’s a start, or maybe more appropriately, a finish.

Mario

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

Mario,

This is a great article. It only validates many of the things I have been working on over the past year. I’m going to show it to the girls tomorrow night and hopefully it will inspire them when they come up with dishes for us.

Ever since being introduced to the idea of pairing beer and food, I have been a fervent disciple ever since. Beers are able to pair with a wider variety of foods when compared with other beverages because of it’s inherent complexity and sheer range of styles. Made from 4 base ingredients (malted barley, hops, water and yeast), each ingredient imparts is own characteristics to beer that can vary greatly as determined by thebrewmaster . Malted barley is responsible for the sweetness of a beer while hops provide the bitterness necessary to provide balance. Yeast provides it’s own flavor and aroma characteristics that are primarily subtle but are allowed to shine in other beer styles. With over 90% of a beer’s composition being water, water is a vastly underrated contributor to flavor that is often overlooked. In addition to all of that, an often forgotten aspect of beer that has a big influence on flavor perception is carbonation. Believe it or not, carbonation plays a huge part in how beer pairs with food and it’s role varies from palette cleanser to aroma booster. Lastly, the best thing about beer and food pairings is that you can purchase a world-class beer for, many times, under $20. It’s difficult to say the same for many other beverages.

Whenever we do beer pairing events for BetterBeerBlog there are just a handful of guidelines that I follow. The beauty of these guidelines is that there are only 4 of them. The other nice thing is that they’re guidelines, meant to give minimal instruction with room for exploration. The best thing about these guidelines is that you can apply them to everything, not just beer but to all things in which you want to pair,culinarily speaking, that is.

1. Harmonize - Using this guideline, you want to pair beers and food with similar flavors.
2. Compliment - Pair flavors that work well together but aren’t necessarily the same.
3. Contrast - Pair flavors that are opposite ends of the spectrum.
4. Intensity - This is the one principle that people often forget. It’s important to match foods of similar intensity to prevent one from overpowering another.

That’s it! I’d recommend starting off with simple pairings that follow one guildeline or another using beers that you are already familiar with. What I quickly found though was that pairings will be a combination of guidelines instead of justadhereing to one or another.

As for personal favorites, here are just a few:

• Pad See Ewe paired with Rochefort 6 - The noodles have a caramelized soy sauce flavor and great balance between the beef, egg and noodle flavors which matched the caramelized flavors of theRochefort. The Rochefort 6 is also the “lightest” of the series and matched the intensity of the beer well. You can read the full review here
• Coriander Crusted Scallop with carrot risotto & pomegranate with Allagash White - Allagash White is an example of a witbier or spiced, pale wheat ale. One of the spices used often is coriander and that played right into the beer but on a more subtle note rather than being overt. The delicate flavors and texture of the scallop plays right into the lightness and effervescence of the beer while the risotto matches with the beer’s noticeable wheat character. Lastly, the pomegranate is more of an accent that works to compliment the citrus notes of the beer. You can read more about that here.
• Tri-tip with mashed sweet potatoes and steamed vegetables paired with Racer 5 IPA - This was a dish designed to contrast flavors. While the malt on the Racer 5 is able to compliment the flavor of the grilled tri-tip, the mashed sweet potatoes contrasted with the bitterness of the IPA. The result was a merging of flavors where both enhanced the other. You can read more here
• Lindemans Framboise with Fudge Brownies - This is a very popular dessert pairing we serve. Framboise is a sour Belgian ale brewed with raspberries with a strong fruit character and a tart finish. To compliment these flavors, we made fudge brownies. Chocolate and sweet fruit play well together while the tartness helps to contrast with the fullness of the brownies.

So those are just a few pairings that I’ve done over the past year that have worked out very well. We’ve done a few that have bombed but that’s okay. You’ll know right away if a pairing works or not.

That ended up being quite a mouthful. Didn’t think I was going to write to so much, ha!

Peter

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

Wow Pete, I guess I was right about you being the person to talk to about this.  I like the examples you give, especially the Tri-tip.  Talk about a California meal, you don’t get much more California than a tri-tip and a malty, hoppy IPA.  I’m sure that Jen will like to hear about the Lindeman’s and brownies, as “that raspberry stuff” is her favorite.  I’ve been promising her and her friends a Belgian beer and chocolate pairing but have no idea where to start.

One thing I’ve been trying out a lot is cooking with the actual beer.  I’ve used Lucy Saunder’s Beer and Food for some ideas with excellent results, but I’m still feeling my way out.  I’m scared of using the hoppier beers like an IPA in anything I cook because I know the hops can kill when the beer is reduced.

I kind of stick to a few simple tricks when cooking with beer.  I like to deglaze pans with a brown ale or a malty lager.  They also work well for basting if cooking a turkey or chicken.  When simmering meats, I tend to push the hops a little, finding a nice Amber works well in chili or when making Mole.  Bringing it back to theTri-tip, I’ve used all kinds of beers for marinades.  Stouts and bocks with a soy based marinade is nice, or I like using ambers with the whole kitchen sink approach or vegetables and spices.

Have you had much experience with cooking or just on the pairing side?

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

The girls who do the cooking for our beer and food events, Joanna and Judy, are not beer people and are relatively new to the culinary world and to the world of craft beer. That being said, we don’t necessarily cook with beer. There are exceptions though. For instance, I paired a chocolate cake with New Belgium’s 1554 in which we used some of the 1554 in the cake in place of whatever liquid they were asking for. It’s an easy way to add beer to a dish in that manner. Chances are that you couldn’t even taste the addition of the beer but for baking, beer seems to produce a more moist final product.

We’ve also done dumplings steamed with beer with a dipping sauce that was beer based. This recipe we modified from the Sander’s book. It worked out well and we made it to dial in specifically with the beer we paired it with, which was Speakeasy Untouchable Pale Ale.

With regards to actually cooking with beer, I am somewhat indifferent to it. I write that with a bit of jealousy, to be frank. Because we don’t cook with beer, I am jealous of those who can and who can very well. Just looking at many of the dishes theHomebrew Chef Sean Paxton does is amazing. He’s doing stuff with beer and with beer cast offs (like spent grains) that totally flip the switch on things. He’s definitely a pioneer on the cooking with beer front. But I suppose as time goes on, we will become more fluent and the girls will become more adventurous with the recipes they come up with. I’m looking forward to helping guide them and honing their skills by eating their food, ha!

So long story short, we mostly work on pairings versus actually cooking with beer.

Peter