Beer and Food Pairings

I'm late in posting this due to an insanely busy week, but this week my article on beer and food pairings ran in the Dayton City Paper.

Big thanks to Gina, my wife, who took the photos. Only cost me take-out at Taqueria Mixteca and a chocolate torte (which the kids actually ate most of). There were two other photos that I really liked that didn't run, so I've posted them here. The cake one is my favorite.

News: Thai9 Tapping Cask Hopslam Tonight

Thai9, the Thai and Sushi restaurant with a great beer list in the Oregon district, is tapping a cask of Bell's Hopslam tonight. I'm told it's one of two such casks in Ohio. This is a great beer in bottles and on tap, so I can't wait to try to the cask version. Beer flows around 7ish tonight.

Also, Thai9 is part of the Dayton Growler Co-Op (although I'd be shocked if Hopslam is included), which, along with Trolley Stop, South Park Tavern, and Blind Bob's, allows customers to pick up and fill growlers to enjoy their favorite draft beers at home. Here's the link to Blind Bob's blurb about it, as well as an article with more details by Mark Fisher of the Dayton Daily News.

Technorati Tags: beer, brewing, craft beer, homebrew, Bell's Hopslam, Bell's Brewing, Hopslam, Thai9, Growler Co-Op, Blind Bob's, South Park Tavern, The Trolley Stop, Dayton, Ohio, cask ale

Critic's Pick: Chappy's Beer Club

Just a quick note that I've been meaning to post for several days now. I have another piece in the current edition of the Dayton City Paper (the 2/2 edition). It's just a quick Critic's Pick, but it highlights the Chappy's Beer Club. If you aren't familar with Chappy's Tap Room and Grille, they've got on of the best beer menus I've seen. Lots of great beers, but more importantly, lots of information about the various beers, so it's easy to find something that suits your mood.

Technorati Tags:beer, brewing, craft beer, Chappy's, Chappy's Tap Room and Grille, Beer club, Chappy's Beer Club, Dayton City Paper, Epicurean, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

Published Beer Writer

I've made the seemingly backwards leap from digital to print and am now the monthly beer columnist for the Dayton City Paper, the local alt weekly (backwards because for many years, I worked with educational publishers, trying to push them from print to digital). My first column highlighted the joy of discovering great beer and the communal nature of beer-geekdom in the Miami Valley and featured quotes from two staples in the Dayton Craft Beer community, Mike Schwartz (owner of Belmont Party Supply and Miami Valley BrewTensils) and Joe Waizmann (founder of AleFest, Cask AleFest, and AleFeast).

One interesting aside that didn't make the article was a story that Mike Schwartz told me in my interview with him. I've always thought of Mike and his shop as an epicenter of craft beer but when Mike bought Belmont Party Supply back in the 80's, it was originally just the liquor store. In fact, at the time, Mike had pretty much stopped drinking beer. He was bored by the macro-lagers, which tasted terrible and left him feeling awful.

But it was Joe Waizmann who showed Mike the right direction. Joe was working for a local distributor and one day, he brought Mike a bottle of Old Peculiar, the legendary British Old Ale. Once that first sip passed his lips, Mike was a man transformed. Like a sinner who found religion, Mike's epiphany drove him to build out his craft beer temple, evangelizing to the hoards of unknowing masses, sharing the gospel of flavor and aroma.

Yet another example of one enthusiastic craft beer drinker sharing his discovery with another so that, as Mike notes, "we all grow together."


Technorati Tags: beer community, Dayton City Paper, beer, Old Peculiar, craft beer, Belmont Party Supply, AleFest

Beer Dinner With "The Barrel Guy" At The Pub

If you dig barrel-aged beers, don't miss this event. Tom is directly responsible for most of the barrel aged beer from craft brewers, including the Rare Bourbon County Stout from Goose Island. Here are the details and a link to an article about Tom:

BEER DINNER WITH TOM GRIFFIN
"The Barrell Guy"

Thursday, January 20th
The Pub Beavercreek
7:00PM
$50 per person
Dinner includes four courses with a beer pairing for each and a Q&A with Tom Griffin.

Check out the article:

http://draftmag.com/magazine/articles/169

The Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beer

Writing from the road--Chicago's Wood and Barrel Aged Beer Festival. I've been assured this will be the most amazing tasting I've ever been to--saisons, lambics, and whiskey-barrel beers. More notes later.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Belgian Beer Review 15: Drie Fontein Oude Kriek

A relatively newbie to the spontaneously fermented Belgian beers, I only recently discovered Armand Debelder. Joe Strange has several notes about the master lambic and geuze blender over at Thirsty Pilgrim. It was the post announcing the brewery's intent to stop brewing, start distilling, and go back to blending that caught my attention. I read the post with great interest, given my current expedition, and figured maybe somehow I'd be able to get my hands on a bottle of Drie Fonteinen if I was lucky. My family and I are traveling to the east coast at the end of this month and I thought I *might* be able to hunt down a bottle in NYC or Boston.

So it was a pretty big surprise when I stumbled upon it at Belmont Party Supply, the craft-beer mecca literally within walking distance of my house. Not only that, but they have both the Oude Kreik and the Oude Geuze. Picked up the Kreik, and on the next trip need to get several bottles of the Geuze--some for now and some to set aside.

A note about the beer, since with the exception of the beer geeks in my audience (although if you've stayed with me this far into this post, its probably time to admit you might be one), aged, blended, sour fruit beers aren't ones most folks have tried. Lambics and Gueuze beers are oddities of the beer world, in that they rely most heavily on the local micro flora to achieve their distinctive sour flavors. In addition, these beers are aged for years in oak barrels and are prized not only for their individual flavors, but for their ability to meld with other vintages. Like meritage wines, the young and aged lambics are blended together to draw out the best of both beers (a gueuze being merely that blend). In addition, to increase the types of flavors available, fruits--notably sour cherries or raspberries--are added. Odd as it sounds, the results are incredible. Intense and at the same time palate cleansing, the straight beers are the Limburger cheeses of the beer worlds and the fruit beers are the sorbets.

Brewery: Brouwerij Drie Fonteinen (via Google Translate, since source page is in Dutch)
Brewery Location: Belgium
Beer: Oude Kriek
BJCP Style: 17F. Fruit Lambic
Serving: Bottle

Appearance: From the time I uncorked the tiny 12 oz bottle, I knew I was in for a treat. Pours a rich cherry red with a rose-colored bubbly head. The picture doesn't do this beer justice--it is a beautiful beer.

Smell: Surprisingly, although present, the cherries don't overpower. Instead, they blend well with the sour barnyard character of the lambic to create a very balanced bouquet.

Taste: Sometimes sour fruit beers can be too over the top. In fact, I've had enough disappointing ones that I approached this one a little apprehensively. I could not have been more wrong. This beer is fantastically refreshing. Sour beers are intensely refreshing, in the way a tart pink lemonade can be in the middle of a sweltering July afternoon. The fruit adds depth to the sour, and mellows out the funkier flavors to make this incredibly thirst-quenching.

Mouthfeel: A very dry beer with a clean finish, which is a bit surprising given the boxes of cherries that I know went into this ale.

Drinkability: These beers won't be around for too much longer and it seems unlikely that you'll be able to get Debelder's blends stateside, so pick up a few bottles now and stick them under the stairwell for later. Although only 6 percent, they'll keep for up to ten years from the bottling date. Just don't get them at Belmont. I've got dibs on those bottles.

Technorati Tags: Drie Fonteinen, lambic, kriek, oude kriek, Armand Debelder, sour ales, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew