Two Brewpubs

Beer, , , ,

We’ve recently had the chance to visit a few brewpubs in upstate New York.  A couple weeks ago, we went to Bandwagon Brewpub in Ithaca.  Their menu was somewhat limited at about a dozen entrees, but did have some interesting options — and I loved the cornmeal waffles with shrimp and andouille sausage.  We got a flight of Bandwagon’s beers, which packed a few surprises:

  • Raspberry Jalapeño: I initially dismissed this as a novelty chili beer, but found it pretty enjoyable.  The raspberry was more creamy than tart, and there was just a little chili heat.
  • Ezra Red Ale: Very hoppy aroma, but pretty mild and even a little sweet.  Nothing wrong with it, but not really winning me over either.
  • High Step Weizenbock: Like a sweeter hefeweizen.  By this point in the flight, I was starting to wonder at liking the novelty beer best.
  • Pirate Eye PA: Very sharp resin.  I’m not a big IPA fan, but I found this undrinkable.
  • Sully’s Irish Stout: Smoky and dry.  I’ve warmed to stout recently, especially malty imperial stout.  But this is a very dry Irish stout, which I just didn’t enjoy much at all.

So their food was good, if not a ton of options.  And none of the beers really captured my imagination, though the Raspberry Jalapeño and High Step Weizenbock were both pretty good.  So I had a great time, but I probably won’t be drinking any more of their beer.  In fact, we took the kids there for lunch last week, but we got beers from other NY breweries.

One of those breweries is Rooster Fish from Watkins Glen.  We drove over to Corning to see the excellent glass museum and were driving through Watkins Glen on our way back and stopped for lunch.  They had a much bigger menu, with a lot of good options to agonize over, even for the kids.  Instead of having a pre-set flight, they let you get samples of as many beers as you want.  The next table had a couple with samples of all 12, but we stuck with just 5:

  • Aspen Wit: a nice and spicy hefeweizen, reminding me of some of the better spicy/herbal German hefeweizen we tried.
  • Summer Sky: much more tart and clean.
  • Tripel Witch: probably my least favorite of the bunch, this tripel was reedy and herbal, reminding me of some of the tripels we tried and didn’t like.
  • Mysterious Amber: tons of toffee and caramel, almost a little too sweet, but very nice for a malt-lover like me.
  • Scotch Ale: very peaty and smoky, a wonderful wee heavy that isn’t too sweet or chewy.  Ranks right up with my favorites.  We picked up a growler of this to take home.

So it was a much nicer experience all the way around.  Of the beers we tried from the two breweries, I think I liked my least favorite from Rooster Fish (the tripel) as much as my favorite from Bandwagon.  

The Session 65: Drinking Alone

Beer, , ,

I should be blogging about tasting our new saison, or the new beers I’m trying in upstate New York where we’re spending July.  But those posts aren’t getting written, so they’ll have to wait.

On a more timely note is The Session — loosely-organized beer blogging on a monthly topic.  I’ve only just heard about it, and I find this month’s topic fascinating: drinking alone:

The way I see it is that I love beer and pubs and I don’t see why I should only go to the pub when I’m with other people.

Am I weird for going to the pub alone?

How do you feel about going to the pub alone? Do you feel it’s necessary to be around friends to spend time in a pub?

As it turns out, it’s rare for me to go to pubs or bars at all, and even rarer that I’d go alone.  Partly this is due to my own laziness, and I’m sure it’s partly due to the general social pressure against hanging out alone in public, especially where eating and drinking are concerned.  Though the social pressure against drinking alone is most acute in public, it’s definitely there in private too.  If I’m home alone for the evening, I might have a beer or two, but it’s definitely the exception not the rule.

But there have been a few times, mostly when I really wanted to try some beer you could only get at the pub.  The most recent example I can remember is when I took a trip to Cologne.  It’s a city famous for its local style of beer, and for the most part it’s not bottled or exported at all.  So you pretty much have to go to the pub to get it.  And since my young children are generally in bed by 8pm, that left a few hours each evening where I could venture out by myself and grab a few glasses of Kolsch, as Wind graciously volunteered to hang out at the hotel with the kids.

I was glad to have the chance to try a few more Kolsches, but it wasn’t much fun.  I’m quite introverted, and really not up to chatting with strangers in the pub.  So I mostly fiddled about on my phone, reading the news or playing games.  Not a terrible way to pass some time, but much less comfortable than hanging around a hotel room.

It really brought home for me the fact that drinking is a social activity, like eating really.  You can enjoy it uncritically or poring over every detail and hint of nuance.  You can enjoy it with two people or twenty.  You can enjoy the most exotic, expensive and rare, or the plain, wholesome and everyday.  But removing the social aspect really changes the experience, reducing it to just fulfilling a need.

I was thinking about all this when I went to a sour fest in Tampa last month.  The situation is very different from your typical pub, since there were some couples and groups, but many more people by themselves.  And the focus was more clearly on enjoying and analyzing the beer, and even I found myself chatting and joking with the servers and other attendees.

Felt for regular needles, too

Fiber, ,

Last year I put together a little sewing kit for myself, after getting tired of having more and more clothes that I couldn’t wear for a missing button or the like. (We have a collection of  random mini-sewing kits that have multiplied over the years, bunny-like, but they hide whenever it is time to come out and play.)

I “splurged” in a few places because I knew that under normal use, I was going to be irritated at best to even need a sewing kit (because buttons have no sense of timing when it comes to randomly popping off one’s clothing), and so maybe having something cute or nice would help soften the blow and make me an ever-so-slightly nicer person during such repair work. So: Sweet little glass jar? Check. Cute little wooden spools? Check. Pretty stork scissors? Check. Cheap plastic insert to hold the needles? Check. Wait, what?

Last week I had a neat idea to replace the cheap plastic insert with a little felt pin cushion attached to the inside of the jar lid. So, after some theraputic stabby-time with my felting needles and an even more satisfying stint with my hot-glue gun, I can now reveal my latest felt adventure:

In order to create a core that was dense enough to hold the needles, even when upside down, I started with a small amount of roving and just stabbed the heck out of it with my largest gauge needle until it was very, very dense and maybe 1/3 the size that it started. (And about half the size of my final pin cushion.) Then, I added layers, carefully shaping the cushion as I went. Finally, I put a light layer around the outside, and using my smallest gauge needle, created a prettier, cloud-like effect.

I’m going to give this a few months of testing, but assuming it continues to work as it does now – I’m claiming victory. And I think I will now even SMILE while sewing rebellious buttons back on. (I’m not making any promises about darning, though. I think “darn” is just not quite a strong enough term to cover it.)

His & Hers

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We didn’t get any barrel-aged Marshal Zhukov — although we are normally very organized and early people, we arrived at Cigar City about 15 minutes after they started selling growlers, to find a rather long line snaking out of their tasting room and out into the parking lot.

When the news came out that the last keg blew, the line dissolved, with most of us heading into the tasting room to pickup whatever bottles and growlers we could.  There was a big crowd right in front of me swooping up the last of the Cucumber Saison.  But they brought out a few more boxes, and I did get a few bottles.  I also got a couple bottles of their collaboration with the Bruery, Dos Costas Oeste — cedar and lemon wood versions.

The cucumber saison tastes like, well, cucumber.  And since Wind likes cucumbers more than me, I guess it’s no surprise she likes it more than I do.  Though I’m now wondering why I like cucumber so much more with creaminess, and thinking about pairing cream cheese and cucumbers on a bagel.  The Dos Costas is the other way around — we tried the cedar aged version first, and I liked it quite a bit, particulary enjoying the spicy, astringent cedar.  Wind didn’t like it nearly so much, and glady handed me her glass to finish.

I guess the moral of the story is: don’t show up late for a Cigar City release, there will be a crowd of people in front of you.  Though they put out so much good beer, it really doesn’t matter, you can still find something interesting anyway.

Sour Beer Fest

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I went to the Sour, Lambic & Berlinner Weisse festival at Cajun Cafe on the Bayou in Tampa this weekend.  The flyer listed an impressive selection of sour beer, about half from Florida, about half from Belgium, and a few others (including BFM from Switzerland and Ommegang from New York).  There were also a few other domestic bottles that were not on the program (more on that later).

There were a couple of tables run by shops, with a wide selection of imports.  And there were several local breweries, brewpubs, and homebrew groups with broader selection of their brews.  I think my favorites of the afternoon were:

  • BFM’s Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien (2007): they actually had four years of this brew (2006, 2007, 2009, 2010), with pretty significant differences between the years.  2006 was very funky but not very sour at all.  The 2009 and 2010 bottles were good, with varying sourness, funkiness and other flavors.  But the 2007 was really strong and tart, with just enough funkiness to make it interesting.
  • Hanssens’ Oude Gueuze: There were a several bottles from Hanssens, with various fruits.  But I think the plain gueuze was the best.  A very clean and sour gueuze.
  • 3 Fonteinen’s Schaerbeekse Kriek: This was the one kriek I really wanted to have when we were in Brussels, but couldn’t find.  I was not disappointed to have it at last: it had a great, almost gritty cherry base, with a big tart lambic bite.  Probably the best kriek I’ve had, with a nice combination of cherry and lambic flavors (instead of just having one of them prevail as often happens).
  • Cascade’s Sang Noir: I was really glad to see a few Cascade bottles were there.  This was a very nice, strongly cherry-flavored kriek, with a richness and creaminess that you don’t often see in sour beers.
  • Mikkellers’s Funky E *: The first glass of this I had was terrible and watery — I think it probably fell over in the ice bath.  But they opened up a second bottle and I’m glad I gave it another chance.  It had a nice oakiness, and more malty sweetness than most sours.

Another real treat came just after the second glass of Funky E * — I saw the server pull a bottle of Pliny the Elder out and put it in the ice bath under the counter.  I don’t know if he was planning on sharing, but I said “Hey! I saw that!” and he gave me a glass.  Within a few seconds, a crowd formed and the bottle was soon gone.  It definitely lived up to the reputation as being a very balanced, world-class IPA.  And I was a little amused to see the biggest commotion at the sour fest was for an IPA.

In fact, there were really only two disappointments of the afternoon:

  • I’d never had Berliner Weisse before, and I had several examples from a range of breweries.  I didn’t find any of them better than drinkable, and most of them I poured out.  So I can scratch that style off my list.
  • I didn’t like the offerings from Cigar City (one of the berliner weisses) or Saint Somewhere (a strange refermentation of their Saison Athene).  I generally count on them to make beers I like (and sometimes love), so that was a little sad.

Saison Bottling

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We bottled our experimental saison mini-batches last night.  Other than almost forgetting the priming sugar, and needing to sterilize a few extra 12 oz. bottles when our 25 oz. bottles were too big for our caps, everything went pretty well.  We had five 1-gallon growlers with different yeast strains, and we didn’t want to cross-contaminate.  So we sterilized our tubing and bottling tip between each batch.  That was time-consuming at first, but we got better with practice.

We started by taking gravity readings of each batch.  Three of the batches (the plain saison yeast, Brett. Bruxellensis and Bret. Lambicus) were all right around the target gravity (1.014).  But the Brett. Claussenii and Belgian Sour Mix batches weren’t quite done (1.018 and 1.020).  But we were done waiting (and they were done bubbling), so we bottled them anyway. We tasted the gravity samples for each batch, and there were definite differences between them.  The plain saison was very dry.  The Brett. batches all had some funkiness to them, though it was hard to tell them apart.

Then we siphoned them straight into a racking tip.  There was a little more loss than with a single big batch, but we wound up with around 4 gallons bottled (6x 22 oz. and 32x 12 oz.).  And it was definitely more bother than doing a single large batch.  But I think it’s worth it for the chance to try a ton of options all at once.

Chocolate Ginger Crackle Cookies

Food, Recipe, , , ,

So, somewhat off-topic, but in the public interest (plus I’ve got nothing on the knitting or beer front to report)…

I started making these cookies in 1997, when I was a graduate student. They have been a solid hit with almost everyone: People who like cookies, people who don’t like cookies, people who think they are too old for cookies, children, people who think they don’t like ginger, ginger-fantatics… Plus, these cookies are consistently good enough that the obligatory “taste” cookie is really just pro-forma.

Anyway, so as I baked a batch tonight for game night (yay, game night!), I realized that I should share. The recipe is at the bottom.

First, let me say that these cookies are sweetish and a little spicy, and they go pretty well with wine (which explains why I found the recipe in Wine and Food originally).  I can’t remember what the recipe used to look like – I suspect that I have probably simplified it a lot over the years, and I know that I will adjust the amount of ginger, depending on my audience. Also, be warned – our local grocery store today informed us that candied ginger is a “seasonal” item. Seriously? In this whole “globalized” market place, we still think that anything can’t be sold any time, anywhere?

Anyway… these are refrigerator cookies and the prep always reminds me a little of peanut butter cookies and snickerdoodles. Be prepared to wait at least 2 hours between when you mix up the batter (dough? eh, never can keep those straight) and when it is ready – and then be prepared to get your hands all chocolatified as you form the dough/batter into balls.

Ingredients (makes ~24 cookies)

1c sugar
6 Tbsp butter, melted
2 eggs
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup candied ginger, minced
1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar

Instructions

1. Beat sugar with butter, then add eggs, cocoa and vanilla until smooth and creamy

2. Add flour, baking powder and salt (you can just dump it all in together) and mix until blended (about 2 minutes with an electric mixer)

3. Stir in chocolate chips and ginger

4. Cover and refrigerate overnight (yeah, right) or at least two hours

5. Preheat the oven to 350F

6. Lightly grease your cookie sheets if they are prone to things sticking to them

7. Form dough into 1″ balls and then coat generously with the confectioner’s sugar

8. Place on the the cookie sheet with a little room to expand (about 1″ apart should be good)

9. Bake 10-12 minutes, tops should be crinkly.

Note #1: Don’t over bake! These things are just like peanut butter cookies: If they look done in the oven then they are over-done. I’ve even taken these out when they looked a tiny bit wet in the cracks, and they were fine.

Note #2: I let the cookies rest for about 30 seconds or so on the cookie sheet before I move them off to a cooling rack.

Note #3: I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Saison Experiment

Beer, , ,

We have long wanted to brew our own saison.  After all, it’s the style of beer that really opened my eyes to the possibilities of beer and got us more interested in brewing and sampling as much as we could.  But it was only recently when I started reading about saison in the Oxford Companion to Beer that I really understood just how complicated it is.

First of all, while there is a general style of base beer that is the most popular for making saison, you can in fact make sour beer from any base beer.  And then there are several different species of Brettanomyces yeast, each with its own character and intensity.  There are also a couple different kinds of bacteria that sour beer.  And of course, there are a bunch of variables in the souring process, such as when you add Brett./bacteria (primary fermentation, secondary, bottling), or how warm you ferment (Dupont is supposed to ferment at 90°, for example).

So, we found a Saison Dupont clone recipe online that looked about right, and picked up five different vials of yeast: a straight saison yeast, three different Brett. yeasts (B. bruxellensis, B. claussenii, and B. lambicus), and Belgian Sour Mix (with Brett. and bacteria).

This was our second all-grain brew, and it went pretty smoothly.  Our 5-gallon water cooler mash tun didn’t hold temperature, but we kept adding hot water until it was warm enough.  The mash and boil went great, and after adding water to make up five gallons, the gravity was exactly on target (1.057).  We also used fine mesh hop sacks this time instead of cheesecloth, which made for much less gunk to filter out of the wort.

After the boil, we put the wort into our bottling bucket and filled five 1-gallon growlers, one with the Belgian Sour Mix, the second with just regular saison yeast, and the last three with saison yeast and one kind of Brett.  We’re hoping this will help us figure out what kind of saison we want to brew a larger batch of later this summer.  And if everything works out, this should be a great way to try out a bunch of different options in small batches.  There are so many options, especially for mead and cider, and it would be nice to have a good process to try out a lot of options and see what we like.

Getting ready to move

Fiber, knitting, ,

Quick knitting update: I’m working on a lightweight scarf for Redbeard that combines my love of knitting, numbers and codes. But, I have gotten stalled out about 3/4 of the way through with all the packing and cleaning we’re doing to get ready to move back to the US.

Speaking of packing, I just entrusted the good folks at the local post office with lots and lots of these:
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These are fat quarters (always loved that name) that use traditional Dutch patterns. I found them at a fantastic local quilting store – I spent way, way too much money in this place! But, it inspired me to make my daughter a new “grown-up” (i.e. twin-sized) quilt and to replace the baby quilt for my son that we LOST with a bigger quilt (maybe also twin-sized, we’ll see how overambitious I’m feeling).