Category: Craft Beer

Moar about craft beer!!!!!!

Wine From Water – Food and Beer Pairing

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Hello! I know this a little late (a year and a month late to be exact), but I wrote it, so I want to post it. Plus it’s interesting and cool and I don’t do a lot of blog collaboration – I want to do more of that. A while ago, Nelli and Brian started a blog called Wine From Water. It’s awesome with all sorts of good recipes, commentary, and food porn photos, etc. Nelli asked me to write a little piece about pairing beer with a meal they made, so here we go!

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I am so pleased to be blogging with Wine From Water; I’ve known Nelli and Brian for a long time, and well, let me just say that Nelli (and assumedly Brian) is a great cook and very adventurous when it comes to the palate. I’m just glad I have something to contribute to the mix (literally). Trust me, I know a lot about mac and cheese, because it’s pretty much the only meal I make (different variations thereof, including Annie’s, spruced up), and I know even more about beer. Here I’ve laid out different beer options for pairing beer with the two dishes Nelli and Brian have made, and a little bit about pairing beer with food to get your mind working. So next time you go to the liquor store after a grocery store run you can think about the flavors and come up with a pairing on par with the fanciest wine-only restaurant. Beer is for everyone, so I don’t want to hear that you don’t like beer. If you don’t like beer, you haven’t found the right one, so keep trying!
 
Food & Beer Pairing with Wine From Water’s Spicy Shells and Gouda Cheese recipe: 

You pay a small amount for a meal, you don’t want to bust your budget on beer, but you still want it to taste good and compliment the deliciousness you labored over. With a meal like this, which is generally spicy, I would recommend an IPA. IPAs can help balance the flavors of robust meals like this one, because of their high levels of hops, and are good balancers for spicy and chili flavors (like the ones found in pepperjack cheese). Spiciness also part of their history. IPA stands for India Pale Ale, if you didn’t know the lore, now you do: when the British went to explore India they brought beer (good idea guys) and then they were worried it was going to go bad (unlikely) so they put some hops in the finished beer (called dry-hopping, hehe), which makes the finish (the lasting taste in your mouth once you’ve swallowed it) incredibly bitterTwo Hearted Ale and delicious.
 
If you’re from Michigan, a good standby is Bell’s Two Hearted, and it won’t break the bank, really (I would say on average, about $10 for a 6 pack, which is pretty standard for a nice craft beer). But if you’re from Minnesota, or can get your grubby little hands on it, have yourself a Surly Furious (more IBUs – international bittering units – than your mouth can taste). It’s about $12 for a 4 pack of tallboys. Or even better, and cheaper, you could get Rush River Bubblejack ($9 for a 6 pack).
 
anchor porterIf you’re not into IPAs, that’s fine, but you’re missing out. Instead, you could pair this dish with a beer that accents the smokey flavors in the paprika topping, and can help tone down the spicy notes in the food: a porter. A cheaper more widely found porter is the Anchor Porter from Anchor Brewing, one of the oldest breweries in the United States. A good Michigan option: Founder’s Porter. Deep, dark, and delicious. That’ll run about $10, but the Anchor can be as cheap as $8.

Cheers!

The Beauty and Elegance of High-Low Beer and Food Pairing

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Recently I’ve been itching to go to a beer dinner, a really delicious excuse to eat too much delicious food and drink too much delicious beer, but to be honest, they’re just too expensive. I mean $50 for a four-course meal with 4 beers is pretty reasonable, assuming that each of those beers costs $5, that’s $20 and then the dinner itself is $30. However the reason person within me thinks ‘wow, when was the last time you spent $50 just on food for yourself in a normal restaurant situation?’ I feel like beer dinners should just be cheaper – you’re a captive audience and supporter and blowing $100 on a weeknight meal for two just feels frivolous to do more than once a year. It’s ok to make it expensive sometimes especially if you’re involving a renowned chef, but to really get people excited and learning about craft beer and food/beer pairings, you have to make it more accessible – lower the cost.

However, it’s a two-fold situation. Beer-pairing dinners are the little brother to wine-pairing dinners, which are arguably more expensive and, for lack of a better word, ritzy. The discourse around wine is much more sophisticated and as are the people that talk about the ‘bouquet of the wine’ and nibble crackers in between tastings (that apparently you are not supposed to actually swallow). Wine is supposed to go with high-class food while beer goes with sporting games and burgers. But as we’ve seen recently ‘everyday’ food like burgers and grilled cheeses are become more popular, more ritzy, and definitely more expensive. So why not pair beer with those things instead of the unattainable Michelin star-type food you find matched up with wine? Well, some do, but then they charge wine dinner prices for it. Sure good quality craft beer isn’t cheap, but it’s definitely not fancy pants wine and that’s not what beer is all about so why charge like it is? Beer is for the people, even craft beer, believe it or not.

If craft beer is expensive then won’t people think it’s better and more elite, like wine? So then it practically needs to have events similar to those with wine. Craft beer no longer competes against crappy American lagers, it competes against wine. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, people who say they don’t like beer just haven’t found the right one. There is a larger variety of flavor profiles in beer than there is in wine because it can literally be or taste like anything – craft brewers are getting adventurous and by over-pricing beer dinners, people are missing out. Pairing craft beer with gourmet food isn’t the ‘next big thing’ because it’s here and frankly it’s unsustainable and further alienates people that craft beer has left behind. The future of craft beer and food is high-low beer pairings, bringing the people and the beer together rather than the beer to the people.

Last summer for a friend’s birthday we went to the Lagunitas and Heggie’s pizza beer-pairing dinner at the Nomad World Pub. It was awesome. For $20 we had four (five?) glasses of Lagunitas paired with five different slices of the famous bar-only Heggie’s frozen pizza. As an appetizer we had a handful of Totino’s pizza rolls in a whiskey glass served with a tasting glass of beer and then from there, the beer and pizza were flowing. Before every new pizza and beer, the local Lagunitas rep gave us a brief description of both and why they went well together – there were no white tablecloths, no cloth napkins for that matter, just a lot of beautiful patio and tasty beers. I honestly can’t tell you why there weren’t more people there – am I the only one who likes cheap craft beer and above average frozen pizza? Perhaps.

But my point still stands. Through that event, Lagunitas got their name out in the community, we got to try more Lagunitas than I have even had at a beer festival and we ate plenty – it was a successful beer dinner by all definitions.  So now I want more but I have seen none. Unlike a wine-pairing dinner that teaches people that the only way to enjoy good wine and good food is to pay a lot at a fancy restaurant, the beauty of the high-low beer pairing is that it is inexpensive for everyone and a great way to focus on the beer and how to pair and enjoy it with everyday foods. That’s what craft beer is all about.

Beer Black Hole

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As I stared at the never-ending rows of craft beer at Zipp’s, overcome with indecision and displeasure, I realized that I have a problem. I am bored by craft beer in its current state. It makes me sad and grumpy and disappointed – like a parent whose child wrecked the family car and claimed it was an accident when it was clearly a case of distracted driving. I have tried so many beers, and love trying so many beers, to such an extent that it is the core element of the beer experience for me now. I no longer want to just drink a beer; I want to try a new beer. I want to evaluate it. I want to recommend it to friends and love it for that moment, for that six-pack, and move on to another. And repeat. So I just stared at the beers, settling on a tried and true brew, but I was disheartened. How many others are suffering from this illness? This I-need-a-new-brew-to-survive disease? And the answer is, I’m sure, plenty. That’s why the beer scene continues to grow and there is literally a new brewery every other week in Minneapolis. But that begs the question, when will it be enough? A sinking feeling in my stomach – never. I will endure this forever, for better or worse, until the beer industry implodes on itself from too many beers.

My Beer Myopia

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As I stared at the long list of bottled beers at the Epic tap-less taproom, my mind drew a blank. I was stunned by the sheer volume of beers and only 30 minutes in which to drink them before they closed the place down. I have never seen so many beers available at a taproom before. My friend Blackmer and I bellied up to the bar where the above-average looking bartender stood chatting with another customer. This was no ordinary taproom, this was a tap room in Salt Lake City, Utah. What was once a notoriously barren desert of craft beer (due to a strict 3.2% law with a religious bent) now has a couple cactuses and, boy, are the cactuses flowering – at high gravity nonetheless (only because they have to; the law states that if a beer is above 3.2% it has to be in a bottle, so that’s a nice loophole).

The man sitting at the bar next to me, a business man also staying at my hotel but for a trade show, was also clearly very knowledgeable about beer, suggested I try their Copper Cone Pale Ale, saying it was one of the best he’s ever had. He asked me what my favorite IPA was – not just beer, but IPA. This is not the first time I have encountered this question but it was the first time I was hyperaware of my lack of beer knowledge in this particular situation and my desire to not only seem knowledgeable but interesting in my beer tastes. Anything I said wouldn’t have resonated with him, he doesn’t know Surly Furious or the Rush River Bubble Jack – or maybe he does, but he wouldn’t have truly understood what they meant to me on a deeper level, as a proud Midwesterner; he was clearly intimate with the beers of the West, and I was dumbstruck, paralyzed by my own inability to commit and be judged outside of my flannel comfort zone. I avoided the question, saying I would gladly take his recommendation but I sat tentatively on the edge of my seat. What had I gotten myself into?

The sad truth is I am honestly used to knowing more about beer than the majority of the people around me, and even if they have a strong opinion that I would fundamentally disagree with (I don’t believe in hopped-stupid beers and I firmly believe that Fulton is a good brewing company), we’re on the same page. Naturally I am one page ahead of them, or so I like to think, but that page is definitely in the chapter known as ‘Minnesota and other upper Midwest breweries.’ It was at that moment, as I took a bite into the best prosciutto and Gruyere panini I’ve ever had (it even had honey on it, what?!), I realized – I have become too myopic in my beer crusade. If I cannot even commit to a universal, or at least national, IPA that I genuinely enjoy, I am doing something wrong.

The real kicker is, however, the realization that I am ignorant of other awesome beers out there, making me the most insufferable beer snob akin to only those who reside in Portland, complacent with their local beer selection and ever-so-gently reminding you that no, craft beer from Portland is the best. I only really know my local beers, and as I said in my Growler magazine article, my favorite anytime beer is the Summit Oatmeal Stout (don’t even go there, I already recognized in said article that it is a silly choice, but I’m just being honest). If I am to be the craft beer lover and advocate I pretend to be, I need to do more in the way of higher education; as we all know, education doesn’t end in school, it’s everything you do all the time – good thing I drink beer all the time, so that part is easy. But the hard part is going out and seeking things you haven’t tried before and not just putting beers from the coasts on a pedestal as the end-all-be-all, an attitude that I attribute to my reactive Midwestern beer myopia, which in a way is almost just as bad. It is exploring all the styles, beers and breweries you can get your hands on to get a better understanding of the larger context, and more specifically, the ability to just shut the hell up and pick a favorite IPA that everyone knows and can relate to. So, watch out, America – this beer snob is about to get a much-needed beer education.

Oh, Hello Again!

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As some of you have mentioned (somewhat passive aggressively) to me over the past few months, I have been neglecting the ol’ beerspectacles and for this I have no excuses, only apologies. As of late I’ve been enjoying the summer and the beer events it has to offer while trying to build my online presence and experience through beer blogging and journalistic-related endeavors. So in a way this blog post is actually pretty weak, I’m just here to tell you about the different sites and things I’ve been working on/with to try to get you to support them too, and to let you know I still care (I even have a new layout, don’t you like it?).

MNBeer.com

Many of you are already familiar with MNBeer.com or should be; it is Minnesota’s premier beer blog filled with events, goings on, interviews, spotlights, and basically anything and everything you need to know to be as on top of the beer scene as I have. About a month ago, Ryan, the main MNBeer.com dude sent out a call to all followers asking for more hands at blogging, naturally I was very interested. After meeting him at the St. Paul Beer Fest (which was awesome by the way, the best I’ve been to yet), he decided it would be a good fit and I was given a log-in and an assignment and so began my journey with MNBeer, which is only just beginning. They are going to do a full rebrand and website redesign, so stay tuned for more about the blossoming Minnesota beer scene; the most exciting thing I’m looking forward to: Ryan is making a beer blog aggregate! I will also be receiving tickets/passes/other shit related to Minnesota beer, so if you’re ever interested in going to something let me know, my answer is almost always ‘yes.’

The Growler Magazine

One of my friend’s friends passed me along to Jason Zabel (you may recognize him from the now-defunct AV Club Twin Cities) who is the editor of the Twin Cities newest beer magazine: The Growler. I sent him my credentials and some story ideas and was assigned a story about biking in the Twin Cities and how various breweries/styles of beer pair with the different kinds of bikes people ride. This article is scheduled to come out in the August/September issue, which is both online and print. The Growler is a subsidy of The Beer Dabbler, Minnesota’s most successful beer festival organizer (despite my gripes from this year’s winter one), and is paid for by advertising, which makes it free to the public, available at your favorite taproom, liquor store, or homebrewing supply store. Go grab yourself a copy and be expecting to see a lot more of me in there! Your thoughts and ideas are always welcome.

Fusion Chill

As many of you know, I also have a day job that I am technically not allowed to blog about here, so I will not. However, I can’t NOT talk about the beer-brewing I spear-headed for our summer client event. If you follow me on Twitter (@beerspectacles) than you’ve been witnessing the beer as it fermented, but the final update: the beers turned out better than I would’ve ever expected and the turnout at the party was great. More importantly, people LOVED the beer and there was a lot of talk about leaving my job. But as many of us avid homebrewers know, there’s plenty of homebrewers out there who want to brew professionally, but very few actually go through with it – it’s just a dream the helps spur the craft rather than change the path. But maybe one day, a girl can dream. One of our graphic designers did a killer job on the labels as well as coordinated decorations. The three beers: A lightly smoked apple and pear hard cider (everyone’s favorite despite naysaying at the outset), a coffee porter (less people are into these in the summer, but I drank my fair share), and a classic American IPA (for men, since as you may know, I work for an all-female company and we have male clients). Brewing three batches at once isn’t the easiest thing in the world, because it ends up being about a day’s worth of work whatever way you look at it, but it’s fun to get paid to brew beer with your coworkers.

That’s it for now, folks. I have other posts in the works (have been for a while) and I promise – pink swear – that I will be better about my avid beerspectacles fans. I love you all. Cheers!