Your Comments, Criticisms and Contributions - July 2004
I'm enjoying your brewspaper articles, both the "Yorkshire Steel Conicals" in Ale Street News & "Beer vs. Wine" in Celebrator.
Your observations about winery tasting made me laugh & reminded me of when my wife & I visited Napa in the mid-90s. One guidebook we read ahead of time warned us about the challenges of "musing intelligently" about wine . . . It suggested the following, to deflect any sense of not belonging (I paraphrase -- it's been a while):
"Swirl. Peer. Sniff deeply. Sample. Draw air through your lips, and if you swallow close your eyes. After a long pause, say: 'Reminds me of running naked through a field of sunlit flowers.'"
Works every time.
- Craig Hartinger
Sounds like sage advice, Craig. Thanks for the comments.
Love your articles on food preparation with beer and your beer cocktails. As a homebrewer with an amateur culinary interest, I am always interested in new ways to use beer in food preparation. As you may know, here in the New Orleans area, you can't get 2 people together w/o talking food, drink and music. Hope to see your culinary use of beer become more prevalent in this area. Any ideas or educational material or instructional ideas you could provide for a simple beer culinary demonstration as part of a homebrew club meeting?
Fermentably yours,
- Larry Hartzog
Funny you should write at this time, since I've been talking about New Orleans with people quite a lot lately.
As for your question about a culinary presentation, I'd suggest one of two things. For demonstrating the use of beer in cooking, I'd prepare the same stew twice, once with an appropriate amount of brown ale or porter in it and once without. (Or a jambalaya with some porter or stout mixed in the same quantities as a helles, and topped with a dribble of bourbon!) Leave the stew for three days and then serve hot. The difference between the two should be measurable.
On the beer with food side, serve a bowl of salty pretzels with two beers, one a malty ale and the other a hoppy pale ale or pilsner. The salt on the pretzels will kill the malty beer, but perform beautifully with the hoppy beer.
Is Piss beer available in California?
- David Johnson
Piss has never been imported into the United States. I'm not even entirely certain it's still being brewed in Oz.
And a nice comment received about beerbistro, the beer cuisine restaurant and bar in which I'm a partner:
Well, Stephen, I've got to say that beerbistro was the highlight of the trip.
I was warmly greeted by Brian. He mentioned that you had told him that I'd be by, and he welcomed me with wheat beer tasters, which I thought was a wise choice (or is that weisse choice?) to present to a thirsty traveler.
The very attentive Vickie took care of the rest of my needs. She had a pretty good beer knowledge - a very refreshing change from most of the rest of the world.
Your beer selection was very well considered and balanced. When I travel, I mainly like to concentrate on the locals but sometimes like to fall back on the more exotic but more widely available. After a thirsty 2000 mile flight a refreshing Cantillon Gueuze sounded perfect. The beer menu, obviously authored by you, showed that great balance that I like. Enjoyable reading for the 3 hours I spent there.
The delightful food provided a splendid palate cleansing between beers. Your pairings were quite thoughtful.
Thanks for the perfect beer experience, Stephen!
- Chris Bushman
And thank you for the feedback, Chris. Emails like this make all the work that it takes to run a place like beerbistro worthwhile!
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