The big day is approaching. While you might feel obligated to grab a Guinness or one of those pints of green beer that started showing up a week or so ago, why not try some stout based beer cocktails this year?
Naturally, there’s the classic Black and Tan. Traditionally, the B&T is made with Guinness and Bass. The drink works because pale ale is heavier than stout. If you fill a glass halfway with pale ale then carefully pour stout on top, the stout will literally float on top. Not only does the drink look cool, it’s quite tasty, too. If you try this yourself, you probably want to use a spoon to slow the stout down so it won’t mix with the pale ale. Pouring it over the curved back of the spoon should do the trick. There are tools made for this very purpose which mount on the rim of the glass that make the pour a lot easier.
The Black and Red is like the B&T except in the beer styles used. The best option is a framboise lambic topped with a chocolate stout. This decadent drink tastes like chocolate covered berries in liquid form.
The Stout Sangria was originally designed to be a Christmas drink but it’s good anytime. Besides, this day when stout is the star seems like the perfect day to whip up the drink. To make it you’ll need:
One bottle of dry stout
1/2 ounce of simple syrup
1/2 ounce of ruby port
Cinnamon or nutmeg for garnish
Fill the glass about 3/4 full with the stout. Add the syrup and port then top it up with the rest of the beer. Sprinkle the spice of your choice on top. Drink. Enjoy. Repeat.
The final stout cocktail comes from our favorite guru of cocktails, Colleen Graham. She recently published this recipe for Apple Cider Shandy. It’s an easy drink to make - the best always are, aren’t they? Pour about half an oatmeal stout in a glass. Top it with an ounce of cider. Colleen recommends soft, nonalcoholic, sparkling cider. The flavor of hard cider is too harsh, she says, and will overwhelm the drink. I haven’t tried this one yet but I look forward to experimenting with it to find which cider is my favorite in it.
Valentines Day is just a week away. So let’s talk a bit romantic booze.
Today we’ll begin with the most unlikely of adult beverages, beer. For those of you for whom beer means the cheapest case of cans filled with piss water - you know who you are - beer might not be the most romantic of drinks.
What is romantic? Is it elegance? Beer’s got elegance. Some of the top shelf craft and import beers are pure elegance. They range in intensity from delicate to bold with a whole palate of flavors from light and fruity to big roasty stouts to funky sour beers.
And the packaging; special release beers these days rival the finest champagnes with magnum bottles, wired down corks and striking labels. For a lot less money, one can pick up a fine bottle of beer that rivals the best wines in flavor, presentation and appearance.
Finally, does a romantic encounter always involve a box of chocolates for you? Chocolate and beer go great together. From the rich, coffee-like flavors of good stout to the tart, fruity flavors of lambic, there is plenty of fine beer that will go very nicely with the box of chocolates.
Or, just get chocolate beer! There is some great chocolate beer out there. Buy a bunch of individual bottles and see which one is you and your lover’s favorite.
You know I like to drink. I’m fond of pretty much every form of alcohol from whisky to cider to red wine to mead – put it in front of me and chances are I’ll enjoy it. But my hands down favorite is beer. It is simultaneously simple and complex, unassuming and brash. No other drink is quite like it.
So, I tend to be a bit thin skinned about beer. The cheap clichés of beer being the drink of drunks drive me crazy. I get impatient when writers and journalists embrace them; I get absolutely pissed when lawmakers do.
The latest thing that has me crawling walls is the fact that Sam Adams high-alcohol beer, Utopia, is banned in 13 states here in the US. No doubt one can buy whisky, gin, vodka and many other forms of booze that far exceed Utopia’s 27% alcohol. But because Utopia is a beer, it must be stopped, according to these lawmakers.
When can we have some sort of equity? I’m not the biggest fan of Utopia. It’s $150 price tag is too great for what the beer is. But these stupid laws reinforce the idea that beer is evil and must be stopped.
Tebbit understandably concluded that the bottles came from the Queen’s Head pub, 30 feet from his front door. So, the lordly one confronted Joel Shepherd, manager, of Queen’s Head. It was quickly established that the bottles couldn’t have come from the pub, rather they were likely sold at a nearby grocery store.
Joel gave the lord a pint and all was well. The lord graciously apologized to Joel and the staff. No word on whether the bottles are still sitting on the lord’s front stoop or not.
If you have young kids, then this is their day. First, you have to strap them into the super hero or cartoon character costume that they excitedly picked out last weekend. Then you herd them out the door and into the street where you cautiously lead them from neighbor’s house to neighbor’s house and send them forth for candy - which you will pick through for razor blades and broken glass later at home. Or if you’re really anal you’ll load them into the minivan and head down to the local civic center or mall where every bit of fun and adventure of a kid’s Halloween has been stripped away for safety’s sake. Or if you’re extremely anal, then you’re heading off to church to pray for us sinners as we celebrate this satanic holiday.
But, if you’re a childless heathen like me, then you get to go have some real fun. Either you’re throwing a party or a friend has invited you to his. You get to go check out your boss’s trophy wife dressed in her slutty cheerleader costume or spend the night getting drunk and smoking cigars by a bonfire. My wife and I attend such a party each year. A friend of ours hosts it at her house in the country. It’s nice and big with plenty of places to crash for the night if the booze and merriment flow a little too freely to make the drive home reasonable.
BYOB is the standing rule for this party. One regular attendee and I always try to bring the hoppiest beer. Well, usually. This year I’m bowing out of the contest. I’m bringing a split sixer of Founder’s Dirty Bastard Scotch Ale, the perfect bonfire-side, cigar puffing beer. Rich, chocolaty and caramelly with an 8.5% ABV that tastes way boozier than that giving the beer a strong backbone. I’m also bringing Avery’s IPA - not the hoppiest beer in town but a very nice ale. My wife, not being a fan of either of those beers, is bringing her usual six-pack of Woodchuck Pear Cider. She can drink that stuff like it’s water.
So those are our plans. What’s your Halloween tradition?
Let me start out by saying that I don’t know anything about the Horny Goat Brewing Company except that it is a brewery in Wisconsin and a really creative marketer works there. I had never heard of it before stumbling across this blog entry about the free condoms.
Naturally, I had to check out their website. It’s a slick-n-sexy tour of the brewery, the beers and a sign-up form for a newsletter and the free condom. Yes, I signed up; this is just the sort of thing one can’t turn down if for no other reason than the giggle factor.
One note, despite the wild, fun attitude the website communicates, the selection of beers is pretty tame - a light ale, a hoppy pale ale and a Belgian wit. Yup, a brewery with the goatiest marketing and branding that I’ve seen in a while doesn’t brew one bock.
Nevertheless, the site is great fun and, despite my beer geek misgivings, makes me want to visit the brewery and try their beers.
It might not be the most obvious combination. When a lot of people think of jazz they think of the bebop era in the ’50’s or the swing period of the ’40’s, a low point for American beer. In these decades the beer industry was dominated by just a few companies and one would have trouble finding any but one style of beer, light lager. The craft beer renaissance was still years away. Looking back it seems like everyone was drinking martinis and elegantly puffing cigarettes.
Okay, so perhaps my image of mid-Twentieth century American culture may be a little off. I’m no sociologist.
But I dig jazz and I really dig beer. So I tend to take note with the two come together as they have recently on both coasts.
On the west coast we have Brother Thelonious, a Belgian style abbey ale. If you don’t know Thelonious Monk’s music then there’s a big piece of your soul missing. Stop reading this blog right now, go to the nearest record store and buy the first Thelonious Monk album you can find. Don’t download one song from Itunes, you have to get the whole album.
Anyway, back to the beer. North Coast Brewing has produced a really nice beer here. It’s big and chewy - very nice. When you buy a bottle of BT you are not only getting an excellent beer but you’re helping out the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. The Institute offers free jazz training to young musicians and a portion of the sales of BT go to it.
Then on the east coast we have the Harlem Brewing Company and Celeste Beatty. She’s been brewing her Sugar Hill Ale for a long time now and listening to jazz even longer. She says that she named her beer Sugar Hill Ale because it “was the neighborhood where my family lived and it was also where a lot of musicians and personalities came from that defined Harlem.”
Now she’s joining forces with World Market, which is opening a store in Harlem, for a free jazz series on Friday nights. The events will feature local musicians as well as beer tastings and food pairings. Sounds like a great way to spend a Friday night.
The recent so-called beer summit had a lot of people talking about beer in public. This is really kind of unusual in the US where we love beer but we’re supposed to be a bit ashamed of it. Whenever we do talk about beer in public we are required to make nervous little jokes about it, use words like “suds” and make little self deprecating quips that prove we’re cool with it.
Bollocks!
With that I’d like to say that I’m now a fan of Representative Jared Polis. I don’t know a lot about the congressman; I’d never heard of him before seeing this clip. But I like the casual way he accepted doing a beer bong on camera. Sure it’s a little juvenile to funnel a beer but you have to appreciate the way he just rolled with it. He’s clearly comfortable with beer and doesn’t need to consult a focus group before drinking one in public. Bravo, Jared!
But it doesn’t stop there. Beer and wine might have naturally occurring benefits but what if more were infused into the beverages. Vitamins and herbs found their way into our adult beverages. And now they are seeping into the hard stuff.
What the hell? Why can’t I just have a drink because I want a drink? In this multitasking world in which we live, it apparently isn’t enough to want to relax and unwind a little at the end of a day. We have to be nourishing ourselves at the same time.
Well, not me.
If there happens to be incidental health benefits to the beer and wine that passes my lips then that’s just great. But I declare here and now that I will not drink nutritionally amped-up booze. A line has to be drawn and this is where I draw mine. You can keep your ginseng infused vodka; I’m going to have another straight bourbon.
For days, beer lovers and political junkies with too much time on their hands have wondered which beers would be chosen for President Obama’s so-called beer diplomacy meeting. (In case you’ve been sleeping for the past two weeks this is about an arrest of a black Harvard professor by a white Cambridge police officer that Obama felt compelled mention in a recent press conference.)
So both the president and the policeman brought up the idea of discussing the issue over a beer. Since then every journalist and pundit have gleefully rolled out every tired joke about beer drinking. And they have endlessly speculated about which beers would be chosen.
Now they have. The president will be drinking a Bud Light; the policeman a Blue Moon; the professor a Red Stripe.
With just a little coordination they could have scored red, white and blue beers. But Obama’s choice screwed that up. If only he’d gone for a White Rascal from Avery!
But setting symbolism aside let’s consider these choices. The professor chose an offbeat light lager. I find it impossible to dislike Red Stripe. Those stubby little bottles are positively adorable as is Red Stripe’s “Hooray, Beer!” ad campaign. The cop chose Blue Moon, the light and gently spicy beer that is often served with an orange slice. And the president chose the most innocuous, inoffensive beer imaginable. No doubt he spent some time with his political consultants to come up with that choice.
What would you choose? Imagine that your choice of beer would be broadcast to the world for some reason. Which brew would you pick?
