Winding up the year, starting the next one

Early Thursday morning

Well...I had a really horrible 9 hour drive through Wednesday's snowstorm (a drive that usually takes about 5 hours) to my in-laws in upstate New York. But at the end of it, we got stuck into some seriously good beers: DC Brau's On The Wings of Armageddon (a jaw-slapping double IPA) and a jug of Selin's Grove's SNAFU IPA from Friday the 21st (when Nora and I dropped in at the brewpub for their 16th anniversary), and then some Smuttynose Big Beers: Zinneke (a Belgian-type stout that was good but wasn't fantastic), Scottish (delicious malt pillow), and Gravitation (a marvelous quad-type that really kept the malt train rolling along, rich and tongue-heavy).

Thursday...we recovered, and then Friday the bros-in-law and I went out to Sticky Lips BBQ in Henrietta, NY. The catfish was good (the fried pickles were just okay), the ribs were good, and the pulled pork was great. I had an Ed Fitz Porter (an always favorite) and a Three Heads The Kind IPA (excellently hoppy and brisk, even more so at $4 a 16 oz. glass). I had some GoldenCold when we got home. Saturday? Another long drive through snow, and some beers at the end...and a few more tonight.

But look, tomorrow is New Year's Day! As we've done for a few years now, we'll be going to Memphis Taproom for a late lunch (they have their full brunch menu from 11 AM to 3 PM NYE and NYD; late lunch, late breakfast, whatever, right?), then picking up some bratwurst at Rieker's for our midnight grillfest. I've got a magnum of Dupont Avec les Bons Vouex for the celebration.

Now, New Year's Day is a conflicting set of traditions for me. I've been watching the Mummer's Parade since I was a little kid -- on television, never been able to get down there... -- but Cathy has never understood, appreciated, or wanted to get anywhere near the Mummers. At all. Which may have something to do with why I've never been able to get to the parade, come to think of it. The other tradition is spending the day with my brother-in-law Carl and his family...but they couldn't make it this year; neither could we, actually. So we're on our own, and it turns out that there are some really good things to do on New Year's Day.

Like we may start at Monk's Cafe,where Tom and Fergie have started their own odd little tradition of serving all stouts (and one excellent sour, TBA) on NYD. Here's the list so far:
1. Allagash Bourbon Black
2. Alvinne Catherine The Great3. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
4. Dogfish Head Bitches Brew
5. Dogfish Head Chicory Stout
6. Dupont Monks Stout7. Dogfish Head World Wide Stout
8. Emelisse Russian Imperial Stout
9. Founder's Breakfast Stout10. Great Divide oak aged Yeti
11. Lost Abbey Deliverance (cellared for a year)
12. Sierra Nevada Narwhal Imperial Stout
13. Stoudt's Fat Dog Stout
14. New Holland Poet Oatmeal Stout
15. Bells Java Stout
16. Laughing Dog Dogfather Imperial Stout
17. Smuttynose Zinneke Belgian-style Stout

Pretty sure we can find something (fancy a Narwhal?).

Then we've got a private drop-in party to hit, followed by the annual whoopee at Local 44, where they celebrate their opening anniversary on January 1st (I'm hoping to snag some of the Lees Moonraker). Then it's back home, where I guess we'll have to have some amount of pork and sauerkraut, just because I'm a Dutchman.

What a Week! Jousting with the PLCB and a Bourbon Dinner

Posts have been thin again, but it's been a wild week. As I posted on the PLCB blog (and here, briefly), I was on WHYY's Radio Times call-in show with PLCB Chairman PJ Stapleton this past Monday. That went well -- and substantially increased my Twitter following, and got me some interest from pro-privatization groups; maybe more on that -- and got my week off to a good start.

Yes, that's Casey Hughes...

Tuesday was my bourbon dinner at Percy Street Barbecue. All you barbecue freak haters who can't wait to jump on the comments to bitch about their barbecue -- because no matter what a place is like, I know you're out there -- don't bother: we didn't have any barbecue. What we did have was a full menu informed and inspired by chef Erin O'Shea's barbecue experience and Southern roots. The place was sold out: 100 people (including some brewer friends, some writer friends, and my own wonderful wife) all ready for bourbon and food. We clustered around the bar for beers near the beginning (I had a 21st Amendment Bitter American (Percy St. only has draft beer and what might be the best craft can selection in the city)), then got down to business -- or bidness, I suppose.

First course: three different country hams, cut thin (proper), with rolls. Rolls maybe could have been softer to be traditional, but they were good. The hams were well-differentiated: rich, smokey, and delicate. The bourbon I paired (1792) as a "Kentucky tea," about 2 parts bourbon and three parts spring water over ice in a tall glass. It's an old distiller's favorite: you still taste the bourbon (which is why I chose the flavorful 1792), but with enough volume from the water and ice that you can easily drink it with your meal...and it's perfect for the salty ham.

Next two courses -- a delicious sweet potato soup (and I hate sweet potatoes!) with some deliciously fatty pork good on crisps; and smoked trout on a salad of apples, onions, and fingerling spuds -- were terribly good, the smoked trout especially. They got whiskeyed by Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey (a malt whiskey aged like bourbon; chose it to stand right up to the rich sweet potato soup) and Four Roses Yellow Label  on the rocks (chose it for the opposite reason; a great-tasting table bourbon that didn't overwhelm the trout). The whole time, of course, I was telling them about bourbon, and rye, and distillation, and some stories about distillers...you know, working the dinner and the room.

Fourth course was the big one: smoked whole quail, stuffed with cornbread and house-smoked sausage, on a bed of brussels sprouts with a side of beets. This was extremely popular at our table full of brewers, for a good reason: it was fabulous. It was semi-boned, with only the wings and legs left intact; you know, the parts you want to gnaw off the bone! I decided to let the bar show off their stuff this round, and we did a Rittenhouse Rye Manhattan, perfect in the city of Rittenhouse. (We will have rye whiskey made in PA again; soon. Trust me.)

Things wound up with something Erin called "Cracker Jack," which was grits (cooked in milk, I think), with caramel, nuts, and a raisin puree made with whiskey. It was way more yummy than something made with grits and raisins ever deserved to be. I paired it with Rowan's Creek, which may have been my one duff move of the evening; Rowan's is pretty sweet stuff (at least, this batch was), and the dessert really over-accentuated that. We live, we learn.

A great time, and a very impressive first special dinner for Percy Street. Things came out hot (when appropriate!), service was steady and friendly, and the drinks were dead on the money. Be happy to work with these folks again.

Still, like I said...this was the start of my week. Another post to come on the rest of it: a trip to NERAX, another lunch with Thomas at Deep Ellum, Will Meyers's barrel room marvels, arguing session beer with BeerAdvocate's Alström Brothers (now posted at the SBP blog), a great dinner at Hungry Mother, and I touch down at Zeppelin Hall. Stay tuned...

5-course Whiskey Dinner at Percy Street, featuring me

I got talked into doing a whiskey dinner...at Percy Street Barbecue...by Jennie Hatton...and if you know me, you'll be able to guess that it took very little persuasion to get me to say "Hell yes!"

Let me tell you, though: working with chef/pit mistress Erin O'Shea has been inspiring. Here's the 5-course food/whiskey menu we put together; I think you'll agree that it goes way beyond barbecue.

• Country Ham Tasting, featuring Phillip’s from North Carolina, Father’s from Kentucky and Edward's Wigwam from Virginia, paired with a “Kentucky Tea,” 1792 Ridgemont Reserve whiskey over ice with plenty of water;  
• Sweet Potato Soup with smoked pork rillettes, paired with Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey;   
• Smoked Trout with apple, onions and fingerlings, paired with Four Roses Yellow Label
• Stuffed Quail, smoked and stuffed with cornbread and sausage, served with Brussels sprouts, paired with a Rittenhouse Rye Manhattan;  
• “Cracker Jack” corn grits with caramel and nuts, paired with Rowan's Creek Bourbon.

I'll be talking about all the whiskeys, and bourbon and rye in general, of course, but I'll also be talking about why we chose the whiskeys we did, with the courses, and why we decided to do the two cocktails. I hope you'll notice that we spread the love around, and tried to lay down some whiskeys you may not have tried before.

The dinner's on March 29th, and tickets are $50, which I honestly think is a steal for five drinks and five courses. Seats are limited -- and I know of ten that are reserved already -- so if you're interested, call today: 215-625-8510.

A Whole Lot Of Lager

I've been pretty much off the air for five days. Hey, it was a holiday weekend! We dropped off the Corgis at a nice kennel and drove south to bro-in-law Carl's house south of Richmond for a family celebration: Carl's son Matthew graduated from high school this year, the first of the next generation of Cathy's family. He'd done very well in high school and was accepted as an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia.

So we celebrated: way too much food, loud music (world music, Matt's studying a variety of languages and makes the cultures part of his study), and a 50 liter keg of Blue & Gray Classic Lager. Which was quite tasty, particularly since with the brewery's recent move, the only way they could sell Carl a keg -- Carl being a fairly regular customer -- was to give him unfiltered beer. Very tasty indeed, although when we had to move the last three gallons or so last night, it got real cloudy; lots of yeast in those last glasses!

We had some cans of Sly Fox Phoenix Pale Ale, too, and a Pike Place Monk's Uncle Triple (very nice golden color, pleasantly dry malt presentation (too many sappy tripels out there), with some great spicy notes -- quite a good beer, and I recommend it to you), and I got a bit sappy myself drinking some Old Charter 101, but mostly...we drank Lager. Mostly Carl and I drank Lager, although his brothers Chris and Curt helped. (Don't anyone's parents come to graduation parties any more?) We worked some of it off with a hike around the pond at Pocahontas State Park (that's Carl in the hat and Curt in the...skin).

Most of the family went home Sunday morning. We had breakfast with them before they left, then went to 11 AM mass, and took the rest of the day pretty darned easy as it rained almost all day. More Lager, of course.

Monday Cathy and Thomas and I toured University of Richmond and William & Mary, part of the reason for the trip. We're doing college visits this month. It was not as grueling as we'd feared: the weather was simply wonderful, high 80s with hardly any humidity. Of course, we were touring two beautiful campuses, which didn't hurt. We took the Johnstown-Scotland ferry back across the James River on the way back from Williamsburg, which was smooth, cool, and very pretty, then joined Carl and family for one last dinner (pizza and salad...and Lager).

Today was grueling. We left Carl's at 8:30, drove down I-85 and had breakfast at Brian's Steakhouse in South Hills, VA (excellent), then struck west on VA Rt. 58, a fun and gorgeous drive I've done in the past, and enjoyed again today. But...it was 1:15 by the time we made Wake Forest, and today was hotter (thank God for the breeze). After the talk and the tour (another nice campus, Thomas pulls a face when he notices me taking a picture), we toddled down to Little Richard's Bar-B-Que on Country Club Road.

Holy crap, it was good. I got the coarse-chopped tray with slaw, hush puppies, and fries (why do these places insist on deep-frying 'krinkle-kut' "fries"? Make some damned fresh-cuts, willya?), and tossed the meat up with Little Richard's "dip," the Lexington-style sauce that is just hypnotic to the tongue. Yum-damnit-yum, and the hushpuppies were plentiful and crisp, the slaw diced with dip, and the meat...well, I'm very glad that Little Richard's actually smokes their 'que. 'Nuff said. The side of beans was disappointing: if they weren't lightly doctored canned beans, they were putting too much effort into making something that tasted just like lightly doctored canned beans.

Somehow we managed to realize that dessert -- banana pudding! -- would just not have been -- chocolate pie! -- a good idea, and hit the road at 5:15...for Charlottesville. Argh. The Jetta's nice, don't get me wrong, but four people in it for eight hours? We got a little snarky at times. The driving was fabulous (once we got off I-40 onto Rt. 29 North); hills, practically deserted four lane highway, beautiful vistas of forests, even the waves of kudzu looked good. We got to Ch'ville at 9, and dossed down in our hotel room. Know how grueling all that driving was? I didn't have the energy to drive into town to take in the excellent beers at South Street. I feel like I've let you down, but I was just not getting back in that car again till tomorrow morning!

Tomorrow we tour UVA, probably grab lunch at either Michael's or the Mellow Mushroom (fast good pizza, one pint for the road), then drop in to take a look at the Dickinson College campus before picking up the Corgis and going home. In other words...we're looking at another six and a half hours in the car. Although the last hour and a half will be in both cars, with the Corgis, which will be much better. Talk to you later!

The BBQ Beat Goes On...

As promised, Jay Brooks and I headed out early to Allen & Son outside of Chapel Hill on Saturday morning, and also as promised, we got us some serious pig. Allen & Son was every bit as good as it was last year, although Jay and I disagreed on the fries: he likes them crispy, me, I really like a good meaty fresh-cut fry where you can taste the flavor and texture of the potato. Jay called this "soggy." To each his own, I guess (even though I know damn well I'm right). Minerva took us by kind of an ass-backwards route, but eventually we got there, about 10:10 AM.

I got Brunswick stew and pulled pork, Jay just pork. The stew was okay, sweeter than I like, but with a nice smokiness from the meat. The meat...I have been told that NC BBQ is more about the meat, the pork than anything else: sauce, sides, or smoke. To quote a wiser...no, better...no, taller man than I, that's crazy talk. Smoke in the meat. That's what makes this great BBQ. Many NC barbeque places have gone to electric or gas "pits" and the lack of smoke in their meat has been rationalized: it's about tender pork and the vinegar sauce, we're told. Well, as I found at the Barbecue Lodge, that can be good, but it's not fantastic, like this stuff was.

And it was. I'd describe it, but I've already wet myself once. Jay ordered some peanut butter pie -- he has addiction issues in that corner, though he did say this one could have been more intensely peanutted -- and I went to the counter to get Penderyn another BBQ bone. I need a bone for my dog, I said. Oh, says Karsten, our waitress, what kind of dog do you-all have? A Corgi, I said, in fact, I sent you a letter about him saving my life and you were kind enough to send him some -- "I remember him! I sent you those bones! How is he?" she squealed. We talked dogs a bit, and I left, grinning.

Well, we felt so good, I easily talked Jay into whipping over to Raleigh for more barbecue at Ole Time Barbecue outside of Raleigh. (That's not a picture of how I rammed the Passat into a schoolbus, by the way: that's what their joint looks like!) A great idea, for many reasons. First, it was a gorgeous early October day and a fun ride. Second, the pork was a very close second to Allen & Son, smoky and delicious, even without their quite nice sauce. (The fries...not so good. Wedges. Yuk. But I had boiled cabbage, which was perfect.) Third, the sweet tea rocked, made fresh, and re-filled fast and often (and when we were ready to go, our waitress topped us up and capped-and-strawed it for us). Finally, two barbecue lunches/breakfasts (first eats of the day!) gave us a solid drinking base when we headed back to the festival.

In short, Saturday's barbecue experiences were every bit as exceptional as Friday's had been unexceptional. Saved the trip for me, by golly.

More to come on the festival, my talk, and session beer in Virginia.

Durham: the World Meat Fest -- er, Beer Festival

Once again, I'm speaking at the World Beer Festival in Durham this weekend, and using the opportunity to scarf up some of the local bounty: North Carolina barbeque. I left my bro-in-law Carl's house yesterday morning about 9, and leisurely drove down I-85 and Rt. 1 to Raleigh, where I stopped on the outskirts of town at a plaza-based joint called the Barbecue Lodge. I was flying blind here, just going on the vaguest of recommendations, and it didn't look good: too damned bland, too damned clean. They were cleaning the glass on the pig showcases when I came in, even.

But the menu proudly declared that their minced pork barbecue sandwich was the best barbecue sandwich in the Carolinas, so I figured I'd give that a run -- besides, I had to save room for more, I was planning on hitting two more places. Oh, wait, banana pudding? I'll have that, too. Well, I got hush puppies (and the horrible "corn logs") right away; the sandwich and pudding came in about two minutes, along with a glass of sweet tea and a back-up pitcher on the side. Sweet!

The hush puppies were too delicate for my tastes -- I declined to even touch the corn logs. The sandwich, at $3.50, was stuffed with minced pork, moistly held together the classic vinegar/spice "sauce" they use round here, and the slaw was also finely minced, more like what we call "pepper cabbage" back home in Pennsylvania. I don't know about "best barbecue sandwich in the Carolinas," but it was damned fine. Still, it's just not a real smoky meat, which disappointed me. The banana pudding was rich and sweet, kept from tooth-hurtingly sweet by thick slices of mellow banana and big veins of cookie crumbs. I didn't finish it, but not because it wasn't toothsome.

I paid up and headed into town towards Clyde Cooper's BBQ. Like the one reviewer on Yelp, I really wanted to like this place, and to be honest, I liked everything about it -- the old-timey space with the quick lunch counter service (on the right), the sweet tea, the hush puppies, the cracklin's (fried pork skins, like rich, crunchy fat), and some of the very best slaw I've ever had -- except the meat. I mean, damn. I got the coarse cut pork, and it just reminded me of the wet chunks of steam-roasted pork I used to get at the school cafeteria, dressed up with Carolina vinegar sauce. No smoke, and not much texture to speak of. I did eat things up, because the slaw was so damned good, and the tea was delish. But...it's a barbecue place. Sigh.

I walked over to the Flying Saucer because while I'd heard a lot about this beer-centric southern chain, I'd never been to one. Wow, beery as advertised. Tons of good beer in a wide-open, almost echoing space, a very long bar, and staff that really had a clue about the beer they were serving. The menu was accurate and up-to-date, I was offered a taster without asking for it, and the guy talked beer quite intelligently with two other customers. I got a Cottonwood Endo IPA that was real fresh, a blunt, hoppy smack in the chops. My God, North Carolina beer is so much better than it was 15 years ago. Which is true of damned near anywhere in the U.S., of course.

I meant to hit one more place, Ole Time Barbecue...but truth be told, I was gut-stuffed and groaning. I reluctantly headed to Durham, where I met up with All About Beer publisher Daniel Bradford, and went for a couple beers at one of his regular hangouts, Bull McCabe's. It's one of them "Irish" bars stuffed full of stuff from Ireland...but as DB said, just because it is doesn't mean it's not a fun place. And the Fuller's London Porter sure did rock.

It's Saturday morning now, though, and I'm getting ready to head out to Allen & Son for more great pork meat with Jay Brooks, who is also here to speak. We sat up drinking last night, and now it's barbecue time!

Even Penderyn Loves 'Que

When I was paying for the great barbeque eating at Allen & Son, I saw a hand-lettered sign at the register: "Hickory-Smoked Bones: $1." Hey, I thought, Little Mister Dog might like that. So I got one. LMD was very excited to see me when I got home (Cathy said he'd been lying by the front door, waiting for me to come home), but when I got the bone out he got very serious.

He sniffed it all over, took it in his mouth (with substantial overlap; it was about 7" long), and trotted out into the backyard without a backwards glance. I heard gnawing noises the rest of the night till bedtime, when I had to go out and bring the little guy in...with about two inches of leftover bone. He was at it again this morning (the pic above which shows the remaining stub in his mouth), a very happy dog. 'Que, gotta love it.

One More Box of Meat

I headed for home Sunday afternoon, after dropping off Carl at his place south of Richmond. We have a choice when we come back from Carl's: we can take our chances with the heavy traffic on I-95, chancing that we won't get hung up going around DC and Baltimore (and pay $11 worth of tolls), or we can peel off onto US Rt. 301, through the woods of Fort A.P. Hill and across the Potomac on the big bridge at Dahlgren, chancing that there's no accidents and the traffic lights don't hit us wrong.

I decided to take the road less-traveled. It was a nice day, traffic wasn't too heavy, and, um...there's Johnny Boy's Ribs on 301 in La Plata, Maryland. I figured by the time I got to Johnny Boy's, I'd be ready for lunch. After a real easy run over the river and through the woods, I pulled off the road and smelled that aroma of hickory smoke. Mmm, boy. I've only eaten here once before, years ago, and I remember mostly that it was cold and windy as I determinedly ate my minced pork at the outside picnic table (no indoor seating at Johnny Boy's). I didn't really know what I was eating, didn't have any kind of appreciation for it. Today, I was ready.

I was going to get minced pork, just to make things fair, when I saw the sign. The name of the place is Johnny Boy's Ribs, I thought, and remembered what Carl had said earlier that morning: sometimes, ribs are just what you want. Screw it: "Half a slab, please, with a side of beans."

The ribs came in a neatly folded cardboard box, lined with foil; the beans in a styro container. The beans were okay, tasted like doctored canned beans: good, but not a lot better than I can do at home. The ribs, though, were excellent. Cut into individual pigsicles, they were meaty and ripe with smoke, with the pinkness that shows the smoke has penetrated the meat.

Johnny Boy's is well-known for their Mama Sophie's sauce, and I should have, I guess, but I wanted to taste the meat. If that was a mistake, it's one I can happily live with. I sucked every bit of meat from the bones, delighting in the meatier ones, gnawing on the leaner ones, and licking the scrumptious grease from my fingers. I took my time, as good ribs will force you to do, and enjoyed every minute.

When I was done, I cleaned up, tossed my trash, got back in the car, and headed north, sticking to Rt. 301 and trying a new route, across the Bay Bridge and up the DelMarVa to Dover. It worked well, and the flat Eastern Shore landscape looked gorgeous in the late afternoon light. I got home about 7:00, and gave Penderyn a big old hickory-smoked bone from Allen & Son. He took it out in the backyard and gnawed on it for an hour in the dark. I knew how he felt.

The Best Damned Barbecue

You might be wondering whether I went to Durham for the World Beer Festival, or if I really went for the barbecue and dropped by the fest on a whim. You'd be close. I won't deny that the barbecue was a strong lure when Julie Bradford asked me to speak at the fest. But the bonus turned out to be when I put the word out at the Friday night brewers' reception that I was looking for the best 'cue in town, please, and not the place you send tourists to. Your place. The Real Deal. Smoke Heaven.

Daniel Bradford, All About Beer publisher, came through, in spades: "You want Allen & Son. It's in Chapel Hill, about a 20 minute drive. We'll figure out how to get you there between sessions." Perfect. It got even perfecter (ha!) when I hit the Web and learned that they opened at 10 AM on Saturdays. Carl and I were parked out front at 10:07. A quick peek around back confirmed that not only was Allen & Son the 'real deal' and used real wood-fired pits, they were hard-core Old School: there wasn't just wood back there, there were big freakin' logs that they were cutting and splitting themselves, presumably to either save some money or get just the billets they wanted. Or both.

We went in, and "Hunting Camp" went through my mind: dead heads on the wall, old furniture and linoleum, and woodsmoke. We dropped anchor beside the two figures you see to the left -- the pig showing a slightly uncomfortable amount of emotion in his little ceramic eyes -- and were greeted by our waitress Jennaraye. I told her we were there the first time, and asked her what we should have. Pulled pork was her suggestion, which got right to the issue: how's your pig? I'm much more a pulled pork/minced pork kinda guy than a rib-lover. Carl got it with fries, I got the tatie salad.

She brought us a basket of hush puppies to start, rough, non-uniform, and dark, both inside and out. They were still hot, and I grabbed one by the sharp, crusty corner, and bit in. Glory. These were the best hush puppies I've ever had. They were moist, heavy, a bit coarse, and sweet with corn; no spices, no onion that I could detect, just delicious cornmeal. I asked her what cornmeal they used -- after I had moaned and shuddered my way through about four of them -- and all I could get from what she was saying was that it was a local brand, House of Ayard? Or something. I'm checking a grocery store on the way out of town this morning; if you know what she's talking about, pass it on.

Then the pig came. Hey, you read the title of the post, right? I can't keep you in suspense, right? It was The Best Damned Barbecue I remember having. It was boldly smoky, smoke-infused, with a hot-pepper vinegar dressing (I know I'm a bad man, but I can't bring myself to call the east Carolina vinegar and pepper thing, delicious though it is, "sauce") and plenty of browned chunks of outside meat and a couple chunks of skin. We just fell on it. My tater salad was good, but not exceptional, the slaw was peppery and okay. Carl's french fries were outstanding, meaty strips of spud, fried down just right.

I could not resist dessert when Jennaraye asked. I got peach cobbler, which was real downhome and good, but I should have resisted her suggestion that I get the homemade vanilla ice cream: it was at least a day old and grainy. Cobbler was quite good though.

If I get near the Triangle again, bet your soul: I'll be at Allen & Son.

The Session #8: Beer & Food, Part 3

It was a long night till I was hungry again after the gut-stuffing at Parker's: minced pork, Brunswick stew, string beans in pot liquor, hush puppies, fried chicken....Damn. And those boys at Parker's stand ready to get you more, more, more. God bless 'em, even if they don't have beer.

But Tyler's Taproom put out a spread for the World Beer Festival's brewer's reception: salmon spread, shrimp, artichoke dip... what the hell? No 'que? I dipped a bit, but mostly drank: Bell's Two-Hearted, Sierra Nevada Harvest, Big Boss Surrender Monkey (and the oak-aged Surrender Monkey, which was a totally different, totally excellent beer), and BridgePort IPA, an unexpected pleasure. Tyler's did have taps o'plenty, and good stuff, but short on dark beers, which hurt.

Then about 9 PM they suddenly brought out a tray of sharply vinegary 'que, and I grabbed my glass of New Holland The Poet Oatmeal Stout, shouted HOORAY!, and grabbed pork. Mmmmm, baby. Beer met pig and rejoiced. Vinegar melted into rich pigmeat and thoroughly mellow malty/bitter stout, and all was good. A soothing wrap for an acidic/meaty mix.

So what do we learn? Couple things. First, NC is a great place for barbecue. Hell yeah. Second, NC is not a great place for beer and food (but you can sneak around it sometimes). That sucks, truly, and the whole "family atmosphere" thing is crap that needs to be addressed by beer drinkers: it needs to be proven that "beer with dinner" clearly does not mean "drunks with dinner." Sanctimonious weeners.

The prime lesson, of course, is that it's a good thing to put the right beer with your chow. It can really make things better, more clear, maybe even synergistically delish. It can help the beer or the food or both.

Mmmmm...barbecue works well with malty beers. Yeah.

The Session #8: Beer & Food, Part 2

Tough to get to a WiFi. Sorry not to have put these up in real time, as planned. We're in our room in Durham now, and I'm writing.

Carl and I decided to go for BBQ greatness by going down I-95 to Wilson, and then west across Rt. 264 to Durham. We started lunch, pre-lunch, with some minced pork and slaw at Ralph's in Roanoke Rapids. We checked Ralph's buffet, found it impressive, but offering too much variety for our plans for the day: "This is a marathon," Carl observed. "We need a longer-term strategy." So we got takeout, and enjoyed it in the parking lot with another Saranac Ofest.



Damn me if it wasn't good: the mellow pork, the sharp vinegar/pepper dressing/sauce, and the roundly sweet Ofest. We were disappointed by a lack of smoke in the pork, but weren't about to let that stop our enjoyment. Rain poured down as we passed the slaw and pork and beer back and forth; roaring on the roof at times, gently dripping at others. The mustardy slaw, the pig-sweet meat, and good beer...NC BBQ joints don't really go for beer, you gotta grab it, and it's worth it, and, well, maybe it's sweeter for being slightly illicit. (I had the keys on the dashboard the whole time, BTW; might as well be obviously not drinking and driving.)

We went on down to Wilson, and stopped at Parker's, and ate a big feast...with no beer. Food...with no beer. This was really good, but a big mug of beer would have been better. It yanks me when I can't have a beer, when I'm not allowed to have a beer with my dinner. It rankles me when the New Drys say "You don't have to have beer to have fun" but they won't go with the converse, which is "You don't have to be abstemious to be virtuous." Jerks. Pass me another bowl of minced pork, willya?

Southbound

I'm off today for the World Beer Festival in Durham, NC. The folks at All About Beer magazine invited me down to the festival, to check things out and to give a seminar on Dark Beers. I've been checking out the beer list and getting interested; this is going to be a great chance to try some new breweries.

It's also a chance to try some new 'que. I'm going with my brother-in-law Carl Childs, who is about as much a barbeque hound as I am a beer hound. Carl's got the best smoke pits en route and in Durham mapped and plotted, and we is gonna be eatin' some pig. Should enable me to get back in the swing of The Session, our monthly beer blog-a-rama (I've missed the last two months, regrettably), which is Beer and Food this month, put on by Beer Haiku Daily. Beautiful.