There's a guest commentary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today: Matt Lee, a senior journalism major at the University of Georgia, writing about the unintended consequences of the 21 LDA. Lee smartly suggests the old "2-tier" system of beer at 18, liquor at 21 (Lee makes no mention of wine...which, of course, never ever gets you drunk, so it's not a problem). It's a good piece, take a look.
This is exactly what I've been wanting to see, and exactly what I've been observing: a debate on this topic. The New Drys screamed and squealed when this started ("Age 21 Law [is] Not Open For Debate" howled the Marin Institute in a beautiful display of anti-American passion for censorship), and now that it's fully underway, they're engaging in fumbling attempts to ridicule the debate itself (see their blockheaded copy of Choose Responsibility's site). Guys: is a debate of the issue so dangerous that it shouldn't even take place? Or is it that you know your "facts" won't stand up to real scrutiny?
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Another Jackson Eulogy
My latest Condé Nast Portfolio column is up, a look at Michael Jackson's influence on the beer industry. My thanks to Ken Wells, senior editor at Portfolio and fellow beer lover, for green-lighting the idea.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
More Bourbon Festival Coming Soon; sorry for the delay
I have to apologize; I did intend to blog every day when I was in Bardstown for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. But when I went to the Java Joint to upload the two entries you've seen here so far, I couldn't get the WiFi to work. I went at it for a couple cups worth, but no luck. So I stuck the text files on a fly-drive, and took it with me. The warehouse guys at Heaven Hill were nice enough to let me use their office PC to upload them and post some comments. But after that I didn't have much motivation to keep at it; I figured I would be spending my time better by enjoying the perfect weather, the festival, and the bourbon.
So. More to come once I get home. Great time, can't wait to tell you about it.
So. More to come once I get home. Great time, can't wait to tell you about it.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Kentucky Bourbon Fest: a tasting and a distillery tour
Well...
I had a great time with Chris Morris at Brown-Forman. I got in about half an hour late, but got right in the rental car (who knew Corrollas were such cheap pieces of crap, after all the gushing Consumer Reports has done about them?) and headed over to B-F corporate on Dixie Highway. Chris met me at the door, and took me into the bar (yeah, really: is that bourbon country, er what? A beautiful bar right behind the receptionist's desk), and sat me down to taste six glasses of whiskey. I'd missed the massed tasting might of Chuck "Bourbon County Reader" Cowdery (folks say we were separated at birth; I say not separated nearly enough), Mike "Mr. Bourbon History" Veach, and the notables of the local press (Chris actually said a couple of them...weren't bourbon drinkers. Gawd); they'd been in before lunch. Me, I had no lunch, but I tied right into the bourbon.
We had the standard 86 proof Old Forester: nice, not sappy, straight up stuff. Then the 100 proof Old Forester Signature: notably more mature and sophisticated. Then a solid hit of this year's newly released Old Forester Birthday Bourbon. Very nice stuff, with a big minty/spearminty nose with some light fruit notes, followed by mint that stays up in the mouth, then glides into spice and oak, with cinnamon forward, and then sweetening in the finish -- Chris said blackberry, but I think he was 'dog-whistling' me. It was awful good.
The next three were the candidates for next year's Birthday Bourbon. Chris told me that the others had already voted and decided on one, and he agreed, but he didn't tell me which one it was. All three were heavily overproof, 10 and 12 years old and the angels had been sucking the water out of them; Chris had carefully watered them to 100 proof. The first wasn't much on the nose, something Chris said the others had noted, but there was a big, really interesting undertow of anise in the mouth; never tasted that much in a bourbon. Still...cool but one-trick pony time, and if I want anise, I'll drink anisette. The second was good, with oak and spice notes, classically dry in the Old Forester tradition...but you know, so's Old Forester Signature, and I don't see any reason to pay three times as much for it just cuz it's in a neat bottle. The third one, though, a neat nose with carob and dark nibby chocolate notes, and then an extremely lively feel in the mouth, ringing all the bells, a real wowser. This one, I said to Chris, and sure enough, that was the one folks picked by about 3 to 1. I'm looking forward to next year...not that this year's wasn't excellent.
Then he took me on a tour of the big Old Forester/Early Times distillery down in Shively. We did the whole tour, from grain delivery (there was a truckload of corn being dumped and tested when we started the tour) to milling to mashing to fermentation, into the room with the two big column stills, thumpers down below, into the yeast mashing and propagation rooms, and into the cistern room, where everything goes after dumping to get set down to proper proof and tanked to the bottling house up the road. We ran into Brett Pontoni, the whiskey man at Binny's of Chicago and good friend (who's going to be getting in here to the Parkview shortly, and then we'll be drinking...just relaxing with a Poon IPA right now -- thanks, Whole Foods of Louisville!), who had a group of employees and customers going through on a tour.
Then we went over to one of the big brick "cycling" warehouses. Brown-Forman doesn't age their bourbon like most everyone else, at least, not Old Forester, Early Times (and yeah, there is Early Times Bourbon, it turns out, for the export market), and Woodford Reserve. Instead of just letting the bourbon sit in the cold over the winter, resting, they cycle the warehouse temperatures. Chris explained. There are temperature probes in some of the barrels, scattered through the warehouse. Say the temp outside goes down to 20. When the temp in the barrels hits, maybe, 60 (Chris was careful to couch all of this in general hypothetical terms), the heat goes on, and it stays on, until the whiskey gets up to, say, 80, maybe a week, and then the heat goes off until the whiskey gets down to 60 again. Once winter's over, they stop cycling and let nature do its thing. Which, Chris explained, is why with Old Forester and Woodford, they don't talk about the whiskey's age, but about its maturity.
Good stuff! I thanked him, and said good-bye, and headed across the Ohio to the New Albanian Brewing Company, the desmesnes of Rodger Baylor, another old friend. Unfortunately, he wasn't in, at a long meeting elsewhere, and I just et one of his real good pizzas and had a Community Dark (a dark mild, and kind of overdone on the dark malts, IMO), and a Happy Helmut (a nice lightly smoked rye beer that went well with the pizza). Some great beers on tap: three Schlenkerlas, Mahr's Hell (what is it, Franconia Month?), and others I can't remember in my increasing glow.
But then I had a real bad experience. Kind of reminded me of all the bad things that I was trying to forget while being in Kentucky. I went to Proof on Main, a beautiful place where I'd stayed back in June when Brown-Forman flew me out to taste the new Master's Collection Woodfore Reserve. I'd had a Sazerac cocktail that was absolutely one of the best drinks I've ever had, I'd been daydreaming about it ever since, and I wanted another. So I got off I-65 in the middle of Louisville and made my way over, parked and went in, and said, "A Sazerac, please." And the sweet, very pretty bartender told me she didn't think they had any Sazerac right now. Oh, dear. Sure enough, when I told her it was a cocktail, she got out the cocktail book and looked it up. I asked to see it: all wrong, beginning with calling for bourbon, not rye.
Oh, no, this isn't right, I said, and tried to explain. Well, wait, she said, the other bartender will be back in a few minutes, he can make you one. Great, I said, thinking and hoping it would be Chris Lamb, the fellow who'd made the one in June. Well, no. It was some guy with a 1/8" buzzcut and a fakey cowboy shirt, who breezed in and said, no problem, I'll make one. I watched him, and moaned. He took Michter's Rye -- a good start -- and dumped it in a shaker of ice, poured in sour mix (probably house-made, to be fair) and what looked like simple syrup, and shook it. He put a lemon peel garnish on a frosted martini glass, and strained the drink into it: essentially, a rye sour. No Pernod anywhere. Even the recipe in the book was better, if you put rye in instead of the bourbon they ignorantly called for. I'll quote the next bit, because it just...no, it didn't enrage me, it left me limp and disappointed and despairing: "I learned to make them at Harry's Bar in Paris. That's where they were invented." Oh, son of a bitch. A frosted martini glass. No Pernod. And then, just to add insult to injury, it was a dollar more than I'd been charged in June.
Did I say anything? No. Because I just didn't feel like making a scene. Because I was beat down. Because now I knew that if I wanted a Sazerac, almost anywhere, I'd always either be in a game of cocktail roulette, or going to the same tiny number of places where they know shit from Shinola.
Thank God for the absolutely beautiful, wonderful, and restorative drive down Bardstown Road, or I'd still be pissed off.
I had a great time with Chris Morris at Brown-Forman. I got in about half an hour late, but got right in the rental car (who knew Corrollas were such cheap pieces of crap, after all the gushing Consumer Reports has done about them?) and headed over to B-F corporate on Dixie Highway. Chris met me at the door, and took me into the bar (yeah, really: is that bourbon country, er what? A beautiful bar right behind the receptionist's desk), and sat me down to taste six glasses of whiskey. I'd missed the massed tasting might of Chuck "Bourbon County Reader" Cowdery (folks say we were separated at birth; I say not separated nearly enough), Mike "Mr. Bourbon History" Veach, and the notables of the local press (Chris actually said a couple of them...weren't bourbon drinkers. Gawd); they'd been in before lunch. Me, I had no lunch, but I tied right into the bourbon.
We had the standard 86 proof Old Forester: nice, not sappy, straight up stuff. Then the 100 proof Old Forester Signature: notably more mature and sophisticated. Then a solid hit of this year's newly released Old Forester Birthday Bourbon. Very nice stuff, with a big minty/spearminty nose with some light fruit notes, followed by mint that stays up in the mouth, then glides into spice and oak, with cinnamon forward, and then sweetening in the finish -- Chris said blackberry, but I think he was 'dog-whistling' me. It was awful good.
The next three were the candidates for next year's Birthday Bourbon. Chris told me that the others had already voted and decided on one, and he agreed, but he didn't tell me which one it was. All three were heavily overproof, 10 and 12 years old and the angels had been sucking the water out of them; Chris had carefully watered them to 100 proof. The first wasn't much on the nose, something Chris said the others had noted, but there was a big, really interesting undertow of anise in the mouth; never tasted that much in a bourbon. Still...cool but one-trick pony time, and if I want anise, I'll drink anisette. The second was good, with oak and spice notes, classically dry in the Old Forester tradition...but you know, so's Old Forester Signature, and I don't see any reason to pay three times as much for it just cuz it's in a neat bottle. The third one, though, a neat nose with carob and dark nibby chocolate notes, and then an extremely lively feel in the mouth, ringing all the bells, a real wowser. This one, I said to Chris, and sure enough, that was the one folks picked by about 3 to 1. I'm looking forward to next year...not that this year's wasn't excellent.
Then he took me on a tour of the big Old Forester/Early Times distillery down in Shively. We did the whole tour, from grain delivery (there was a truckload of corn being dumped and tested when we started the tour) to milling to mashing to fermentation, into the room with the two big column stills, thumpers down below, into the yeast mashing and propagation rooms, and into the cistern room, where everything goes after dumping to get set down to proper proof and tanked to the bottling house up the road. We ran into Brett Pontoni, the whiskey man at Binny's of Chicago and good friend (who's going to be getting in here to the Parkview shortly, and then we'll be drinking...just relaxing with a Poon IPA right now -- thanks, Whole Foods of Louisville!), who had a group of employees and customers going through on a tour.
Then we went over to one of the big brick "cycling" warehouses. Brown-Forman doesn't age their bourbon like most everyone else, at least, not Old Forester, Early Times (and yeah, there is Early Times Bourbon, it turns out, for the export market), and Woodford Reserve. Instead of just letting the bourbon sit in the cold over the winter, resting, they cycle the warehouse temperatures. Chris explained. There are temperature probes in some of the barrels, scattered through the warehouse. Say the temp outside goes down to 20. When the temp in the barrels hits, maybe, 60 (Chris was careful to couch all of this in general hypothetical terms), the heat goes on, and it stays on, until the whiskey gets up to, say, 80, maybe a week, and then the heat goes off until the whiskey gets down to 60 again. Once winter's over, they stop cycling and let nature do its thing. Which, Chris explained, is why with Old Forester and Woodford, they don't talk about the whiskey's age, but about its maturity.
Good stuff! I thanked him, and said good-bye, and headed across the Ohio to the New Albanian Brewing Company, the desmesnes of Rodger Baylor, another old friend. Unfortunately, he wasn't in, at a long meeting elsewhere, and I just et one of his real good pizzas and had a Community Dark (a dark mild, and kind of overdone on the dark malts, IMO), and a Happy Helmut (a nice lightly smoked rye beer that went well with the pizza). Some great beers on tap: three Schlenkerlas, Mahr's Hell (what is it, Franconia Month?), and others I can't remember in my increasing glow.
But then I had a real bad experience. Kind of reminded me of all the bad things that I was trying to forget while being in Kentucky. I went to Proof on Main, a beautiful place where I'd stayed back in June when Brown-Forman flew me out to taste the new Master's Collection Woodfore Reserve. I'd had a Sazerac cocktail that was absolutely one of the best drinks I've ever had, I'd been daydreaming about it ever since, and I wanted another. So I got off I-65 in the middle of Louisville and made my way over, parked and went in, and said, "A Sazerac, please." And the sweet, very pretty bartender told me she didn't think they had any Sazerac right now. Oh, dear. Sure enough, when I told her it was a cocktail, she got out the cocktail book and looked it up. I asked to see it: all wrong, beginning with calling for bourbon, not rye.
Oh, no, this isn't right, I said, and tried to explain. Well, wait, she said, the other bartender will be back in a few minutes, he can make you one. Great, I said, thinking and hoping it would be Chris Lamb, the fellow who'd made the one in June. Well, no. It was some guy with a 1/8" buzzcut and a fakey cowboy shirt, who breezed in and said, no problem, I'll make one. I watched him, and moaned. He took Michter's Rye -- a good start -- and dumped it in a shaker of ice, poured in sour mix (probably house-made, to be fair) and what looked like simple syrup, and shook it. He put a lemon peel garnish on a frosted martini glass, and strained the drink into it: essentially, a rye sour. No Pernod anywhere. Even the recipe in the book was better, if you put rye in instead of the bourbon they ignorantly called for. I'll quote the next bit, because it just...no, it didn't enrage me, it left me limp and disappointed and despairing: "I learned to make them at Harry's Bar in Paris. That's where they were invented." Oh, son of a bitch. A frosted martini glass. No Pernod. And then, just to add insult to injury, it was a dollar more than I'd been charged in June.
Did I say anything? No. Because I just didn't feel like making a scene. Because I was beat down. Because now I knew that if I wanted a Sazerac, almost anywhere, I'd always either be in a game of cocktail roulette, or going to the same tiny number of places where they know shit from Shinola.
Thank God for the absolutely beautiful, wonderful, and restorative drive down Bardstown Road, or I'd still be pissed off.
Kentucky Bourbon Fest: I'm on my way
Anticipation.
I'm at Philadelphia International, waiting for my flight to Louisville, now 45 minutes late and counting. I'm headed for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival for, I think, my fifth time. I'm on my own, representing Malt Advocate, and since my schedule was my own, I made the most of it.
I'm touring Brown-Foreman's Louisville distillery this afternoon (assuming my flight gets in on time!), making an enjoyably obligatory stop at Rich O's and the New Albanian Brewing Company, and stocking up on beer (beer's essential when you're drinking bourbon...) at the Louisville Liquor Barn before heading south to Bardstown. Tomorrow I'll be at Four Roses, the Heaven Hill Bourbon Heritage Center, this year's Bourbon Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Maker's Mark, and then dinner at Heaven Hill's Bourbon, Cigars and Jazz event. Saturday I'll be at the bourbon breakfast, the barrel races, blogging my brains out all afternoon, and then going to the Gala, where I got a seat at the Buffalo Trace table this year -- out of the press ghetto at last!
And of course, I'll be hanging out every night with fellow bourbon lovers, drinking and talking and laughing well into the night. By now, I go into this knowing that when I leave Sunday morning, I'll be wrung out, exhausted, maybe a bit achey even...and I'll be grinning. Because one of the things I look forward to most when I go to Kentucky is shedding the subtle, clenching tension I feel, almost unconciously, every drinking moment of my life, because I am a bourbon drinker.
Even now, in an era when bourbon is reclaiming American hearts and minds, just saying the word "bourbon" can still make people giggle. It's not taken serious, it's something yahoos knock back in untemperate amounts, something Grampa spills down his beard and shirt as he rocks on the porch, something you have to mix with Coke to make palatable. It's something that way too many bartenders still do not understand, probably because way too many bars still do not stock proper selections -- I can't tell you how much it galls me when I see a backbar selection of 20 vodkas and 4 bourbons. Bartenders don't know how to make any proper bourbon cocktails -- and for God's sake, don't even think about rye. (Yeah, I know, there are exceptions, and it's getting better, much better, but just like better beer, you still have to know where to go.)
Except when I land in Kentucky. The unfelt weight slips away, and I realize I've been carrying it, and feel free. I breathe easy. I walk with a relaxed but jaunty step. I'm home, I'm with my people, and bourbon is no longer a funny word, it's a no-shit staple of life. I still remember my last pre-9/11 flight out of Louisville, when I opened up my carry-on for inspection and the old fellow doing the job widened his eyes at the five bottles I had stuffed in there and asked me, "Can't you get this back home?" We laughed, and I explained that I couldn't, but luckily I was able to do something about that!
So I'm looking forward to relaxing...and having some bourbon. Sorry I haven't been able to write as much about bourbon as I'd planned to this month, this National Bourbon Heritage Month; I had some big pieces to work on, and I was kind of thrown of track by the kids going back to school and the shock of Michael Jackson's sudden death. Hang on: you'll get plenty in the next five days.
I'm at Philadelphia International, waiting for my flight to Louisville, now 45 minutes late and counting. I'm headed for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival for, I think, my fifth time. I'm on my own, representing Malt Advocate, and since my schedule was my own, I made the most of it.
I'm touring Brown-Foreman's Louisville distillery this afternoon (assuming my flight gets in on time!), making an enjoyably obligatory stop at Rich O's and the New Albanian Brewing Company, and stocking up on beer (beer's essential when you're drinking bourbon...) at the Louisville Liquor Barn before heading south to Bardstown. Tomorrow I'll be at Four Roses, the Heaven Hill Bourbon Heritage Center, this year's Bourbon Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Maker's Mark, and then dinner at Heaven Hill's Bourbon, Cigars and Jazz event. Saturday I'll be at the bourbon breakfast, the barrel races, blogging my brains out all afternoon, and then going to the Gala, where I got a seat at the Buffalo Trace table this year -- out of the press ghetto at last!
And of course, I'll be hanging out every night with fellow bourbon lovers, drinking and talking and laughing well into the night. By now, I go into this knowing that when I leave Sunday morning, I'll be wrung out, exhausted, maybe a bit achey even...and I'll be grinning. Because one of the things I look forward to most when I go to Kentucky is shedding the subtle, clenching tension I feel, almost unconciously, every drinking moment of my life, because I am a bourbon drinker.
Even now, in an era when bourbon is reclaiming American hearts and minds, just saying the word "bourbon" can still make people giggle. It's not taken serious, it's something yahoos knock back in untemperate amounts, something Grampa spills down his beard and shirt as he rocks on the porch, something you have to mix with Coke to make palatable. It's something that way too many bartenders still do not understand, probably because way too many bars still do not stock proper selections -- I can't tell you how much it galls me when I see a backbar selection of 20 vodkas and 4 bourbons. Bartenders don't know how to make any proper bourbon cocktails -- and for God's sake, don't even think about rye. (Yeah, I know, there are exceptions, and it's getting better, much better, but just like better beer, you still have to know where to go.)
Except when I land in Kentucky. The unfelt weight slips away, and I realize I've been carrying it, and feel free. I breathe easy. I walk with a relaxed but jaunty step. I'm home, I'm with my people, and bourbon is no longer a funny word, it's a no-shit staple of life. I still remember my last pre-9/11 flight out of Louisville, when I opened up my carry-on for inspection and the old fellow doing the job widened his eyes at the five bottles I had stuffed in there and asked me, "Can't you get this back home?" We laughed, and I explained that I couldn't, but luckily I was able to do something about that!
So I'm looking forward to relaxing...and having some bourbon. Sorry I haven't been able to write as much about bourbon as I'd planned to this month, this National Bourbon Heritage Month; I had some big pieces to work on, and I was kind of thrown of track by the kids going back to school and the shock of Michael Jackson's sudden death. Hang on: you'll get plenty in the next five days.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
It's Jack Daniel's World...
...we're just living in it. That's the opener to my Straight Whiskey cover story for BeverAge this month. I liked the way this one came out -- particularly the two sidebars on rye, and Canadian and blended whiskeys (great Larry Kass quote at the end of that second sidebar). It seems particularly appropriate to post this on the day before I leave for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival (and as I scramble to finish my next story for BeverAge before I leave!).
DuClaw Bel Air about to re-open
The fire-damaged original DuClaw brewpub in Bel Air Maryland is about to re-open, after a year of repair and re-modeling. There will be 'mock service' trials this weekend, and after adjustments, look for a re-opening. I remain in awe of the customer loyalty this place has (not that surprising, given Jim Wagner's beers); they have one of the most amazing response rates on loyalty club e-mailings I've ever heard of. Good to see Bel Air back, we pass by there often, and it will be nice to be able to stop in for a pint of Venom. Brewing, of course, has been moved to a central location, so I assume the big brewhouse will be gone: more room to drink!
A Toast to Michael Jackson
On Sunday, September 30th, at 9:00 PM Eastern, we're raising a glass to Michael Jackson, and raising money in his name for the National Parkinson's Foundation.
We now have a list up of bars and brewpubs that are participating; see the window-widget over on the left side of the page.
If you are a bar or brewpub owner, and would like to join in, go here for the information, and a template we've made for a flyer/poster, then please add your info by the Upcoming link at that page, or here on mine.
Be generous, folks: this is for Michael, the guy without whom a lot of this would not have happened. As Tom Peters, of Monk's Cafe, said to me, "I'd really like to be able for us to hand a check for $100,000 to the Foundation in Michael's name." (Tom's donating the evening's profits at Monk's, and will be passing the hat for direct donations as well.)
There will be other, ongoing opportunities to honor Jackson's name and legacy, but this one, as Sam Calagione said, is from the heart. Here's to Michael. See you on the 30th.
We now have a list up of bars and brewpubs that are participating; see the window-widget over on the left side of the page.
If you are a bar or brewpub owner, and would like to join in, go here for the information, and a template we've made for a flyer/poster, then please add your info by the Upcoming link at that page, or here on mine.
Be generous, folks: this is for Michael, the guy without whom a lot of this would not have happened. As Tom Peters, of Monk's Cafe, said to me, "I'd really like to be able for us to hand a check for $100,000 to the Foundation in Michael's name." (Tom's donating the evening's profits at Monk's, and will be passing the hat for direct donations as well.)
There will be other, ongoing opportunities to honor Jackson's name and legacy, but this one, as Sam Calagione said, is from the heart. Here's to Michael. See you on the 30th.
Jackson Toast Gets Rolling
The Michael Jackson Toast for Parkinson's Disease is starting to roll. Check Upcoming for venues; the list is just starting to grow.
Rob Tod, Allagash, and Monk's Cafe
Just a quick note about last night's Allagash dinner at Monk's Cafe. Tom invited me to come down, which I wanted to do: Rob's a great guy, and a good friend, and Heaven knows his beers are excellent, but I was meeting with another friend last night to help pick out music for her wedding. So Cathy and I left late, and got to Monk's at about 8 (after an amazingly fast run down to Philly; where was the traffic?).
Matt "Beer Yard" Guyer graciously made a place for us at the infamous "press ghetto" table in the front window, and I plonked down beside Don Russell just in time to catch a glass of Allagash Triple, which was tasting fine, better than I remember: clean, crisp, and drinkable. (Yes, I know, those are the classic adjectives for describing Budweiser; this stuff isn't Budweiser.) We also got a retrograde glass of White, which I enjoyed and should have kept to have refreshed through the night as a calibration tool.
We'd already eaten, not knowing how long the music selection would take, so we passed on Tom's gracious offer to feed us. Although...when he urged me to try a bite of the salmon with a Curieux mole, I did, and I was glad; the Curieux was tasting just a bit top-heavy on its own, and the fish and heat-kissed sauce knocked that top-hamper right off, making it a delightful mouthful.
I talked a little New Jersey Breweries business with co-author Mark Haynie, who was in for the dinner. He's making brewery visits next week, I'm going to start hitting bars -- tough work, but some poor sucker's gotta do it (You got any good NJ bar suggestions, particularly in the vicinity of a New Jersey brewery, send 'em in!).
We got Musette (Rob's take on the Belgian take on Scotch ale) and barrel-aged Four with dinner (dinner was a 'barbequed' brisket (the 'quotes' are there for the barbeque fanatic who wrote a comment recently on my post about Clem's in Port Matilda; fanatic, I didn't put the post up because it was too long and a bit too vicious, not because I want to censor anyone who disagrees with me), mashed yams, and collard greens). The Musette was nice, malty with an edge, and the Four was just huge, bourbony, and deep, lots going on once you dove deep under the bourbon layer.
We did eat dessert, a chocolate fig cake with Allagash Double. It had been quite a while since I'd had Double, and it was great, flavorful, but not huge, and good at picking up the fig notes in the cake. Pretty much general lusciousness.
After that, we hung around a while, helping Bryan Kolesar and his wife celebrate their 9th anniversary (Congratulations!), talking about the Michael Jackson toast plans with Tom, and introducing Cathy to Rob. Rob Tod's talk, by the way, was one of the most fact-filled yet engaging talks I've ever heard at Monk's: focused, but fun, in his self-deprecating way. His passion for his beers, and for the thrill of trying new techniques, has always been exciting, and it came across clearly last night.
Thanks to Tom for the invite: another great time at Monk's Cafe.
Matt "Beer Yard" Guyer graciously made a place for us at the infamous "press ghetto" table in the front window, and I plonked down beside Don Russell just in time to catch a glass of Allagash Triple, which was tasting fine, better than I remember: clean, crisp, and drinkable. (Yes, I know, those are the classic adjectives for describing Budweiser; this stuff isn't Budweiser.) We also got a retrograde glass of White, which I enjoyed and should have kept to have refreshed through the night as a calibration tool.
We'd already eaten, not knowing how long the music selection would take, so we passed on Tom's gracious offer to feed us. Although...when he urged me to try a bite of the salmon with a Curieux mole, I did, and I was glad; the Curieux was tasting just a bit top-heavy on its own, and the fish and heat-kissed sauce knocked that top-hamper right off, making it a delightful mouthful.
I talked a little New Jersey Breweries business with co-author Mark Haynie, who was in for the dinner. He's making brewery visits next week, I'm going to start hitting bars -- tough work, but some poor sucker's gotta do it (You got any good NJ bar suggestions, particularly in the vicinity of a New Jersey brewery, send 'em in!).
We got Musette (Rob's take on the Belgian take on Scotch ale) and barrel-aged Four with dinner (dinner was a 'barbequed' brisket (the 'quotes' are there for the barbeque fanatic who wrote a comment recently on my post about Clem's in Port Matilda; fanatic, I didn't put the post up because it was too long and a bit too vicious, not because I want to censor anyone who disagrees with me), mashed yams, and collard greens). The Musette was nice, malty with an edge, and the Four was just huge, bourbony, and deep, lots going on once you dove deep under the bourbon layer.
We did eat dessert, a chocolate fig cake with Allagash Double. It had been quite a while since I'd had Double, and it was great, flavorful, but not huge, and good at picking up the fig notes in the cake. Pretty much general lusciousness.
After that, we hung around a while, helping Bryan Kolesar and his wife celebrate their 9th anniversary (Congratulations!), talking about the Michael Jackson toast plans with Tom, and introducing Cathy to Rob. Rob Tod's talk, by the way, was one of the most fact-filled yet engaging talks I've ever heard at Monk's: focused, but fun, in his self-deprecating way. His passion for his beers, and for the thrill of trying new techniques, has always been exciting, and it came across clearly last night.
Thanks to Tom for the invite: another great time at Monk's Cafe.
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