Mouthing Off

 

Beer is often associated with backyard barbecues and sporting events, but writer Christian DeBenedetti reports on the growing trend of craft beer showing up in some of the country’s best restaurants:

“American craft beer's surge into the spotlight has taken many forms, but until relatively recently, beer dinners in ultra-fine-dining settings were generally considered oddities, one-offs or experiments, rather than the norm. No longer: American brewers from the likes of Allagash in Maine, Oregon's Deschutes and Delaware's Dogfish Head are working with top-tier chefs from Thomas Keller of Per Se to Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns to present beers and foods that are well matched and fun to try together.

Recently the beer dinner concept hit a new high with the collaboration between New York's Brooklyn Brewery and Eleven Madison Park. For the event, brewmaster Garrett Oliver worked with chef Daniel Humm, Eleven Madison Park general manager Will Guidara and Eleven Madison Park dining room manager/beer coordinator Kirk Kelewae to create a pairing menu almost entirely from scratch.

The dinner included Local 11, a beer made by aging the dark, abbey-style ale Brooklyn Local 2 in 20-year old Pappy Van Winkle whiskey barrels. It had never been tasted outside the brewery before this dinner. "Garrett really opened my eyes in a big way," said Humm. "Craft beer works really well with food; there's so much to it. And it's not just rustic food—sausages and stuff like that—but also really refined food, because the beers are really refined."

Unlike most beer dinners—perhaps any other beer dinner that has ever taken place—the collaboration started with the beers, not the menu. "We're getting a chance to show the real creative evolution of the brewery," Oliver told me as guests sipped on an aperitif beer called The Concoction, inspired by the classic Penicillin cocktail and redolent of whisky, ginger, lemon and honey. "Usually these things are done by e-mail," Oliver continued. "The chef sends me a menu, I send back the pairings. And it often turns out wonderfully. This time, the Eleven Madison Park team came out to the brewery and spent three-and-a-half hours tasting with us. Then they went back with the beers and developed the menu in the other direction. This is a whole new way to do things."

The night’s highlights included a foie gras terrine with strawberry, yuzu and black pepper paired with Wild 1, a beer brewed in 2008 and aged in Woodford Reserve bourbon barrels, then refermented with Brettanomyces, the earthy, fickle yeast strain prized by Belgian brewers; and Pennsylvania's Four Story Hill Farm suckling pig with apricot and cardamom, paired with the Local 11. Oliver, for his part, was ecstatic. "I've done about 700 beer dinners, but this is the ultimate."

Here's a photo gallery from former Eleven Madison Park sommelier-turned-professional photographer Nathan Rawlinson along with a short video report.

You know the rest of that line, right? Well, it's with some small amount of sadness that I am saying that about this blog: It must come to an end. I've had a terrific time writing it, but we've decided that in the end it's a bit strange, for a magazine that's all about bringing together food and wine, to have separate blogs on those topics.

So, from here on out, any wine blogging that I (and Megan Krigbaum, Kristin Donnelly, and various other stalwart folks) do will instead appear in F&W's primary blog, Mouthing Off. No less wine coverage, just a different venue. See you there.

Ray Isle

If there’s one thing I want to do in a restaurant, it’s eat something amazing. But if I get to eat something good and beat my friend at ping pong, well then things are going really well for me. Happily, there’s a whole new world of restaurants that decided to take the Dave & Busters concept to another level, combining great food with superfun extracurricular activities.
 
Fly Fishing at the Restaurant at the Little Nell, Aspen – The hotel hasn’t actually installed a river in the middle of their dining room. But they do take guests out for a fly-fishing lesson and chef Robert McCormick will serve a waterside lunch on fine china, along the lines of salmon crostini and housemade ice cream sandwiches.  Starting this summer, they’ll make trips in a gorgeous new made-in-Montana wooden boat. thelittlenell.com
 
Surfing at Casa del Mar, Santa Monica – The name, Surf with Chef, says everything you need to know. You get a surf lesson with a private instructor and chef Jason Bowlin (chef at the hotel’s Catch restaurant; let’s assume he’s a good surfer); then Bowlin will slide in and serve lunch made with ingredients you’ve caught…. No! from the nearby farmer’s market, where he’ll make dishes like roasted beets with burrata. hotelcasadelmar.com
 
Rocking out at Sam’s, Boston – Sam’s co-owner, guitarist Drew Parsons (of American HiFi) often plays live sets on Friday nights at the restaurant. Extra credit to Sam’s: they also have a bocce court where groups can compete and sample dishes like black pepper patty burgers, and drink a Captain Hilt, a mix of bourbon, chartreuse and raspberry puree. samsatlouis.com
 
Ping-Ponging at Beekman Beer Garden Beach Club, NYC – Down at South Street Seaport, chef Jason Mayer serves German bratwurst on a pretzel bun (also hand-stretched pretzel snacks and cinnamon-sugar pretzels for dessert). There’s live music (George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic at the end of July!) and a rec room dream assortment of ping pong, foosball and pool. beekmanbeergarden.com
 
Related Links
 
America’s Wacky Fair Foods
 
America’s Weirdest Regional Foods
 
American Beer, Bourbon and More

World’s Weirdest Restaurants
 
World’s Top 10 Life-Changing Restaurants

 

It’s hard not to geek out on beer this summer with the explosion of beer gardens and radical new micro (and nano) brews. Beer expert Christian DeBenedetti urges beer enthusiasts to take things to the next level and start brewing at home.
 
“Give a person a six pack, they'll drink for a day," says DeBenedetti. "Teach them to brew…" OK, you know the rest. These days, what was once a messy affair has gotten simpler and way more fun with the advent of smarter books and equipment. Suffice it to say that the joy of tasting your first successful home brew isn't easily put into words. If you can follow a recipe, you can make your own beer, and it's cheaper in the long run, too. If you get really good, you might even show off your skills in cool New York City bars like The Diamond, where, in addition to a Shuffleboard Biathlon, there is the Brew 'n’ Chew, a home-brew and home-cooking competition.
 
Start with the new book Beer Craft: Six Packs From Scratch by William Bostwick and Jessi Rymill. "Home brewing is easy—you probably already have most of the equipment at home," says Bostwick. "But it's also something you can geek out over and get a gallon of great beer in the process (and mess up the kitchen a little)." The genius of this book is that it takes an incredibly complex topic and boils it down to quaffable parts without dumbing down the key points of becoming a serious homebrew honcho. You've got everything from basic definitions of beer ingredients to detailed yeast strain recommendations and an incredibly helpful primer on off flavors and insights into genre-bending sour beers.
 
Once you have the book, find a local home-brew shop (some Whole Foods stores carry equipment) or order a home-brew kit and you're ready to go.

 
I’ve just spent the past few weeks interviewing the food-obsessed Superfly Presents team for the August issue of Food & Wine. Superfly is responsible for producing some of the country’s coolest music festivals, including Bonnaroo, which kicks off tomorrow on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. To celebrate the festival’s 10th anniversary, the Superfly team has gone overboard lining up not only stellar music but also amazing beer and food. Here, some highlights:

*Food Truck Oasis:This new food zone is the parking spot for a dozen food trucks from around the country. Don’t miss the Dirty South-Meatloaf Balls with pepper-crusted bacon, hash browns and bacon-scallion sauce from Asheville, North Carolina’s Eat Box; short rib sliders from Miami’s gastroPod; and tacos and burritos from Tampa, Florida’s famous Taco Bus.

*Broo’ers Festival: I can’t think of anything better than a beer festival within a music festival. More than 20 American craft breweries—including Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project and Abita—will be here.

*Fried Chicken & Champagne: On Saturday, June 11, rock stars like Eminem and Arcade Fire will be backstage at a private party, drinking champagne paired with fried chicken from NYC’s Blue Ribbon.

*Crawfish Boil: Superfly thanks the Bonnaroo staff by throwing a karaoke and crawfish boil party on Monday, June 13. New Orleans–based Shaggy’s Boil Inc. will be hosting.

*Food Drive: Last year’s food drive brought in more than 7,000 pounds of food donations, which went to the Good Samaritan Food Pantry of Manchester, Tennessee. This year, Bonnaroo hopes to get 10,000 pounds.

When American Craft Beer Week concludes on May 22, events will have taken place in every state for the first time in the celebration’s six-year history. No one understands the rise of local beer better than Garrett Oliver. The Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster and award-winning author of The Brewmaster’s Table (2005) is finishing up his latest feat as editor-in-chief of The Oxford Companion to Beer. Considering the honor attached to a first edition in the food reference series, it's funny to hear Oliver's take on the publisher's pitch three years ago. "I went quickly sprinting in the opposite direction. The project seemed so overwhelmingly huge, and obviously I already have a job over here as brewmaster," he remembers. With the encouragement of friends who knew he'd regret the lost opportunity, Oliver embarked on the work over a year ago with a preliminary list of 500 topics;1,120 references and 160 additional writers later, the tome will drop in October. Here, Oliver reveals some of the groundbreaking subjects that will be covered and what he thinks you should be drinking (and eating) now.

What convinced you to sign on? There are a lot of subjects that we in the craft-brewing community might use every day that are literally not written down. So if you want to know about, say, dry-hopping—adding hops after fermentation for extra flavor and aroma, which is done by 80 to 95 percent of all the breweries in the United States—there is precisely nothing to read.

What other categories are you breaking ground in? Sour beers. Barrel aging:There's a huge movement all over the world now interested in deriving flavors from wooden barrels. You will read about Amarillo, a hop variety: where it comes from, how it developed, what its genetic parents are, how it grows in a field, and how people tend to use it. But then, right before that, you'd read [an entry called] Ale House, about the history of the ale house from Roman times to its development into the modern pub. So it really covers not only things scientific and technical, but also cultural and historic things.

What's the most surprising country making beer? Of course when we think of Italy, we think of wine. But Italy has 350 breweries, and Italian brewers are really excited, creative and using a lot of their background in food to inform what they do on the beer side. Scandinavia is also a big story. We might think of one or two beers, like Carlsberg, but there are many dozens of breweries in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc.

Do you cover foods to eat with beer? What's your favorite pairing? There are sections on food-and-beer pairing. I've done about 700 beer dinners in 12 countries, and I wrote a 360-page book on beer-and-food pairings. But this time of year, for example, I love saison, which is a Belgian-style wheat beer. [At Brooklyn Brewery] we have a new one coming out called Sorachi Ace, based on a particular hop variety of that name, and I think it's really great with grilled salmon and shrimp dishes—lighter dishes you might grill in summertime.

How much has beer culture evolved in the last decade? It's really pretty incredible. When I first started traveling, I would go overseas and say, "Oh, I'm an American brewer," and people would just be dripping with disdain: "Oh, yes, we have heard of your American beer." Because they were thinking about just the mass-market beer. We now have over 1,700 breweries in the United States, and we have the most vibrant beer culture in the world, bar none. What's amazing is that now, we go to Germany and Belgium and Italy and, to a large extent, brewers all over the world look up to the United States. Twenty years ago it was exactly the opposite.

Last weekend goes down as one of the best in recent memory for me thanks to two great meals in Boston and a little baseball team called the Red Sox.

Friday night found some friends and me at Coppa, where I made it just in time for the late-night menu-an abbreviated version of the dinner menu, but no less impressive. Highlights included chef Jamie Bissonette's stunning crudo with radishes and carrots and borage flowers and the Pattypan di Popeye pizza topped with summer squash and spinach. A friend ordered the Strongman cocktail, which came in an enormous stein with a very muscular glass arm as the handle. The drink, a mixture of green chartreuse, yellow chartreuse and Coors Light (!) was remarkably refreshing and surprisingly strong.

The next day we were lucky to score some seats to the Red Sox game versus the Detroit Tigers. Now, as a girl who grew up in Michigan, I get a lot of flack for rooting for anyone other than the Tigers, but I can't help it. I love David Ortiz. I confess. I also love walk-off homeruns. And guess what: Bottom of the 9th, Sox down 3-2, David Ortiz gets up to the plate and WHAM! Three-run double, and the Sox win the game!

To celebrate this ridiculous victory, we sat down for dinner at Eastern Standard where the oysters were delicious and the 2009 Domaine Colotte rosé (find this wine) from Marsannay went expertly with the tomato, goat cheese and almond salad. Mixologist Jackson Cannon started us off with a to-be-named mini-cocktail (created by fellow bartender Bob McCoy) that was the perfect aperitif. Cannon's been making amber vermouth in-house, and it made this cocktail particularly herbaceous and balanced and refreshing. This is the best possible drink for a hot summer night after your favorite team comes through in the end:

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add 1 ½ oz. gin, ¾ oz. amber vermouth, ½ oz. fresh lemon juice, ¼ oz. simple syrup and 1 dash orange bitters. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Squeeze a fresh lemon twist over the glass and discard. Serve.

The lottery for the NYC Half-Marathon opened yesterday, so I logged on to the New York Road Runners’ web site to sign up. In addition to asking for my estimated finish time, I was asked if I'd be interested in the following: a beer and barbecue bash, a wine and food festival, and wine tastings. Of course I said yes to all three, and then called NYRR to find out more. Ann Crandall, NYRR's senior vice president of business development and marketing, told me, "Most people don't just run. They run and go out for a beer with friends," says Crandall. "We're looking to form partnerships with local restaurants or chefs and create food-driven post-race events." I can't think of a better reason to run.

Writer Christian DeBenedetti reported on San Diego’s craft-beer scene in F&W’s June issue. He recently returned to San Diego to attend the city’s first-ever Beer Week, with 300 events held in 40 bars, 45 restaurants and five hotels. Here, his highlights:

* At Lost Abbey’s Barrel Night, 150 guests gathered to taste 10 rare, uncarbonated ales that had been aging in oak barrels. The ales were paired with beer-friendly foods like seared pork belly on crispy brussels sprouts and mussels steamed in beer.

* Several guest brewmasters were on hand for Q&As and tastings. Colby Chandler of Ballast Point discussed why San Diego has suddenly leaped to the forefront of America’s craft-beer scene. His theory: “Ambitious home brewers in the 1980s and '90s helped spur the rise of commercial brewing in the area, which in turn has inspired a new generation of artisanal producers.”

* At 1500 Ocean, a restaurant at Coronado Island’s historic Hotel Del Coronado, chef Brian Sinnott created dishes to match distinctive local beers from Ballast Point, Lost Abbey and Coronado. Among the most successful pairings: Lost Abbey’s earthy-yet-tangy, orange-hued, 6.5-percent-alcohol, saison-style Carnevale Ale with braised chicken oysters (two small, round pieces of dark meat on the back of a bird, near the thigh) served piccata style.

Last year, I was one of a supersmall group of journalists and brewers invited to the Brewers Association’s first-ever craft-beer dinner at NYC’s Gramercy Tavern. This year's dinner was even more spectacular. Some highlights:

New Glarus Brewing is legendary for its hard-to-obtain beers. Stories circulated around the table about attempts to smuggle them across the Wisconsin/Illinois border. We had the rare chance to try their seasonal Wisconsin Cran-bic. This is exactly what I’d want to pour with my first course at Thanksgiving dinner.

Scott Vaccaro of Captain Lawrence Brewing in Pleasantville, NY, brought his intense, dark, malty, bourbon-barrel-aged Nor’Easter Winter Warmer to pair with our cheese course.

The Twelve XII from Firestone Walker Brewing in Paso Robles, California, is one of the most complex beers I’ve ever tasted. Brewmaster Matt Brynildson enlisted area winemakers to assist in the blending of component beers, some of which spent more than two years aging in a combination of retired bourbon, rye and wine barrels.

I tend to prefer pumpkin in my pie, not my beer. But Lakewood, NY’s Southern Tier Brewing Company has made an extremely drinkable pumpkin beer called Pumking that is meant to be served in a goblet to bring out all of the spicy aromas. It’s full of cinnamon and clove, yet doesn’t have any cloying sweetness, and was brilliant with poached lobster served with turnips, daikon and lobster-squash sauce.

David Katleski, founder of Empire Brewing in Syracuse, NY , surprised us with a growler of what he’s calling White Aphro, a supposedly aphrodisiacal brew made from ginger, lavender and honey. The jury is out on whether it really works.