Daily Archive for July 1st, 2008

Two More Beers

Published on July 1, 2008 in Ale, Beer and Review. Closed

To avoid having to play catch up again, here’s tonight’s beers, since they’re out of the ordinary.

I started with Picaroons Man’s Best Friend.  It’s a porter, I imagine an American Porter considering the body and bigger flavor.  It’s got a nice roasted malt flavor with just enough smoke to give it another dimension, but not enough to call it a smoked porter.   The beer is hopped for perfect balance, but it’s all about the malts.  It’s probably one of the best porters I’ve had.

The second beer of the night was less impressive.  I had Rock Art American Red Ale.  It looks as though it’d be a great red ale, but it’s a bit light in flavor.  Everything else is spot on.  However, as it warmed, the flavor picked up quite a bit.  It’s very drinkable, but nothing special.  I have 2 more in the fridge, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy drinking them.

Dogfish Head Dinner

Published on July 1, 2008 in Ale, Beer, Beer Dinner, Food, Providence and Review. Closed

As I previously posted, Sunday night was the Dogfish Head Beer Dinner at Julian’s on Broadway in Providence.  We arrived a little before 6 and found a couple of Nikki’s regulars already there drinking.  We went inside and waited for them to start (which we were told would be promptly at 6).  We got our first beer, Festina Pêche and the first course, almond-mint pesto stuffed mission figs with pickled jalapeno pepper.  The beer was pumped through the Randall, a device that’s basically just a pipe filled with stuff (usually hops), that had strawberries and oranges in it.  It added a nice fruity dimension to an already awesome beer.  The fruit served to balance some of the tartness.  I was very impressed.  It was served in Dogfish Head snifters which ended up being given back to us as a gift to take home at the end of the night.

The next course was a champagne-poached pear, preserved lemon, and baby arugula salad with celery root chips and a green tea vinagarette.  It was served with Black & Blue.  The salad was really good, though, obviously, the lemons were super sour.  The root chips were awesome, as were the pears.  I’m not normally a Black & Blue fan, but the beer paired perfectly with the salad.

The third course was cucumber stuffed curried sticky rice balls golden beet carpaccio, and curled jicima.  This was paired with Chateau Jiahu, another beer I’m not overly crazy about, but was perfect with the appetizer.  The rice balls were awesome.  It’s a purple sticky rice, which I have only previously seen at Julian’s.  The only thing I wish is that the curry was a bit more predominant as I couldn’t taste it at all.

There was a palate cleansing intermezzo course.  For this, they gave us a ginger ice cream float made with 3 year old Pangaea with a ginger lace cookie.  It was really good, but we all wanted to actually try the aged Pangaea on its own, so they gave everyone a small glass of it.  I was impressed.  I wasn’t overly crazy about this beer fresh when I tried it at Nikki’s the night before, but it was awesome aged.

The entree came next.  We had a choice of brown sugar and soy marinated flank steak or seitan (a vegan steak) with pomegranate smashed carrots, herb dressed watercress, and meyer lemon coulis served with Immort Ale or pink peppercorn rubbed escolar with bruleed summer vegetables, butter braised frisee, and rhubarb Raison d’Etre reduction served with Palo Santo Marron.  I chose the steak and Susan got the escolar (which we later found out can cause some not so fun digestive issues).  They were both absolutely awesome and the pairings were spot on.

Finally, we had dessert.  There was also a choice for this course.  I had the vegan peach cheesecake with peanut butter drizzled over the top and raspberries served with World Wide Stout.  Susan got the quince, which sounded better and was served with Raison d’Extra.  My whole dessert was actually better, and while the pairing didn’t sound like it would work, it was perfect.

Brian, the bar manager at Julian’s, told us that they’ll be doing a beer dinner the last Sunday of every month.  July’s will be a Belgian beer dinner.  I haven’t made a reservation yet, but hopefully they’ll announce a menu soon and then I’ll make my reservation.  It should be good.

Playing Catch Up

Published on July 1, 2008 in Ale, Beer and Review. Closed

I’ve had a lot of beers that I haven’t written about.  You can always check my beer list if you’re curious as to what I’ve been drinking.  I keep that more up-to-date than my posts about beers I’ve had.  Anyway, here’s some of the beers I’ve had since I stopped writing about them.

As I posted previously, I picked up a bunch of beer from Rock Art in Vermont.  I have since tried their Midnight Madness Smoked Porter and their IPA.  The Midnight Madness was awesome.  It was nicely smoked and a great all around porter.  The IPA, however, was pretty bland.  It was light in color, flavor, and body.  It didn’t have the hops flavors I’ve come to love in my IPA’s, but it wasn’t really an English-style IPA either.  I probably wouldn’t bother with this one again.

One beer I picked up in Vermont that I thought was really solid was Peak Organic’s Maple Oat Ale.  This one has a nice hint of maple and the smoothness of the oats.  It’s a really great amber ale that I will likely buy again and again (perhaps they’ll find their way down to RI soon).

I rarely give a beer a drain pour.  However, I tried the bomber of McNeill’s Summer IPA.  It was easily the worst IPA I have ever tried (and being an IPA fan, I’ve had a lot).  I drank a full glass, but poured the rest.  It was just an unbalanced mess of hops and malt that didn’t make for a drinkable beer.

Another recommendation from BeerRiot was Clipper City’s Loose Cannon from the Heavy Seas lineup.  It was good, but nothing special.  I’d consider it just an average IPA.

Another disappointment was Founders Devil Dancer.  I use the term “disappointment” lightly as the beer was good.  It just wasn’t what I expected.  They call it a “Triple IPA”.  That’s not a true style (not yet at least), but the beer tasted like a slightly hoppy barleywine.  It was good and definitely worth trying (and maybe I’ll buy it again), but I wanted a DIPA at the time.

I tried a different Victory beer (and I think I’m just about through with their whole lineup aside from the bigger bottles, like V-12 and V-Saison).  I had the Moonglow Weizenbock.  It had a nice banana and spice flavor to it, but it wasn’t overly complex.  I’ve had better weizenbocks, but this one is still a great weizenbock from a great American brewery.

Finally, the beers I brought back from Canada… I had Picaroons Blonde Ale and Picaroons Yippee IPA.  The Blonde Ale was simply fantastic.  It was a nice light ale.  It was very refreshing, but still had a lot of flavor.  The IPA wasn’t quite as good, but it was still a good English IPA.  It had this other flavor to it that I couldn’t figure out.  The only thing I can liken it to is a slight whisky flavor (perhaps it was aged in barrels).  Other than that other flavor, which did make it good, it was a very solid beer.  The label made it sound like they were playing around with the recipe with each new batch.  I’ll have to look over their Brewer’s Log to see if I can find it.  Picaroons is turning out to be a totally awesome brewery.  I can’t wait to try the others I bought.  I had to add the Blonde and the IPA to BeerAdvocate because they weren’t listed (new styles, perhaps?).

That ends my catching up.  I’ll post about the Dogfish Head dinner in a little bit.  Right now, I think I need some Mr. Lemon.