Tag: beer

PBR…actually not as terrible as I'd been led to believe

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It has been a weekend of decadent eating and drinking. Unlike, you know, every other weekend.

Friday night we joined M2 and H2 for dinner at their sweet loft. On top of the barbecued steaks Mike had a theme in mind: beer judging. He’d procured 14 interesting beers and two “mystery brews”, and we were each expected to rate all sixteen.

As it turned out we only got through twelve, eleven of which are pictured here. The two mystery selections were Pabst Blue Ribbon and Labatt Blue, placed there to keep us on our toes. The top-rated beer of the night was the Sam Adams / Weihenstephan Infinium…very tasty indeed. I enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed having my face licked by their dog, Murphy. I miss having a dog.

Ahem. Anyway.

Saturday was a blur of errands, lunch at La Bettola, penance at the gym (another 5k after being idle for two weeks) and prepping for the arrival of CBGB and the Kelly Gang. They popped over to ours for drinks (Denison’s Weissbeer, Neustadt 10W30, Great Lakes Orange Peel Ale and Erdinger Dunkel for the gents; ice wine martinis for the ladies; a bottle of 2007 Closson Chase S. Kocsis Chardonnay all around) before dinner at Harlem to celebrate Lisa’s birthday. There was a great deal of fried chicken and catfish lafayette consumed, among other things, and we all came back to our place for more drinks (bottles of Stratus Cab Franc, Nyarai Veritas and Strewn Cab Sauv) before they made their way back to their respective broods.

Not surprisingly, today was a sleep-in day. Nellie’s been watching hours of crap TV while I take care of the details of our upcoming trips. Apart from the few hours of work I’ll surely have to do this evening, it’s been an awfully good weekend.

The promised land

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Last night we wedged ourselves into what might be my favourite place of the trip so far, and we’d been to some pretty fantastic places. The Pony Bar showed up near the top of BeerAdvocate‘s NYC beer bars, and last night we found out why.

As it turned out I never did sit down in the place. There was only one stool available at the bar, so Nellie sat and I stood. It started off a little crowded and ended up very crowded by the time we left, so a table never presented itself. Just as well — we found there was an advantage to the spot we had. Meanwhile, the music was tailor-made for old guys like me…Jane’s Addiction, Bob Dylan, Heartless Bastards, CCR…so good.

There was a board over the bar with twenty featured taps. Every time they changed a tap one of the bartenders would ring a bell, the crowd would cheer and then — depending on the new entry on the board — clap or boo playfully. One of those bartenders, Mirjana, became our buddy for the night and took great care of us. I don’t know how we always get adopted by great bartenders, but I’m not complaining either. Especially since at least one of the beers was comped.

We ended up drinking twelve beers between us (Chelsea High + Dry porter, Avery Out Of Bounds stout, Davidson Bros. coffee stout, Abita Turbo Dog, Long Trail Hibernator, Sly Fox O’Reilly’s stout and Magic Hat Circus Boy for me; Weyerbacher Fireside ale, Magic Hat Circus Boy, Barrier Bulkhead red, Southern Tier IPA and Firestone Walker Double Jack double IPA for her) and an amazing plate of sausage & pretzels. All that, plus a tshirt for Nellie, came out to $81 before tip. Incroyable.

Despite that, the twelve beers weighed on us and I knew we’d need a little extra grease in our bellies to be functional the next morning, so…back to Shorty’s for more sandwiches! It was an early evening by NYC standards, but mainly because now (the next morning) we’re up, showered, fed, packed and about ready to head to the airport. What a great wrap-up to a superb trip.

Now then…here’s hoping that EWR doesn’t screw us on the trip home.

In the home, hoppy stretch

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

During my long radio silence (I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ve ever gone without blogging…sorry!) there’s been much progress made on Project FiftyBrew:

  • I have now officially knocked off 39 of 50
  • I have six at home in my fridge, courtesy of friends driving them here from Kentucky and Montreal:
    • Dieu Du Ciel Fumisterie
    • Dieu Du Ciel Solstice D’hiver
    • Unibroue Éphémère Cassis
    • Unibroue La Terrible
    • Unibroue Quelque Chose
    • Unibroue Raftman
  • There is a bottle of Propellor London Style Porter waiting for me at my brother’s house in Nova Scotia
  • I can get the Wellington Iron Duke at a local beer store, and last time I checked Volo still has the Alley Kat Olde Deuteronomy in stock.

That leaves two problem children: the Alley Kat Full Moon Pale Ale (which Volo seems to be out of at the moment) and the Unibroue Eau Benite. So if anyone living in Alberta happens to come across a bottle of the Full Moon, mail it to me, ‘kay? Likewise anyone living in Quebec if they seen an Eau Benite at their local dep.

An excellent beer night

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He said, as if there was another kind.

Two good pieces of news from Troy Burtch’s excellent beer blog: first, that the Ontario Craft Brewers have released an iPhone app (which I have dutifully downloaded to the wife’s device) telling me where I can find tasty local beer. Second, that the LCBO will soon be carrying Dieu Du Ciel Solstice D’Hiver (which is on my Project FiftyBrew list) and the Traquair Jacobite Ale, which I lurved when I first had it back in September.

Meanwhile, as I type this, I’m drinking a Creemore Springs urBock, taking me up to 35/50 on Project FiftyBrew. It may come to pass that I take care of #s 36 and 37 tonight as well if the Canadiens keep playing the way they have been tonight…

[UPDATE] Yeah, I drank #36: Garrison Imperial IPA.

[UPDATE Nov 4] Yeah, I drank #37 too: Dieu Du Ciel Rigor Mortis.

Le party

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Last night we hosted a little dinner party for CBGB and the Kelly Gang. Good fun and great company all around, but I was so impressed with the meal Nellie whipped up that I had to record it here for posterity. We tried hard to make it a very Ontario-based meal, and with only a few exceptions, we managed that.

.:.

Drinks

Wine (Fielding 2009 White Conception, Union Red)

Beer (Great Lakes Devil’s Pale Ale, Creemore urBock, Hockley Valley Dark)

Ice wine martinis (Grey Goose vodka, Lakeview Cellars vidal icewine)

Hors D’Oeuvres

La Quercia prosciutto

Crostini with chevre, honey and cracked pepper

Appetizer

Curried butternut squash soup with toasted coconut, scallions, cashews and pakoras

Daniel Lenko 2007 Old Vines Chardonnay

Hidden Bench 2007 Fumé Blanc

Main

Cumbrae’s pork loin stuffed with apple & caramelized onion

Sea-salt roasted potatoes, green beans and fennel

Norman Hardie 2008 County Pinot Noir

Norman Hardie 2008 Unfiltered Pinot Noir

Dessert

Ewenity sheep’s milk cheese: Beemster, Ermite, Parmesan and Brebette, served with honey, balsamic, red pepper jelly and apple cinnamon chardonnay jelly

Green & Black’s organic dark chocolate

Raincoast crisps

Daniel Lenko 2002 Vidal Icewine

Macallan 15-year-old Fine Oak aged single malt whisky

.:.

And now…we clean up.

2/3

Dan Dickinson6 Comments

I have now reached #34 out of 50 on the Project FiftyBrew list, after drinking a Dieu Du Ciel Équinoxe Du Printemps and a Tree Hophead IPA last weekend, and a Wellington County Ale just now.

I’m definitely going to hit a wall soon though. Volo has another four on the list, the LCBO has two more and there’s one (the Garrison Imperial IPA) in my fridge, but after that…it gets sketchy. Two are Dieu du Ciel beers that I never see anywhere and five more are Unibroue that are rarely if ever in Toronto. The other two are from Garrison (no problem, I’m on the east coast all the time) and the Wellington Imperial IPA, which I’m sure will rotate into local taps now that the weather’s turned cold. Both those seven from Quebec could be problematic.

Road trip to Montreal, anyone?

Recovery

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Vowing to get the trip back on track, we arose early (despite a night of brutal pain in my knee and thumb) and had some very tasty breakfast. Nellie decided to take another stab at being the designated driver and began to shuttle me around to some Sonoma wineries. We tried Loxton Winery, which was highly enjoyable. I was determined to take home a Pinot Noir, and theirs was quite good, so we bought one of their last bottles. When our server heard it would be one of the four we’d bring back to Canada with us out of the dozens we’d tried, she had the winemaker sign the bottle. We drove past the cheeky little road signs on their driveway with our fourth of four and felt good about the start to our day.

Our next stop was down the road at Kaz Vineyard & Winery, which our little Back Lanes book described as being very laid back. It came exactly as advertised. Their tasting room was already decked out for Hallowe’en, and they had plenty of different wines. I don’t just mean a variety, I mean they had blends and varietals we’d not tried anywhere on this trip. We eventually settled on a 100% Lenoir, partly because we thought it might be the only one of those we ever see, and partly because we thought it would go well with lunch. It did, as it turns out — we picked up some pasta from Cafe Citti on the way back to the hotel, found ourselves a picnic table and ate lunch on a perfect California day. Oh, one other awesome point about Citti: they sell several Russian River beers. They had a few in bottles, but not Pliny The Elder (the #2-ranked beer in the world). Nonetheless, the guy behind the counter just pulled me a little sample while we waited for our order. Awesome! Between the food, the beer and the service I can pretty much guarantee we’ll be back to Citti on our next trip.

Thus ended the busy part of our trip. We spent the entire afternoon swimming, drinking wine under a tree, reading by the pool, rescuing a drowning honeybee and generally relaxing on a perfect afternoon. We even saw a family of deer grazing across a dry riverbed. It’s not often I could describe a hotel as being idyllic, but…this might just be.

It’ll be hard to leave tomorrow, but at least we’re leaving Napa and Sonoma on a high note. It was looking bleak for a while there.

Pelican

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As all first-time visitors to San Francisco must do, we visited Alcatraz today. The lines were long and the ferry was crowded — I can’t even imagine what it’s like on a weekend — but it was worth a visit. First of all, it was interesting to see a prison that close…it seemed so small compared to other prisons I’ve seen from the outside. Also, it was hard to get over how tiny the cells were.

Second, the island itself was strangely pretty, for what’s essentially a great rock, and the views from the island of the city skyline and bridges were fantastic. It also helped that the weather was gorgeous today, a vast improvement over the gray skies of the past two days.


Back on dry land we hopped in a cab and went to try Church Key. Unfortunately it wasn’t open for lunch; fortunately, we were near Rogue. I had to go back to a) have some more of those pulled pork sliders, and b) make up for my last beer yesterday, which had been shit. I had the hazelnut brown, Nellie had the Dogfish Head punkin.

There was one last thing on our agenda: looking down Lombard Street from the top. We walked up endless hills to get this vantage, which it turns out isn’t that impressive. We’d hoped to jump on a cable car to take us down the hill, but it was packed, so we just walked the last few minutes back to the hotel. Since then it’s been a nice relaxing afternoon of lying around our suite, and reading outside by the fire.

Tonight we’ll stick our noses into Haight-Ashbury for dinner so we can at least have a look at what that neighbourhood is like. And that will more or less wrap up the San Fran portion of our trip.

California: getting started

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First of all, easiest 5.5 hour flight ever. A weekend Globe, a bad movie (Robin Hood), an EnRoute magazine and a few episodes of Modern Family and there we were in San Francisco. One crazy-ass cabbie later and we were at our hotel, the amazing Fairmont Heritage Place at Ghirardelli Square. Our room…well, it’s actually quite ridiculous to call it a room. It’s a two-bedroom suite, twice the size of our condo and twice and nice inside. I’m not kidding when I say that I would happily live here. We had just enough time to drop our stuff, take pictures of our swish new spread and poke around Ghirardhelli Square a bit before the daily wine and cheese tasting. That’s right: the daily wine and cheese tasting. We sat around the fire pit (it was getting a little chilly outside) and savoured the feeling of not giving a shit about anything.

For dinner we hit the first of several (reportedly) great beer places we’d  picked out, La Trappe. It was a tiny little basement bar…Nellie called it a cross between Smokeless Joe and C’est What, which will only make sense to Toronto beer drinkers. There was a 49-page beer menu but, quite frankly, we never made it off the first page draft list. There was more than enough there to occupy us. I had a St Feuillien Grisette Blanche, a Bavik wittekerke and a Caracole Nostradamus. Nellie had a La Chouffe golden ale, a St Feuillien tripel and a Brugse Zot dubbel. They were all good, though my Nostradamus was a little harsh. Nellie’s dubbel was better, and I could see why they were pouring them for half the people in the bar. Our frites were good (wasabi mayo and curry ketchup…tasty!) and my sliders were excellent with a little leftover wasabi mayo added in, but Nellie’s mussels were a little disappointing. Still, it was a great find for our first meal, and wasn’t the slightest bit touristy. Actually, one other interesting point: drinking beer seems to actually be a trendy thing in this city. There were groups of girls there last night you’d expect to see dancing in a club, but instead were sitting in this basement bar drinking Chimay all night. Weird, but awesome.

We hit the hay pretty early since we were still on Toronto time, and slept like the dead. Even though we’re at street level, noise doesn’t bother us and the blackout curtains made our gigantic home like a cave. We’ve been up long enough to have some breakfast, watch a little Freaks and Geeks, write this, shower and get ready for our first proper day of exploring San Francisco. Now let’s hope the rain holds off!