January 22, 2010

Beer in the City

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…I don’t think our synopsis of our recent visit to New York would be complete without a rundown of the beer happenings that we squeezed in during our stay. I make it a point to find the best places wherever we go to imbibe and/or purchase the malty goodness that is known as beer. Even though Ingrid does not particularly like the beverage, she is a very good sport and not only encourages my quests, but also takes part in accompanying me in my beer-y adventures (it also helps that some of these places serve excellent food!). Beeradvocate.com has become an integral tool in planning our visits to new places- all you need is an account and you can use their “BeerFly” feature allowing you to search a database for beer related businesses…in this case, there was a bounty of places to check out all within walking distance of our hotel. Two of the better beer stores on Manhattan were within a couple of blocks from each other…the Bowery Whole Foods and New Beer Distributors on Chrystie street. Both have a great selection- although I am a fan of the “little guy”, I did make some purchases at the Whole Foods…New Beer can be hit-or-miss and the lighting is atrocious…but we did get some great help while we were there. After checking out those two places, we headed to Daniel Boulud’s DBGB for some lunch. This place specializes in homemade sausages and charcuterie…and they have a fantastic draft beer list to go along with it. We sampled a bunch of sausages and a couple of beers and then we were on our way. After checking out the New Museum, we headed to Zum Schnieder for a pre-dinner beer. Located in alphabet city, this is a cash-only German restaurant which serves authentic German beer and food…

…On Saturday, we braved the chilly winds and headed over to Williamsburg in Brooklyn to stop in at the First Annual Williamsburg Cask Ale Festival and to check out the Brooklyn Brewery. The Festival was at dba Brooklyn and featured about a dozen of cask-aged beers…some of which you don’t see too often. We ended the beer portion of our trip at the Brewery by doing a short tour and sampling one of their beers…

New Beer Distributors on Chrystie Street.

Whole Foods Bowery.

DBGB front door.

A nice De Dolle Stille Nacht before lunch.

Excellent fries!

Blood sausage.

Parisienne lamb sausage.

Aventinus Dopplebock at Zum Schnieder.

Cask at the Festival.

Some cask beers- note the lack of carbonation.

Beer in front of the beer engines- the cask beer is hand-drawn.

A cask porter.

Outside the Brooklyn Brewery.

In the brew room…

Aging barrel…

The Brewery cat.

 

-Josh

 

January 13, 2010

Other reasons to visit NYC

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In addition to eating donuts, Josh and I spent some time checking out some markets in NYC.  We first visited Whole Foods the Bowery Store.  We had read about it, mostly Josh read about it on Beer Advocate.  It was rated very high for it’s range of beers.  This Whole Foods has what they call a “beer room” with close to 1,000 different beers.  I was picturing a cellar with low lighting but it was a nice, bright room at street level with a very extensive beer selection.  They also had about six beers on tap.  It’s really amazing how many beers there are out there – we saw many of the beers we tried in Italy including Baladin.  I was pretty impressed with their chocolate selection but I’m sure no one is really surprised about that!

One of the other markets we went to was the Essex Street Market.  This Market was right around the corner from our hotel. I had read about it online before heading to NYC.  However, at Doughnut Plant on Saturday morning, I picked up the latest version of Edible Manhatten and saw an article about Roni-Sue’s Chocolates.  The article was about Pig Candy – dark and milk chocolate covered crispy bacon.  I’ve had bacon chocolate bars before but this was a little different – super-crispy bacon dipped in chocolate – you have to taste it, you really do!  We also tried a beer and pretzel caramel chocolate there – porter and stout had been added to the caramel which was then covered in milk chocolate.   And on the top was a small piece of pretzel – perfect combination of flavors!  Click here to read the Edible Manhatten article and see pictures.  The Essex Street Market was great to visit – in addition to getting chocolate covered bacon, you can get all kinds of cheeses, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables – the list goes on.  It’s not the biggest market but those small stalls/stores hold a whole lot of stuff!  One product that I had not see before was champagne soda.

Just so you know, we didn’t eat and drink the WHOLE time.  We checked out the Urs Fischer exhibit at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.  Three floors of the gallery space was his work.  He works in a number of different medias and it was interesting to see.  If you go to the second page of the Urs Fischer brochure from the exhibit – you will see  his piece Cumpadre, 2009 which is hanging at about eye level, danging on fishing wire from a ceiling about 30 feet up.  Cumpadre 2009 is the real name for it – Josh called it “Fishing for Ingrid”.

More to come on the NYC trip from Josh.

~Ingrid

 

November 16, 2009

…time is on my side

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…for food, that is. Ingrid had been helping me study for the Beer Judge Certification Exam over the last six or so months and it has been my main focus for the last few weeks. I took the exam on Saturday out in Deerfield, MA and was tested on my knowledge of 22 beer styles and 70+ substyles, fermentation, adjuncts, recipe formulation and sensory skills, just to name a few. The exam was two parts; a tasting section where you had to judge four beers and an essay section with 10 essay questions…all with a three hour time limit…the exam was rather exhaustive, but with it now out of the way, beer can just be beer and now I can focus on food (beer IS food, right?) and the upcoming events and holidays that we have planned…oh yeah, I’ll get my results in 4 months!

                                       -Josh

 

October 3, 2009

Stocking up on the oldies!

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It’s back – or I should say, they’re back!  This morning on our way back from Boston and a great breakfast at the Cambridge site of The Friendly Toast (the original is in Portsmouth NH in all its tattoo’ed glory) with Chris and Grace, we stopped at the Lippett Park Farmers Market.  I ran right to the Narragansett Creamery table and got a tub of ricotta cheese – I can’t wait to break into it!  I had hoped to get some yogurt as well – I want to start using those strawberries in the freezer for smoothies – but they had sold out.  But low and behold – we stopped Farmstead to check out their remodeling  job (it’s beautiful) – and they had some of the Creamery’s yogurt.  Thanks goodness!  If you are in the Wayland Square area, you should check out Farmstead and if possible, eat at La Laiterie at Farmstead.  They have a cheese cave – really a temperature controlled cheese room that you can peer into from the retail space.  There are so many cheeses sitting there,waiting to be tasted!  I’d love to get locked in sometime for a few hours!  While at Farmstead we got some cornichons for tonight’s dinner – maybe to go with the trotters?  Whatever they are for, I’m glad to have them back!  And to have some of Louella’s wonderful cheese and yogurt back in the house is truly a wonderful thing!  And Josh was a happy boy as we stopped at one of our favorite bars, Track 84, after hitting the market and Farmstead.  Josh had Stone Vertical Epic and Brooklyn Chocolate Stout - it was a dark beer kind of day.  And I was a happy girl filling up on Diet Coke and peanuts.  Granted some of the items we had today were not local but we did hit many of our favorite local businesses - it’s been a good day so far!