Beer/Food Pairing 2013

I'm at it again. This time as a professional brewer. We at Cerveceria Dos Aves are teaming up with the La Frontera restaurant here in San Miguel de Allende to present to the locals a three course meal featuring three seasonal Dos Aves ales.

You may remember that our first joint venture was in 2009 and then again in 2010. I worked with Noren at La Frontera to create a beer/food pairing with some of my homebrewed beer. Those beers were brewed with a slant towards utilizing Mexican ingredients. Utilizing local agave in an American pale ale and brewing with hibiscus and tamarindo in a Belgian wheat to name a couple.

This time around we are going with three of Dos Aves seasonal offerings. One, a pumpkin ale which most Mexicans have no idea about since they don't celebrate thanksgiving and subsequently are unfamiliar with the traditional pumpkin pie that north Americans are accustomed to. The other two are classics styles that we only have room at the new brewery to brew once a year for the winter season. One is a 9% Russian imperial stout and the other a 8.5% Belgian golden strong. The yeast I used in this strong ale is pretty interesting as it imparts almost chardonnay wine like flavors and is very dry. Actually, now that I think of it most Mexicans are unfamiliar with these other two beers also. But, I expect this will soon change as the desire for craft beer is quickly becoming popular here in Mexico and craft and import beers are growing beyond the homogeneous but deadly grip of Modelo.

Noren has come up with a unique menu for this selection of beers and it's sound pretty delicious. For starters we'll be having a creamed ginger-squash soup with the pumpkin ale. Following this, for the main course, a choice of either a beer braised brisket or jumbo shrimp in a sun-dried tomato pesto served with garlic mashed potatoes and baby carrots and Brussels sprouts along with Russian imperial stout. To finish, our Belgian golden strong will be featured with a brie and goat cheese platter with grapes and apples as dessert.

If you're local to San Miguel or soon to be visiting, please make your reservation now as seating is limited. Contact Noren at: 152-4265

Cheers!

Beer Tasting

I don't know where to begin, except to say that there are no simple answers. So, I'm posing this question to you who happen to stumble upon or are following this blog. But what is the question you ask? Simple.

How does one decide on a selection of beers if you're conducting a beer tasting class?

The reality is that there are twenty three recognized classic styles of beer not including mead, cider, melomel, and perry (whatever that is). In addition, there are a total of seventy nine subcategories that make up these styles. Break that down even further by considering the companies that brew these beers and you've got thousands of beer out there to choose from.

Now, your mission if you choose to accept it is to pick just eight of those beers to present in a three hour tasting session.

Making the choice of beers can be a creative process and that is how I approach it. I begin this process with an intention. For instance, I may make the decision on my selection based on beers of historical interest, like 'Why monks make beer and when did they start doing that'? I could decide to based the choice on similar qualities, a selection within a style for instance, like Russian imperial, sweet, foreign, oatmeal, American or dry stout. Or maybe a comparison between English and American pale ales and introduce some West coast American pales ales for good measure? A variety of seasonal German lagers?

The recent beers from the tasting class include Belgian tripel, quad, grand cru, grand cru vintage 2007, gueuze, homebrewed dry stout, pumpkin porter, homebrewed Russian imperial stout, Drake's aroma coma IPA and Hop Wallop IIPA.

Any of these ideas would be enjoyable to create a tasting around but there are other consideration that must be addressed. What comes to mind are the students. Their understanding of brewing and exposure to beer. Their preferences and past experience in tasting. In most of the classes that I have conducted, for the most part the students are inexperienced in tasting and have little exposure to beers outside of the mainstream swill. They come with a sincere interest in tasting new beers, learning the process of critically tasting and also want to enjoy a nice afternoon of sipping beers, an entertaining brew event. The reasons for them attending a beer tasting and the level of there experiences must be considered when designing a class. In addition to the novice there will occasionally be homebrewers and beer appreciators that have a wider level of knowledge and experience and their reason for attendance maybe slightly different and must be regarded also in the presentation.

So, back to the beer choice. Here we have 1000's of beers to choose from, a mix of attendees with varied knowledge and experience and lastly, a limited amount of time to not only educate, broaden their interests in beer and entertain but also to reward them with the feeling of satisfaction that they made a good decision by registering for and paying good money to attend a beer tasting.

Go.

I also want to use this space to thank my TA's Brady and Teresa for helping me out with this recent tasting. Their support enabled me to focus on the presentation. Thanks also to Jan and Andy for providing home brewed Russian imperial stout and brownies that were baked with said same stout, delicious!

Now I'm getting geared up to begin the five week brewing course. I'm excited.

Beer For Food Bartering

On a regular basis people who sample my beers will ask 'can you sell this?' and I have to concede that, no, you can't sell homebrew.  Even if I wanted to, it's against the law to commercially produce and market beer to the public without a license. Actually, several licenses from local, state and federal authorities. Authorities that make a sincere effort to prevent most people from doing as they please.
But for me, more importantly is that I don't want a job as a brewer, it's too much work and besides, it's not about making money. I'm content to keep my brewing at the level of hobby. To brew for the enjoyment of the process and take pleasure in the results of my efforts. To share with family and friends and gain the satisfaction of seeing the delight that crosses their surprised faces when they ask 'Is this really home made?' But man does not live on beer bread alone. A certain quantity of protein is needed in his diet to keep him in the upright position and fully functioning. This brings me to my most recent endeavour, trading homebrew for food. Not just trading but trading locally. I like the idea of keeping within the local economy and doing my small part to create a common cause that brings the community together. Think sustainable.

The question then becomes, where can I find these community minded people that produce local food and also would be willing to trade for homemade beer. Oh yeah, the farmers market a few blocks up the street.

Local food to be had

I figured hey, these are hard working people who can appreciate a well made and hand crafted food product. Not to mention, we share similar passions, but where I'm pulled to brew beer they venture just as enthusiastically in a different direction. They may be producing honey from their own hives in the back yard or raising grass fed beef, growing organic vegetables on a few acres near their home. How about fresh fish caught that morning from the bay that I can see from the market parking lot, talk about local. If this trading plan were to work out, the list of possibilities for food is endless, sausage, eggs, chicken, beef, veggies of all kinds, jams, nuts.

My plan was simple, bottle up a variety of ales from my kegerator. Fill up a cooler with said beer and wander through the booths on Saturday. I'd size up the vendors and their product for a good match to trade and offer them a sample beer or two to take home to try out. Then, follow up the next week to see if they have any interest. They did.



At this point in time I have a weekly trade going on with the producers of a selection of excellent small batch cheeses produced at a family farmstead  that has been in the dairy business for generations. These artisan cheeses are by far some of the best I've had. This family business that started as a cheese making hobby a couple of years ago now produces one to two hundred pounds of cheese a week.




The other vendor that I trade with has fresh fish out of Santa Cruz. This is a company that only sells at farmers markets and specializes in sustainable seafood focusing mostly on line-caught local species. They also have some exotics like Ahi which I had last week which I rolled in sesame seeds and pan seared to lay over rice, yum!


I've still got my feelers out for some red meat but it's just a matter of time. Besides the meat, I was thinking that trading for honey might be a good match. I could then use this local honey to brew a honey ale of some sort. A little icing on the cake so to speak, icing is always nice. Then I could trade the honey beer back to the honey vendor to show them how their product can be utilized in my product. Ooh, a win, win, win.

Suffice to say that there are no limits to how far this could go to supplement my diet with needed protein, without having to sell beer to make money in order to buy food.

If you're in the habit of producing more beer than you can consume, like me, I would recommend you form your own food connections in your area as well, I would encourage it. The only requirement is quality homebrew. Everyone likes good beer and food.

Do you trade beer for food? Tell us about it in the comment section below. Let's help each other get back to the basics of local bartering for a healthy community.

Brewing In San Miguel Part II

Living in Mexico, time goes like turning pages. I don't know the date without consulting my calendar and only consider the time when I have to get down to Cerveza De San Miguel to spend another all day brew session. The system is only big enough to do 7.5 gallons at a time so we start early and crank out three back to back brews. While one is boiling the next batch is going in the mash tun and the third is getting weighed and milled. Tuesday we brewed half keg of Serrano chili beer and a full keg of Honey ale and yesterday, a keg of hefeweizen and half a keg of chili beer.

I'm doing this twice a week now in addition to the kegging and it's wearing badly on me. the hobby of brewing for myself is typically a twice a month activity in a relaxed and pleasant pace. I normally mill all the grain and weigh out the hops the night before and have the brewing water in the kettles so that on brew day I can simply fire up the burners, pour myself a pint and enjoy the day. Brewing as I am now is more like work. No me gusta trabajo.

The up side is that with the aggressive brewing schedule we're beginning to get some inventory in the walk-in cooler which should give the beer some chance to age a bit before being served. In all of this my hope is that Cerveza de San Miguel will gain some exposure as a good micro (nano?) brewery and the business will grow. It would be satisfying to think that I had some impact on their success.

Beer Closet

In the mean time, I enjoyed sitting down with Noren at 'El Burrito Bistro' last week to have her taste some of my homebrew and she is coming up with a three course meal to pair the beer with again this year. I have enough beer to serve 60 people. The tentative date is March 21st. and I've come up with a Pale ale with honey, Weizenbock and a double IPA. The weizenbock and IIPA both come in at 8% abv.

I think I'll go have one now.

Miel De Agave Pale Ale Revisited

If you recall from the beer/food pairing event I did last year at the 'El Burrito Bistro', one of the beers was a pale ale that was brewed with an addition of miel de agave syrup that I called Agaveza Pale. You can read about that experience here.

That beer was made with a commercial agave syrup that had a subtle, almost undetectable flavor. I decided it was worth brewing again in an effort to have the distinctive flavor of agave shine thought, supporting the maltiness of the grain. I headed out one morning in search of a more flavorful product.

Well, I came across a small company at the local market and tasted their offerings. What a difference, the flavor is bold with the distinct character of the agave plant. This agave syrup producer is a small company call La Montanesa. They're agave is dark brown with the smell of toasted bread and brown sugar, which is a pleasant surprise because the raw juice of the agave has a foul flavor. Evidently, cooking it down some really helps. In this new recipe, I left the grain bill the same and added eight ounces of this better tasting agave syrup and tweeked the hops by adding some late additions of a Cascade and Centennial blend. I'll let you know how it comes out and I'm hoping it's good enough to serve again at this years beer/food pairing.

In the mean time, I've got plans to brew an all-grain batch of a double IPA and then a dry stout.
I may not use any local ingredients in these beers and just go for good examples of these classic styles. Once these are finished carbonating in the bottles I will sit down with Noren Caseres (the owner of El Burrito Bistro) to taste and plan a menu.

P.S.
I'm really getting frustrated trying to collect enough bottles to reuse for all the beers I'm brewing. My original plan to bottle in the large 3.3 litre plastic carbonated water bottles didn't work out satisfactorily. What's happening is that an excessive amount of yeast sediment accumulates at the bottom of the bottle from the natural conditioning and when the cap is remove and the carbon dioxide is released, it begins to draw up this sediment and causes the beer to get murky. If all of the beer is dispensed quickly, it's not too bad, but the up and down motion of pouring into several glasses really agitates this sediment. “No me gusta murky.” One solution may be to dispense the entire content of the bottle into a pitcher and then fill the glasses from there. Any suggestions are welcome.

The Ol' Factory Cafe In Sand City, Ca.

I recently made the short trek to the other side of the bay to meet up with a friend of mine and enjoy his company over a couple of beers. During the drive down I couldn't help but smile in appreciation, for the privilege of living in one of the most beautiful places in the country. As Highway 1 bends south along the shore I witness the stunning views of the coastline with its cities of Monterey, Pacific Grove and Pebble Beach lining the distant horizon over a vivid expanse of deep blue ocean. My destination is The Ol’ Factory Café
http://www.olfactorycafe.com/
located at the entrance to Monterey. Morgan Christopher is the owner and beer aficionado, who opened for business two years ago introducing to the public the vast array of remarkable beers from all over the world.
As I walk in I am immediately drawn to a bar that boasts at least forty specialty beers in bottles and another ten or twelve on tap. We’re not talking your usual domestic craft fair although there is some of that also, including Belgian style ales from Maine and California , but more appealing to me is the large selection of classics from around the world. Schlenkerla rauchbier from Germany, Koningshoeven Quadruple from Netherlands, Delirium Tremens, Belgium. And on tap, Chimay Tripel and Old Rasputin Imperial Stout and Erdinger Dunkelweizen to name a few. Needless to say, I was in heaven.
I located my friend and we ordered immediately.
A Karmliet Tripel
www.bestbelgianspecialbeers.be/main_eng.html for me, and a La Chouffe Ipa www.achouffe.be/en/nos-bieres/nos-produits/for Karl. Both were delicious. We spoke briefly with Morgan about his operation and then opened a bottle of homebrew that I brought down for the occasion. It was a Chimay Tripel clone that had been aging in my kegerator for several months. He seemed suspicious at first but after a couple sips agreed that it was indeed good. Morgan introduced his chef Kevin Fisher who is also a homebrewer. Kevin has been at The Ol’Factory for seven months where he has refined and considerably improved the menu. His excitement about beer and food was contagious and we talked about the possibility of holding a homebrew and food pairing event in the future. I will follow up on that idea with the other Zymurgeek home brewers. We ordered a couple more beers and enjoyed the open space ambiance of the place with its comfortable couches, big chairs and coffee tables that give the place a feeling like you're in your own living room. Did I mention that they have a full bar for coffee and tea?
The day was drawing to an end and I decided that a perfect beer for the road would be one that I was sure Karl had never had. We were brought a bottle of Girardin gueuze and a couple of glasses to share. After the first smell and sip we both agreed that this beer definitely had a distinct barnyard flavor and aroma and I was relieved when Karl proclaimed that he enjoyed the beer with all of its unique character.
The time came too soon for me to drive back up the coast.
The Monterey Bay area is one of the most beautiful and picturesque places on the planet and only one thing could improve on this image, an establishment that has a huge selection of specialty beers on tap and what seems like an endless array of bottled beer from around the world. Oh wait, it has such a place by the name The Ol’Factory Cafe located in Sand City, within minutes of Monterey.

Beer and Food Pairing

I wanted to know if any of my readers have done a homebrew and food pairing, or even a commercial beer and food pairing? This is a new experience for me and I could use the tips. Please comment below if you have some good advise or talk about your experience.
In any case I delivered one hundred bottles of beer to the restaurant and it looks like it's on for a homebrew and food pairing here in San Miguel de Allende. I have teamed up with Noren Caceres, the owner of the 'El Burrito Bistro' and we have made our final plans for a reservations only dinner on the 7th of February from 5-8pm. Noren just informed me yesterday that we have the sixty people reserved that we can accomodate. Each person will be getting a sample (5oz.) of each of my three beers along with an appropriate course prepared by Noren. The beers will be the Belgian ale made with the addition of jamaica (hibiscus flower) and tamarindo. Followed by a pale ale with miel de agave and then a pale ale made with a serious amount of the local honey that I purchased at the tuesday outdoor market. Noren wrote in the article that came out in the local paper www.atencionsanmiguel.org/
"I'm hoping that the beer tasting menu will create a harmonious experience of flavors that accent and celebrate these exceptional ales. www.alabev.com/taste.htm The first course, served with the tangy Jamaica Ale, will be a baked portabello mushroom stuffed with requeson cheese and herbs on a bed of greens with a balsamic and sun-dried tomato vinaigrette or a tomato and sweet pepper shrimp bisque. The main course, served with the rich Agaveza Ale, a vegetable cous cous and your choice of lamb, chicken or vegetarian tagine. And the sweet Tianguis Ale will be served with a fruit and cheese platter, a dessert that will allow you to experiment with the various flavors and sensations this beer invokes. So I invite you to take a night off from the six pack in the fridge and taste the dream of San Miguel´s locally produced, hand-crafted beer by Mark Taylor".
I will follow up on this post with pictures of the events and lessons learned from the night of homebrew and food.