I’ve got a pet peeve.  Actually I probably have many pet peeves.  One of the bigger ones though is going to a four star restaurant and paying a dear price for a great meal and not being able to order a decent beer to go along with it.  Last night the Beer Lass and I went to Vetri to  celebrate a wonderful three years together, and I’m glad to say that I had nothing to peeve about.  If you want specifics on what we ate and drank check out the Lass’ site.  That’s really more her thing than mine.  If she doesn’t have something up already I’m sure she will in the next few days.

(from the Osteria photo gallery)

Based on experiences I’ve had in other fine dining restaurants I went into Vetri wondering whether I’d be able to have beer with my dinner.  (Don’t get me wrong, I love wine now and then, just not with food).  We decided to go with Vetri’s grand tasting and my heart sank when I read that the “educated staff would assist me  in hand-crafting a tasting menu that suited my particular food and wine preferences.” Oh no!

Flashback to a very nice evening the Lass and I had while travelling in New England.  We stopped at a place in Centerbrook, CT and had a great meal. Great great food, tasteful music, comfortable and classy environment and impeccable service.  We’re talking white tablecloths, crumbing after every course and your napkin refolded everytime you get up from the table.  They boasted an extensive wine list, but completely fell down on the beer!  Bud, Heineken and Stella.  What???? 

Being in the restaurant industry I firmly believe that a complaint is a gift.  So on my way out I gifted the manager with my thoughts on their beer selection.  Unfortunately I got the two most common responses to this feedback, neither of which I can accept.  A. “We don’t have much room behind our bar.”  C’mon, do you really need to have Bud, Heineken and Stella?  Three versions of the same style of beer?  That would be like having 10 chicken dishes with no seafood or beef selections!  Get rid of one of those and bring in just one craft.  Even just keeping a few bottles of Saison DuPont or Ommegang Hennepin in the basement would at least satisfy 90% of all foodie/beer geeks.  B. “We’re not really a beer place.”  What?  Are you a coffee shop?  No.  Do you serve Folger’s with dessert?  Are you a bakery?  No.  Do you bring out a basket of Wonder bread with your soup?  So why would you serve world class food with average beer?  I want everything to match.  If there are white tablecloths on the table I want to hear Vivaldi or Coltrane, not open mic night.  If someone is folding my napkin every time I get up I don’t want to have to hold on to my silverware between courses.  And if I’m paying $60 for an entree I don’t want a beer that I can get for $4 at my corner bar.

Back to Vetri.  Fortunately I was able to flip forward a few pages into the menu to find one of the best selections of Italian craft beers I’ve ever seen, peppered in with a well chosen selection of local crafts.  (If you don’t know about the Italian craft beer  movement, please learn about it.) We were also lucky enough to have Mark Vetri’s beverage manager Steve (apologies for not knowing his last name) in the building. 

When ordering the tasting menu at Vetri the guest can be free from any decision making, which is kind of nice after a work day full of it.  Once you inform them of any dietary restrictions and your gastronomic preferences, they just surprise you with dish after wonderful dish. My one question however was “How do I know what beer to order if I don’t know what food I’m getting?”  It turns out that Vetri’s staff is just as adept at walking you through your beer and food pairings as they assure you they are with the wine and food.  Steve practically held our hands and led us through the entire experience.  We hadn’t intended for this to be a high-end beer dinner, but that’s almost what we got.  I’m glad for it too.  While some of the dishes might have worked with wine, other’s were clearly better with beer.  For instance, I can’t imagine a wine in the world that would have paired with the foie gras seasoned with peppery spices as well as did the Italian Saison we drank with it.

I know Marc Vetri isn’t the only chef owner with an appreciation for beer.  A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to go to Chifa’s first beer dinner when they paired up with Flying Fish.  Congratulations gentlemen for bringing fine dining up to speed, and thank you!  Thanks to chefs like Garces and Vetri experiences like the one I had in CT present themselves less and less every day.

Our Head Brewer in Lancaster, Paul Rutherford, is a big big fan of a particular reality television show.  So much so that he practically begged me

Paul and I discussing "The Situation" photo: Suzy Woods

to name a beer, any beer, “The Situation”.  Why didn’t he do it himself?  He thought people in New Jersey would appreciate it more than folks in Lancaster.  So I had a name that needed a beer.

For year’s I’ve been brewing a beer that I’ve called “Golden Barleywine“.  Mostly because I don’t know what else to call it.  It’s not a Barleywine at all.  Some say it’s a Double IPA, but it’s too light in color and low in malt body.  Not a Double IPA at all.  So this year, with a fresh start in Jersey, I decided to just give it a name and ignore the whole style issue altogether.  So I had a beer that needed a name.

Situation resolved.

We brewed it this past Saturday.  We’ll release it on February 20th along with very limited amounts of a couple of different vintages of the same recipe.  I plan to get a fake tan and style my hair accordingly.  My lady The Beer Lass has agreed to do the same.  We’re working on a bunch of our friends to commit to this theme as well.

Put it on your calander.  It should be a good time.  You’re going to be happy with The Situation.

Cheers,

Chris

P.S. To read about the history of this beer and why I ever called it “barleywine” in the first place, read here.

Larry’s just posted a rough draft of this year’s BCTWC draft list.  Check it out!

This past Saturday saw the continuation of a tradition I started in my old digs of West Chester, the anual wort give-away that leads to the Iron Brewer Competition.  Every year I make an anomaly of a beer that for lack of a better classification I’ve called “Golden Barleywine”.  As the name would suggest it’s golden and strong.  So it uses 100% Pilsner malt and LOTS of it.  The OG is so high that I have to fill my mash tun up twice to get enough sugars for one kettle’s worth of beer.   In order to insure we get the alcohol content we want we only use the first bit of liquid that comes out of the tun.  What that means is that at the end of our run off, there’s still plenty of sugar left in the mash tun.  Enough to make another batch of reasonable strength beer.  That’s where the homebrewers come in, literally.  They come in with 5 gallon buckets and take home the wort or unfermented beer and make their own batches with it.   (We always brew this beer on a Saturday or Sunday so everyone can have the day off to brew.)  They put their own spin on each brew, using their choices of specialty malts, hops, yeast, fermentation temperature etc.  Then a month later, they bring their creations back and we see who’s is the best!  (Got the Iron Chef parallel here?).  If nothing else we save the homebrewers some money, time and a bit of mess.  We offer them yeast to take home too, so all they have to pay for is hops and whatever specialty malts they may or may not want to use.  This past Saturday was the first time I’ve done the giveaway in Maple Shade, but the turnout was just as strong as it was in West Chester.  (Free stuff, go figure!)  We had around 20 people come in and take home about 130 gallons of wort.  I can’t wait to see what these folks come back with.  I’m amazed at the range of beers that are made with the same wort.  Homebrewers are a creative lot!  Photos by Melissa Jaarsma

About four years ago I started this little event in West Chester in which I invited all of my local brewer friends (and a couple friends and former co-workers from afar) who made Belgian style beer to put their stuff on tap in our restaurant.  When I first showed my boss the list he was worried that I had bitten off more than I could chew.  He was probably right, but it was great!  I didn’t really know what to expect that first year but I definitley never expected it to be as huge as it was.  This event was (and continues to be) our second-most well attended beer event in the company. (First is our outdoor Brandywine Craft Brewer’s Fest)  I look forward to it every year, but this year I’m REALLY looking forward to it.  Usually I spend the first two or three hours of the event cleaning glassware, bartending and putting out fires in general.  This year I get to go as a participant and not an organizer.  I’ll get to hang out with friends and drink great beer while some other poor schlep does the running around and sweating.  This really is a unique event.  There are plenty of great beer festivals out there, including a couple that focus on Belgian style beer.  But this is the only one in America I can think of that features this many Belgian style beers all made within a 50 mile radius.  I know most of my readers are from New Jersey and West Chester is a bit of a hike.  But trust me, if anything were worth making a trip out to the Pennsy ‘burbs, this is.  Here are the details.  See you there!

Remember groaning as a child when you asked what was for dinner and got the answer “leftovers”?  Well somtimes leftovers can be a good thing.  I have two kegs of beer that I’ve been saving for the sold-out beer dinner we’re having tonight.  Once the needs of our beer dinner guests are fulfilled I’ll be putting them on tap.  Around 8:00 pm I’ll be putting the last keg of Caprice on tap and around 10 pm we’ll start serving the last keg of our Cherry Vanilla Porter.  Also, as of now a single firken of McMaster Wee Heavy is on the beer engine.  (I really like this beer on cask).  Get them while they’re on, they probably won’t make it ’till the weekend, and I guarantee they’ll taste better than Mom’s three-day-old meatloaf!

So despite the fact that IH Maple Shade sells more beer than any Iron Hill in existence I just can’t get my boss to approve the purchase of another fermenter.  But you guys won’t stop drinking my stuff, so I had to come up with a plan.  I built my own out of wood!  Just kidding.  I think I’m close to breaking the powers that be on the new fermenter thing.  The barrels are actually for a very special beer we’ve got going, an Oud Bruin or Flemish Brown Ale.  While Jeff and I spend 90% of our time cleaning and sanitizing to prevent bacteria from getting a hold of  our beer, we invite it with this one.  The wood is a great environment for the wild yeast and other bugs that we’ve got working on this future sour beer.  It will also pick up a hint of oak character and some wine character as well.  These barrels are used Beaujolais barrels from the Tomasello winery in Hammonton, NJ.  Don’t hold your breath, this beer will be sitting patiently in the barrels for at least another 3 or 4 months.  Bacteria works a lot slower than yeast does.  I’ll let you know when its ready!