Samuel Adams - 2011 Infinium Ale

Wandering through my local packy this weekend I stumbled upon a new (to me) offering from Sam Adams.

Apparently a bunch of their brewers spent the last two years working with the worlds oldest brewery, Weihenstephan, to create a new category of beer. According to their packaging they have created a "Champagne-like beer with fine bubbles and a fruity, spicy aroma. It's light malt character is balance by the Noble hops that impart a soft citrus and floral flavor."

So what should you expect?

Ron Zacapa Sistema Solera 23

So generally speaking I don't like rum.

I probably had one too many "capt'n and cokes" in college or something and I'm not giving rum a fair shake; but when I think rum, I think, "daiquir", I think "punch", I think "sweet monstrosity", and mostly I think "headache".

On the recommendation of Geoff I'm working my way through a bottle of Pusser's rum and it's Okay. This summer Sioux and I went on a caprihina jag fueled by a bottle of Beleza de Minas Cachaça,but frankly that's in a whole other category. Mostly, I just don't like rum.

That was of course until I was introduced to Ron Zacapa.

White Birch Brewing - Quad

In an earlier post I mentioned that Wally Liquors is carrying White Birch Beer. You didn't think that I just noticed that and failed to pick some up, did you?

This time around I grabbed their Quad. It's a Belgian Ale, but not in the intensely sour way that some Belgian beers are. This is well balanced, with a bit of the Belgian funk, but more hop and caramel character than anything. Sioux's entire review of it was "It's good. . . A little malty at the end, but still good" and if you knew how much Sioux dis-likes malt you would know that this speaks volumes.

The Quad is malty. It's also hoppy. Mostly it's flavorful. Flavorful, and strong. In fact another testament to it's flavor (and the power there of) is that you don't really notice the 11% abv until the very end of a sip, and then the alcohol burn is mistaken for a clean almost minty flavor. ( or perhaps I swallow too much mouth wash . . .)

This is a meat beer. Rich flavorful steaks. With steak sauce, and garlic mash potatoes. and a cigar. I'm going to have this again and pair it with a cigar . . . but now I'm going to go to bed. This is one bomber (22oz bottle) that will get you bombed.

I'm going to rate this a 4.7, and recommend that you try some soon. They only made 900 bottles of this batch . . . and I can confirm that there are not more than 899 left.

CAO Black - one of my top 5

So the Epicurean and I were sitting on the back porch at work - gotta love small companies - when we both decided that a glass of Ardmore Highland Single Malt, (non-chill filtered, peated, 46% alcohol by volume) and a cigar would be a good thing. Now the Ardmore is an unusual combination of sweet in the nose and front of the tongue, fire from the alcohol, and smoke from the peat. Not as smoky as one of my beloved Islay malts, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

I reached into my copious coolerdor and fished out a couple of 5" CAO Black cigars (apparently named "Storm") with their cedar sleeves still intact . CAO Blacks are a top-5 for me for three reasons: a tremendous consistency from cigar to cigar, medium bodied smoke with hints of cedar and leather, and an ability to stay smokeable down to the nub. It features a Connecticut-seed Ecuador-grown wrapper, with habano filler from Nicaragua and Mexico. It's got good solid flavor throughout.

But this cigar won't destroy a newcomer to cigars. In fact, it would be a lovely way to descend into this particular vice. When smoked slowly, it is very mild. The Epicurean thought it was a decent smoke too, perhaps a bit light for him, although he shredded the wrapper pretty fast on this one. At least he didn't eat it.

For me, a must-have in the humidor. 4.5 out of 5!

The Great Divide Mix Pack

Normally Sioux and I don't keep a lot of bottled beer in the fridge. It's generally whatever is left over from the last event. We have beer in the kegerator, and some 22oz bombers of specialty beers that we want to try. (We actually go through the beer in the kegerator slower than we do beer in bottles... we're too lazy to make sure we get a full pour.)

This weekend was different. We were going to the first ever "Jay Lane Summer Games"--a cook out with bracketed tournaments for the three B's (badminton, bocce and bean bag toss) and as such we were going to need more portable beverage choices.

Tap that keg (of wine?)

The tradition of drought beer grew out of beer being shipped in casks. Those same casks are were often used to ship, store, and age wine... So why don't we see wine in kegs?

I'm guessing that it has a lot to with the romance of opening a bottle of wine, and that while most beers don't "lie down" well, wine continues to improve in the bottle over time, so there is value in the additional step of cellaring it.

However apparently that is changing. Debbie (Geoff's wife) found a story on boston.com about serving wine from kegs. It actually makes a lot of sense. It's faster, easier, cheaper, and more ecological to serve a beverage out of a keg, and nobody ever gets that 3rd glass of wine out of a bottle that's been open for a day (or two). That's assuming of course that the restaurant cleans their taps.

Still, I don't think you have to worry about dirty taps for a while. A normal tap system would turn every wine into a sparkling wine, so to serve keg wine you are looking at a price in the 5 digits to get started. That ought to keep your favorite dive bar where you have to drink fast moving bottled beer from jumping in the game.

Ardmore & Cohiba Pairing

Geoff and I only made it until Wednesday this week before we broke down and had a, um, strategy meeting.

We accompanied our musings with a couple drams of Ardmore Peated Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, and a Cohiba Cigar.

To be honest as a pairing these two particular vices don't exactly complement each other, but taken separately they are both recommended. Let's start with the Scotch.

Keep that Damn Fruit Out of My Beer

I hate fruit in my beer.

Seriously.

Beer has a flavor. Drink it for what it is.

That said I have never had a beer call out for lemon quite the way the Harpoon UFO White does.

First let's take care of some house keeping:

A Productive Friday afternoon.

This Friday, Geoff and I got a bit burnt out at the end of the day. Sometimes you push through. Sometimes you just give up and smoke a cigar. We lit up a Tabak Especial Red Eye. This 4.5 inch maduro has an open foot and two bands lovingly wrapped around it's 54 ring gauge. (Remember to remove the lower band before smoking . . . People forget and it tastes nasty when it burns)

This is from Drew Estates and is technically a coffee infusion, so the tip is a bit on the sweet side, but you really can't taste any coffee. As smokes go this is pretty much middle of the road. It's well crafted and burns well. No harsh notes but you don't get much beyond campfire and leather until the second half, when there is a touch of pepper and, well, straight tobacco. Almost a pipe tobacco.

Homemade pasta redux.

So the first recipe that we tried for pasta was, well, disappointing. This weekend Sioux and I gave pasta another try, but this time we tweaked things a bit.

We only made linguini for reasons noted below and we also wanted the pasta to have some flavor this time so our base recipe got kicked up a couple of notches.

Ghurka G5 Avenger Cigar

Had a box-pressed G5 Avenger toro on the ride home the other night. I'm not normally a box-press kind of guy, but it was staring at me from my humidor, so what could I do, right? First blush - a very dark and smooth oily wrapper - the band slid off with the cellophane - and the promise of a big-boy smoke. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, frankly. Immediately upon lighting, I was impressed with the easy draw and the big but not overwhelming flavor- mostly leather and aged tobacco.

Pathetic Pasta Problems

We ran out of places to dry our pasta. Yes, that's a chair.

So for a brief moment last week our kitchen looked remarkably like a 54 year old British prank.

Sioux and I tried our hands at pasta making, and this time we were given the unique opportunity to learn from our mistakes.

The recipe we choose to use--it was on the back of the sack of flour--involved 2 cups of water, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt, and "enough" warm water. No recipe should ever call for "enough" of anything.

Fenway Face Off.

Fenway Park. (photo credit: Sioux)

Sioux and I got treated to a sox game the other day. This is in no way a vice. It's just pretty cool.

It did however set up a showdown that's been brewing for a while. My lovely girl friend has maintained that a Fenway Frank is best hotdog in the Boston area.

I, of course, know better.

Super Sausage Update

Sausage in a bun with extra peppers and onions, and some blanched Pak Choy

We got back to the DePasquale's sausage today, but we supplemented it with the sauteed pepper and onion, and a honey-mustard reduction sauce.

I decided to cook the majority of this dish on the grill, because, well, its still hot out.

A new slice on a classic

So I've been drinking gin and tonics for about 15 years.
When I started I was in college and my contemporaries were swilling down "Captain and Cokes" or "Jack and Gingers" so drinking something that was not directly tied to a brand of budget priced alcohol seemed cool and aloof... Or perhaps "Gilbey's and Polar" just doesn't roll off of the tongue. Yeah, I drank Gilbey's. I was a poor college student.

I love a good Caucasian... (*)

The mason jar didn't work out: too many coffee beans in my glass

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It was hot-as-hell in Quincy today, So I decided to make myself some iced coffee.

Given that it was after noon on a weekend when I was alone around the house, I decided that I should make that iced coffee a bit more memorable. Unfortunately a quick survey of the liquor Cabinet suggested that I didn't have anything that would pair well with coffee. (Scotch, gin, vodka,) except some Brazillian Rum, but I wanted to save that for caipirinhas when Sioux got home. . .

A Little Link of Heaven

So tonight's life-shortening goodness comes from DePasquale's Sausage factory via the grill. This is the type of family run business that's way too busy with word-of-mouth traffic to build a website, so that link heads over to Yelp.

My buddy Geoff suggests that their sausage is amazing because it is unpolluted with fennel. By definition that should mean that this is not, in fact, Italian sausage. However, after wandering through the Nonantum section of Newton--where the side streets are painted with spumoni--and walking into an easy to miss store front where there is more Italian than English on the labels, that's a tough argument to make.

Getting Started

So it's two AM, and I'm in bed next to my sleeping girlfriend. I'm totally stressed out over the number of things I'm supposed to be doing at work and in my personal life, and that's before I even start to consider what how I'm going to pay to do all of the things I've committed to doing.

The only obvious thing to do is to commit my self to one more project, right? At least I'm going to give it a try.