Speaking of Beer

SNAKEBITE

Combine equal parts stout and hard apple cider. Serve in a pint glass.

BLACK VELVET
Combine equal parts stout and champagne. Serve in a fluted glass.

MOONGLOW

12 oz. American amber ale, 1 oz. Amaretto, 3 oz. half and half, a 1â?„2 oz. of Irish cream liqueur and mint leaves (minced). Mix all ingredients gently in a shaker. Pour over ice in a short goblet and garnish with a mint sprig.

BERRY BLAST
12 oz. American light lager, 11â?„2 oz. strawberry daiquiri mix, and 1â?„2 oz. simple syrup. Mix strawberry daiquiri, syrup and 2/3 of the beer with ice and shake to degas. Strain and pour into a pilsner glass. Now add the remaining beer and garnish.

ALL-PURPOSE GRILL/BARBEQUE RUB

3/4 C paprika (sweet or hot, as best suits you)
1/4 C ground black pepper
1/4 C salt
1/4 C sugar
2 Tbs chili powder
2 Tbs garlic powder
2 Tbs onion powder
2 tsp cayenne
1 – 2 Tbs Ingredient X (something that makes it your own!)

Mix together thoroughly, store in cool, dark place. Makes ~2 cups.

BRATWURST IN GUINNESS

Place 4 – 6 brats in a covered skillet. Add one can of Guinness. Bring to boil and reduce heat. Let simmer until Guinness is reduced to a thick syrup consistency. Turn brats occasionally as they simmer to cook evenly.

Variations:

•Cut one whole onion (large pieces) and add to the brats when adding Guinness.

•Make a “boat” out of aluminum foil and cook on the grill.

(recipe courtesy of Michael R. Mennenga)

HEFE CHICKEN

Beer mixture:

One full bottle of hefeweizen. (your favorite kind, for example Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse or Widmer Hefeweizen)
1/4 cup brown sugar
Add spices to taste.
(suggestion: one whole clove garlic, 1 tsp rosemary, 1 tsp thyme, 1 1/2 tsp salt and pepper)

Prep:

Place chicken pieces in a skillet with a couple Tbs oil and brown for 5 minutes.
Transfer browned pieces to a roasting pan and add 1st part (half) of the beer mixture.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350° F

To the remaining half of the beer mixture add juice from two whole lemons (about 1/2 cup) and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Add remaining beer/citrus mixture (part 2) and continue baking for 30 minutes basting pieces with pan drippings every 5 minutes or so until a thick coating forms on the chicken.

Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before serving. (This lets the coating set up so it does not slide off when moved)

Variation: Replace lemons with orange juice or grapefruit juice

(recipe courtesy of Michael R. Mennenga)

TRADITIONAL WASSAIL

2 pints of malty English ale, like Samuel Smiths Pale Ale
1 cup sugar
6 eggs, beaten
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of ginger
pinch of cloves
pinch of nutmeg
4 apples

Pour the ale into a saucepan and heat. Add sugar and spices and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Gradually add a small amount of the hot liquid to the beaten eggs, as for custard. Return to saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened. Meanwhile, core the apples, place them in a casserole dish, cover them in foil, and place them in a preheated 325 degree oven for 25 minutes. Place apples in a heat-proof punch bowl, and pour the hot mixture over. For authenticity, garnish with toast.

Prebeer Preamble: Are there brews that will get a beer non-drinker hooked on the juice of the barley? With the help of some listeners, and a brave “pink wine” fan, we tackle this question today.

Beer #1: I’m joined by my neighbor Devona, years away from her last (unpleasant) beer experience, to try some Shiner Bock from the Spoetzl Brewery in Texas. Will this whole show concept prove brilliant, or did you just take a ringside seat for the wreck of the beer train?

Interbeer Interlude: Adjunct. “Beer Butt Chicken”. If you have some cans of the old yellow fizz around the house, don’t be ashamed. Turn them into forces for good with this nifty grilling trick!

Beer #2: Newcastle Brown Ale. This wildly popular English ale is our next conversion candidate. It was mentioned by several listeners as a good gateway beer, so it HAS to work for Devona, right? Right?!?

Beer Geek Moment: “Off Flavors.” So your last brew was a little wonky. Is it just style-related quirkiness, or has something gone horribly wrong?

Postbeer Postscript: Devona and I score up these two dark beers. Did either of them trip Ms. White Zinfandel’s trigger?

 

 Show #6: Through a Gateway, Darkly: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1969)

We score our beers based on a fairly standard beer rating rubric, primarily meant to enhance the beer-drinking experience. The beers are evaluated on five characteristics:

APPEARANCE: This is how the beer looks after it has been poured into an appropriate glass. Look at color, clarity, and head. Color can range from the palest straw yellow to pitch black, clarity from crystal clear to deep murk, and head from effervescent fizz to dense cream. Most important is your reaction to how it looks: is it inviting you to take a sip, pour it down the drain, or something in between?

AROMA: A significant chunk of beer enjoyment can come before you take your first sip. Bring the glass up to your nose and take a sniff. What does the smell remind you of? Keep in mind there can be lots going on here: sweetness, grass, flowers, perfume, spices, musk, toast, grain, berries, toffee, citrus, and more, often with weird combinations and surprises, await you in the beer’s “nose.” Are you intrigued, put off, or something in between?

TASTE: Here’s where the aroma evolves into something more. The tongue can detect sweet, sour, and bitter flavors in beer. Often, the themes established by the aroma continue more strongly in the taste. Sometimes, however, surprises await. A beer that comes on sweetly might have a bitter bite on the back of your tongue; a beer that promises hops might be more like honey than hoppy. Does the taste trip your trigger, gag you with a spoon, or something in between?

MOUTHFEEL: Quite literally, how the beer feels while in your mouth. Mouthfeel ranges from watery to syrupy. After you take your first sip, notice how this evolves, as some beers can start fairly dense, but then evaporate away, while others coat your mouth and refuse to leave. Think in terms of “body”: light, medium, and heavy, but also in terms of dynamics: cloying, effervescent, inviting. When it comes to what your beer’s doing in your mouth, do you dig it, hate it, or something in between?

HOLISTIC ASSESSMENT: My favorite category, because here you can rave about the beer that, on paper anyway, you should hate, or totally bag on a beer you’re “supposed” to love. Beer drinking is as much about the “experience” as it is the chemicals. We are opinionated animals, and with this category you can let your totally biased opinion fly. Did a beer defy your expectations? Reward it! Was it a crushing disappointment? Punish it! No wrong answers here, just what did you think of this particular beer on this particular day?

Each category gets 10 points. A 5 means “OK, that’s fine.” Anything that catches your attention in a positive way warrants additional points, and anything that catches your attention in a negative way warrants deducted points. Total them up, and you’ve got a number out of 50 that expresses your beer experience!

By the way, we use this whole scoring thing primarily as a way to focus our attention on our beer-drinking experience at the time we’re drinking the beer, and to provoke conversation. It’s a bit of a “McGuffin” (to borrow a term from film school, which, as it turns out, I never attended). What I’m trying to say is that simply paying attention to the beer you’re drinking is a reward unto itself, and the numbers come in a very distant second to the experience.

Drink well.

Just curious…is anybody out there drinking along? I haven’t heard much in the way of “drink-along stories” or anything, so I’m not sure if these preshow posts are doing much for y’all. Still, it’s no skin off my proverbial nose to post them, so what-the-hey…

Next week it’ll be two darker beers.

Shiner Bock [alternatives: Saranac Adirondack Lager, Warsteiner Premium Dunkel, any "dark" "amber" or "dunkel" lager]

and

Newcastle Brown Ale [alternatives: Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale, Wychwood's Hobgoblin, Pete's Wicked Ale, any "brown ale"]

Newcastle’s available worldwide, but Shiner Bock is a fairly American phenomenon. You can check Shiner Bock’s availability here.

Oh, and you might even want to swing by your local grocery store and pick up a chicken. Yes, a chicken. You’ll see….

J.R. Murdock sent me this pic:

Quoth J.R. :”Something to do with those old desktops now that everyone has a laptop”

Prebeer Preamble: What’s the most beer-friendly US State? A thorny question if ever there was one, but today we dive into some Oregonian beers, and begin to make a case for the Beaver State.

Beer #1: Full Sail Amber. I’m joined by long-time Portland friends Beth Green and Jason Newsom to quaff this Hood River brew. Will old friends reconnect over this approachable beer, or will I seriously piss off my pals by declaring ambers to be “generally cheesey?”

Interbeer Interlude: Beer As Folk. “Alan Sprints”. The founder, owner, and head brewer of Portland’s Hair of the Dog Brewing Company joins me for a terrific discussion. Topics include his beers, his brewing philosophy, and what it’s like to be a small craft brewer with a deservedly big reputation in one of America’s premier beer cities. You can find Alan’s beers here.

Beer #2:Black Butte Porter from the Deschutes Brewing Company in Bend, Oregon. Armed with some boutique chocolate, Beth, Jason and I plunge into this roasty classic. The conversation eventually runs up against the musical question “How are porters different from stouts, anyway?”

Beer Geek Moment: “Meet the Hop” A whirwind introduction to everyone’s favorite brewing spice, and one of Oregon’s big cash crops. Consider this Part 1 in a series…

Postbeer Postscript: We do that evaluation thing, and find out that living in Portland can seriously skew what one considers to be “middle-of-the-road,” beer-wise.

 

 Show #5: Oregonian Beertacular!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1959)

This week (May 15 – 21) is the inauguaral American Craft Beer Week. It’s a great excuse to spend much time visiting your local breweries and/or brewpubs. You can actually earn “points” by doing so, and win pint glasses, T-shirts, or even a trip to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver this September. Plus, you can drink lots of REALLY good beer.

All the details can be yours by visiting the URL above, or simply by clicking here.

Thanks to Eric for the tip!

At first these two American microbrews appear very different from one another, but keen-eyed observers should pick up on the theme.

Full Sail Amber [alternatives: Red Rocket Ale, Rogue's American Amber, Fat Tire, any "red" or "amber" you can find]

Deschutes Black Butte Porter [alternatives: Sierra Nevada Porter, Odell's Cutthroat porter, Saranac Caramel Porter, any "porter"]

Prebeer preamble: What’s the deal with monks and beer?

Beer 1: Orval. Eric and I begin our sampling of monkdom with this Trappist creation. It’s the only beer this particular monestary makes, but does all that devotion create a good brew?

Interbeer Interlude: Beerlosophy essay “Beernumeracy.” I rant about numbers and air travel, then somehow bring it all back to beer. It always comes back to beer…

Beer 2: Tripel Karmeleit. We now crank it up to “three”, with this triple abbey. More malt, more alcohol…more holy?

Beer Geek Moment: “Belgium” Everything you need to know about one of the world’s beer epicenters. Or at least enough to sound like you know what you’re talking about at your next beer gathering.

Postbeer Postscript: Do Eric and I let the potential wrath of God influence our judgement on these two divinely inspired brews?

 

 Show #4: God Beer by the Numbers: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1909)