The Beer Baron - Forest City Beer Fest

This post courtesy of Matt, the Beer Baron.

London’s Forest City Beer Fest was held on Saturday, August 10^th and despite intermittent showers, there was a great turnout. Now in its third year – and first being held at the Covent Garden Market downtown – the Beer Fest was organized by Aaron Brown, who pulled together a great day of craft beers, food trucks, beer seminars, cooking classes and local vendors.

I started the day with an English Bitter called Elvis Has Left the Building, the official beer of the festival. I’ll let Aaron share the back story:

“Once upon a time, I worked with Peter Fowler, and English brewer located near Oxford. The brewery was called Pitstop and all of the beers had an automotive theme. My favourite beer we brewed was called On The Button, named after driver Jenson Button who raced for the Williams F1 team located just down the street from the brewery.

The beer has been given a new name on this side of the Ocean, but it is a faithful recreation of Peter's original English Bitter.”

The Beer Baron - You Had Me at Stout: Testing the Spiegelau Stout Glass

Post by Matt, the Beer Baron

Like many a good beer geek, I have far too much glassware. What started with a few Chimay chalices has blossomed into several shelves of everything from Aquaman pint glasses to a Westvleteren glass I had to beg the store owner in Belgium to sell me. For the most part, they are mementos from brewery tours and are all variations of a few classic beer glass styles. I’ve got countless pint glasses, tulips, chalices, shakers, steins, snifters and steins, so I really don’t need any new glasses – or so you would think.

Enter the Spiegelau stout glass. If you recall from my post about Bell’s Expedition Stout, I hold stout in high regard, especially Russian Imperial Stout. Actually, that is an understatement akin to saying the aforementioned Aquaman holds water or punching bad guys in high regard. So, when news broke that Spiegelau was following up their IPA glass with a stout glass, I was instantly reduced to an internet meme:

Since the Spiegelau stout glass was developed in partnership with Rogue Ales and Left Hand Brewing Company, I figured it would be apropos to try out my new stout glass using Rogue’s own 99/100-rated Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout. For the sake of comparison – and to drink two stouts rather than just one – I also used an American-style pint glass. The bottles were purchased, stored and refrigerated in the same way and I did my best to pour the beers at the same angle and rate.

As you can see, the stout glass encouraged more of a rich, creamy head. While what little head did show up in the pint glass dissipated quickly, the head in the stout glass remained for the better part of 45 minutes – and would have remained longer if, you know, I wasn’t thirsty.  

The biggest difference I found in comparing the two glasses was in the aromas from the stout glass. While the pint glass presented hints of coffee or roasted malts or caramel, it was relatively subtle. However, with the stout glass, everything has not just amplified, but enhanced – it became the kind of alluring, complex aroma that made you wish you could crawl into the glass for a bath. (The Clockwatching Tart herself joined in the comparison and agreed the aromas were much more complex and full bodied, so you don’t have to be a stout fiend to appreciate the difference.)

As for the taste, the biggest difference I noticed was in the mouth feel. Because the angles of the stout glass helped to create and maintain a better head, the stout glass provided a much creamier, smoother sensation. Personally, I didn’t notice a marked difference in the actual taste of the stout from either glass but because aroma and mouth feel are such important aspects of how you perceive taste and enjoy something, I absolutely preferred the stout from the stout glass. (Your mileage may vary, as they say. I’m no supertaster, so you might notice and appreciate even more of a difference.)

So, should you buy Spiegelau stout glasses? The short answer is yes; the longer answer is absolutely yes, you fool; and the less sarcastic answer is that if you enjoy stout – especially oatmeal stouts, American-style stouts or Russian imperials stouts – and you have room for and can afford a $9 glass, you owe it to yourself to get one, posthaste.

A set of two glasses direct from Spiegelau will run you $24.90. If you don’t mind labels on our glasses (which I don’t, obviously), you can save yourself a few dollars and get them from Rogue for $18.00 or get a single glass from Left Hand Brewing for $9.00. For my fellow hosers, the Canadian shipping from Rogue was pretty reasonable and the package arrived safely and quickly, eh.       

         

      

The Beer Baron: Liefmans Goudenband

  Post by Matt, the Beer Baron

While I’d certainly love to live in San Diego and enjoy an endless stream of perfect weather and world-class IPAs, there is something to be said for living in the great, white north and having the beers change with the seasons. While there is never a wrong time for a great stout, after the polar vortex-y winter we just endured, it is nice to enjoy a beer that seems like a celebration of spring and to me.  Liefmans Goudenband is just such a beer.

Goudenband falls under the broad category of sour beers, which are exactly how they sound: tart, acidic and, well, sour. Normal beer is typically made in a pretty sterile environment using brewer’s yeast while sour beer gets its funkiness from allowing wild yeast strains and bacteria into the brew.  In many sour beers, lactobacillus provides the lactic acid that gives the beers their tartness.

Specifically, Goudenband is a Flemish Red Ale, which is also known as a Flanders Red Ale because – you guessed it – they often come from the West Flanders area of Belgium. Really though, names and nomenclature and science aside, all you really need to know is that Goudenband is awesome, complex, interesting, unique and wonderful – and is a perfect beer to ring in spring.

Seriously, you can almost hear Vivaldi when you drink it.

Speaking of drinking it, beyond just sour, how does it taste? For me, I get hints of caramel and malt that you might expect from a dark beer, but also so much more. There are bright notes of apple and cherries and maybe even rhubarb as well as pleasant woody notes that come from the cellaring process.

So, at least to my palate – and your mileage may vary, as they say – Goudenband is vibrant and bright and has notes of spring fruits and fresh woodiness. That is to say, it is about as perfect a beer as I can think of to celebrate spring.

Note: Sadly, the LCBO is currently sold out of Goudenband. They do get it, along with other sour beers such as Cuvee Des Jacobins Belgian Lambic Ale, on occasion. Right now, if you want to celebrate spring with a sour beer, track down a bottle of Lindemans Cuvee Brut, which is Goudenband brewed with cherries!

The Beer Baron: Bell's Expedition Stout (The Beer Baron's first post!)

Rex Banner - The Beer Baron

My husband is a craft beer fanatic.  Although I don't drink much beer I feel like I know a lot about craft beer through osmosis and our frequent visits to craft breweries and beer bars. 

Matt has written several guest posts for me about beer. I've been thinking of ways to become more motivated to blog and one of those ideas is regular monthly features. Tart of the Month is one thing I'd like to make a regular feature, and I'd like the Beer Baron to become a regular feature too. Matt tries new beers all the time so he's a good resource for craft beer info. He also tries beers from all over North America, so there should be lots of diverse content from our travels as well as what's in stock at the LCBO and our local craft beer bar.  So here's the first official guest post from the Beer Baron...  

If you happen to go to a pub or just about any chain restaurant or bar this St. Patrick’s Day, you’ll likely see signs for Guinness, a dry stout from Ireland. In fact, it won’t just be on St. Patrick’s Day, as the makers of Guinness – no doubt perturbed by the fact that St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Monday this year, thus limiting intoxication levels to the merely absurd – have dubbed it St. Patrick’s Weekend.

I have nothing against Guinness and have enjoyed many a pint of its smooth, creamy goodness. However, as a beer, it is really just a gateway drug to bigger and better things and to me, you can’t get much bigger or better than Russian Imperial Stouts. Named in honour of the style of beer preferred by the court of Catherine II of Russia, I personally believe she deserves the moniker of Catherine the Great because of her taste for big, bold, high-alcohol, low-carbonation, intensely malty, roasted stouts.

One of the better examples of a Russian Imperial Stout is Expedition Stout, brewed by Bell’s Brewing in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Rated a perfect 100 on Ratebeer for good reason, Expedition Stout is to Guinness as Batman is to Scooby Doo. Sure, they are both solve crimes, but the latter wants to lick your face while the former wants to punch your face (in the best possible way).

While Guinness is on the lighter side of things with a white head and low alcohol content (4.2 – 5.0% alcohol by volume, depending on where you get it), Expedition Stout has a rich, brown head and a decidedly high alcohol content (10.5%). The colour of the head is usually a pretty good indicator of whether you are about to drink stout or STOUT... If it’s white, it’s not right; If it is brown, drink it down.

Beyond the looks, Expedition Stout just smells and tastes downright decadent. There is a heavenly aroma of chocolate mixed with dark fruits and molasses and the taste... well, that you should experience for yourself. Everyone’s palette is different and with something as complex as Expedition Stout or any other truly great Russian Imperial Stout, you might get notes that are special and just for you. To me, it is a mix of dark things that I love (dark-roast coffee, dark chocolate, dark fruits) with little hints of caramelized sweetness and warm booziness and a texture could be described as oily or sticky, if those things were positives.

The other amazing thing about Expedition Stout and Russian Imperial Stouts like it is that it is magic! Different aromas and flavours present themselves at different times and it could be argued that the best Expedition Stout is the one that has warmed up and is in your half-empty glass. Better still, it was designed to be aged, so a new bottle can be a completely different experience than a bottle cellared for a year or two... time can take booze and bitterness and give you mellowness and depth, just like people!

So, if you’ve never tried Guinness before, don’t be afraid, you’ve got an entire St. Patrick’s Day weekend in which a million different pubs and restaurants will pour you a pint. However, once you’ve taken those baby steps, do yourself a favour and work your way up through great, readily available stouts like Wellington’s Russian Imperial Stout or St. Ambroise’s Oatmeal Stout and then track down a Bell’s Expedition Stout or anything from this list. They didn’t call her Catherine the Great for nothing.  

The Beer Baron: Le Chimay à la Bière

Here's a guest post from Matt, the beer expert.  

On Saturday, we decided to have lunch at the Covent Garden Market downtown so we could see them setting up for the World Figure Skating Campionships and pick up a few things at the market for Jen's carne adovada tacos. While Jen was off looking for dried chiles, I was at SmithCheese picking up some queso fresco when I happily stumbled across some Chimay cheese, specifically their Le Chimay à la Bière.

Now, to back up a step or two, Chimay is a Belgian Trappist brewery, one of only eight Trappist breweries in the world. The monks at these monasteries truly do God's work, brewing some truly wonderful beers. In fact, Chimay Bleue / Blue, which is technically Chimay Grande Réserve but is known as Blue because of its blue-coloured label, was probably the first beer that truly showed me how utterly wondrous beer could be.

So, did I pass up the chance to buy cheese made by honest-to-goodness monks to pair with one of my all-time favourite beers? Sacre bleu. I most certainly did not.

I'd been saving this bottle of Chimay Blue for about two years. For you non-beer geeks out there, don't try this with your Bud Light. Chimay Blue is bottle conditioned, which means there is still active yeast in the bottle, which also means it can be aged and the fermentation continues in the bottle. Science! Thankfully, the LCBO is possibly going to be getting more Chimay Blue this spring, so I didn't feel too guilty popping open my bottle for this tasting.

How to describe Chimay Blue? Have you ever picked fresh apricots during a golden sunset with Rachel Weisz (or Daniel Craig) and then had those apricots with a caramel fondue that is warm and lightly spicy but also light and delicate? No? Neither have I but that is what Chimay Blue tastes like.

As for the Le Chimay à la Bière cheese, it was washed with Chimay beer (not necessarily Chimay Blue) and has some similar apricot notes to the beer. However, it is also quite salty and wonderfully creamy, which is a nice contrast to the beer's sweetness as well as a nice complement to the beer’s mouth feel.

In the end, it is no surprise that the monks who make one of the better Trappist beers in the world also make a cheese that is not only fantastic on its own but also a perfect accompaniment to their beer. Cheers!

Matt's Shepherd’s Pie (Guest Post)

Here's one of my wonderful husband's dinner specialities.  It's fantastic! And not just because I don't have to cook it.

If it’s not obvious my now, I’m lucky to be able to taste so many of Jen’s wonderful dishes. As much as I like helping and tasting, I even enjoy cooking sometimes too. One recipe that I’ve been tinkering with for ages now is my shepherd’s pie. You can make this recipe in lots of different ways but there are a couple of tried-and-true tips to make any shepherd’s pie even better that I’m happy to share below.

This is what you’ll need to start off:

1 lb of ground beef

3 lbs of Yukon Gold potatoes (5 lb if you want left over mashed potatoes)
1 cup grated marble cheese or old cheddar
1/3 to ½ cup of milk
3 to 4 tablespoons of butter
2 zucchinis (or ¾ cup frozen peas if you’d prefer)
1 cup frozen corn
2 large carrots
1 large red onion
5 heaping tablespoons of salsa
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper to taste