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.  

Rice Pilaf (Guest Post)

I wasn't feeling well last week so Matt did a bang-up job on dinner. This was so delicious we'll be making it again and again.  Here's Matt...

Sometimes, inspiration strikes and you end up trying something new with wonderful results. We had a pork tenderloin to marinate and had a bottle of souvlaki marinade. Wanting to keep with a vaguely Greek-style flavours, I took to the Googles and quickly surfed through some recipes for rice pilaf.

I decided to use this recipe as a starting point and made a few little changes: 

Food Truck Road Trip! (Guest Post)

We're in sunny California right now eating fish tacos - posts to come. Meanwhile, here's a guest post by Matt from his Niagara road trip.  

When I decided to visit the Niagara region to check out the emerging beer scene, I knew exactly what I’d be checking out for lunch. In her online food reading, Jen had stumbled across Gastronomo Vagabundo, which is a food truck in the St. Catharines area that specializes in fish tacos. Remember the “I believe...” speech from Bull Durham? Well, the way Kevin Costner feels about kisses is the way I feel about good fish tacos.

If you follow Gastronomo Vagabundo on Facebook, you can find out where their food truck is going to be. It is usually at Montebello Park in downtown St. Catharines, which, as luck would have it, was only a few minutes from my base of operations for my weekend road trip.

When I arrived with my brother-in-law Mike, we were greeted with this menu:

I decided to have the prawn tacos and the pork tongue fritters and in the name of research for Jen’s blog, Mike ordered one of everything. While we waited, we noticed everyone else who had ordered was also snapping pictures, so I didn’t feel too silly taking pictures of the menu and truck either. I’m sure they are used to the cell phone paparazzi by now.

So, how was it?

The Beer Baron - Road Trip: Finding Good Beer in Wine Country

This guest post is by Matt

While Jen was at the Food Bloggers of Canada Conference, I decided to take a little road trip to the Niagara region to see family and check out the newly emerging craft beer scene. (I admit I also visited Cave Springs Cellars in Jordan, Ontario, but that’s because only a fool passes up the chance to get their CSV or Dolomite Rieslings.)

After meeting their representative at the London Food & Wine Show in January, I had been planning a trip to the Silversmith Brewing Company in Niagara-on-the-Lake. 

Converting a church into a brewery and brewpub is the Holy Grail (pun intended) for beer geeks like me, so I had to see their operation for myself. It was an impressive site:

When I walked in, I was greeted by the following menu:

I kid you not, I clapped and grinned like an idiot when I saw it. Silversmith is best known for their Black Lager and I knew they would have that, but seeing the Russian Imperial Stout – which is my favourite style of beer – on the menu was a happy moment, indeed.

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

Putting up with: Tomato Sauce

This is my husband's special recipe so I'll hand this one over to him... (JH)

Guest post by Matthew Brown

If it isn’t obvious already, Jen is the real chef in the house but I do like to help out and am not useless in the kitchen (or with the camera). Every fall, we go to the Trail’s End farmer’s market, get a bushel of Roma tomatoes and I make a pasta sauce.

I've been refining my recipe over the years. I started out using canned tomatoes and dry herbs, but these days, fresh is best and other than added tomato paste for a little added richness and thickness, everything is fresh from the market or our garden.

This is what we started off with:

While you can substitute hotter or milder peppers to suit your tastes, we started with:

1 bushel of Roma tomatoes
3 large red onions
1 ½ cups of fresh basil
9 Hungarian peppers
9 super chili peppers
18 cloves of fresh garlic
9 bay leaves
3 tablespoons of salt
1 ½ - 3 tablespoons of sugar
3 sprigs of oregano
1 sprig of fresh rosemary (or 1 ½ tablespoons of Italian seasoning)
Olive oil

First off, you need to peel all those lovely tomatoes:

With that many tomatoes, you’d be crazy to do it just with a paring knife. Jen looked online and found that the easiest way to do it was to set up a little assembly line with a big pot of boiling water and a big pot of ice water.

Before you put the tomatoes into the boiling water, use a knife to score an X at the bottom end of the tomato:

With the size of our pots, we could fit about 10 tomatoes at a time into the boiling water. They only need about a minute or two in the boiling water, then you can transfer them into the ice bath. This loosens the skins. With some of them, you can just squeeze them and the fruit will pop right out of the skin; others, you’ll need to give them a little help and peel the skins off by hand or with the edge of a paring knife, but it is pretty easy regardless.

After a little work, you’ll be left with several big bowls of skinless tomatoes.

Before you move on to the next step, you just need to use your handy paring knife and cut the little stem parts out, so they end up looking like:

Next up, prepping your onions, peppers and garlic!

You’ll use an immersion blender later on, so the dicing doesn't need to be too precise. Considering the amount of tomatoes involved, we needed to cook our sauce in three big pots. As I like to be organized [read: anal retentive] in the kitchen, I ended up making three individual bowls with equal amounts of onions and Hungarian peppers. (One large red onion and three Hungarian peppers to each bowl.)

For the garlic and super peppers, I just used the little chopping bowl in Jen’s handy dandy Kitchen Aid food processor to chop together six cloves of garlic and three seeded super peppers for each batch. (Tip: super peppers are small so they are a pain to cut open and de-seed. If you just cut the stem end off, you can roll the pepper between your fingers and the seeds will fall right out. Huzah!)

Now, time for some cookin’! In each of your large pots, drizzle some olive oil into the bottoms and put them to medium-high heat. Throw in all your onions, Hungarian peppers, garlic and super peppers and just cook them long enough to get them softened up, so that the onions start to turn translucent.

Once that’s done, add in all your tomatoes. Before I was able to use the immersion blender, I used the edge of a pretty sturdy plastic flipper (?) [Ed. Spatula?] to cut the tomatoes into smaller chunks. No need to be gentle at this stage. Now you are ready to blend.

We’re not huge fans of big chucks of tomato in our sauce, so I kept at it until the sauce was pretty smooth. Now you’re ready to “kicks the flavour, like Steven King writes horror”. [This is a guest post, which is why House of Pain lyrics are allowed to be quoted.]

Chop up all that beautiful fresh basil:

I just divided it pretty evenly into the three pots and then added one tablespoon of salt, ½ tablespoon or a little more of sugar, ½ tablespoon of Italian season or finely chopped rosemary, a little bit of finely chopped oregano and a drizzle of olive oil to each batch.

The bay leaf is just in that photo for artistic purposes. I used the immersion blender again to get everything nicely mixed together, then put the bay leaves back in while keeping it at a low simmer for about half an hour.

Since Jen already covered the canning of her salsa verde so wonderfully, I won’t get into too much detail on the canning, except for a few key differences.

To keep everything safe and shelf-stable, you need to use a ½ teaspoon of citric acid in the bottom of each jar.

Then, once all your lids are prepared and jars are sterilized / boiled and ready to go as in the salsa verde post, you’re ready to start filling the jars.

The other key difference between the salsa verde and the pasta sauce is the time you need to boil them after the jars are filled. Since salsa verde has so much lime juice / citric acid, it doesn't need to boil as long, but since we are just using the regular canning method and not a pressure canner, and since the jars are so big, it is recommended that you keep the submerged, filled jars at a boil for 45 minutes. Better safe than sorry, as they say.

However, in the end, it is worth the time and effort. The sauce is delicious and I know exactly what went into it and it is something I’m proud of. The cost of all the ingredients was probably the same as what it would have cost me to go to the store an just buy 12 jars of decent sauce, but that’s not really the point, is it? Not only was it fun to do, but I’m proud of the end result and also know it is healthy and that I don’t have to add anything extra to the sauce to make it flavorful like I would with a store-bought sauce.

After a long-but-fun day of cooking and canning, we treated ourselves to a nice glass of red wine and an absolutely delicious bowl of pasta with zucchini and freshly grated parmesan.  

Cheers!