A Nice Way to Cook Chicken

For a vegetable dish tonight i had vignole in mind – an italian braise of spring onion, artichokes, fava beans and peas. I used flageolet beans instead of fava. I had no clue what to make for a meat course and entered Wegmans with some vague ideas of turkey or chicken or maybe even salmon [...]

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Strange Brew

During this cold winter i sort of lost any interest in mixology. So no wonder i missed the article on the subject once so dear to my heart, of beer cocktails – Bartenders hop up cocktail flavors with beer… The article is so insightful and quotable you want to memorize it.
The Strange Brew sounded [...]

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Jasmine IPA, a Proper Drink for Valentine

A confession – i’m not a big fan of writing (and reading) beer tasting notes. I find them (similar to wine TNs actually) too trying, in many cases forced by the rigid format (no less than X words) of beer reviewing sites.
And then a good belgian is a good belgian, who really cares what you [...]

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Celebration of Homebrew, and Excellent Lamburgers

Many moons ago one of the members posted on then popular What Beer Did You Drink Today thread on eG: I drink my homebrews only… At that time i dismissed him as a show-off but here we are – almost a year of home brewing under our belt, and a nice selection of our beers [...]

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Apple Beer, Almost

So there was an orphaned bottle of Unibroue Ephemere Apple in the fridge that begged to be imbibed. I felt its pain but couldn’t imagine to stomach this beer neat. At this point another bottle caught my eye: this one contained leftovers of fresh cider i was meaning to use in some fancy autumnal cocktail. [...]

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Brewing Under Rain

For fall winter brewing we moved the action to the garage:

And this was a summer set up:

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Modern Beer Cocktails

Recently several publications covered beer cocktails offering a bunch of interesting recipes by known mixologists. Some of them are luckily available online:
In Food Arts Beer Tails.
Some more here: Flavor Touchdown.

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BackWoods Bastard

I love Founders brews; this year i really can’t get enough of their Harvest Ale. But it would never occur to me to try something labeled as scotch ale. After tasting a bunch of typical british ales i decided they’re not my cup of tea (or better say my glass of beer).
But couple of days [...]

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Drinks with Dark Rum

Decided to take a break from gin-based cocktails switching to rum.
Started with a classic – Dark and Stormy: 2 once of Tortuga Dark to 5 once of Reed’s ginger beer, generous squeeze of lime. This is nice, quite balanced and the medicinal element in Tortuga is balanced against the ginger.
Then a riff on Drill Sergeant [...]

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Green Devil

Finally. A proper Green Devil:
rinse of 2 drops Pernod absinthe1 oz Martin Miller’s gin1 bottle Duvel
The gin selection is very important – i tried this before with Junipero and couldn’t swallow a bit. Tonight it was Miller’s; though i should have been more careful with Pernod (the rinse got frozen in a ice cold glass [...]

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