Hungover is the new normal, four days into SF Beer Week. The Bay Area blowout of craft beer events and parties kicked off last Friday at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where 30 Northern California breweries poured their rare and lesser-known beers. (Pictured: Beer from Devil’s Canyon out of Belmont, California.) I got a chance to try a bunch of stuff I had never tasted before. All of these beers will be available during the rest of Beer Week, along with plenty of cool events, tastings, dinners, and more. Here are some highlights.
• Urban Peoples’ Common Lager and Burning Oak Black Lager from Linden Street Brewery, a brand new outfit in Oakland, and the first production brewery in the city since 1959. The brewery is currently only producing these two old-timey pre-Prohibition-style beers that would have been made when Oakland last had a thriving brewing scene.
• Golden Doom, from 21st Amendment Brewery. A deceptively strong, approachable golden ale that made you want to drink more and more, but threatened to knock you on your ass. San Francisco’s 21st Amendment is becoming famous nationally, and not only for its quirky canned beers, like Watermelon Wheat. I’ve been slow to fall in love with its beers, probably because the brewpub is totally lacking in ambience. But now I am officially smitten!
• Old Thunderpussy Barleywine, Four Winds Quadrupel, and Delilah Jones Rye, all from Magnolia Brewery of San Francisco. Magnolia showed spunk for only pouring strong beers (meaning beers over 8.5 percent ABV). For years, February has been Magnolia and 21st Amendment’s official Strong Beer Month, during which both brewpubs offer six strong beers on tap, and you try to fill up a punch card by sampling them all. All three of these beers were well-balanced, aromatic, and totally poetic.
• Imperial Common, a collaborative brew created by members of the San Francisco Brewers Guild. The copper-colored, 10 percent ABV lager was aged in St. George Spirits whiskey barrels. Herbal, strong, fresh, and strangely comfy; drinking it felt like hanging out on your living room couch with your best friends smoking weed. (I wasn’t the only one to make this analogy, either—it was the consensus.)
Additionally, Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream in the Mission District of San Francisco is serving many of these beers, in ice cream form, all week. You can get a $4.50 flight of four different beer scoops. If they still have it, the ice cream version of Magnolia’s Smokestack Lightning Imperial Stout is out of this world.
Have you ever felt your chocolate was not spiritual enough, or your beef jerky didn’t keep you pumped up when shredding on your snowboard? Finally, your prayers have been answered!
First, Intentional Chocolate, which claims to be the first “intention-enhanced” food on the market. This chocolate is, literally, imbued with good vibes. The process outlined in the press release for making it: “Experienced, meditating monks in Madison, Wisconsin project positive intention into a device developed by the HESA Institute that is designed to capture, hold, and then transfer intention into food.” The company claims that a study published in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing found that one ounce of the chocolate eaten over three days “increased test subjects’ well-being, vigor, and energy by an average of 67 percent.” The company says on its website that 50 percent of net profits are donated to “organizations committed to the benefit of humankind.”
That’s all very nice. But what if the monks go rogue and put bad vibes in the chocolate? We’d like to see this turned into a movie ASAP, possibly starring Keanu Reeves, who would first have to choose between the bad or good vibe chocolate, then he’d learn kung fu and wear a lot of PVC and some sweet shades.
Next up is Perky Jerky, “the world’s first all-natural performance-enhancing meat snack.” Perky Jerky is a caffeinated jerky (150 milligrams per 2-ounce bag), thought up by two dudes in a ski lodge after a “long, hard night of energy-drink-cocktail-fueled libation” (at least, that’s what it says in the press release). Apparently they got some energy drink on their jerky, which they ate the next day “as they floated their way down the mountain through bottomless powder.” I imagine the ensuing dialogue went something like: “Dude, brah, this is nuts!” “Dude, totally, Broseph. We need to take this brofessional.”
Tonight, CBS Evening News is airing the first installment of a two-part investigation into antibiotic use in livestock production and how this may be contributing to the spread of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.” Katie Couric was on the Early Show this morning to discuss the series, and sounded the alarm bell. According to Couric, “the CDC says that antibiotic resistance is one of the most pressing issues facing Americans today, and there is growing concern agriculture may be playing a major role in this, with huge amounts of antibiotics being given to healthy livestock.”
The Washington Post’s Checkup blog is all freaked out about commercials for Eggland’s Best featuring eggs sunny-side up. If you weren’t in the know, as, apparently, I wasn’t, sunny-side up eggs are perceived by many to be only slightly safer than fugu or warthog anus in terms of their potential health impact.
Does the introduction of the McItaly burger mean that McDonald’s is finally tuning in to the higher themes of gastronomy on the Italian Peninsula, or that civilization itself is under attack?
McDonald’s would argue that the McItaly burger is a big step forward, as it’s made from “all-local ingredients, including the artichoke spread and the Asiago cheese.” Critics such as Matthew Fort at the Guardian in the U.K. say the Italian government’s endorsement of the new product is nothing short of a “monstrous act of national betrayal.”
Dan Mitchell at Slatemoderates, sort of, but it seems pretty clear everybody’s talking about different things. McDonald’s sees itself as embracing Italian food and culture by making a burger tailored to local tastes using local ingredients. Points for the company: The move doesn’t make McDonald’s a local trattoria, but it does show that the company’s paying attention to its critics and putting a bit more money into the local economy.
If you’ve ever pickled, made your own sauerkraut, or experimented with growing your own sourdough starter, you’ve probably read Sandor Katz’s book, Wild Fermentation, or been helped by someone who did. Now the granddaddy of today’s DIY fermentation craze (and one of our inaugural CHOW 13 food trend influencers) is penning a follow-up. Katz, who lives in an intentional community in the hills of Tennessee, is collecting anecdotes and info for his new book, and would love to hear from fermentation hobbyists and pros. He sent out this questionnaire this morning. You can email him with your responses at sandorkraut at wildfermentation dot com.
QUESTIONS FOR FERMENTERS
1. Can you think of any practical tips you wish you had had when you
embarked upon a fermentation project?
2. Are there any common misunderstandings or fears that you have
encountered talking to people about your fermentation projects?
3. Can you describe any unusual flavor, ingredient, or process
variations that you have tried and especially liked?
4. Can you articulate any important life lessons you have learned
from your fermentation practice?
We’ve seen a handful of interesting wine and beer documentaries popping up recently. First, there is Blood Into Wine, a film about the winemaking endeavor in Arizona of Maynard James Keenan (frontman of Tool, A Perfect Circle) premiering February 19 in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Check out the website for info on screenings in other cities.) Keenan is infamously reclusive, and just the fact that he was open to having a documentary made about him is pretty interesting. He’s apparently trying to bring recognition to Arizona’s wine industry, and from the trailer, the movie looks pretty humorous.
Last week, a somewhat mysterious trailer for what looks to be a documentary on the late, great beer writer Michael Jackson, put together by the Wine Travelers, was posted on YouTube. There isn’t much info on the film, other than a 2010 release date.
And finally, the folks at Stone Brewing have been releasing a series of videos about their travels in Europe and collaborations with Nøgne Ø in Norway and BrewDog in Scotland. So far the clips have been really fun to watch, with surprisingly high production values. There are four parts; here is number one. Check the Stone Brewing website for the other clips as they release them (part two is also out).
A couple of weeks ago, Severine von Tscharner Fleming filed the paperwork to start the National Young Farmers’ Coalition, a nonprofit she says will be the first of its kind, aiming to address the needs of the new generation of farmers. Farming has been a huge part of her entire adult life (she’s 28), from working on farms for the last eight summers, to starting her own Smithereen Farm last year in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she raises rabbits, pigs, chickens, herbs, and vegetables. That’s not to mention her work on an organization called the Greenhorns, which has produced a documentary on young farmers in America, as well as a radio show, newsletter, and young farmer mixers. We caught up with her to find out more about the new coalition. (more…)
“Japanese horseradish, whose smell is more usually found in sushi restaurants, contains allyl isothiocyanate—the same chemical compound that gives mustard its bite—and tests at the Shiga University of Medical Science have shown that virtually all the hearing-impaired people exposed to the odour of wasabi woke up within two-and-a-half minutes.”
Donald Link is one of New Orleans’ best chefs, known for his down-home Cajun cuisine at Cochon and his Frenchified Southern food at Herbsaint. His most recent project, the Cochon Butcher shop, is a holy trinity of deli, sWINE bar (that’s a pork-focused wine bar), and butcher counter, where Link is serving muffulettas and Cuban sandwiches and selling fresh cuts of meat as well as house-cured salumi. At the bar, you can get a glass of wine and bar snacks such as wings with sweet potato hot sauce and pimento cheese sliders.
Chef Link designed a Mardi Gras menu for us (spiced candied nuts, boudin balls, chile-roasted shrimp, artichokes and pickled shrimp, meat pies, and a satsuma Mojito—delicious!). We caught up with him to discuss how the holiday is really done.
