Beer

This is the first time I’ve made a dinner for friends with courses each paired with / inspired by a specific beer. Some of them worked well together, some didn’t, but it was a good evening overall. Appetizers: a slightly bitter, slightly floral beer (Upright Flora Rustica) with a collection of snacks: bread, cheese (Cowgirl Creamery Mt Tam), radishes, fresh-pickled fennel (an interesting concept), Boccalone orange-fennel salami and pepper salami, salted almonds, and three kinds of pickled carrots (carrots pickled for a week with dill, vinegar, and salt, carrot quick pickles (overnight with lots of vinegar, mustard seed, cloves), and some Happy Girl spicy carrot pickles I bought). ...

So far I’ve seen about a third of the beers I had in Belgium for sale in San Francisco takeaway-bottle-style, either at City Beer Store or Healthy Spirits. Here’s a tasting I organized today with a few folks: La Chouffe -> Orval -> Gouden Carolus Classic -> Gulden Draak -> La Trappe Isad’or -> 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze. The last two elicited strong opinions in both directions. My favorite of the six was definitely the Gouden Carolus Classic (tastes that remind me of caramel/burnt sugar and coffee, but not cloyingly sweet). ...

Here’s a map of the best breweries and beer cafes from the trip (as well as a few select restaurants). Perhaps some day I’ll post more details about a few specific ones.

[the original motivation for creating this blog– I had pages of notes from a trip and wanted to share them with a few friends] I recently spent a week in Belgium with three friends, visiting breweries and tasting beers. Without further fanfare or detail, here’s a list of everything I tasted and my favorites (somewhat subjective, I’m sure, depending what I was eating with them and so on): My very favorites: ...