A one-of-a-kind evening of strong, dark, and old beers with friends. Some of us had been hanging on to some beers for years without quite the right excuse to crack them open… problem solved. Not a wedding, new year, baby shower, or birthday, just a casual evening hanging out with lentil soup and bread. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout *2007*, Westvleteren 12 and 8 eBayed from Belgium years ago, Half Acre’s special Sanguis beer brewed with oranges and beets for one specific dinner at Next, an excellent imperial porter from High Water, a 10.5% imperial stout in a can, homebrew, and more. ...

Traveling across Iowa and Wisconsin, I tried a fair amount of local craft beer… and a lot of meat and potatoes and ice cream (along with one fancier excellent meal at Forequarter in Madison). A few memories: The West O ( West Okoboji) lager was nicely crisp and well done. I finally had the all-the-rage New Glarus Spotted Cow and a few others from New Glarus and they were solid, good beers but didn’t blow me away. ...

In Madison for a few days, I had one deeply excellent dinner at Forequarter. The pan-roasted broccoli, the ham plate, the scallop crudo with fennel and grapefruit, and especially the carrot pasta with carrots and a rich carrot greens pesto were all very good.

For a 4th of July BBQ, a successful experiment making cotton candy flavored with tarragon, peach, corn, and smoked tea: For a while, hannah and I had been kicking around the idea of “savory cotton candy” (or at least, sweet but flavored with something beyond vanilla). What would that even be like? With a 4th of July BBQ approaching, this seemed like the now-or-never time to actually try it. Some searching found a few bulletin board discussions about how you might do it, but only one set of photographic evidence… and that came with no description of how. ...

I found myself in Bavaria recently. Unfortunately, I’m not really a fan of German food and the continuous stream of meat-and-white-starch (and to my disappointment, so many of the sausages and pork chops just weren’t very good), but a handful of meals or beers were memorable. Bamberg was a cute city and great place for beer. Schlenkerla is one of the few old breweries still making a rauchbier (smoked beer). Their Marzen tapped straight from a wooden keg was intoxicatingly campfire-smoky in smell, but not bitter or harsh in taste, with a modestly roasted malt and creamy body (and all this for about $3). Delicious and definitely worth a visit. ...

My most successful homebrewing by far deserved some extra effort on the label (laser-cut paper laminated to silver foil): It’s “homebrew #6” because I brewed it back in December and let it age for five months (it could probably go another half year, even). And it really turned out well. Rich, dark, smooth but not sweet, almost like bittersweet baking chocolate and with none of the overt “roasted coffee” flavor I don’t like in some imperial stouts. And it’s powerful. Did I mention it’s 10% ABV? ...

I’ve wanted to brew a saison for a while, and when the San Francisco May Heat Wave struck (88 degrees during the day– the horror!) I knew I had to jump on it (saisons are traditionally fermented at higher temperatures, and I hadn’t built a hot water bath or heating jacket). Inspired by the Modern Times Lomaland saison (which they publish the recipe for on that site), I brewed with barley malt, wheat and flaked corn, Saaz hops, and some acidulated malt, plus the White Labs saison yeast another friend had used to great success in the past (the yeast is the defining characteristic of the saison flavor, after all). ...

Peels of each type of citrus (meyer lemon, lime, and bergamot) soaked in vodka for a month in a dark cupboard, swirled gently every few days. After a month, I strained the peels out of the vodka. Instead of just adding a simple syrup, I got another set of each type of citrus (meyer lemons and limes from friends’ back yards, and I was fortunately still able to find fresh bergamot at Bi-Rite) and made each into an oleo saccharum– and then used that citrus-oil-infused sugar as the sweetener. ...

Plate of sashimi. Friendly couple who greet me by name even if it’s been 6-12 months. No fuss, no elaborate rolls.

Cooking from Plenty. Excellent. And the Straus plain Greek yogurt is now my favorite brand.

A long weekend in San Diego for the First Annual SD Bike & Beer tour expanded naturally into a broad beer tour of that fair city with 51 new-to-me beers (thank goodness for tasting flights and friends to share). This isn’t quite the " tasting 100 beers in belgium" adventure that was the original impetus behind this blog a few years ago… but it’s good to see I haven’t changed much. ...

What was going to be “an informal bread, cheese, and homebrew hard cider tasting” expanded a bit, as it always does. Highlights were the small carrots roasted in cider, the hummus made with plenty of garlic and a little cider vinegar in lieu of lemon juice, #3 of the hard cider experiments (made with unpasteurized cider and champagne yeast), the fennel salami mail-ordered from Seattle (which I’ve wanted to do ever since having it on a trip) and the Russian Imperial Stout (rich, coffee-like, well-hopped (not actively bitter but it kept the alcohol in check), 10% ABV, aged 4 months so far since brewing and really supposed to go 6+). ...

After last year’s enjoyable experience making shrubs (a shelf-stable way to preserve fruit with vinegar and sugar, for mixing into soda water, cocktails, salad dressings, and so on), I’ve spent a few more weekends trying new citrus, new vinegars, and different ratios, as well as using oleo saccharums (citrus oils extracted from the peel with sugar: I posted some photos of the process yesterday). Bergamot / Cider Vinegar Shrub ...

Pearl couscous browned in olive oil, then simmered with preserved lemon, cayenne, water. Mixed with toasted pistachios, parsley, mint.

This is now my favorite way to extract intense citrus flavors, especially from fragrant citrus (bergamot, other sour oranges, Makrut limes, and so on). I’ve started using this in both shrubs and [citrus]cellos. Basically, you slice the peel off citrus, painstakingly scrape off any white pith so you have thin, translucent strips of peel, then pack them in sugar for about 10 hours, periodically kneading them as the oil diffuses out of the peel and liquefies the sugar. Bergamot through the afternoon, in photos: And knobby Makrut limes getting the same treatment (I spent more time after the first photo removing pith before packing in sugar): ...