Fall Beers : Pumpkin beers

  After sampling over 500 different beers over the years, I can easily say that fruit and vegetable beers are the hardest to perfect. Critics usually tear fruit and vegetable beers apart, but I can honestly say, when done right, I enjoy these beers quite often. My favorite beer of all vegetable/fruit beer is by far the pumpkin ale. It combines the best flavors and spices of the season. What says fall more than something made with pumpkin? To date my absolute favorite pumpkin beer is dogfish head punkin ale. There were a lot of good choices and many very unfavorable options out there, but let's see how my new experiences with pumpkin ales stack up with my old favorites.


    Here are the pumpkin ales I tried for the first time this year:

Pumpkin ale - Buffalo Bills
Pumpkin UFO - Harpoon
Pumpkin Ale- Blue Point
Imperial Pumpkin Ale - Wayerbacher
Pumking - Southern Tier
Pumpkinhead - Ship yard
Pumpkin - Sea dog
smuttynose pumpkin ale
Pumple Drumpkin - Cisco Brewers
Post Road Pumpkin - Brooklyn

The top 2 choices for me were the pumpking from Southern Tier and the imperial pumpkin by wayerbacher. But the crown goes to the Pumpking. It literally tastes like liquid pumpkin pie, a simply delicious treat of a beer!

Fall Beers: Fall seasonals

 There are many different fall seasonals, and the fall seasonal beer is up to much interpretation. It is up to the brewer to create a beer that best represents the wonderful season of fall.

Here are the fall seasonals I tried for the first time this year:

Autumnfest - wayerbacher
Harvest - Southern Tier
Fall Summit - Peak Organic
Samuel Adams - Bonfire Rauchbier
Late Harvest - Red Hook
Sierra Nevada - Tumbler
Freaktoberfest - Coney Island

  The best one was very close between Peak Organic's Fall Summit and Sierra Nevada's Tumbler. Also being highly recommended by many different people, I'd have to say that Sierra Nevada wins this one!

Fall beers : Oktoberfest

    When it comes to oktoberfest beers, I always have Sam Adams Oktoberfest in the back of my mind. I love this beer so much I really wish I could get it all year round. Its not fall without getting a Sam Adams Oktoberfest on draft which is available in almost every restaurant.

  Here is the list of new Oktoberfest beers I tried this season:

Leinenhagel- Oktoberfest
Stoudts- Oktoberfest
BBC- Oktobefest
Widmer Brothers- Okto festival
Lakefront- Oktoberfest
Peoples Pint - Oktoberfest
Amherst brewing co- lewmeister oktoberfest
Wachusett brewing co- octoberfest

By far, the best octoberfest beer was by BBC, the close runner's up were definitely the People's Pint and Amherst brewing. Yes, they are all very local to where I moved so I may seem a little bias, but I feel they are superior and easy to find!

Beers of the fall: Introduction

  With winter now here, the fall seasonal beers are long gone. I had a great season sampling lots of awesome new fall seasonal beers. I break them down into oktoberfest beers, fall seasonals, and pumpkin beers. I will discuss my favorites of each catergory. I found some awesome new beers in each category, too bad I have to wait til next year!

After taking a break......I'm back!!

After taking a couple of months off from my blog, mostly because I was moving states and getting settled in the new place. I also had some personal issues to deal with first before continuing with the blog. Anyways, I am back so be patient while I play catch up with a lot of beer, food, and adventures.

North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival - Orange, MA

  About a half hour from my new home of Greenfield, MA , on a rainy fall New England day, we made our way to the garlic fest! Sounds a bit strange doesn't it? An entire festival dedicated to garlic? Well it is not quite as strange as it seems and actually lots of fun.

    Like most of the festivals in the area it is dedicated to organic, healthy, art, green living, local businesses and of course good food and good music. The festival screams rural New England with a hint of garlic, ok maybe a bit more garlic.

    What better than to enjoy a hot cup of cider and donuts on a cold New England day. And that is how we started things off. We then continued on to the sampling of sauces, cheeses, cupcakes, and giant burritos with roasted garlic! Garlic chocolate chip cookies (yes, and they were good) , garlic cup cakes with goat cheese-garlic frosting garlic cornbread base (savory not sweet) mmmmmm . We ended up purchasing organic garlic cheese, a reusable garlic fest tote bag, horseradish mustard, maple mustard, real local maple syrup, bag of cider donuts all from local businesses!

   We had a great time sampling all the garlic and chatting with all the local business owners and we were quite impressed with a rather strange and quirky fest. The best part is we found that we can get pretty much all of the specialty foods and sauces we tried at local stores! I think we will be back next year!

The People's Pint - Greenfield, MA

  My new home of Greenfield, MA has exactly what I am looking for. It is a quiet town in the middle of nowhere with down to earth people, country living, convenience of shops and restaurants and of course an awesome brew pub!

  People's Pint has been around since 1997 and has managed to keep their dining room packed with very pleased diner's. I love all the vegetarian, healthy options and organic as well as fresh and local ingredients and the ever-changing beer list! On the menu they claim brewing over 70 different beers since the place opened, nice!

 So while I was there, I was able to try 8 different kinds of beer. IPA, bitter, scotch, blonde, octoberfest, oatmeal stout, pale ale, and brown ale. My 3 favorites were the blonde, IPA, and  the brown. I normally love brown ales and normally go for darker beers and hoppy beers. Usually when I try a blonde beer I find them to taste too light or watery. People's Pint has the blonde that really changes how I think of blonde beers. It was very fruity, some hop notes and very flavorful. Excellent blonde beer!

 I got a grain fed natural beef burger with vermont cheddar, bacon, peppers and onions, and chipotle mayo. Nice greens on the burger as well. MMM absolutely amazing. My favorite thing about the meal was that even though I love fries, the sandwiches come with roasted seasoned potatoes instead which is a great alternative! For dessert I shared a Pumpkin cheesecake with almonds and gingersnap crust! My favorite dessert is cheesecake and this is one of the best ones I have ever had! This place is awesome and what's even better is that it is right down the road and I can go there any time! I will be back very soon!

Chicken Bacon Ranch Casserole

   Once in a great while I come up with a concept for a recipe and I wing it, and it just works. I get so proud when I create my own recipe especially when it works out so nicely. I loved this meal so much that I have to share it with all of you!


First of all, I moved to Massachusetts to a much bigger and nicer place and this is my first recipe in the new kitchen which is amazing and twice the size of my old kitchen!

  You start with 2-3 pounds of red skin potatoes and cut them into small pieces. Boil the potatoes with the skins on until the pieces easily slide off of a fork.

When the potatoes are done, drain them and blend the potatoes with an 8oz package of cream cheese, 1 cup of sour cream and 1 small packet of ranch dressing dry powder mix.

In a large casserole dish, put a layer of the ranch potatoes on the bottom about 1-2 inches thick

Sprinkle the top of the potato layer with 1/2 cup of cooked crumbled bacon

Add a 1/2 cup of sliced green onion and a 1/2 cup of chopped tomato

Add a pound of cooked chicken cut into small pieces.

Crush cooler ranch doritos to cover everything about 1-1/2cups

Cover the chips with 1-2 cups of shredded cheddar and monterey jack cheeses

Bake covered at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Enjoy!!

I wish all of my kitchen experiments came out as well as this, but with a new kitchen and a lot more time, I am hoping to come up with many more recipes to share!

 

Beer Baked Tilapia

   I bought a new book called cooking with beer. It inspired me to make a baked fish with beer.

I decided to mix mayo with Wolaver's IPA. It sounds weird but mayo is essentially oil and eggs. Eggs are great for breading.

  I made a cornmeal and seasoning mixture with seasoned salt and old bay seasoning.


I dip each piece in the beer mixure

Bake the fish for about 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees

The fish was baked perfectly but could use some more beer flavor. I drank an IPA with the fish and seasoned some plain rice. Not the best dish I have made, could use some improvement but hit the spot.

Stout BBQ Boneless Ribs

       I had the biggest craving for ribs and I remember having a stout BBQ sauce at a local brew pub so I decided to combine the 2 ideas.

First I put seasoning salt and pork seasoning on the ribs and did a nice rub that way so they were well seasoned. Then moving on to the sauce:

     I comined the following in a sauce pan:

1 Bottle of Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
Bottle of BBQ sauce

I cooked the incredients until they were well infused

Then I added the seasoned ribs and sauce to the crock pot

Now, slow cooking the ribs for about 8 hours on low.

Excellent results on the ribs. They fall apart and are packed with flavor!

I decided to enjoy these ribs with potato salad, cole slaw and cold Wolaver's Wildflower Wheat! perfect!