Trying random imported beers

I like to enjoy local craft beer a lot and even quality beer from all over the usa. I feel that america makes great beer and deserves more credit than we get! However there are great beers all over the world and I saw some at the big store that I always go to that I knew nothing about but decided to try anyway

First beer I tried was Stiegl Gaudi Radler. This beer is half lemon soda and half beer. I have had beer brewed with lemonade before but never a beer that was half beer and soda. A lot of beer snobs dont like fruit beers and have a lot of issues with them. I am very open-minded when it comes to beer. When it comes to fruit beer I prefer a beer that has a more natural taste where it still tastes like a beer, is not too sweet or overpowering with fruit. I was expecting this beer to be too sweet or overpowering. However, it did still taste like a beer with a malty finish. The lemon flavor was there but not too sweet. The beer was very low in alcohol content making it very refreshing, crisp, and drinkable. Great for summer. 3/5.

The next beer I tried was the Wells Bombardier from England. England usually has great beer and this one caught my eye. This beer was an average ESB type beer, but nothing too special. Slight bitter, spicy hops, malty caramel, drinkable, crisp, but could be a bit more balanced. I did enjoy this beer and would get it again. 3/5

The next beer I tried was a little disapointing. Zipfer original, another one from Austria. There is really nothing great about this beer. Very cheap and mediocre taste. A bland fruit-malt taste, very watery with a slight skunkiness. This is definitely not my kind of beer but drinkable enough to get it down. Just ehh...2/5

Whether great, average, or poor, it is always good to try random beers from around the world, why not?

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Awesome local brew pub changes names, still awesome!

I used to go to a local brew pub all the time by the name of John Harvards. It is a local brew pub chain only in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. The one near where I grew up and currently live, recently closed for a few weeks to fix a water leak and was then bought independantly and announced to be renamed. The good news is that the same brewer is going to still be doing his thing there. Today was the first time I went to it with the new name of Tallycross tavern. The menu was pretty much the same with a few new additions. I normally got the cuban sandwich (sooo goooood) but I decided since they changed up their menu, I'd try something new.

First off I had to order my usually sampler of beer. Like most brew pubs, you get a set of 5 small classes of beer to sample and they usually get you a variety from a lighter beer up to darker. The beers I sampled were light lager, pale ale, IPA, stout, belgian black, and I got an extra sample of the vienna lager.

The light lager was similar to sam adams light. It didn't even really taste like a light beer and was better than the one I had when it was called John Harvards. It was not watery like some cheap american light beers and pilsners. It has a nice malty taste and a nice hop note. It has good carbonation and light feel. Very drinkable, but great flavor for a light beer.

The pale ale was good too. It had a great hop flavor and smooth finish. Almost slightly creamy in feel. Had a toasty malt flavor and very slight finish. American pale ales tend to be hit or miss, but this one was on point!

The IPA was a good beer as well and I love my IPAs. It was not an overpowering hop flavor, but it got the job done. It was a well balanced IPA. It had a smooth finish and slight sweetness and no aftertaste. A solid IPA, could have used a little more hop flavor. Not my favorite, but I enjoyed it.

The stout was amazing. I am not always a huge fan of stouts, but when I get a good one, I enjoy it very much. This stout was not bitter at all. Heavy, smooth, creamy, nutty, no aftertaste. Some chocolate notes and slight sweetness. Some stouts are hard to drink, but this one was well balanced and was easy to drink. Mmm.

The vienna lager I tried was damn good. It is a style very similar to an oktoberfest ( which is a favorite). Amber in color, with slightly sweet caramel and citrus notes. The beer had a slight bitter finish, but still smooth and easy to drink. What a great beer!

I saved the best for last. The Belgian dark beer. It is like a Belgian white but almost pitch black. Dark toasted wheat flavor. Smooth and creamy but still drinkable. Wasn't very hoppy or bitter. Had a nice fruit flavor slighty sweet hint. This beer was quite unique and very enjoyable.

I have never quite had such a good experience with beer sample before. There was really nothing bad in the bunch and it was very well rounded. Yes the beer was the highlight but the main reason I was there was to eat lunch.

The menu there is great. They have a lot of classic pub dishes like shepherds pie, fish n chips, mac n cheese, wings, burgers, sandwiches, etc. But they also have some different stuff like salmon, cuban sandwich pasta and bbq meatloaf.

Like I said before, I normally get the cuban sandwich, but since they had a new menu I wanted to mix it up.

I ordered a small plate of wings for an appetizer. These weren't just any old wings, they were beer battered wings! They reminded me of the chicken tenders at chinese restaurants but over a wing. The batter made them poof up with the carbonation from the beer and the batter was light and crispy with very juicy chicken inside. Just when you thought it couldnt get any better, the wings were covered in a very delicious stout bbq sauce!

The main dish I ordered was BLT sliders. I love little beef or chicken sliders, its a trend that I am very happy about. This is the first time I have had a BLT slider so I was excited to try. You get 3 sliders with crisp bacon, fresh lettuce, tomato, and a chipotle mayo. Mmmmmmmm. And my side....beer battered onion rings!

So, I was a little worried about the name change ruining a good thing, but I am proud to say I had one of the best lunches ever and nothing has really changed, if so its probably a change for the better!

Tullycrosstavern.com

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Free Beer Movement

I love beer, especially free beer. And I love sports especially soccer. The free beer movement (thefreebeermovement.com) combines all of these things. The blog and web page is the center for an idea of offering free beer to friends and family who aren't into soccer for a chance to spread the love and passion for the game. I have played sports my whole life, especially soccer. I have always watched sports here and there, but it seems like the older I get the more I like to follow sports. What better than relaxing at home watching a game or going to a local sports bar for a favorite brew to watch your favorite team. I can't help but love to watch soccer/futbol. I was very excited when major league soccer started in the early 90's and being a guy from new england, I am a huge revolution fan. I am going to be moving closer to the stadium and am looking forward to going to a lot of games. I havent been to a new england revolution game in years. I am considering joining a local supporting club and tailgating with them before games. Beer, grilled food, and live sports! I am there! I am very excited to move and get more opportunities to enjoy this under-appreciated sport. I like the concept of the free beer movement. I am skeptical of how well this will work, however. People who love baseball and american football could care less about some sport that Billions of people love all over the world like. But I like the idea of the movement, and it is worth a shot no matter how stuck up sports fans are. I think a big problem is that a lot of soccer fans only care about english premier league soccer and dont even like the local mls teams. For me, its all about the local team. Why not support a team that you can drive to watch a game or not have to watch it live at 1am? I think the mls is very exciting to watch and very competitive and a lot of soccer fans are missing out. I think more people should enjoy local soccer and soccer in general. It is a very team oriented sport that takes a lot of skill and strategy from the whole team to win. I support this movement to get the sport noticed, but part of the reason I love soccer in this country is that it is the underdog and its rare and not overkill. Either way, I am proud to put a concept that combines 2 of my favorite things ( beer and soccer) . So whether you are a soccer fan or not you should check out thefreebeermovement.com and maybe get some free beer while enjoying an exciting sport.!

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Dogfish Head My Antonia

    One of my favorite things about craft beer is that it can be like a treasure hunt to find some of these beers. When you hear about a beer and you want to try it but you have to go all over to get it, and then finally it becomes available to you its incredibly exciting like finding a rare collectors item or some type of treasure but better because you get to drink it! Sam Calagione is the president and founder of Dogfish head beer and he is definitely a cool guy. On the documentary "beer wars" he claims you can call or email him and talk to him personally. It is true because I had emailed him and he got right back to me and answered all my questions. How many presidents of a relatively large company will do that? Not many. Anyway, Sam had been working on a collaboration in Italy for a beer in 2008. The beer started being brewed in delaware at the Dogfish head brew pub and was named "My Antonia". Then it apparently started being bottled and shipped out because I found it at my craft beer specialty shop that I always go to.

  My Antonia is an imperial pilsner. When I think of imperial beers (which I do like) I see a lot of imperial stouts and imperial IPAs. But an imperial pilsner? Awesome, must try!

  Pours a golden-copper color with a high fluffy head which is a lot for what you think of when you think of a pilsner. It smells very faint floral, you can't really smell the hops. The 7.5% alcohol is well hidden with its crisp citrus flavor. The flavor is a lot stronger than a typical pilsner with a in your face grapefruit citrus hoppy flavor. It is still very drinkable and has a clean finish. 4.5/5

I have had a lot of different Dogfish head beers because it is one of my favorite breweries out there. But this beer in particular is fantastic. I can't wait to try more of their collaboration and specialty beers!

Parmesan Crusted Tilapia

I like to make dinners ahead of time for the week and I wanted something simple but good and I wanted seafood.

I haven't made any tilapia in a long time but here's what I decided to do.

I beat some eggs until blended with a fork

I combined equal parts of italian bread crumbs and parmesan cheese on a plate.

I then dipped the tilapia in egg and quickly coated in the bread crumb mixture

Repeated this process until all the fish was coated

Baked the fish for 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees.

The crust came out golden-brown and the fish wasn't overcooked at all.

I paired the fish with a mixed green salad with olive oil vinegar dressing.

Simple, delicious, great week night meal that I just threw together without a recipe, I did it again! Mmmmm.

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How can you not love leftovers?

Especially when you come up with something good out of extras in your kitchen and fridge, it can be fun and very tastey. I had some leftover chicken that I had been marinating in garlic and herb marinade. Also, some leftover potatoes. I decided to make oven fries out of the potatoes. Put olive oil on them with salt,pepper,paprika, and garlic powder. For some reason they came out a little spicy, maybe I put too much black pepper?, they were still good though. I grilled the chicken to perfection. Even though it is a little case of carb overload, I decided to make some leftover instant stuffing that we had. I thought it was a very satisfying meal, grilled chicken (really liked the marinade and was still juicy) oven fries and mmmm stuffing! Yes of course I am a beer guy but I do like wine and I decided to enjoy some wine with this wing-it type dinner. The dinner worked out very satisfying and I can't wait to see what I can throw together next with extras and leftovers!

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Burger & Beer night out!

I took my fiance to a burger bar called Plan B. Plan B uses fresh ground hormone free, vegetarian fed, humane beef! The taste difference is definitely there! The restaurant has received many awards and praises for a variety of reasons. My reason for coming back a second time is the menu of wacky culinary bending burger ideas from a chili burger to a fresh made veggie burger to a lobster burger, I want to try them all and I was very pleased with their beer selection as well (of course!)

I asked to see their ever-changing draft beer menu. A lot of good selections on there, hard to decide! But I wanted to try something new, something different.

I started with the Blue Point brewery's spring fling. The long island based brewery has impressed me with a lot of different beers from them, so I figured I couldn't go wrong. The beer is a nice copper color. It was smooth at first and slightly nutty, almost slightly creamy but still light feel. It was a decent typical amber beer in the flavor. There was this slight bitter after taste to the beer that was a little unexpected and kinda got old after a while. The slight sour aftertaste to the beer made me change my mind a little about it but before I could complain too much I realized the beer was empty! Time to try another one!

I decided to go with the Smuttynose summerweizen. A summer seasonal from New Hampshire's brewery. I have liked everything I have tried from smuttynose and I was in the mood for something summer to go with the burger. I love hefeweizens and wheat beers for summertime. They pair really nicely with burgers. The beer was nicely carbonated but not a lot of head dissipated fast. The beer had nice strong wheat beer flavor with orange peel and citrus with a spicyness to it. However, instead of being too sweet it was more dry hoppy tasting than most hefeweizens but I liked that a lot because I love hop flavor and IPAs. The hop flavor wasnt overpowering but it was definitely present.

Although the beer is great and I am a big time beer guy of course, but the real reason we were there was to eat dinner so you've gotta get some real food to go with your real beer. I decided on the pretzel burger with no pink. The pretzel burger has this great pretzel bun that it is served on. It tastes exactly like the fresh made pretzels from the pretzel shop that I love so very much. It even is sorta shaped like a pretzel. It comes with that spicy mustard with the seeds in it that I have to dip my pretzels in every time I get one. Also cheddar cheese, romaine lettuce and pickled on this bad boy. I had to order the "disco fries" that I heard about last time I was there. Literally fries smothered in cheese sauce and gravy, I am drooling just writing about it, oh my god, so ridiculous. I forgot to mention the fresh deli pickle they serve too. So the beer with the hops and citrus pairs so damn well with that spicy mustard burger I cant stress it enough. The burger is classic pretzel meets classic burger tastes together with a summer beer and smothered fries!, so good I almost passed out, culinary goodness overload.

Since we were out on a date night we had to share a dessert. Pecan pie with ice cream, I dont think I even need to say it but, yeah, it sure hit the spot and completed the evening.

So, with great beer, fresh beef burgers, and awesome dessert , it was a flavorful experience I will not forget!

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