STILL beer celebrity startruck

I fully meant my next blog post to be about my second batch of homebrew, started up yesterday, but this is too good to wait.  Today, was the best beer day of my life, bar none.  The Five Guys and a Barrel dinner was AMAZING.  I’m still recovering physically (tomorrow will definitely be a hangover Monday) and emotionally (I’m still kicking myself for being too shy to say hi to Sam Calagione). 

The first 10 minutes of the night were a little tenuous as no good friends had been willing to shell out the money to come with me.  I did the awkward, “Sure, I’m just looking around, walking down to this end of the room to check it out, oh wait it looks just like the rest of the room, well I’ll walk down the other way to check it out….” Kind of thing for a while.

Then, I noticed Tim from Bar Crudo (picture below).  We talk when I come to his restaurant, but I’ve never hung out with him outside the bar before.  His group of friends were amazing and adopted me like one of their own, and I’m so grateful to them for this.  It was great to talk to Tim and his brother Mike about their restaurant that I already love, Bar Crudo, and to talk to Erica and Eric about Millennium, which I’ve never tried before, but plan to visit on Wednesday or Thursday next week. 

 

The reception started at 6:30pm and lasted for a good long while, Meanwhile they served Allagash White and Russian River Blind Pig.  These are both very good beers, but I feel like they were just holding back for the rest of the dinner.  Vinnie mentioned later that Blind Pig was his favorite of Russian River’s IPAs but, much as I like it, and I definitely do, I prefer Pliny the Elder.  I feel the same about the Allagash beer.  Their White was one of the first good beers I ever liked, and I still like it very much, but have other favorites from their stock now, like the Curieux.   

I have no idea exactly how long the reception lasted, but I appreciated that it was long because (A) the appetizers were delicious.  The artichoke soup was INCREDIBLE, plus there was delicious lobster bisque, foie gras on crackers, pea soup, deviled eggs, beef skewers and who knows what else.  Plus, (B) it gave me the time to work up the nerve to go talk to my idols. 

I decided to go pay my respects to Vinnie from Russian River first because he seemed the most accessible since he’s a local brewer, and because I am most familiar with his beer and so I had the most to say to him beyond “I love your beer.”  He was so personable and attentive, had answers to my questions, and I swear I blushed from head to toe when someone new walked up to our group and he introduced me by name!  Vinnie Cilurzo remembered my name!  Now, the even better part of this moment was the fact that the person who walked up was Bruce Paton, the Beer Chef himself, and the mastermind of this dinner and he already knew my name!  I’m not good at expressing myself in the face of people I admire, and I think I might have just babbled when Bruce said, “Oh I know you, Jessica, right?”  Best Moment of the Night!  I knew on some level this had to be from the blog (where else would Bruce Paton know my name from?), but I also couldn’t really believe it.  Suffice it to say, I was bowled over and returned to my friends with a big stupid grin plastered all over my face (picture below).

 

They started testing the microphones, so I knew I had time for a maximum of one more beer intro before we all had to sit down.  I love all the brewers there, but decided to go say hi to Rob Tod from Allagash because it seemed like these West Coast folk didn’t quite appreciate the luminary in their midst.  I must have looked like a complete idiot, unable now to suppress the ridiculous grin I had been hiding behind my beer questions while talking with Vinnie.  I mentioned that I was going to the Trappist tasting tomorrow night and that I was so conflicted about the simultaneous Dogfish Head event at Toronado and Rob said not to worry, that their whole crew would probably be rolling over to Toronado afterwards anyway.  Of course this was music to my ears since I live around the corner from Toronado, but most of all, it was the way these guys disclosed these tidbits as if they weren’t industry secrets.  And maybe they aren’t.  Maybe, as my friends suggest, I’m a little obsessed.  But to me, this was precious information and gave me a feeling of familiarity that can’t be topped. 

We sat down and our table initially had one empty seat.  As a lucky coincidence, the man who ended up filling that seat was Bryan Harrell from the Celebrator, their Tokyo correspondent.  This was awesome on so many levels because: A Celebrator correspondent is always going to be an awesome table-mate, and I’m going to Japan in July and there’s probably no one better IN THE WHOLE WORLD to ask for beer recommendations.  For the record, his recommendations were the Beer Club Popeye in general and Bois Celeste for Belgians. 

The food continued to be incredible.  We had citrus cured blue sea trout that I couldn’t believe wasn’t gravlax, it looked so much like salmon.  It came with a beautiful array of citrus and other garnishes, all of which I swept up.  The beer served with it was Dogfish Head 90 Minute and Avery Maharaja.  They were both fantastic, and very different in style.  The Maharaja is an Imperial IPA, with intense hop bitterness that defines its taste and a malt backbone to back it up.  The malt flavor tasted really fresh and raw to me, like pure grain distilled into liquid form.  And I have to hand it to the 90 Minute, even though it is probably the most easily found beer of the beers we drank tonight, I think it easily stands up to the special limited edition beers.  And this is the secret to Sam Calagione’s success.  Every beer, not just the special ones, is a beer drinking experience you want to have over and over again.  Even though the 90 Minutes is 90 IBUs (very high hop bitterness levels), I barely noticed and it felt like a very malt-driven beer to me. Maybe half the beers out there are described as having a “caramel flavor” at one point or another, but that generally means a trace of caramel here or there.  The 90 Minutes was like biting straight into a caramel, all toasty, caramelized sugar and crème bruleed goodness.  Taste this beer.  I don’t care who you are, this will make you a convert.  The only hitch at this point was that we were seated at the back of the room and the servers ran out of Maharaja before they finished their way around our table.  How do you run out of beer at a beer dinner?

The second course was cheeses with Allagash Interlude and Russian River Supplication.  The cheeses were tasty and Bruce even stopped by our table to see how things were going.  I’m not sure if I could have gushed more than I already did the first time we spoke, but if its possible, I did.  There were stewed cherries on the cheese plate that went PERFECTLY with the sour cherry flavor of the Supplication, which was already one of my favorite beers.  We had a sour ale tasting on Friday night, which I’ll write up soon, but suffice it to say that of the Sour Ales we had, which are traditionally Belgian, my two favorites were the Rodenbach Grand Cru and the Russian River Supplication.  I had never had the Interlude before, but I loved it’s oak-y flavor, and it was a great smooth contrast to the sourness of the Supplication. 

Then it was on to “A study in duck” for food, and Cuvee de Tomme from Port Brewing and Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron for beer.  This may have been where I hit the wall.  I can’t even remember exactly what I ate except that there were slices of duck, shredded duck on some kind of mashed potatoes, a duck mousse, and duck prosciutto.  I loved all of it, except maybe the mousse which was a little rich and heavy at this point in the marathon meal, but I badly wished there was more duck prosciutto.  I was a little surprised by the beers from this round.  In keeping with the dinner, both were great beers, but the Palo Santo was nothing like I expected and I felt like the Cuvee would have been better matched with the previous round.  The Cuvee was a dark sour beer brewed with cherries and it seemed to be the dark flipside to the Supplication.  Maybe they were spaced out because they were so similar, to offer some contrast, but I would have loved to taste them side by side.  The Palo Santo tasted like one of the best porters I’ve ever had, but I couldn’t discern the taste of the Palo Santo wood in it, and apparently it’s a brown ale, not a porter.  I’m going to chalk this up to tasting it several hours into a beer filled night, and by the way, this doesn’t mean I don’t like it, only that I expected a “woodier” beer, which I may well conclude that it is upon tasting it again.

Dessert was chocolate mocha cake with blood orange sabayon and fig syrup, served with Avery’s The Beast Grand Cru and Lost Abbey’s Older Viscosity.  Honestly, I couldn’t publish a fair review of either of these beers, or the final toast (see below), as I was so full and tipsy at this point.  I had to just gulp down some water to try to regain some balance. 

This was a tragedy as the final pour, for the evening-ending toast, was the Isabelle Proximus, which is a beer that ALL FIVE BREWERS brewed together at Lost Abbey two years ago.  It was a light colored, sour style ale that was delicious.  I couldn’t drink very much of it at that point, but wished I could have. 

I finished off the night with another short chat with Bruce Paton (which is when I got my photo) and a meeting with Vic from The Bistro (who I accidentally though was someone else at first – so sorry!).  I’m sad I missed his hop rhizome festival, but it may have just spared me frustration this year since I have no suitable place to plant a hop rhizome in my home, work, or otherwise.  The fire escape at my apartment can only serve so many functions and it’s already doing duty as my boiling station, and I had to throw out my only plant at work when spiders decided to colonize it and build a giant scary nest in it.

All in all, it was a fantastic night, and I’m still thoroughly starstruck.