United Nations of Beer

Great American Beer Festival 2009 Media Luncheon

by Lucia Novara
(Denver, CO)

Great American Beer Festival 2009 Media Luncheon
Denver, CO, USA

"Here in Denver, beer is part of our DNA," Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said at the opening of the Great American Beer Festival media lunch.

Truer words were never spoken. As the Colorado Beers Delegate, I felt a surge of pride in my beautiful high plains oasis of a city; a city seeped in beer history, independent breweries and subsequent street burritos.

The media lunch was a six course extravaganza of food and beer mixing it up together and making some beautiful music in my mouth. The pairings were put together by a "cicerone", which I learned is like a sommelier for wine; someone who chooses beer pairings with food. Feel free to use that term to impress your friends the next time you order Schiltz and pretzels at the bar.

The first course was an 'Ale-pertif'. I was confused when a tray of malt and whole hop cones got passed around the table, and as my stomach was kind of rough from the session the night before, for one really scary moment I thought we were only getting fed like horses.

Fortunately the Munich Malt, Chocolate Malt, Cascade Hops and Saaz Hops were just for our sniffing pleasure, and there was all sorts of real food on the way.

The first appetizer (yes, there were two appetizers. So not messing around) was a Cajun BBQ shrimp with fresh corn grits paired with Del Norte Brewing Company's Manana Amber Lager.

Del Norte is out of Denver and the only brewery in the US that specializes in Mexican beer. The Manana is a Vienna style recipe but with lower levels of hops because hops tend to bring out the bite in spicy food. Since most Mexican is spicy, their styles adapted Old World recipes to contain less hops.

The brew was a little bitter, but it was a great pairing because I liked it better after the shrimp and corn grits. However, I tend to like everything better after a bite of shrimp, including sex.

The SECOND appetizer was Buffalo Carpaccio with Avocado Tile, paired with Bend Brewing Company's Rocksy Stein Lager. There's a serious story behind this brew. First of all it was poured out of a bottle with a computer printer address label, so you know it's the limited shiznit.
It was actually a collaboration between Lost Abbey and Bend Brewing, and what a collaboration it was!

In order to achieve the candy sweetness and smoky aftertaste this brew exhibited, the brewer used an old school brewing method of super heating 300 pounds of basalt rocks and adding it to the barrels. What's really crazy is at the end of the process, each rock has a 2-3 inch thick layer of caramelized sugar left on it. The beer was amazing but I can't speak too much to the pairing, as anything carpaccio reminds me of brutal road rash, and as such I am a little remiss to put it in my mouth.

The salad consisted of organic greens with macadamia nuts, Colorado peaches, jicama and a white balsamic vinaigrette. Patrick Rue of The Bruery introduced his Hottenroth Berliner Weisse by saying the name was derived from his lovely grandparents Fred & Sarah Hottenroth, and the taste reminded him of being really, really bored at their house growing up.

The Bruery is fairly new on the scene having opened less than two years ago. Rue blogged about the entire two year process of putting the brewery together, and if anyone is interested in turning their brewery pipe dreams into reality, check out his blog.

The Berlin-style tart wheat brew itself was just straight up delicious with a light mouth feel, champagne and lemonade flavors and a lemon yogurt aftertaste. It was great with the white vinaigrette, as the beer tasted less sour after a bite with the vinaigrette. Traditionally in Berlin this style is served in big tumblers with fruit syrup to cut the bitterness. It's 70 percent wheat, 3.1% ABV and doesn't taste anything like German grandparents.

The intermezzo was a Hibiscus Flower Granite with Fresh Horseradish. If that sentence doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry, I thought I was getting flowers at a symphony performance while eating rocks. I must be pretty unsophisticated, because even when I figured out it was a palate cleanser with shaved ice and sweet flavoring, I still didn't think it was a great idea to throw some horseradish on that.

It was paired with Estes Park Brewery's Long's Peak Raspberry Wheat. I want to give a shout out to the Colorado brewery, but in truth it was a boring beer with little carbonation and a blander taste than the sweet smell would let on.

The entrée was a Three Day Beef Cheek with Mashed Potatoes and Baby Root vegetables paired with Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter.

Black Butte is the best selling porter in the US, and I could see why with a single sip. The brew uses German and domestic chocolate malt and is a perfect example of a well balanced porter. Next time you buy a sixer let it chill out for a month because Black Butte connoisseurs say that it tastes better after a month of hanging out in the bottle.

The beef cheek was marinated for three days in the Black Butte before being cooked. I took a mini-bite of the beef and it was so tender it melted in my mouth, while the porter sip afterwards made the beef flavor sing like a mafia rat.

Dessert was a Black and Tan molten chocolate cake with a hazelnut brown ale gelato. There were two very different brown ales paired with dessert: Rogue Ale's Hazelnut Brown Nectar Ale and Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales' Maracaibo Especial Brown Ale out of Dexter, Michigan.

The Hazelnut gelato was made with the Rogue Ale. The hazelnut flavor makes sense for Rogue since the nuts are indigenous to Oregon, and the brewery likes using local ingredients; so much so that they now grow their own hops and barley.

I didn't love either of these pairings. The hazelnut gelato seemed kind of redundant with a strongly hazelnut ale, and the Jolly Pumpkin was just straight bizarre. This unique brewery focuses on open fermentation, oak barrel aging and bottle conditioning. It's wild as a puppy on meth. The Maracaibo is brewed with real cacao, cinnamon and sweet orange and was a really interesting beer on its own, but a little out there for a dessert pairing.

My favorite pairing of the entire meal was beer with my tummy. They just go together, like Sonny and Cher, Ike and Tina, Whitney and Bobby. Sure someone gets hurt once in a while, but beautiful music is made anyway.