I have said it before in this space, Reuben’s Brews really knows what they are doing with rye beer. Back at the beginning of the year, they debuted a Belgian version of their Imperial Rye IPA; it has since made a couple of appearances in the tap room, most recently at the Rye Fest they hosted for Seattle Beer Week.
The beer pours hazy orange in color with very little head. There are tons of citrus on the nose with some green hops and hits of sugar and rye. The first sip is a huge hit of hopes that lingers for a long time before moving into a long rye finish that is intertwined with the classic flavors associated with a Belgian beer – banana and cloves. The hop character is slightly more subdued and the rye finish is shorter and less intense that its regular Rye brother, but the Belgian yeast makes for an interesting and complex flavor and finish, making this beer a fine product in its own right. The bold flavors also go a long way in hiding the 8.4% ABV on this monster. It is a heavy beer in terms of flavor, texture and alcohol, but it is well balanced and smooth and you can easily forget how big this beer really is.
Next time the Belgian Rye IPA makes an appearance, get yourself down to Reuben’s and try one of the more interesting beers out on the market – even if you are not a fan of Belgian style beers.
Reuben’s Brews Belgian Rye IPA rings in with a clear 4 calls to prayer out of 5.
I have said it before in this space, Reuben’s Brews really knows what they are doing with rye beer. Back at the beginning of the year, they debuted a Belgian version of their Imperial Rye IPA; it has since made a couple of appearances in the tap room, most recently at the Rye Fest they hosted for Seattle Beer Week.
The beer pours hazy orange in color with very little head. There are tons of citrus on the nose with some green hops and hits of sugar and rye. The first sip is a huge hit of hopes that lingers for a long time before moving into a long rye finish that is intertwined with the classic flavors associated with a Belgian beer – banana and cloves. The hop character is slightly more subdued and the rye finish is shorter and less intense that its regular Rye brother, but the Belgian yeast makes for an interesting and complex flavor and finish, making this beer a fine product in its own right. The bold flavors also go a long way in hiding the 8.4% ABV on this monster. It is a heavy beer in terms of flavor, texture and alcohol, but it is well balanced and smooth and you can easily forget how big this beer really is.
Next time the Belgian Rye IPA makes an appearance, get yourself down to Reuben’s and try one of the more interesting beers out on the market – even if you are not a fan of Belgian style beers.
Reuben’s Brews Belgian Rye IPA rings in with a clear 4 calls to prayer out of 5.
Our neighbor Kurt has started EarthBoxes! (It’s like a disease, only healthier.) His first post on the subject is here. We share an interest in low-labor container gardening it seems.
Well really, I just try to avoid weeding whenever I can.
The tomato plants got a bird net over their cages this week — four of the six plants are now producing fruit. (The Glacier, Stupice, Siletz, and Sungold. The Roma and Brandywine are holding out, which is to be expected.) The zucchini and brussels sprouts got staked with Ultomato cages. I like the idea of the Ultomato cages, and I’ll be looking to buy more parts either in bulk or on clearance at the end of the season. I know that the “arms” are available as a 36-pack, though I’d buy more at the right price. Getting a good deal may require a little digging.
Among the recent dishes to be partly or fully composed of Earthbox ingredients includes a bunch of green salads, guacamole, pico de gallo, dill “crusted” salmon, caprese salad, and grilled bok choi and scallions. The grilled bok choi and scallions were served with chicken kebabs marinated in greek yogurt, lemon, and Tom Douglas’ Bengal Marsala rub. Very tasty! Also this:
Going to restaurants that are considered institutions can be tough, after many years, restaurants that don’t change will eventually lose their clientele. It happened in Boston with 150 year old Locke Ober closing late last year. Sometimes restaurants adapt like Canlis did with bringing in Eleven Madison Park chef Jason Franey to update the menu. Sometimes the restaurant falls victim to the economy and problems with the partners. This was the case with Philadelphia institution Le Bec Fin. Le Bec Fin was founded 40 years ago by chef Georges Perrier and for many of those years was considered one of the best restaurants in the US. It was an over the top, white glove experience with course after course of decadent and rich French inspired dishes. I had the pleasure of dining there once back in the late 1990’s and it is still the greatest restaurant meal I have ever had.
The economic downturn and infighting between the owners lead to the departure of Perrier and an attempted relaunch after the restaurant lost its way. There were rumors that a Michelin starred chef, Justin Bogle, was being brought in to right the ship.
Well, that rumor was true, but it means that the institution that is Le Bec Fin will be Fin at the end of June. I think changing tastes and a ton more competition in the industry really lead to the downfall and it is sad to see such an institution close, but it was probably time. I will always have fond memories of that meal and I do own the Le Bec Fin Cookbook, so who knows, there might be a dinner in the cards for sometime this fall…
Speakeasy is a long time San Francisco Brewery that recently started distributing their beer in Washington. I have been to the brewery in SF, so I was excited when Annie S. invited me over to do a tasting of Speakeasy beers. Their amber is one of the first beers that Speakeasy brewed when they started and is available on tap, six packs and in 22 oz. bottles, which run around $4. This review is for the 22 oz. bottles.
From the Speakeasy website:
Prohibition Ale is the first beer we bootlegged back in the early days of the brewery. Anything but traditional, Prohibition pours a deep reddish amber hue, with a fluffy tan head that leaves a beautiful lacing on the glass. A lush, complex aroma teases the senses with juicy grapefruit, citrus, pine, spice and candied caramel malts. Mouthfeel is creamy, with a silky, medium body and modest carbonation.
Style: American-Style Amber Ale
ABV: 6.1%
IBU: 45
Color: 15L – Copper, Dark Amber, Red
Barley: Two Row Pale, CaraMunich, Chilean Caramel
Hops: Chinook, Cascade, Centennial
Yeast: California Ale
The beer pours ruby in color with a cream head. The nose has a light malt profile with decent amounts of floral hops. The beer has a slightly sweet, upfront character which transitions into a lightly floral and bitter lingering finish. The sweetness is much more pronounced as the beer warms, which was a bit off-putting for me, but I know people who like that style of beer. If you like more hop character from the beer, serve it around 40-45 degrees. If you like more malty sweetness, serve the beer at 50-55 degrees.
Speakeasy Prohibition Amber Ale is an easy drinking beer that, considering the price point, is one you should have in your fridge when you are looking for something nice to drink but don’t want to break out the really good stuff.
Speakeasy Prohibition Amber Ale sneaks up to the hidden door and gets in with 3 secret passwords out of 5.
I almost spit out my coffee when I saw that the MLS wants to expand again and add another team in the New York City area. Here is a quote from the ever delusional MLS Prez, Don Garber:
“This market has 19 million people in the region and is soccer hungry,” said MLS commissioner Don Garber. “With the Red Bulls here, we have the opportunity for a rival — a derby, if you will — that will break through the clutter of sports teams in this market and will work on the local, national and global levels.”
Ok, sure. The market has 19 million people but it has never really embraced the MLS. The team has averaged about 75% capacity over the 3 seasons they have occupied Red Bull Arena and their average of 18,804 per game there is only slightly higher than it was at Giants Stadium. Red Bull Arena sits right on 2 mass transit lines, has easy highway access, plenty of parking and is in the middle of an area that has a high immigrant population, which usually means more soccer support. The problem that the MLS has is that those people know what good soccer looks like and the MLS isn’t it. There is a reason why you don’t see the US National team playing home games in NY/NJ during the World Cup qualifying – it turns into a virtual home game for their opponent.
That being said, is the talent level in the MLS really that good that they can dilute it down further without compromising the “quality” of the product? I don’t think they can. The season is early, but the attendance is down league-wide this year – Only DC, Montreal, Dallas and Portland have seen any increase in attendance (well technically KC also, but their average has gone up 9 per game). Even the Sounders have seen a significant drop in attendance this year. Last year they drew 66,000 for a game against Portland. This year – just a shade over 40,000.
What this is all about is money and brand. The new NY club will be owned by the Steinbrenners (of NY Yankee fame) and Sheik Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (owner of Manchester City). Since both of these owners have very deep pockets and the MLS has very liberal rules about skirting the salary cap when it comes to foreign players, you can expect this team to be stocked with over-paid, past their prime players from Europe who have name recognition, a la David Beckham. That is not good for the long term success of the MLS and is exactly what brought down the NASL.
Considering that teams like Chivas, New England, Dallas and San Jose don’t draw well, the league might just be better served moving one of those teams to NY. Honestly, the league would probably be better served putting another team in Seattle over NY – right now, I believe the only cities that could support a second team attendance wise would be either Seattle or Portland.
Look, there comes a time when you have to send a guy down to the minors before you completely destroy his confidence, and that time has probably come for Brandon Maurer. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about his struggles with left handed batters. Well, he has pitched “slightly” better against lefties recently (they are “only” hitting about .325 against him over his last few starts) but he has suddenly lost the ability to get right handed hitters out also (they are hitting over .400 against him in his last few starts).
Right now Maurer is a mess. If you watch him pitch, he looks like he has no confidence in his stuff. His start on Tuesday night was a disaster and he has given up 10 home runs in 49 innings. It is time for him to go back down to regain that confidence. I would suggest something radical too – sending him to AA Jackson rather than AAA Tacoma. Why? Well Tacoma, and the PCL in general, is a hitter’s league. Maurer has been getting smacked around pretty badly and pitching in the band box that is Cheney Stadium will probably not help his confidence. Maurer wasn’t that great last year in Jackson anyway.
I know the Mariners don’t really have many options at this point, but I think I would rather see Hector Noesi stink it up out there than watch Maurer get destroyed, completely lose confidence in himself, get traded to another organization for a bucket of baseballs and come back in a few years as a serviceable major league starter.
UPDATE – The Mariners sent Maurer to Tacoma sometime between when I wrote this and this morning, calling up Alex Liddi. Supposedly they are looking at calling up Jeremy Bonderman, but Bondo is not on the 40 man roster, so someone either goes to the 60 day DL (Guti possibly) or someone gets DFA (either Ryan or Thames), to add Bondo.
Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Rosemary Focaccia Sheet from The Bread Bible. To quote:
This intriguing dough presents an apparent contradiction: it is incredibly light yet moist and satisfyingly chewy. Consider the percentage of water in this dough! In relation to the flour, it has 113.5 percent water, making it the highest percentage of any dough in this book. [ed: most doughs generally run 60-70 percent water as a percentage of the flour weight.] Who would have thought it even possible to make a dough this wet and still produce bread? And that is the secret of its incredible texture. The exceptionally high amount of water keeps the gluten in the flour from breaking down during the very long beating process. This enables the dough to develop into long stretchy strands that hold the air and give a chewy texture. It will remain a soupy batter until toward the very end the twenty-minute beating, when it suddenly metamorphoses into a shiny, smooth, incredibly elastic dough.
I adapted this recipe from my favorite neighborhood bakery, the Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City…
So yeah, that’s some great pedigree. I had four hours before I needed to be out the door, instead of the five hours called for the recipe, so I goosed the yeast a little and figured I’d sacrifice a bit of the flavor associated with the rising time — the bread was getting rosemary and a healthy amount of salt and olive oil anyway, so it seemed like a reasonable tradeoff.
The recipe (notes are in italics)
390 g AP Flour
3/8 tsp instant yeast (I increased this to 3/4 tsp)
442 g warm water
3/4 tsp each sugar and salt
36 g extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp rosemary, fresh
1/4 tsp sea salt or fleur de sel
Sheet pan
1. Mix the dough. In the mixer bowl, with the paddle attachment on low speed (#2 Kitchenaid), combine the flour and yeast. With the mixer running, gradually add the water, mixing just until the dough comes together, about 3 minutes. It will be very soupy. Increase the speed to medium (#4 Kitchenaid) and beat until the dough is transformed into a smooth, shiny ball, about 20 minutes. (This never happened, or at least it hadn’t after almost 30 minutes. It just stayed soupy. I wound up adding about 1/2 cup+ of flour so that the dough would cooperate. It was a humid day, which may have effected it somewhat. I added a tiny amount of salt and sugar to compensate for the added flour — otherwise it might have tasted “flat”.)
Add the sugar and salt and beat until they are well incorporated, about 3 minutes.
This went on for too long.
2. Let the dough rise. Lightly oil a bowl, cover and let rise for about four hours. (I did this directly in the Kitchenaid bowl. With the greater quantity of yeast that I used, this only took about 90 minutes.)
3. Shape the dough and let it rise. Coat the sheet pan with a heaping tablespoon of the olive oil. Pour the dough onto it. Spread the dough as thin as possible without tearing it. Let it rest 10 minutes, then stretch again. Cover the pan and let rise until doubled 1-1/2 to 2 hours. (I used another sheet pan upside down as a cover. Mine was ready after about 60 minutes. Typically I use parchment paper to make “unmolding” easier. As it turned out, this dough decided to completely cement itself to the tray. The unmolding was a hassle.)
4. Preheat the oven. Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F for 1 hour before baking. Have an oven shelf at the lowest level and place a baking stone or baking sheet on it before preheating. (Maybe I’m just too cheap… I let it preheat 30 minutes. I can’t believe that the oven will retain *that* much more heat if I let it go for an hour. I used a baking stone.)
5. Sprinkle on toppings and bake. Uncover the dough and drizzle on the remaining olive oil. With oiled or wet fingertips deeply dimple the dough. Sprinkle evenly with the rosemary and salt. Place the pan directly on the hot stone or sheet tray and bake 12-13 minutes or until top is golden. Remove from oven and drizzle on a little extra olive oil if desired. (Mine was done at closer to 15 minutes.)
—
Other than resolutely sticking to the pan, it was a nice bread. I wouldn’t call the texture “incredible” like Beranbaum does, but for a fairly fast bread it was better than serviceable. The crust had a light chew to it. The crumb had an almost spongy, open texture, similar in appearance to the structure of a luffa. (Appetising, I know — I mean that in a nice way.) The hole size was very consistent throughout. (It really sucked up Iron Chef Leftovers’ terrific pig sauce.)
One reason I chose to try this bread, as close to the recipe as I had time for, was the 20 minute mixing time and super high hydration. Both of those parameters were well outside of what I make usually make. Normally I would try to minimize the oxidizing of the dough by not mixing for that long, but for this bread, it worked. I can see making this one again, though I’m sure the Kitchenaid won’t dig having to run for that long if I choose to make multiple breads for a crowd.
For a crowd, though, the Go To potato onion focaccia recipe is here.
Almost everyone is doing a pumpkin beer these days and that is not a bad thing since I love them. My issue is that most of them are a liquid pumpkin pie – lots of spices with a small amount of pumpkin flavor. Because there tends to be so much of that on the market, I tend to gravitate towards the styles of pumpkin beers that are different. Big Black Jack is an Imperial chocolate pumpkin porter. Chocolate? Pumpkin? Porter? They had me at hello. The beer is available seasonally in 22 oz. bottles and on tap. This review is for the bottle which ran about $7.50.
The description from the Oakshire website:
This malt-forward ale is a medium-bodied beer with flavors & spices that evoke fall. Pair Big Black Jack’s rich character with the seasonally favorite foods keeping you warm as the temperature drops: spicy Indian and Mexican dishes, molé, smoked goose, buttery aged cheddar, Irish cheeses, Gouda cheese, chocolate and peanut butter cookies, toasted coconut, pumpkin tarts and chocolate soufflés.
Part of our Single-Batch Beer Series, Big Black Jack became a fall favorite when we first released it in 2011. The Imperial Porter also won the 2012 North American Brewing Awards Gold Medal for Hybrid Beers. It is a warming autumn delight at 7.5% ABV.
The beer pours jet black with a creamy tan head. The beer has heavy overtones of pumpkin and roasted pumpkin seeds on the nose with notes of chocolate, nutmeg and cinnamon. The initial taste yields a slightly bitter chocolate hit with a quick transition into pumpkin seeds and roasted pumpkin. The pumpkin lingers for a bit before transitioning in into a spice finish with notes of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon with a hide-and-seek pumpkin flavor. When the beer warms the pumpkin flavor becomes much more pronounced with subtle notes of oak and spice. A really complex and interesting pumpkin beer, which does a great job balancing the roasted flavors with the pumpkin ones. If you are in the mood for something with more depth than the run of the mill pumpkin beers, pick up a bottle of Oakshire Big Black Jack.
Oakshire Big Black Jack Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter doubles down its bet with 4 split aces out of 5.
As my boyfriend and I are finishing a celebratory dinner at Le Bernardin, on West 55th Street, a couple in their 50s wearing festive sweaters sits down at the next table.
Waitress (to the couple): “Can I offer you a drink before dinner?”
Woman: “I’ll have an unsweetened iced tea.”
Waitress: “O.K.”
Woman: “Do you have free refills?”
Waitress: “Uh, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check.”
Woman: “Check, and if you do, then I’ll take it with ice. If you don’t have free refills, I’ll have it with the ice on the side.”
Waitress: “Got it.”
I am making an assumption here that we are talking about the dining room at Le Bernadin and not the lounge. If you are unfamiliar with Le Bernadin, it is a restaurant in NYC belonging to Bourdain-pal Eric Ripert and has 3 Michelin Star and 4 stars from the NY Times, oh and is considered to be the #19 restaurant in the world.
The menu is basically a bunch of fix priced offerings: between $124 and $194 per person, excluding tax, tip and beverages, depending on the options you choose (there is no al a carte menu). I find it hilarious that someone that is dropping a minimum of $160 per person is worried about a $5 glass of iced tea, if it is event that much. Some people just really confuse me.
FlatbreadGarden 