AntSaint

Belgian & English Beer Tasting at Broadway Deli

Belgian beer? English beer? And cheese? Oh yeah. Check it out a free tasting this evening, at the Broadway Deli on Broadway and Charnelton, downtown Eugene:

Link: ENTREE NOTES: The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore..

"Friday: The Broadway — 200 W. Broadway. 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. “First Friday” beer and wine tasting features Belgian and English microbrewed beers from Artisanal Imports and Italian-style wines from the Apolloni Vineyards in the Willamette Valley, paired with cheeses of the region. Free. 685-0790"

New Pub Coming to 19th & Jefferson

There's no such thing as too many good pubs, after all:

Link: Brothers’ pub plans build on past success: The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore..

The brothers already jointly run McCallum’s Custom Catering, along with Mac’s at the Vets Club — a restaurant and nightclub at the Veterans Memorial Building in Eugene. Now they’re launching a neighborhood pub, and there’s some history there, too. Billy Mac’s Bar & Grill, which is scheduled to open June 10 next-door to the Little Y Market at 19th Avenue and Jefferson Street

Natalie MacLean gives you 50 ways to keep your lover this Valentine's Day

Trying to pair up the perfect dessert with the perfect wine this Valentine's Day? Fire up Natalie MacLean's dessert and wine-matching tool for some sumptuous – and sensual – combinations.

Or, if you're in a hurry because it's the day before Valentine's Day, skip the tool, print out her top 10 (below) and head straight to the grocery store now:

Natalie's top 10 wine and chocolate matches:

1. Dark Chocolate and Banyuls, France
2. Chocolate-Covered Biscotti and Recioto Della Valpolicella, Italy
3. Chocolate-Orange Cake and Liqueur Muscat, Australia
4. Chocolate with Nuts and Tawny Port, Portugal
5. Milk Chocolate and Tokaji, Hungary
6. Bittersweet Chocolate and Amarone, Italy
7. Chocolate-Dipped Fruit and Icewine, Canada
8. Chocolate Ganache Truffles and Sauternes, France
9. Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake and Framboise, California
10. Chocolate Hearts with Cream Filling and Cream Sherry, Spain

Keep Natalie's wine-matching tool on-hand for dinner too - it has thousands of wines to pair with any dish: meat, pasta, seafood, vegetarian fare, pizza, eggs, cheese and dessert. Hungry - and thirsty - for more? Learn more about matching food and wine with Natalie MacLean's book, Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass, at nataliemaclean.com.

Champagne with Potato Chips? Free Web Site NatalieMacLean.com Offers 360,000 Food and Wine Pairings

From a release... New York  – You really can drink wine with just about anything, according to a new web site devoted to food and wine pairings. Zinfandel with your Tex-Mex? Not a problem. A little Chardonnay with your fried chicken take-out? Delicious. Pinot Noir and wild boar? Why not, says Natalie MacLean, who has included these in a free, interactive matching tool at www.nataliemaclean.com/matcher.

“The old rules about white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat just don’t give enough guidance anymore,” says MacLean, author of Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass, which was named the Best Wine Literature Book at the World Gourmand Cookbook Awards. “With modern fusion cuisine and wines from new regions around the world, the choices—and confusion—are great.”

MacLean’s matching tool pairs wines with everyday meals, as well as challenging fare, such as vegetarian cuisine, egg-based sauces, cheese, TV dinners, and even dessert, including Jell-O and fudge (for those who like to layer their vices).

Visitors simply search by wine for meal inspirations or by food to find great wine choices. There are more than 360,000 food and wine combinations in the matcher as well as thousands of recipes for a variety of dishes. MacLean adds more wines and foods based on readers’ suggestions, which she gets from the 73,000 subscribers to her free e-newsletter, Nat Decants. The newsletter offers tips on how to buy, cellar and serve wine. MacLean also writes about food and wine matching for dinner parties in Red, White and Drunk All Over.

With barbecue season around the corner, wine lovers will find suggestions for grilled meats and vegetables, as well as summer salads and seafood. Those planning weddings, reunions and graduation parties can discover great suggestions for a wide range of menus. Got a dish or a wine to stump Natalie? E-mail her via the web site and she’ll suggest a match for you.

About Natalie MacLean
Natalie MacLean has won four James Beard Journalism Awards, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award; and she was named the World’s Best Drink Writer at the World Food Media Awards. Rex Pickett, author of Sideways, says that Natalie “writes about wine with a sensuous obsession” and is “often laugh-out-loud funny.” Eric Asimov of the New York Times notes, “Ms. MacLean is the disarming Everywoman … she loves wine, loves drinking … a winning formula.” The Financial Times observes, “Natalie MacLean is a new force in the wine writing world—a feisty North American answer to Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. She can write beautifully about wine.”

Irish- and American-style Red Ales

This afternoon I hit up the Home Fermenter Center for some ingredients for a tasty Red Ale. In preparation, I've been going over my homebrewing book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition (Harperresource Book) and hitting up the web for some info on this style of ale. Hmm, though perhaps Jodie and I should also prep a shopping list for the Bier Stein, for, ahem, more, um, field research...

BYO - Are my taste buds wrong or are Irish Red Ales similar to Oktoberfest beers?

"According to Michael Jackson, most Irish Ales, including Kilkenny, use a portion of caramel malt and roasted barley to provide a toffee-like malt backbone with roasted overtones."

Red Beer. Sections of note:

• Grolsch Amber Ale is the newest U.S. offering from Grolsch Breweries of The Netherlands. Described by the brewery as an altbier (a German style ale), this amber ale features a lightly malty flavor with a hop finish derived from American and German hops. It serves as a good training wheels beer for those trying to crossover from light lagers to fuller flavored beers. It is brewed with amber and roasted malt as well as wheat. All Grolsch ales are cold conditioned like lagers with krauesen added for a smoother, less estery and yeasty character.
• McTarnahan's Amber Ale from Portland (Oregon) Brewing Co. is a full-bodied rich amber beer that gets its character from roasted caramel malt, which is balanced by a double addition of Cascade hops for robust bitterness and a floral, sprucy aroma. It walked away with the Bronze medal in the American amber ale category at the 1996 World Beer Cup.
• Boont is a traditional dialect in Boonville, California, and it seemed like the perfect moniker for Anderson Valley Brewing Company's quirky Boont Amber Ale. The sweetness of crystal malt and the sourness from a 16-hour mash (usually the mash takes around two hours) combine to give it an unusual, yet refreshing and tangy flavor. The caramel malt gives it a hazy pale amber color with citrusy aromas and a lingering hop finish. It earned the bronze medal in the American amber ale category at the 1995 Great American Beer Festival.
• Opening its doors in 1993, New Glarus Brewing Co., New Glarus, Wisconsin, is a relative newcomer to the U.S. craft brew industry. Its Belgian Red Wisconsin Cherry ale is brewed with Wisconsin cherries and aged in oak for that marriage of wine and beer. It is refreshing and complex with subtle sourness and cherries in the flavor. It garnered two recent awards -- a gold medal in the fruit beer category at the 1996 Great American Beer Festival and a silver in the same category at the 1996 World Beer Cup.

Dry Hopped St. Rogue Red - Rogue Ales Brewery / Brewer's on the Bay - Beer Advocate. Good Reviews and tasting notes, including some characteristics of these red beers that I'm interested in putting in mine.

the beer hall - donavan's literate beer guide

"Irish Reds are less hoppy than their American cousins. They look essentially the same in the glass, but the flavor profile is quite different---beginning sweet and ending roasty and dry."

Mia & Pia Red Ale

I'm a big fan of red ales. They tend to have more flavor than brown ales, while not being too bitter or too hoppy or too strong. They are, perhaps, some of the most balanced beers available.

So at the Bier Stein this evening, I was quite chuffed to get a pint of the Mia & Pia Red Ale (also Monday's beer of the day, at $3 a pint). Superb, rich color, and a slightly bitter, well-malted taste. I'm amazed I managed to have just one.

But perhaps you can make up for that.

Beer tax raise tastes bitter to opponents

Lovely — a tax increase on beer. Potentially damaging to one of Oregon's healthiest, most innovative industries. This tax feels punitive — what else could it be, asking for funds from the beer industry to alcohol rehab?

From what I've seen so far, I'm opposed to this tax, especially in its current form. With the vagaries and nuances of the beer distrubition industry, this sounds like it will wind up an across-the-board tax that's bad for the beer industry, and for all us beer drinkers.

Then again, there could be some potential here. Fast food could be taxed, with the revenues going to weight-loss clinics. Guns and ammo could be taxed, with the revenues going to fund prisons. And patchouli could be taxed, to provide soap to stank hippies. This might be worth considering after all...

Link: Beer tax raise tastes bitter to opponents -The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA.

To hear the two sides talk about the six proposals was like listening to entirely different debates. Advocates focused almost entirely on the need to restore shrinking Oregon State Police patrols and to build back the system of treating alcoholics' addiction and preventing others from becoming problem drinkers. To them, Oregon's lowest-in-the-nation beer tax (80 cents per gallon) is prime for an increase of a nickel or a dime. But Oregon brewers saw the proposals as an unprovoked assault on the heart of "Beervana," as Oregon is sometimes called because of its reputation for the state's numerous producers and consumers of regionally brewed craft ales and beers. By their calculations, the six bills discussed before the House Revenue Committee would drive up their taxes by up to 1,235 percent - from $2.60 to $32 per barrel.

Tonight at the Bier Stein: a primer on Czech beer

Ah, Bier Stein — not only do your ever-changing taps and hundreds of bottles make me glad to be alive, but you also feed my beer brain.

Tonight, Monday, April 16, at 7 p.m., there will be a half-hour talk at the Bier Stein by a Czech expert in, well, Czech beer. His talk will focus around the history of brewing in the Czech Republic. This isn't a tasting, by the way — though there will be plenty of Czech goodness for you to practice you new knowledge on.

Link: www.myspace.com/thebierstein.

The Bier Stein

Whether for a bite to eat and some beer to drink, or to grab a few bottles for some St. Paddy's fun, be sure to head over to the Bier Stein on 11th & Mill. This is our favorite beer joint in town, not only for the excellent (and ever-changing) taps, but also for the massive selection of bottled beer. Go now.

Good wine under $10: Amaicha 2005 - Torrontes, from Argentina

While whipping up some chicken stew this evening, Jodie and I — oh, so sadly — had to open a bottle of white wine. For the stew and the chefs we chose a bottle of 2005 Amaicha, from Argentina. We found this at Trader Joe's for, oh, maybe $5.99. Might've been cheaper; the details are a little fuzzy at the moment, no matter how much I ask the empty bottle to jog my memory.

Jodie and I are huge fans of sweet crisp Rieslings, but loved the Amaicha because it was so different. This wine is much drier, yet with a sweet, citrusy crispness at the edge of every sip. It's well worth a try, both in the pot and in the glass. Check your local Trader Joe's or other wine shop.