Desert Hops Beer Festival: Food And Beer Pairing

I was recently asked if I'd share my favorite food and beer pairing as part of a blog shout out to the The Desert Hops International Beer Festival which is being held today, at the The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. I'd never heard about the festival before, but my first reaction was "OMG where's my admission ticket?" 

For me, going to a beer festival is second to going to a good writer's conference. Can you just imagine combining the two events? That would be incredible. Just think of how many writers and agents we could pair up or just how many books could be published....or... yeah, maybe not. :P 

Anyway, I wish I could tell you that I have some fantastic and exotic pairing of food and beer, but for me, simple is best. What I'm not a fan of, is sweet flavored beers and don't really like the weird fruit beers be it watermelon or pumpkin, and God forbid you add a peach or grenadine syrup to your beer like they do here, yuck! I figure if you're going to add syrup to your beer, you might as well order a cocktail. To each their own. 

Basically, I prefer a good beer with a dish of salty carbohydrates. Because let's face it, there's nothing better than a nice cold one and pizza, or chips, or just plain old peanuts. But better yet, beer on a hot day, in the back yard, cooking BBQ, and hanging out with family and friends. I think that's what I associate beer with the most, sharing it with friends and enjoying the simple things while we talk about how better the world would be if we ran things.  

So, when it comes down to it, I'm much more of a have-a-couple-cold-ones-at-home-with-friends-while-watching-Arrow kinda gal. 

So here is my favorite beer / food combination to date: 

Abbaye des Rocs (9 %), a strong Belgian ale with a rich dark amber color and full body taste that lingers in your mouth afterwards. In other words, it tastes awesome. Now take a beer like this and pair it up with a perfectly cooked steak with sautéed mushrooms, along with a side of potatoes loaded with bacon, onions, and melted cheese all cooked in an iron skillet. There, a slice of heaven... unless you're a vegetarian who doesn't drink alcohol. Then, this would be hell. :o  (Actually, there is a beer called Hell, just sayin... :)  )

So even if you're not much of a beer drinker, I'd be willing to bet, with all the different microbreweries producing such a wide range of craft beers from around the world, there's a beer even (or especially) for you. :) 

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So do you have a favorite beer/food pairing? Or maybe you have another drink/food pairing you'd like to share. I'd love to hear about it!


#BrewLV

IWSG: Have A Beer With Me

Lately, my writing has taken a nose dive into the dismal abyss of meritocracy. But this time, instead of moaning and groaning, snapping pens in half, popping keys off my keyboard, or setting my manuscript on fire, I’ve decided to take a different approach, a more calm and religious path to my latest self-loathing. I’ve decided to sit back and have a beer. Now I know that’s not very lady-like but at this point, I don’t care. Besides, I don’t always drink beer, but when I do… I make sure it’s a great tasting beer. Name that meme! ;) 

Anyway, this is an IWSG post, not a beer tasting post and yet… I will find a way to transition this in into a beer post, so hang on. 

Have you ever tried describing how something tastes in your writing and gotten stuck? 

No. 

No? Well, humor me for a second. Geez. 

I like drinking all kinds of different beers. One of the things I enjoy is reading the label before I start peeling it off into little strips and making a mess on the table. On the back of one of these labels, I read a short, highly pretentious description of the beer I was holding. Luckily, the beer was a good one and it prompted me to look up some beer tasting reviews. This is where things got interesting. Beer and wine tasting reviews are some of the most imaginative, colorful, sexy, flowery, BS descriptions you’ll ever read. Here are examples I pulled from random beer descriptions online:

“. . .candied sweet hops pucker the mouth; pear and apple make for a perfumed blend, supported by a surprisingly hearty malt base.”

“. . . dark cumulonimbus, Everest-like white climbing head--”

“The foretaste is very prolonged because of its rich and unctuous development throughout the mouth.” I swear this is talking about BEER. 

“Bitter and sugar tendencies compete and come back together to the taster's great satisfaction.”

“It confirms the initial impression in the first mouthful, with a sharp body that is balanced with a certain fruitiness.”

“...malty caramel aroma, with obvious cherry and floral notes...”

“Some traces of burnt wood are detectable, but never scorched even if it contains this kind of malt.”

It's not easy describing something as subjective as taste. But even if some of these are laughable, if you keep digging, you'll find wonderful imagery and many creative ways for describing taste through beer and wine tasting reviews. 

So there you have it. 

My writing sucks. 

Cheers.

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Many thanks to Alex Cavanaugh our IWSG host and his super co-hosts this month. If you'd like to know more about the IWSG monthly bloghop, feel free to click the IWSG button on my side bar.

Savory Sunday: Beer, Books, and Flying Snake Women

Recently, I sampled a few local beers : Mélusine, Blanche Ecume, Love & Flowers, and Puy d’Enfer. Each had their own personality with eye-catching labels that made it feel like I was looking at book covers. Plus, the larger bottles (75cl) were corked a bit like champagne bottles which was fun.

Anyway, of the four I drank sampled, the one I preferred was Mélusine. It’s a dry beer with a 6.5% alcohol content and is the kind that tastes great on a hot summer day.

The second one I tasted was the Blanche Ecume. Despite its bronze medal win in Paris last year, the Blanche Ecume (4.2%) was just ok in my opinion. It was a little weaker in taste compared to Mélusine but not bad.

After that, I tasted Love & Flowers (4.2%). From the label alone, this beer certainly targets a more feminine palate. I was curious about this beer because on the back of the bottle it says it's flavoured with flower petals and hops. And indeed, it did have a subtle rose flower aroma to it. But, the taste doesn’t last in your mouth, and I like beers that tickle my tongue and linger in my mouth a bit. 

Then, I tried Puy d’Enfer that had the highest alcohol content, 8.5%. This one I did not like at all. Blaeeeah. It was really bitter with a strong taste of hops. It was like licking a thorn bush. The word ‘Enfer’ translates to Hell, so the label was aptly chosen. This beer did indeed taste like Hell. 

 ANYWAY, what was interesting about all these beers besides taste, is that they are made by the same brewery: Mélusine. And even MORE interesting, is in the European literary world, Mélusine (which rhymes with magazine) refers to a mythical creature described in many legends. There are different variations of Mélusine but she is usually depicted as a fairy, mystical female spirit or a kind of half-human half-serpent creature. 

The first literary version of Mélisine was written in the late 1300's by Jean d'Arras, a French poet and composer. The story basically tells the tale of a man named Raymond of Poitou (a real province in France) who meets a woman named Mélusine in a forest. He falls in love with her and asks her to marry him. She says yes, under one condition, he must never enter her chamber on a Saturday. He agrees and keeps his promise (for a while). They go on to have a family and their lives prosper, until the day he breaks his promise and sees her in her true form: part woman, part serpent. After that he calls her names, she turns into a dragon, and all hell breaks loose (I'm simplifying just a tad, can't you tell?)

Anyway a while back, friends of ours offered my kids a book about Mélusine. This children's version is called, The Fairy Mélusine talks about the region we live in.

In this book, poor Raymond meets beautiful Mélusine in the forest. She sees in him a good man and asks him to marry her. She tells him she has the power to make him a wealthy man under one condition, he must never disturb her in her chamber on Saturdays. He agrees.

Soon after they are married, she uses her power to create castles and churches throughout the region (all of which are real places that can be visited today.)

They live in a beautiful castle in a kingdom that prospers, have a large family, and everything is perfect until. . . curiosity gets the better of Raymond. 

One Saturday, he peeks through a hole in the door and sees Mélusine in her true form; part woman, part serpent.

Turns out, Mélusine is cursed and Raymond's betrayal condemns her to grow wings and leave the kingdom forever. 

Little by little, all the kingdoms she created fall into ruin.

Moral of this story is: 

Respect a woman's privacy else you lose all your shit. 

Cheers 

And Happy Sunday.

Hell Needs a Caption

Every Wednesday and Friday evenings I train with the local track and field club. Wednesday nights however, are special. That's because we all get together afterwards for drinks (usually beer) and munchies (like nuts, chips and sweetbread). Last week, the person hosting brought with him a few cases of a light tasting beer he got in Germany. They were 50cl bottles (just shy of 17 fl oz) with a 5% alcohol content called, Hell. 

This is just dying for a caption, don't you think?  

Hope you all have a great weekend, and if it turns out like Hell, then consider yourself lucky and have another.

Cheers!

(; 

Savory Sunday: Beer and Chocolate

We had friends over for dinner last week and for l'apéro, I thought it'd be fun to do a little beer tasting. Back in college, I came to appreciate all kinds of beers and really miss the microbreweries of the States. Unfortunately, since I moved to France, I haven't had a lot of opportunity to drink beer. As a consequence, I know very little about European beers. Anyway, I thought I'd go out and grab some random bottles at our local beer store (which is huge btw) to sample with friends. This is what I ended up with:  

My favorites were the first two on the left and the last on the right .

Abbaye des Rocs a dark Belgium beer (9 %), Tripel Karmeliet (8.4%) a Belgium light beer that claims their 3 grain beer recipe dates back to the 17th century in the Carmes de Termonde monastery. And lastely, Chimay (9%) another Belgium dark beer  brewed by Trappist monks of the Abbaye de Scourmont.  

The Quintine (8%) was a light beer and the only reason I got it is because I like the label. Serves me right, it really does taste like witches brew. The Timmermans (4.5%) was a bit too aggressive to my liking as far as taste, and the Goliath (9%) was so strong  I ended up watering the weeds with what was left in my glass. 

If anyone has any suggestions I should try let me know. Got any favorites?

And for you non-alcoholic / chocolate fans, here's something really simple to make and an instant smile generator no matter what time of year. Make hot chocolate and use a tooth pic to skewer two marshmallows and pinch them to the edge of your mug. See, you're smiling already. (:

My kids love this. Even in the summer, it's a hit.