The Saccharomyces brothers, Pastorianus and Cerevisiae, are recognized as being the lager and ale yeasts of beer production. While they have been doing a good job of creating dozens of different, recognized styles of beer, it seems brewers are looking to a new yeast to do their bidding.

Now it’s the Brettanomyces family of yeasts that are getting all the attention. It seems these days that if you want to stand out amongst the nearly 2,000 breweries in America, you need to either barrel age your beer, add wild yeasts to the fermentation, or both. “Brett” is the new buzzword amongst craft beer followers. There’s no limit as to what beers you can spike with Brettanomyces. Lambics, farmhouse ales, saisons, etc are the standard. But breweries like Anchorage, Jolly Pumpkin, and The Bruery are putting Brettanomyces in white ales, IPAs, and even stouts!

Flavors of Brett fermented beers range and vary depending on the strain of Brett used and whether it is used in primary fermentation or in a secondary fermentation. You may either not notice a difference in a beer with Brett, or it may be a little tart and fruity, or very funky with complex aromas and flavors of a wet horse blanket (appetizing, right?).

I am not very well versed when it comes to Brettanomyces in beers. If you want more information, I highly recommend you check out Embrace The Funk’s website.
If you want to buy a few Brett beers in Las Vegas, check out Whole Foods or Khoury’s Fine Wine. Both tend to have a very good selection of Brett fermented beers.

When someone tastes the dish I prepare and when I educate them that there is alcohol in the dish, people usually just shrug it off and say “It’s alcohol, it has evaporated.” Well, that is true up to a certain point. You see, depending on the cooking method and for how long you cook a dish, it will greatly impact the remaining percentage of the alcohol. With that being said, it does not mean that you will get drunk if you consume a dish that has been prepared with alcohol.

This is very important to know, especially if you are dealing with people who have allergies or have just recently stopped drinking due to health issues.

Let’s look at this chart which will explain what exactly I am trying to explain here:

When looking at the chart, what does this mean? It’s very simple. Cooking methods that include short and quick cooking, obviously retains the most alcohol. The common misconception that I have seen among people is that if you flambé something, most of the alcohol is gone.

If you are not familiar with the term flambé allow me to explain it. It is a cooking procedure which involves a hot pan and high proof alcohol. Once you combine the two you create a burst of flames. Flambé is usually done at table sides in a restaurant for the wow effect and also for additional flavor. Flambéing can infuse a dish with additional aroma and flavor, while burning off some of the alcohol content. Granted this cannot be accomplished with beer.

So what about beer? What happens if you make that stew with beer? How does that affect the overall taste?

Stew is a combination of solid ingredients that have been cooked in a liquid and the overall dish is served with the cooking liquid. There are many ingredients that stew can include (vegetables, meat, poultry, seafood), and also the cooking liquid does not have to include water, necessarily. Some of the acceptable ingredients are wine, stock and also beer. While the stews are cooked on a low temperature for a long time, this allows the flavors to become richer. Do not forget that also less percentage of the alcohol will be retained in the final dish.

Every once in a while I make a beer ice cream. What about that? how does the alcohol affect the taste of the ice cream?

Granted the beer is cooked for about 10 minutes on a medium heat on the stove, but if you look at the chart, that means that approximately 40% of the alcohol content remained in the final product.

Since I can keep on rambling about this subject all day long, let me conclude this post for now. What am I trying to say in the end? Inform your guests of the ingredients you have used in your dishes, just in case someone is allergenic to something. Just because you have “cooked” the alcohol, it does not mean that it is all gone. Help spread the word and when someone tells you next time that the alcohol is evaporated, please correct them. There are lots of misconceptions about food going around. Especially when you combine alcohol!

Green Flash is a brewery based out of San Diego. They recently started distributing to Las Vegas a few months ago. You can find their beers for sale at Whole Foods, Khoury’s Fine Wine and probably a few other places. Currently you can taste their Palate Wrecker IPA on tap at Tenaya Creek Brewery and Aces & Ales. 

Le Freak is a blend of a Belgian Trippel and an American IPA. The result is wonderful. Bright, citrusy hops with a peppery, clovey aftertaste from the Belgian yeast. The bottle conditioning gives this beer a big, pillowy soft head. 

I have yet to taste a beer from Green Flash that is less than amazing. I look forward to tasting anything else they ship to Las Vegas!

Last week, the Whole Foods at Town Square held a beer pairing dinner with Sierra Nevada and Bit & Spur Restaurant in Springdale, Utah. The food and the beer was amazing, so I’m just going to cut to the chase and show you some pictures.

Gazpacho soup with roasted green chiles, tomato, cucumber, and garnished with a hard boiled egg and croutons.
Paired with Sierra Nevada Kellerweis
Kellerweis is a wheat beer, and a perfect companion to lightly spicy, flavorful soup. The soft textured, sweet beer cleanses the palate between each bite.

Smoked baby back riblets with red chile ketchup BBQ sauce with & citrus ginger cole slaw with fennel, apples, and pomegranate seed, ginger yogurt, lime dressing.
Paired with Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye
If you read my Ruthless Chicken article, you know that I love rye beers with barbecue. These ribs were no exception. The sweet smokey taste compliments the harsh, rustic IPA.

Picadillo empanada garnished with queso fresco & pico de gallo
Paired with Ovila Quad
Quad is probably the first Ovila beer that I’ve really liked. The malty sweetness was a good choice for the ground beef inside this empanada.

Warm brownie with espresso creme anglaise & raspberry coulis
Paired with Sierra Nevada Porter
You can never go wrong having a porter with desert.

As a bonus, we also got a taster of Sierra Nevada Hoptimum. Holy hell is that a bitter beer! Probably one of the most bitter beers I’ve had in a while. A must try for the hop heads!

The above photos were either taken by me or by Whole Foods. See the rest of Whole Foods’ photos here.

The Great Vegas Festival of Beer is back again this year at Tivoli Village on April 21st!

This was one of the better Las Vegas beer fests I attended last year. A lot of great beers from some great breweries.

The things I didn’t like about last year was the length of time it took to get into the festival, and how small and crowded the festival area was. It looks like Motley Brews learned from last year by adding an express lane for online ticket holders and three times more space than last year! Also exciting are some of the breweries that will be present this year that are new to the festival: Brewery Ommegang, Ballast Point, Uinta, and Green Flash, to name a few. Expect to see the local breweries on hand as well: Tenaya Creek, Joseph James, Chicago Brewing Company, and Big Dog’s Brewing Company.

More details, and pictures, can be found at Motley Brew’s website.

Hopefully you’ve heard of Anchorage Brewing Company by now. This brewery is less than a year old and yet it has been recognized by Ratebeer as the top new brewery of the year. Each of their beers are consistently recognized as having high scores on both Ratebeer and Beer Advocate.

Embrace the Funk has a great interview with Anchorage founder, Gabe Fletcher. What I didn’t realize, is that he runs the entire company by himself, in some space he’s renting from another brewery. His methods for using wild yeasts, aging and blending are worth the read. For homebrewers, he provides the recipe for Anchorage Love Buzz Saison.

Read the interview here.

It is surprising to me that craft beer drinkers are too often not always craft food eaters. Craft beer drinkers are often proud of the fact that their beers do not contain the adjuncts or chemicals that the large macro brewers use. However many will happily eat low quality, mass produced food.

When Stone brewery first opened their restaurant, they created a menu that contained as much of a focus on quality ingredients, as they have on their beer. The result was their guests often complaining that they didn’t sell cheap bar food. In addition to being the largest purchaser of organic food in San Diego, the brewery even purchased a farm last year so they can even start growing their own vegetables. Stone’s World Bistro and Gardens is a great resource for how to merge craft beer with high quality food.

Here in Vegas, we have several restaurants that do focus on both craft beer and food. Public House and Todd English’s PUB immediately come to mind, along with a few others. However, it isn’t practical for anyone to solely eat at these restaurants everyday, so what can someone do at home to enjoy both craft beer and food?

The first step is to start cooking, using as few prepared meals/ingredients as possible. Buy fresh meats and vegetables and prepare it yourself. I’m not saying you have to buy organic foods, and I’m not saying that you even have to eat “healthy” foods (though both are good options), all I’m saying is that you make your own food from fresh ingredients. Write down a few of your favorite foods, and look up recipes to make it yourself. If you love pizza, buy cheese, sauce, pepperoni, dough, and make it (even better, make your own dough). Do you like hamburgers? Heat up the grill and start making your own burgers. If you want to go to the bar and eat chicken fingers, then you should make your own. I guarantee that if you buy fresh chicken and make your own beer batter, it will taste better than anything you can buy in a bar where the focus is solely on making chicken fingers as quickly, and cheaply, as possible. There are many things added to these foods when you get them at your local bar that you would never use at home. Restaurant food is known for having ridiculously higher sodium levels than the freshly homemade equivalent. The fresher your ingredients, the more flavor the food will have and you will need less salt and fat to make it palatable. Even if it’s a bacon cheeseburger, the home cooked option is more likely to taste better and be better for you (bacon is a nutrient right?).

There are two things you will learn once you start pairing great food with great beer:

1. Great food will make a great beer taste better. The rich, hearty flavors in great dishes will match the quality of the beer and increase its refreshing characteristics.

2. Great beer will make your food taste better. Because the quality of the food matches the beer, the flavors in the beer will match the flavors in your food. The caramel sweetness in a brown ale will match, and increase, the sweetness in barbecue. The light tartness in a hefeweizen will match and highlight the lemon flavors in seafoods, salads, or other dishes seasoned with lemon. Because beer and food have so many similar flavors, you will find a near infinite amount of ways to match food with beer.

I am confident that once you begin to drink your beer with better quality food, you will enjoy both even more.
If you need help with recipes (especially ones using bacon and beer as ingredients) contact Hooked on Hops’ own contributor, Goran Cvijanovic. You can view a few of his recipes here on the site as well.

Earlier I mentioned the struggles Stone had getting their guests to enjoy and appreciate high quality food. You can read more about this, and even get some recipes from the restaurant in their book.

In keeping with the recent Joseph James articles, here’s another review.

When Joseph James had their brand relaunch at Khoury’s earlier this month, I was able to snag a bottle of their Roasted Coconut Pumpkin Porter. This is part of their “Rough Draft” series. These beers are in progress and are not available for sale.

This beer had an incredible smell. Neither the coconut or pumpkin overwhelmed the other. This was also evident in the taste as well. The two main ingredients went together incredibly well. This was more of a brown porter style, so the sweetness in the malts also brought out the sweetness in the pumpkin flavors.

The aspects that were lacking in this beer were body and carbonation. It was a bit thin and flat for a porter. It is important to remember that this is a rough draft beer, and as such is a work in progress. These are very easy issues to fix and the fact that these are the only issues in an in-progress beer is nothing to hold against it.

I really hope they make this beer again and release it as a seasonal. This would be a great fall/winter beer to drink by the fire. Or even better, as an ice cream float!

Joseph James Brewing Company has always made decent beer. However, I generally thought that their beers were missing something.
Recently, Joseph James altered their recipes and completely blew my expectations out of the water!
Hop Box went from being an average, bitter IPA to a “go out of your way for” beer! The hoppiness hits you right away and lingers on well after your last sip! Pair this beer with a cheese plate from Whole Foods Market, and I guarantee that you will not be disappointed!