My afternoon with Sam Adams

When I walked into the brewery there was a small television crew filming a red-cheeked woman making coffee.

“What is going on?” I inquired of the gentleman handing out tickets for the Sam Adams brewery beer tour.
“Some woman brews her own coffee. A local station is doing some piece on local beverages, I don't really know. Want to go on a brewery tour?”

And so my afternoon began at the Samuel Adams brewery in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. I wandered around the lobby reading Prohibition time lines and perusing a collection of antique beer bottles until a girl in tight jeans and a pair of Uggs called the crowd to assembly.

“Free beer,” she shouted, hoping to elicit a response from the twenty or so people gathered in the annals of the Boston Beer Company building. She didn’t look like much, but after the tour and tasting, this little lady convinced me that the Boston Beer Company is the work place of my dreams.

After an exhaustive history of the company, a run down of the raw ingredients and brewing process and a few samples of fresh beer, my tour guide stood around with me for a half hour or so and answered every inane and geeky question I had. She started working at the brewery during her third year in college and knew nothing about beer. Now, she has a vast knowledge of the beverage and is beginning to brew at home, a habit encouraged by her employers. My afternoon at the brewery brought about a couple of revelations for me:

1) When fresh, Sam Adams lager is one of the crispest, most thirst quenching brews I’ve ever tasted. It tastes like freedom.
2) I need to find a job in a brewery.

Local 2

Just in case you had something important to do, you may have not noticed the release of Brooklyn Breweries Local 2 last Friday. Although the beer has been available sporadically for about two weeks, Friday marked the official release date and coincided with a launch party at the brewery in Williamsburg.

The fiesta was rife with an eclectic mix of casual drinkers, local beer aficionados and a six-year-old child or two (Brooklyn Brewery is a family establishment after all). President Steve Hindy and brew master Garret Oliver were even present to speak although I got out of work late and wasn’t able to hear them. Despite my misfortune, I tasted the ambrosia and got to speak to Garret a bit about the long journey Local 2 took from idea to brew.

Local 2 is a much darker beverage than Local 1. It is brewed with dark sugars, local NY honey and a secret array of spices. It pours opaque with a tan, caramel colored head with a hint of spiciness in the aroma. It’s much heavier than Local 1, and has a pronounced chewy, almost bread like feel. Bubbling forth from my classy Brooklyn Brewery goblet, Local 2 is a sight to behold. Congrats to the brewery for another great beer! Definitely pick up a bottle when you can, there aren’t many American made 100% bottle fermented beers out there.

Taste of Success

Last week I was a fly on the wall.

A friend of mine is a photographer and was working an event at the City Winery in downtown Manhattan. The event, called Taste of Success, was a fundraiser put on by StreetWise Partners, an organization aimed at coupling large corporations and low-income individuals. I didn’t know any of this information when my buddy invited me to attend, but once he said there would be free food and drink, I agreed hands down.

After entering the City Winery, I was instantly thrown off by the power ties and high heels circling the crowd. Clad with my finest shirt tucked into my Levi’s, I questioned how the young lady in the three-inch pumps made her through the snow mounds on Varick Street. She did know there was a blizzard outside, didn’t she? I was gazing at my ice-crusted boots as my friend pulled me to a table to help him with his camera.

“Do you know what this thing is all about?” I asked.
“Not a clue. I’m kind of doing this as a favor to my friend.”
“Well,” I began as a woman sauntered across the floor in a strapless number, snow capped cars visible through the windows “can at least I taste some of this stuff?”
“Sure. I’m going to take a bunch of shots. Just help yourself.”

With that I was off. I heaped my tiny plastic plate with prosciutto spring rolls, crepe lasagna and an assortment of other goodies. After several laps, I saw a young man pouring drinks with an ornate water fountain. I made my way past a few clean-cut bankers to investigate his mysterious drinks.

“Absinthe,” he replied after my inquiries. Immediately, thousands of little flash bulbs went off in my head: green fairies, hallucinations, that sketchy bar in Canada when I was 18. I sheepishly asked for drink and began to bombard him with questions.

A couple of glasses and some time later I learned a few things about the beverage. Absinthe is composed of three main ingredients: anise, fennel and wormwood. The wormwood is what people attribute to the hallucinations, but like most storied beverages, it is just a myth. The fabled Green Fairy can be written off as a writer’s muse or attributed to a French nurse who gained the moniker after administering the herbal alcohol to patients with stomach maladies. I inquired about lighting the stuff on fire before drinking—careful not to admit I happily did just that in a Canadian bar—only to be assured it was a bartender’s trick, suitable more for entertainment than drinking.

Having my fill of information I made more rounds. I sampled Creole Paella, colored black by a Caribbean mushroom called jon-jon; I ate hotdog looking concoction that turned out to be smoked codfish on a brioche; I even had Port and Champagne sorbet, a delicious mix of alcohol and science created by Wine Cellar Sorbets. When I asked the woman pushing the boozy dessert if they were looking to make a beer sorbet in the future, she told me that it was possible. They are currently working on cocktail sorbets like gin and tonic so beer probably wasn’t too far behind. I pondered the thought of an all-natural, Guinness Stout sorbet and made my way to the bar.

Standing behind several bottles in a quiet corner of the event was gentleman from the Brandy Library. He poured a few scotches throughout the night for various business types but I noticed no on really took any time to inquire about what they were drinking, focusing instead on the leggy power brokers sampling the Rosé wines. I walked through the crowd and started to ask him about Scotch. Immediately, he pulled up glasses and started pouring. I told him I was in journalism—beer journalism to be exact—and we began chatting in terms of casks, malted barley, nutrient rich water and such. A few suits came up and requested single-malts in gruff voices, flashing smiles to the ladies patiently waiting for them. After they stumbled off with another free drink, I continued my alcoholic education.

I was always curious about scotch and other whiskeys, and this guy really blew my mind. He covered geography, laws and other minutia. We chatted for over a half hour and after learning about the pairing potential of a highly smoked scotch and fudge brownies, I shook his hand and parted ways. He agreed to chat with me in the future about the prized beverage and even hook me up with more folks in the industry. Satisfied and smelling of peat smoke and booze, and pushed through some overly absinthed future CEO’s shouting about the stock markets and one night stands and searched out my pal.

Peanut Butter and Salmonella Sandwiches anyone?

The recent peanut scare has put a spotlight on the safety of organic produce. A recent article has shed some light on aspects of the industry I’ve been skeptical of for a long time.

Throughout college I had to defend my badmouthing of certified organic foods and produce:

“But isn’t healthier for you?”
“It tastes better, doesn’t it?”
“They are more expensive but it’s worth it…right?”

My answer was always the same: it depends. While I have no problem with organics—I prefer my food as natural as possible—I’d repeatedly explained that it was the certification process, not the food I was against. My penchant for farmer’s markets and scrounging around my landlord’s garden was proof of my natural food obsession. However, when my friends would see my peppers and onions without that little green and white organic seal, the avalanche of accusations came.

After letting them in that the vegetables grown in my backyard were as organic as it got, I would describe how companies producing organic products had to pay for that holier-than-thou seal. In turn, the farms producing the ingredients for those products also had to pay. Despite the Department of Agriculture determining the standards for organic products, they had nothing to do with declaring the wares organic. This was left to various companies and officials who were paid by the producers looking to gain organic status.

“Wait a second,” they’d say, “the people who want the organic certification have to pay for it themselves?”

Exactly. Doesn’t that seem a little strange? Doesn’t that jeopardize the integrity of the system?

Another example was the Pennsylvanian farmers I dealt with on a weekly basis. These tiny operations didn’t have much money for anything, let alone organic seals. While I can’t be sure that every single one of them would adhere to the “no pesticides, no addictives, no hormones, no bull-shit” signs they would post over their stands, chatting with these people put my mind at ease about their agricultural practices. I’d much rather buy my produce from a local farmer without the seal thirty miles away than from a large, organic certified farm in California.

This isn’t to say that I go organic all the time. I’ve been known to eat an orange in the middle of March, but I do the best when I can. Buying organic isn’t all or nothing, but unless you do your part to be educated about you’re eating, you’re missing the point entirely.

Let's Get Savory

Enough of the sweet stuff! Some brown rice seasoned with onion and chili, sun-dried tomatoes and chopped almonds. Toss a lovely little fried egg on top and cover with Parmesan just to keep it interesting.


Nothing says morning breath like spicy, runny yolks.

Warm It Up

With more than a foot of snow on the ground the last thing I wanted to do was whip up some breakfast before rushing off to the restaurant. My groggy morning mind was trying to persuade me to whip together some of the same old for breakfast, but sheer will power—not to mention lack of bread and peanut butter, my morning staples—prevented me from doing so. Thus, in honor of the winter wonderland outside, I attempted to conjure up a toasty, SE Asian archipelago in my kitchen with some sweet coconut and ginger oatmeal.


P.S. It was delicious, but I still stepped into 12-inch mound of snow once I walked out of the door this morning.

Breakfast of Champions

Japanese Sencha.

Sometimes you just aren't that hungry in the morning.

...or sometimes you are still hurting from yesterday's hangover. Go figure.