Beer Trading

A new area of the beer world for us has been beer trading. Trading is easy enough to get into, the two ways we have arranged trades has been through Beer Advocate (www.beeradvocate.com) and Twitter . Beer Advocate gives you plenty of routes to trades with a "beer trading group" , member profiles can contain beers people want (wants) or beers they have (gots) and you can look up specific beers and see who "wants" or "gots" it. Trades via Twitter you have to be a little more lucky/daring/social for them to get done but we did an epic trade with @agirlandherbeer, a fellow tweeter, that we will discuss in another post.
Although not technically our first trade but our first completed trade was with a member of Beer Advocate. After several Beer Mails , intra-website emails on Beer Advocate, over the course of a few weeks we aquired a six pack of beer mostly from the Delaware area. The highlight of the trade was four beers from an up and coming brewery Evolution Craft Brewing Company ( www.evolutioncraftbrewing.com ). Evolution has just recently expanded their distribution and aquired more equipment so hopefully they will reach Mass soon so I don't have to trade for them. The beers we received were Exile ESB, No.3IPA, Lucky 7 Porter and Primal Pale Ale. All excellent beers with the Primal Pale Ale being my favorite. The other two beers we got as extras (beers or items added to the trade that were not discussed in the deal these enhance the trade ,a form of beer thank you/cheers) in the trade were Flying Fish Grand Cru Winter Reserve and Bells Christmas Ale. Also thrown in as an extra was a very nice tasting glass seen in the picture above.
Trading can be very rewarding with the chance to get beers not available in your area but it can get expensive. So if you haven't tried trading yet give it a go you never know what you might be able to get, small local brewery beers that don't distribute to your area or some rare beers that are hard to find no matter where you live. Good Luck happy trading.

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Review of Beer Summit Winter Jubillee

On Jan 14th and 15th of 2011 was the annual Beer Summitt Winter Jubillee held at the Park Plaza Castle. This years fest was incredible with aproximately 60 breweries and 200 beers. The fest seemed more organized and steamlined than past years. It also appeared to have more open spaces to relax in, as previous events left you feeling sardine like. The crowd as usual was very enthusiastic but not overly vocal as some other events with no known altercations happening at our session. As far as breweries mentioning all would be to much but for a rundown of our favorite/best of fest.
Brewery- Fishermans with two outstanding beers there Stout run thru coffee and the Accidental Eis-DIPA (keg partially froze in brewers trunk)
Blend- "CHUCK-BERRRRRRRYYY" which was Woodchuck Cider with Seadog Blueberry
Innovative Idea- Choklat Float a medallion of vanilla ice cream floated on Southern Tier Choklat.
Surprise- Cody Brewing after having a bad experience at another fest with their beer Cody came roaring back and blew us away. Their Brown was to form and the Whiskey Aged Stout phenominal (if bottled I need this)
New to Us- BNektar Meadary Mead is a new beverage for us and these guys really opened our eyes to the range of flavor available with T loving their Pyment (mead w/ grapes)
There were several other excellent showings Haverhill/TAP with their Joshua Norton Stout , Ithica 13 , Watch City 1yr old Kingpin Imperial Stout , Clown Shoes Tramp Stamp , as well as beers from DogFishHead , Lagunitas , Founders , Brooklyn , Victory Sam Adams and many others.

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New Years Eve 12/31/2010

New Years Eve 12/31/2010 , the perfect day to start up our blog. We decided to stay in and enjoy our 1st Beer and Cheese pairing and allow the "rookies" their night out. We picked up three cheeses to match with beers we already had at home.
Our 1st pair was Widmer The Drifter labeled as a Pale Ale with a Sharp Cheddar that had been aged for 2yrs. T noted that The Drifter seemed to have more characteristics of an IPA, even being a little cold it had a very hoppy aroma and a bitter bite. The Cheddar was delicious ,though I may be biased it being my favorite type of cheese, having a very sharp mouth watering taste. The mix of the two was very surprising the beer seemed to make the cheese almost creamy and the beer lost some of its bitterness and became more floral and citric in taste.
Next we moved on to Parmesan (due to a aweful Brie choice by A) paired with Maui Coconut Porter. The Parm was pretty standard in taste with a very grainy texture. The Porter was on point for a Robust Porter but we both had trouble picking up any coconut. Paired together they didn't blend as well as the 1st pairing but the earthy roasted quality of the Porter was subdued by the Parm and a subtle sweetness was brought out .
The final pairing of the night was the most intimidating of the 3, Anchor Foghorn and Stilton. The Stilton was very imposing not looking very appealing and definetly giving off some funk and tasting highly salty with lots of Umami (fun word to say). Anchor Foghorn a big beer (Barleywine) big in every way alcohol, maltiness and hops. We were having trouble seeing how these two could pair well, no matter what we read about pairings. After building a little courage (no doubt fortified by earlier beers) we dove into the pairing and both of us were surprised at how well they blended no longer to salty or funky of a cheese nor was the beer to big an experience tough to descibe .
To sum up the pairings I feel the Old Foghorn and Stilton paired the best followed by the Drifter and Cheddar with the Maui Coconut Porter and Parmesan coming in 3rd (slightly unfair to judge because it was a last second swap out of cheese for this pair).
We learned a lot in our 1st pairing of cheese with beer. 1)take some chances, try differant/new cheeses. 2)be prepared for mishaps, like picking a cheese that seems to have gone bad(dummy). 3) have fun with it food pairing guidelines are just that guidelines not hardcore rules.
To add 1 final footnote I would like to thank @agirlandherbeer from Twitter for the Maui Coconut Porter that she sent to us in a beer trade that I will blog about later.

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