Boiling the wort. Image by Lisa Bramen

I have found that one of the keys to harmony in my marriage is clear division of labor. I’m in charge of food acquisition and preparation (except one night a week, when my husband makes either pasta or pizza so I can write), paying bills, and general tidying. My partner is responsible for doing the dishes, most of the heavy housework (like cleaning the floors and bathrooms), and either mowing the lawn in summer or clearing the driveway of snow in winter. I’m pretty sure I got the better end of the bargain—here’s hoping he never develops an interest in cooking.

But sometimes it can be fun to tackle a kitchen project together, as we found this weekend, during our first attempt at brewing our own beer. After my last DIY food adventure, pickling vegetables from my garden, I was glad I didn’t have to go solo this time. As with the pickling, the process took a lot longer than expected—the better part of Sunday—but it went a lot more smoothly having two heads, and two sets of hands, rather than one.

Which is not to say there were no glitches. We followed a porter recipe from a nearby brewer’s supply store where we bought our ingredients. (There has probably never been a better time to take up home brewing—thanks to the explosion in interest in the past decade or so, supplies and information are readily available at bricks-and-mortar stores and online.)

The first step was to steep our specialty grains—a combination of three kinds of malted barley—in hot water, wrapped in cheese cloth like a giant tea bag. We accidentally spilled about a quarter of the grain in the sink while trying to pour it into the cloth. Everyone, from the supply store owner to the guys on the instructional video that came with our brewing kit to the authors of the book we bought on brewing, had drummed the importance of sanitation into my husband’s head. (After reading the book before bedtime, he actually muttered in his sleep, “It’s all about cleanliness.”) We didn’t dare try to salvage the spilled grain, even though the sink was clean. So we decided to compensate for the lost grain by steeping the remainder longer. I’m hoping we don’t end up with two cases of watery porter.

Next we added malt extract, which looks like the sludge left in an engine that’s overdue for an oil change but smells pleasantly, well, malty. This we boiled, along with the hops, for about an hour. Or, it would have taken an hour, if our 1961 stove weren’t so dysfunctional. The large front burner goes on strike about as often as an Italian train worker. At some point we realized our rolling boil had slowed to barely a simmer. And since the five-gallon pot wouldn’t fit on the back burner under the second oven, we had to move it to the small front burner. Again, we added a little extra time to compensate.

The beer in the early stages of fermenting

Finally we had our wort, which is what gets poured into the fermenter (a glass carboy) along with some yeast. At this point we would have used our hydrometer to measure the original gravity before fermentation—later readings will tell us how fermentation is going, because the reading will get lower as the sugars turn into alcohol—but we didn’t realize until too late that the hydrometer had shipped broken. The supplier sent out a new one and assured us it wasn’t a big deal to not get an original reading.

A couple of days later, our batch appears to be fermenting nicely; it has developed a good mound of foam on top, called Kräusen. By next weekend, it should be ready for racking, or siphoning into another carboy for secondary fermentation without the spent yeast sediment that has settled to the bottom of the first carboy. Once fermentation is complete, we’ll add a little corn sugar to aid carbonation before bottling.

By Christmas, we’ll either have two cases of delicious porter under the tree or 48 bottles to reuse/recycle and some brewing lessons under our belt. Either way, we’ll have a new hobby to share.

Scientists recently discovered the wild yeast that came to be used to brew lager beer. Image courtesy of Flickr user Anders Adermark.

People have been tossing back beer for thousands of years—the drink is a cornerstone of human civilization—and it’s a potation whose heady qualities come to us by way of yeast. Perhaps most familiar to us in the granulated form stocked on supermarket shelves, yeast is a single-celled microorganism that creates the alcohol and carbon dioxide in beer, in addition to imparting flavors, all of which can vary depending on the type of yeast being used. (More than 800 species of yeast have been documented.) A variety of this fungus commonly used to bake bread and brew ale beers is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which ferments at a warm 70 degrees. But at some point in the 15th century, Bavarian brewers introduced lager, which employed a hybrid yeast that fermented at cooler temperatures. But what the S. cerevisiae was crossed with to craft this type of beer remained a mystery until now.

Scientists from the Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and elsewhere set out to find where the non-ale portion of the lager yeast came from—and the search took them to Patagonia. Here, in outgrowths on beech trees, they found an undocumented wild yeast—dubbed Saccharomyces eubayanus—whose DNA sequence matched the genome of the unknown half of the lager yeast. They hypothesize that this wild yeast made its way to Europe by way of trans-Atlantic trade and mixed with the baker’s yeast in brewery environments.

But with lagers being brewed before Europeans graced North America, how did this variety of beer initially come to exist? Chris Hittinger, one of the lead scientists on the study, suggests that lagers were made before the arrival of S. eubayanus, and while the beer underwent a long fermentation process in cool temperatures, the resulting brew just didn’t taste very good.

Blackstrap molasses. Image courtesy of Flickr user FotoosVanRobin.

People between North Carolina and Vermont are cleaning up after Irene, the storm that destructively tromped along the eastern seaboard this past weekend. Hurricanes in the northeast are pretty rare and can leave people at a loss for how to prepare for extraordinarily severe conditions. At the very least, there are standard pieces of advice you can use to more or less muddle through a nasty situation. But perhaps even rarer are freak events involving food that cause a lot of damage. Those with an appetite for tragic tales might enjoy the following:

London Beer Flood: In the late 18th century, the Meux family brewery attained celebrity status, at least on account of the spectacular size of the vats they used to craft porter—one had the capacity to hold some 20,000 barrels of beer. Unfortunately, the hoops holding one of the vats together had corroded, and on the evening of October 17, 1814, they completely gave out, loosing some 3,500 barrels of beer that knocked down the brewery walls and flooded Tottenham Court, killing eight.

The Great Mill Disaster: Built in 1874, the Washburn “A” Mill along sat along the east bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota and at the time was the largest flour-making facility in the United States. “Was,” unfortunately, is the operative word. On the evening of May 2, 1878, the stones used to grind grain gave off sparks, igniting particles of flour dust in the air and causing a massive explosion. (Flour, a carbohydrate, is made mostly of sugar and burns very easily.) In all, 18 people were killed and the blast started other fires that destroyed six nearby mills.

Boston Molasses Disaster: In Boston’s North End, near the city’s financial district and working class Italian neighborhoods, there stood a molasses tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company. Built in 1915, the vat was capable of holding some 2.5 million gallons; however, by 1919, locals were complaining that it was leaking, and on the afternoon of January 15, it exploded. Flying metal knocked out the supports of nearby elevated train tracks and a 15-foot-high wave of molasses crashed through the streets at some 35 miles per hour, knocking down and enveloping people in its path. Parts of Boston were standing in two to three feet of molasses and the disaster left 21 dead and 150 injured.

Basra Mass Poisoning: In the winter of 1971, shipment of grain arrived in Basra, Iraq; however, it was treated with a methylmercury fungicide and was intended only for use on seed. (If ingested, methylmercury can cause serious neurological damage, and in high doses, can be deadly.) The bags were accordingly marked poison—although only in English and Spanish—and the grains were dyed bright pink to indicate they were not for consumption. Nevertheless, bags of grain were stolen before they could be distributed to farmers, the dye washed off and the grain sold as food. (Another account says that the grain was freely given away and the recipients thought that washing off the dye would rid the grain of mercury, making it safe to eat.) Some 6,500 people were hospitalized, 459 of whom died.

Chocolate Stout Milk Shake. Image courtesy of Flickr user Accidental Hedonist.

In John Steinbeck‘s 1945 novel Cannery Row, the loner marine biologist Doc loves his beer—so much that one of his friends jokingly remarks that one of these days he’ll order a beer milk shake. ”It was a simple piece of foolery, but it had bothered Doc ever since,” Steinbeck writes. “He wondered what a beer milkshake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn’t let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn’t forget it…. If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known—they might call the police.”

Doc eventually gets over his neuroses at an out-of-town diner and orders the shake—half a bottle of beer added to some milk, no sugar—under the pretense that it’s doctor’s orders to help treat an infection. The resulting flavor, described as nothing more than the sum of its dairy and stale ale components, hardly sounds appetizing, and Doc’s post-swig twisted facial expressions pretty much say it all. So from there on out, I’m guessing he probably went back to pairing beer with savory foods, like hamburgers, which is what most of us do. But who’s to say you can’t find beers fit for a dessert course?

Greg Engert, the beer director at Churchkey and Birch and Barley restaurants here in DC, chatted with Smithsonian online reporter Megan Gambino a while back about beers to sub in for New Year’s champagne toasts. It only seemed fitting to pick his brain over e-mail about brews to satisfy the sweet tooth and how to incorporate them into the dessert course of a meal.

When did people start brewing beers meant to appeal to the sweeter part of our palate?

Beer, as a fermented grain-based beverage, has always displayed some degree of residual sweetness. In fact, most beers would have displayed very little “sweetness” as we today comprehend that sensation. Until the technological innovations that began in the early 18th century and culminated in the 19th, beer would have for the most part been much lower in alcohol than today’s variants, had a dark hue, almost always shown some sort of roasty or even smoky quality (both on account of primitive malting techniques), and would have also almost exclusively displayed at least a mild acidity, as well as a sort of earthy, somewhat funky quality we would now mostly associate with Old World wine (due to a lack of yeast science, more rustic brewing techniques and equipment, as well as the affection for such flavors).

I think the larger desire for sweetness is a 20th-century invention, and one only made possible by technological advancements, then instilled in a larger culture with the advent of processed food, as well as with Prohibitionist movements that swept the West with a flurry. I like to remind people that with the United States’ nearly 15 years of the Great Experiment, a generation of young men and women grew up without tasting alcohol, and soft drinks swooped in to ensure that soda-pop, and simplified, concocted—i.e., unnatural—sweetness would remain an indelible part of our world.

What qualities make a beer suitable to serve as (or with) a dessert?

Sweeter, grain-based flavors offer beer as a companion to so much of our foods, as they allow for ales and lagers to complement the sweeter notes that abound in all aspects of cuisine. I am not just talking about sugary sweetness, but starchy sweetness, as well as the sweeter notes inherent in the fatty, protein-laden, buttery tastes we discover in so much of the dishes we enjoy. Beer’s matching with food is extremely complex and many interactions are contained within the felicity of food and beer.

So, when most people think dessert, they think of sweetness, and beer certainly has that covered. Malty beers arrive on the palate showing fantastic notes of toasted bread, biscuits, nuttiness, caramel, butterscotch, toffee. These are all flavors we find in desserts. And beers can very emphatically showcase chocolaty and coffee notes in those darker brews with roasty notes. Fruitier flavors abound in some of the maltier styles already mentioned, but are also seen in the yeast-driven brews, which—through fermentation—produce boldly fruity and spicy notes. These are typically stronger Belgian ales, with those that are lighter in color tasting of apple, pear, peach, orange, lemon, banana, apricot and figs, as well as clove, pepper, cinnamon, vanilla and coriander. The darker varieties offer banana, fig, prune, raisin, cherry, plum and vinous flavors. Spices arrive in the guise of clove, pepper, rose, nutmeg and cinnamon. Some of the funky and sour brews, the Flanders red and brown ales, the fruit lambics, are also excellent for not just showing off fruitier flavors, but reminding us that their acidity is often present in fruit itself. So fresh fruit desserts can work nicely with these drinks that are actually more naturally similar to the fruits themselves. And this is to say nothing of the beers that are brewed with many adjuncts to either establish or heighten the flavors of the beer. We have malty beers brewed with hazelnut nectar, roasty stouts with cacao nibs and sweeter Belgian lambics crafted with fruit, or at least fruit juices.

Can you pair beers with more traditional dessert offerings?

Beers can pair well with so many desserts it is mind-boggling. The ability to identify very emphasized flavors in our beers, like chocolate, fruit or nuttiness, makes it so pairing beer and dessert is quite an approachable endeavor, and one that is instantly rewarding. The easiest approach is to look to mirror the flavors of the dessert with flavors found in certain beers; however, one needs to make sure that the impact of flavors from both are even, otherwise a light and airy dessert will be overwhelmed by a rich and boozy brew, even if they share certain major flavor effects. The same is true for a bold and rich dessert when paired with a lighter and more restrained ale or lager.

Think like a pastry chef and approach your pairings as if you are continuing to craft the dessert. To that end, in addition to looking for complementary flavors, matching fruit with fruit and chocolate with chocolate, one can seek to forge new complimentary relationships on the palate. So perhaps bringing a stronger Belgian dark ale to that chocolate cake, rather than the imperial stout; the Belgian will show some caramel and hints of cocoa to mirror those flavors in the cake, while adding some delicious dark fruit and spice flavors to add a complimentary nuance to the dessert. The same would work for bringing a nutty, toffee sweet barleywine the cake: this dusts the slice with shaved hazelnuts and drizzles of caramel.

What would your top recommendations be for dessert beers and what draws you to these particular brews?

Top styles for dessert beers fall into these categories. They should typically be bolder brews, as dessert comes at the end of the meal and the palate may struggle to fully engage milder flavors. Also, desserts tend to be richer, or at least intensely flavored.

Malty, bready, nutty, caramelized brews: English strong ale, barleywine, Scotch ale (aka Wee Heavy), doppelbock, eisbock

Roasty and chocolaty brews: sweet stout, oatmeal stout, porter, Baltic porter, Belgian stout, brown ale, imperial stout

Fruity, spicy, sweeter brews with brighter notes: sweet fruit beer/sweet fruit lambic (brewed with strawberry, raspberry, cherry, peach, apple, etc.), Belgian strong blond ale, tripel, Belgian strong pale ale, Weizenbock (pale), wheatwine

Fruity, spicy, sweeter brews with darker notes: dubbel, Belgian strong dark ale, Weizenbock (dark), quadrupel

Tart, funky, fruity brews: Flanders red/brown ale, traditional fruit lambic; blond, pale and dark wild ales

So perhaps if Doc were a little more beer-savvy before going into the diner, he could have had a better milk shake. He’s not the only one who has been intrigued by the pairing—and some even find it preferable to enjoying beer on its own.

Putting beer koozies to the test. Photo credit: Lisa Bramen

With the official kick-off of outdoor barbecue season this weekend also comes an alarming increase in beer waste. According to the Bureau of Bogus Statistics I Totally Just Made Up, as much as a third of every beer opened during the summer months goes unconsumed. The primary reason: the beer has gotten warm. When the mercury climbs, canned and bottled beverages don’t stand a chance of remaining palatably cold to the finish. With sodas or mixed drinks, it’s no big deal—just add ice. But beer doesn’t taste good with ice (even, in my opinion, when “ice” is just in the name).

Some people might say, “I don’t have that problem. I drink my beer in one long guzzle so it never has a chance to get warm.” Those people might have problems beyond warm beer.

For the rest of us, some marketing genius out there invented the koozie. The koozie, in case you are unfamiliar with the term, is a little foam insulating sleeve that fits around an aluminum can or, in more recent versions, a bottle. No one seems to know the origin of the name (or of the product itself, which became popular sometime in the 1980s), but my best guess is that it is a corruption of the word “cozy”—as in a tea cozy, meant to keep the teapot warm—with an extra “o” so it sounds like “cool.” Switching the “c” to a “k” must have been a byproduct of the era when bastardized spellings and superfluous umlauts were considered cool (see “Mötley Crüe”).

Whatever the origin, the koozie has several undeniable benefits: It keeps your hand from getting cold and covered in condensation. It’s a good way to identify one’s beer at a party, where it could easily be confused with look-alikes—the second most common cause of beer waste, according to the BBSITJMU. It can be used as camouflage: a friend of mine who was pregnant, but not ready to reveal her status to friends, covered her nonalcoholic beer in a koozie to avoid arousing suspicion. Finally, it’s a personal billboard, allowing you to proclaim your allegiance to a sports team; declare important sentiments, like that you’re “not as think as you drunk I am”; or go formal with a tuxedo koozie. You can even support independent crafters by buying felted, crocheted or cowhide koozies on Etsy.com.

But how well do they actually work at keeping your beverage cold? In the interest of preventing beer waste, I put them to the test. Recently, my husband and I conducted an experiment with three bottles of beer: I held one in a koozie, my husband held one without, and a third one, also koozieless, was set down between sips. We drank them at the same rate, alternating between the two held beers and the third beer, stopping at five-minute intervals to evaluate the temperature. The air temperature was 67 degrees Fahrenheit (not exactly sweltering, but it was early evening).

Within five minutes, there was already a subtle but noticeable difference between the beers we were holding—with koozie and without—and the unhandled one. The latter was still frosty, while the others had already started to lose their chill. The gap widened over the next ten minutes. At 15 minutes, the one without the koozie was warmer than the one with, but the unhandled beer was still coldest. Finally, at the 20-minute mark, all three were less than refreshing, but the one that had been held least remained coolest.

Our conclusion: the koozie helped, but not as much as limiting the beer’s time in hand.

Would the results have been different if we were using cans? If the air temperature had been warmer (especially if it had been warmer than human body temperature)? If we had a beer in a koozie that we set down between sips?

Hard to say. If any science-minded beer drinkers out there care to conduct their own experiments, be sure to let us know the results.

What is a pint, exactly? Photo courtesy of Flickr user add1sun

Beer is the only consumable I can think of that is so associated with its standard serving measure that you can say, “let’s go for a pint,” and everyone knows what you’re talking about—it’s not a pint of milk.

But is a pint always a pint? It depends on where you are. Some countries legislate the size of a beer, but in the United States alcohol laws tend to be aimed solely at restricting where and when it’s sold. A standard U.S. pint is 16 ounces (473 milliliters), but it’s not governed by law—bars can serve beer in whatever size glasses they want.

Things get more confusing overseas, as I learned on my recent visit to Australia. There, beer sizes vary from state to state. In Sydney, most people order by the schooner—or, because Australians give everything a nickname, the “schooey”—which is about 425 milliliters. In Melbourne, you can order a pot, which is 285 milliliters, according to this handy-dandy chart. Many pubs (frequently called, confusingly, hotels) also offer pints, but in my experience Australians preferred to order the smaller sizes. This is not necessarily a reflection of a culture of moderation (also in my experience), although drunk driving laws are very strict there. My guess is that because it gets so hot there, shorter glasses make it easier to keep a cold one always at hand. On one very muggy afternoon walking around Melbourne, it was great to be able to duck into a pub for a quick pot whenever we needed a respite, without getting soused.

Not so in the mother country. In Britain, the Imperial pint—equal to 568 milliliters—has been the legal beer measure since 1698, and woe to the publican who pulls a short pint. On request, half- or third-pints (for a sampler) are also available. Now the country is considering amending the law to allow a new size akin to the Australian schooner, or about 3/4 of a pint. The concern isn’t less-than-frosty beer—Brits have a not-entirely-accurate reputation for preferring their brews warmish—but public health. As the Associated Press reported, while per capita alcohol consumption had decreased in many European countries since 1970, in Britain consumption had increased by 40 percent. The hope is that, given a choice of a smaller serving, many people will drink less at a sitting.

Germany, a country so serious about its brew that its Reinheitsgebot dictated what ingredients could be used in German beer, keeps it simple with the metric system. There, the Maß—a full liter, or nearly double an Imperial pint—is the standard glass size, though half-liters are also available. I’m guessing this was not one of the countries where beer consumption has declined. Of course, with those heavy beer steins, you could probably consider drinking beer in Germany a weight-bearing exercise. Watch out Zumba—I smell a new fitness craze on the horizon.

Anyone who watched American television in the 1980s probably remembers the Australia tourism commercials with Paul Hogan (aka Crocodile Dundee) saying he’d “slip another shrimp on the barbie” for us. Never mind that Australians don’t use the word “shrimp”—they call them prawns—the catchphrase stuck, along with its concession to American nomenclature.

A chicken gets a beercanectomy. Photograph by Lisa Bramen

It is true, though, that Aussies love a barbecue. In the two weeks I was there over the holidays, I attended no fewer than four. Most featured sausages and marinated chicken, usually served with ketchup (or tomato sauce, as they call it) as the only condiment. But one barbecue was different.

The friends I stayed with in Melbourne are a bi-continental married couple—the Australian husband, Konrad, met his American wife, Nikki, while she was studying abroad in Queensland—who had returned to his homeland after about seven years in the States. During his time in America, including a year in Jacksonville, Florida, Konrad had developed a deep appreciation for Southern-style barbecue. Since returning home, with nowhere local to sate his cravings, he had bought a smoker and made it his project to learn how to replicate his favorite foods himself. During my visit he planned a backyard bash to introduce his Aussie friends to a barbecue with all the Dixie fixin’s—pulled pork, brisket and beer-can chicken with four kinds of homemade barbecue sauce on the side, plus potato salad, macaroni and cheese, baked beans and cornbread. Sweet tea and mint juleps were on the drink menu.

But first we had to go shopping. It turned out that the main ingredient in cornbread—cornmeal—was not stocked at local supermarkets. We tracked down a Spanish market in the artsy Fitzroy neighborhood (the Melbourne equivalent of New York’s Williamsburg or L.A.’s Los Feliz) where we found a package of P.A.N. brand, which had a drawing of a sassy-looking lady with her hair tied up in a polka-dotted scarf.

Naughty Pan, drinking on the subway! Photograph by Lisa Bramen

Since we were out for the rest of the afternoon and evening, this meant carrying around a sack of cornmeal everywhere we went. “Pan” became a kind of mascot, and we took a series of photos with “her” that became increasingly ridiculous as the night wore on.

Konrad and Nikki spent the better part of the next day preparing for the feast that afternoon. For the most part, the food seemed to be a hit with the Aussies. The biggest surprise was the baked beans—over there, as in England, baked beans are most commonly eaten at breakfast with eggs and toast. Their version comes out of the Heinz can in a relatively bland tomato sauce without the zip of BBQ baked beans, and some of the guests were downright excited about having them in this new context. The macaroni and cheese and the smoked meats and sauces also got raves.

As for the cornbread, I think Pan, which was pre-cooked, was the kind of cornmeal meant for arepas (delicious South American corn fritters) and not quite right for American cornbread. Although I didn’t get to try the resulting corn muffins before they disappeared at the party, they must have tasted alright anyway.

Maybe next time, they’ll introduce the Aussies to one of my favorite Southern dishes, shrimp and grits. But I’m sorry, y’all, “prawns and grits” just sounds wrong.

Beer guru Greg Engert recommends some sparkling beers to toast this New Year's Eve in lieu of champagne. Courtesy of Powers & Crewe.

Perhaps it is because I associate it with that stomach-ache-inducing sparkling grape juice I gulped down during so many New Year’s Eves as a kid, but I am not a huge fan of champagne.

So my ears perked up when I heard that the Boston Beer Company (the maker of Samuel Adams) and Germany’s Weihenstephan, the world’s oldest brewery, were teaming up to unveil a bubbly brew called Infinium that blurred the line between sparkling wine and beer, just in time for the holidays. The festive effervescence of champagne with the hoppy flavor of beer sounded like it could be the perfect combination, and I wondered if there were other “toastable” hybrids out there.

Greg Engert seemed to be the guy to ask. He is the beer director at ChurchKey, a swanky beer bar in northwest Washington, D.C., and Birch & Barley, its sister restaurant downstairs, where he curates an impressive collection of craft beer: 500 bottles, 50 taps and five cask-conditioned ales. Both the bar and restaurant, which opened in October 2009, have been huge successes, and Engert’s hand in them hasn’t gone unnoticed. In April, Engert became the first-ever beer professional to be named one of Food & Wine magazine’s “Sommeliers of the Year.”

Engert was preparing for ChurchKey’s big New Year’s bash (tickets still available for an open bar of 55 drafts and samples from Greg’s “secret stash”) when I spoke with him earlier this week. ”I wouldn’t say I dislike champagne per se,” he said, “but I find that flavor options for sparkling wine are only subtly different. Craft beer, on the other hand, always provides the effervescence of a sparkler, but can do so with a wider range of tastes and aroma. You can enjoy roasty or even smoky flavors, caramel, toffee, toasty and nutty notes, herbal and citric hop freshness, or even fruit and spice aromatics that tend toward the darker side—plum, raisin, cherry—or lighter—peach, banana, apple.”

Engert seemed as ebullient as the beers he has on tap, explaining how the methods of making beer and champagne can be quite similar. A popular trend, he says, is for beers to undergo a secondary fermentation at a winery, in much the same way that sparkling wine does. And, as I had hoped, he offered up some recommendations.

So, now, without further ado, I present to you Engert’s top picks for beers to toast this New Year’s Eve!

Bubbly & Brut-esque: DeuS: Brut Des Flandres | Brouwerij Bosteels | East Flanders, Belgium

This beer is fittingly titled the “Brut” of Flanders, as much of its production mirrors that of the finest brut wines of France, albeit crafted of malted barley initially in the Flemish north. The straw pallor signals the intense dryness to come, no doubt engendered in congress with the méthode traditionnelle*. Post primary fermentation it is dosed with sugar and wine yeast, then carried to Rheims, France (the capital of all things Champagne). Only there is it bottled where it can continue to re-ferment for three to four weeks. More than a year’s maturation at cellar temperature then occurs, after which is riddling (3 to 4 weeks), then disgorgement. What remains is an ethereal brew, delicately emboldened.                                                                 * Note: Though Engert’s other three picks are brewed by similar methods, this is the only one made in the méthode traditionnelle.

Bubbly & Roasty: Black OPS | Brooklyn Brewery | New York

Here is an imperial stout loaded with intensely deep flavors of cocoa, caramel and espresso that is further layered by its four-month maturation in oak barrels once used to age Woodford Reserve Bourbon. Vanilla, spice, toast and coconut tastes abound in a brew that might have ended up heavier on the palate had it not been bottled flat, then re-fermented with wine yeast normally reserved for primary fermentation in sparkling wine. Black OPS ends up neither heavy nor sticky, but rather creamy and tantalizing while losing nothing of its mature character.

Bubbly & Tart & Funky: Hanssens Oude Gueuze | Hanssens Artisanaal | Flemish Brabant, Belgium

The “Champagne of Beers” as a moniker could have originally been applied to Gueuze Lambic, the classic-rustic brew of the Payottenland, a valley surrounding the river Zenne, which flows through—and even under—Brussels. While beer has been brewed in countless regions for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, this region has altered their brewing path very little over the centuries. Airborne wild yeasts and bacteria begin the ale’s ferment, and continue along with a hoard of microscopic brethren in oak casks for a number of years. The Gueuze style is naturally re-fermented, but not by some careful “méthode” or more modern bottle conditioning practice; the Gueuze is a blend of Lambic that has wildly fermented in oak barrels for one, two and three years. The still hungry and now starved micro flora of the three-year-old thread feed upon the as yet unfermented one- and two-year-old beers’ sugars and a natural fermentation results. Sparkling, yes. But wildly tart, earthy and even funky. These are rare craft-made ales that not only astound in their astonishing simplicity, but also stand as a sort of revenant of what beer once was…and is. And will be.

Bubbly & Hoppy: Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Grand Cru | Our Brewers Reserve, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company | California

This is the final installment in the series of artisanal beers brewed to celebrate Sierra Nevada’s 30 years of craft brewing. It consists of two hoppy brews (Celebration Ale & Bigfoot), aged in oak barrels, then blended with fresh Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. While malty and firm on the palate, with vanilla notes from the wood, it exudes huge herbal and citric hop notes in the nose. Stunningly generous, as the re-fermentation serves to exude powerful effervescence that both brightens the texture and pushes the aromatic envelope as well.

For the next round of Inviting Writing, and to celebrate the impending new year, we’re seeking your stories about “first taste” experiences.

To be considered for publication, please e-mail your submissions to FoodandThink@gmail.com by this Friday (Dec. 17) morning. We’ll read through all of them and pick our favorites to edit and publish on subsequent Mondays through mid-January. Just a reminder, we’re looking for true, original personal narratives of roughly 500 to 1,000 words. The rest of the details are up to you!

I’ll start with an example…

My Goodness, My Guinness
By Amanda Bensen

Ever heard the term “goody two-shoes?” That was me in high school, and that was still me at 19, as I entered my junior year of college. Up until then, I had never had an alcoholic drink. After all, I wasn’t 21—and underage drinking was not only illegal, but at my college it was an offense that could get you expelled (along with having opposite-sex visitors in your room overnight, or with the door closed).

Guinness, courtesy of Flickr user Paul Watson

But my junior year was different. I was studying abroad in England, where the drinking age was only 18, which meant that the mysterious world of alcohol was suddenly wide open to me. I was eager to experience British culture, and I quickly discerned that drinking was a necessary part of this—even the church I visited held its “young adults’ Bible study” at a pub.

When Ryan, another American student in my program, heard that I’d never had a drink, he was both incredulous and adamant that we remedy this strange condition immediately. He dragged me into a pub on the outskirts of Oxford. It was early on a weekday evening, and the place was quiet. We sat at the bar, where a handful of middle-aged men were silently watching television and nursing pints of beer.

“She’ll have a Guinness, and so will I,” Ryan announced loudly, as if this were something extraordinary. The bartender smirked as he handed us our drinks. I was about to take a sip when Ryan stopped me.

“Wait,” he said, lowering his voice. “Just so you know, this is a real local pub, not a tourist trap. They know how to drink. That means you have to take at least an inch or two out of the glass in your first swig, or they’ll probably laugh you right out of here.”

I was alarmed. That wouldn’t be a good way to experience the local culture. So, I took a big gulp, choking slightly and getting foam on my nose in the process. It tasted bitter, but not bad…kind of like dark chocolate, or coffee. I liked it!

Trying to ignore the fact that the other customers were now watching us more than the television, we hunched over our pints and tried not to talk. I looked at the vintage beer ads displayed on the pub’s wall, with slogans like “Lovely day for a Guinness” and “My goodness, my Guinness!” and debated whether it would be nerdy or cool to mention that I was reading a biography of the British mystery author Dorothy Sayers, who wrote those slogans in the 1930s. I was hoping it would help prepare me for a tutorial on C.S. Lewis I’d be taking that fall, since Sayers was a friend of his. Probably nerdy, I decided.

By the time my pint was nearly drained, Ryan was already finishing his second. “What did you have for dinner?” he asked. I said I hadn’t had dinner yet.

He put on a look of mocking seriousness (although the mocking part went straight over my head at the time).

“What?!? No food in your stomach? That means you’re going to be sick in…” he looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”

I felt fine, but he sounded certain, so I was worried. We tossed a handful of pound coins down on the bar and hurried out to the street in search of a quick bite. With only five minutes left in our ridiculous countdown, we found a food truck. I ordered a tray of fries and a greasy veggie burger, and downed them quickly, as if they were medicine. I don’t know how Ryan managed to keep such a straight face through it all.

By the end of that year, I was the one dragging visiting friends to the local pubs, although I never got into heavy drinking. After buying me eight shots in a row one night without seeing any effect, Ryan declared me the best drinking buddy he’d ever seen: “Such a tolerance! Never seen anything like it in a girl!”

What he didn’t realize is that I was the one doing the leg-pulling this time — it was a dark pub, there was nothing behind my chair but a dead-end stairwell, and I’d been tossing the shots over my shoulder the whole time.

I’ve long since lost touch with Ryan, but I still love Guinness.

A perfect Oktoberfest meal: pretzels and beer. Courtesy of Flickr user kalleboo

Tomorrow at noon local time, the lord mayor of Munich will tap the first keg of Oktoberfest beer, signifying the beginning of the German city’s 200th Oktoberfest. For two weeks thousands of locals and tourists will gather in giant tents and drink liter-size steins of beer (for the metrically challenged, that’s nearly two pints), and occasionally wine, as they rock out to traditional oom-pah-pah music. It’s never a good idea to drink a lot of beer on an empty stomach, so Brotfrauen (bread women) are on hand to sell pretzels the size of a briefcase.

I’ve never been to the official Oktoberfest, but I did become acquainted with Bavarian-style pretzels when I spent a summer in Munich during college. As part of my German language studies, I went on a work-exchange program and was placed as a chambermaid at a luxury hotel in the center of town. I was a vegetarian at the time and, if I had done a little culinary research, I would probably have chosen to study Italian or Hindi instead of German. I survived the summer in that meat-loving land eating mostly ice cream, the little chocolates I was supposed to be putting on hotel guests’ pillows, and pretzels.

There are two kinds of pretzels most Americans are familiar with—the hard-baked packaged ones and the warm, squishy salt-encrusted kind sold at baseball games and carnivals—but neither is anything like Bavarian Brezeln (as pretzels are called in German). In fact, the difference between an American soft pretzel and a Bavarian one is about as stark as between a Lender’s bagel and an Ess-a-Bagel bagel (or a Montreal bagel, for that matter). The secret, according to a recent New York Times article (which also notes the recent fashion for artisanal pretzels in New York), is lye. Lye is a caustic substance traditionally used to make soap. It also imparts a unique, almost glossy, finish to the exterior of a German pretzel, resulting in a bread that is crunchy outside and soft inside (the causticity of the lye disappears when the pretzel is baked). These specimens are a deeper brown and a lot more flavorful than their American counterparts. They can be eaten with mustard but, again, we’re talking a whole different substance than daffodil-hued French’s. Bavarian mustard can be spicy, sweet or both, sometimes with the whole grains of mustard seed still intact.

Many sources say the pretzel was actually invented by a medieval Italian monk, who used scraps of leftover dough to fashion a treat shaped like a child’s arms crossed in prayer. This explanation didn’t make any sense to me, since I had never seen anyone cross their arms in prayer, but apparently this is the traditional way for children who are not ready to receive communion to receive a priest’s blessing. (Some Mormons also pray with crossed arms, but pretzels have been around a lot longer than Latter Day Saints.) The English and German words for pretzel may have ultimately derived from the Latin word brachiatus, meaning “with arms.”

Fans of the TV series Seinfeld remember the episode where Kramer earnestly rehearses his single line in a Woody Allen movie—”These pretzels are making me thirsty.” Utter that line in an Oktoberfest tent, and someone might just hand you a liter of beer (or at least point you in the direction of the Kellnerin, or beer seller).

Beer is a nice drink served...warm? Photo courtesy of Flickr user nagzi

Years ago, before I ever traveled overseas, I remember hearing that English people drink warm beer. This sounded disgusting, of course, because the only “warm” beer I had ever tasted was the dregs of a cup of Miller or Budweiser from a college keg party that I had drunk too slowly. A few years later I spent some time in the United Kingdom, where I discovered, lo and behold, that their pubs were not devoid of refrigeration. In fact, beers were served at various temperatures according to what type they were. If you ordered a lager, it came chilled, but if you ordered an ale, it was only cool. Some brews were served at room temperature, but never what I would actually call warm.

Americans, including me, have become far more beer-savvy in the last two decades since the explosion of microbreweries has introduced varieties beyond mass-produced—and often nearly flavorless—lager. But the Brits-drink-warm-beer myth (or, more accurately, the all-beer-should-be-ice cold myth) seems to have survived, as President Obama’s June exchange with British Prime Minister David Cameron (which I saw on The Daily Show) reminded me. At the G-20 meeting in Canada, Obama and Cameron exchanged beers from their respective countries, and Obama joked that Cameron should drink the Goose Island 312 wheat beer cold. Cameron retorted that Obama could drink his gift, Hobgoblin, cold but that he probably wouldn’t like it.

A dark ale or stout served ice cold just doesn’t taste as flavorful as it does at a slightly higher temperature. The reason for this is the same as why white wines are usually served chilled, while red wines aren’t. Put simply, the volatile compounds associated with certain flavors or odors can be activated or deactivated through heating or cooling. If a flavor is desirable, it needs to be served at a temperature high enough to be detected; conversely, an undesirable flavor can sometimes be suppressed through chilling. So, if you over-chill a beer or wine that is meant to be served cool or at room temperature, you could be killing its complexity.

A chart at Wine.com gives general guidelines for the ideal serving temperatures for different kinds of wines. It explains that a red wine served too warm will taste more alcoholic and even vinegary, too cold and the bite of the tannic acid will overwhelm the other flavors. White wines need to be chilled enough to avoid tasting overly alcoholic and “flabby” but not so much that they lose flavor altogether.

A similar chart for beer, at RealBeer.com, recommends wheat beers and lagers be served at 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (which, incidentally, is still warmer than where most people keep their home refrigerators) and dark ales, including porters and stouts, at 55 to 60 degrees.

Alcoholic beverages aren’t the only things that taste best at particular temperatures. Some foods, especially fruits, can lose their flavor if refrigerated. Tomatoes are one of the examples cited most often—refrigeration turns off the enzyme system that helps produce fresh tomato aroma and flavor.

Of course, taste is subjective. If you ask for your red wine on the rocks you might give the sommelier a heart attack—but you’re the one who has to drink it.

A bottle of gruit beer, courtesy of Flickr user bernt_rostad

I just can’t get on board the ultra-hoppy beer bandwagon. Lately brewers have been vying to create the world’s bitterest beer, and it seems that every microbrewery has put forth an IPA (India Pale Ale) that scores high on the IBU (International Bittering Unit) scale.

Hops are the flowers that give beer its bitter taste, and have been used since the Middle Ages as a flavoring and preservative—extra hops were added to British beers exported to the warm climate of India. I don’t mind hops in moderation, but I prefer when I can also taste the other flavors in a beer. (I should point out here that I am not in any way claiming to be a beer connoisseur. I enjoy a pint now and then, but my interest is casual.)

Hop wimp that I am, I was eager to try gruit ale when I saw it on the menu of American Flatbread, a restaurant in Burlington, Vermont (with other locations in Oregon, Virginia and Vermont) that serves house-brewed beer. Described as a “Medieval herbal brew—no hops,” it had a light, slightly floral flavor—still recognizably ale, but unlike any I’d ever had. That was two or three years ago; since then I’ve ordered gruit every time I’ve gone back, but I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

Apparently, that wasn’t always the case. Long before Budweiser crowned itself the “king of beers,” gruit reigned in Europe—though, since it was often brewed by women, or alewives, it might more aptly be called the queen. Brewers, both commercial and small-scale, used all kinds of other herbs and botanicals, which varied from place to place. Then, for some reason or combination of reasons, beer made with hops came into favor by the 18th century, eventually overshadowing gruit to the point it nearly disappeared.

According to herbalist and author Stephen Harrod Buhner (in an article posted on gruitale.com), the primary gruit herbs were yarrow, sweet gale and marsh rosemary, though other flavorings, including cinnamon, nutmeg and caraway seed, were also popular. Some of these herbs had stimulant effects, which produced a highly intoxicating beverage that was thought to be an aphrodisiac and, according to Buhner, eventually led to their replacement with hops. I’m not sure whether any of those were in the gruit I tasted, though I can say that it was not highly intoxicating (and I am a lightweight). It didn’t make me feel sleepy, though, which beer sometimes does.

Hops, on the other hand, have traditionally been used as a sedative and were thought to reduce sexual desire and male potency. They contain phytoestrogens, the naturally occurring compounds that are molecularly similar to human estrogen and are found in soy, nuts and other foods. Although there has been speculation that over-consumption of phytoestrogens (especially from soy additives in processed food) could lead to health problems, there hasn’t been enough research to determine the effects of phytoestrogens on humans. It’s a complicated topic that will have to wait for a future post.

In the meantime, if you’re a home brewer (or would like to become one) and are interested in trying gruit, gruitale.com links to a handful of recipes.

What goes better with cheese -- wine or beer? Image courtesy of Flickr user Vincent Ma

Last night, I attended a National Geographic Live! event with the fun title “A Come to Cheeses Moment,” about the art of pairing cheese with wine and beer. The speakers included wine expert Joshua Wesson, co-founder of the Best Cellars chain of wine shops (now owned by A&P), and Sweetwater Tavern brewmaster Nick Funnell, a softspoken Brit with a background in chemistry.

And the cheese factor? Well, Steven Jenkins, of course. He’s the cheesemonger for Fairway Market, the author of Cheese Primer, and a self-declared “idiot savant” who overcame a Velveeta-smothered childhood to become America’s first French-certified maitre fromager (master cheesemonger).

The event was presented as a competition between the two beverages, although in practice, the quick-show-of-hands voting system in a crowded room proved pretty darn inconclusive. But that’s the point, I suppose—it’s ultimately up to your own palate to decide what’s “best” when it comes to any kind of food and drink pairings.

“Anyone who comes in here with an open mind and an open mouth is going to be surprised,” Wesson predicted before the event, adding that even though beer might seem to be the underdog, its bitterness and “scrubbing bubbles” often refresh the palate better than wine, giving it an edge when paired with heavier cheeses.

“People assume it that wine and cheese go together better, and that red is better than white—but when it’s a cheese that’s very salty and full of fat, hanging on your palate, you really want something refreshing. It’s going to be very interesting to see if the refreshment factor trumps all the other factors.”

I considered that as we tasted the first cheese, a soft, rich scimudin that tasted lovely but left a buttery slickness on the roof of my mouth. The beer, a nicely balanced kölsch from Capitol City Brewing, was a good match for flavor, but Wesson had smartly picked a sparkling Saint-Meyland Brut (a champagne in all but name), and I thought the wine’s livelier bubbles cut through the fat better.

The wine wasn’t the liveliest part of the evening—my table was full of 20-somethings who had come out to celebrate a birthday, and after just one round they were already talking and laughing loudly enough to get scolded by a server. (Reminded me of a beer event I wrote about last year…good thing Mr. Shush wasn’t at our table!) I couldn’t really tell what the overall vote was in the room; but if our table was a representative sample, most of the rounds were a draw.

All of the beers came from within 150 miles of DC, although most are only available directly from the breweries, Funnell noted. The wines are fairly easy to find, but not the cheeses—Jenkins said he was still unsure until just a few days before the event whether the FDA would let some of them into the country (since they’re all unpasteurized, and rather obscure). “Some of these cheeses are so rare, they don’t even exist!” he joked. My favorite was the Spanish pico melero, an aged sheep’s milk cheese with a firm texture and a slightly sweet, nutty taste.

If you’re interested, the six pairings were as follows:

1. Cheese: Scimudin, (cow, Italy)
Wine: Saint-Meyland Brut NV (France)
Beer: Capitol City Kölsch (Washington, DC)
My verdict: Wine.

2. Cheese: Bethmale (goat, French Pyrenees)
Wine: Oveja Negra Chardonnay-Viognier (Chile)
Beer: Ruddy Duck Tripel (Solomons Island, MD)
My verdict: Beer, by a very slight margin.

3. Cheese: Robiola Vecchia Valsassina (cow, Italy)
Wine: Lurton Mendoza Pinot Gris 2009 (Argentina)
Beer: Sweetwater Tavern Springbock (Centreville, VA)
My verdict: Beer, by a mile.

4. Cheese: Pico Melero (sheep, Spain)
Wine: Vina del Val Ribera del Duero 2008 (Spain)
Beer: Flying Dog Raging Bitch (Frederick, MD)
My verdict: Wine.

5. Cheese: Wildspitz (cow and goat; Switzerland)
Wine: Li Veli Passamente Negroamaro 2008 (Italy)
Beer: Devil’s Backbone Barleywine (Roseland, VA)
My verdict: Couldn’t stand this cheese, no matter what I drank it with; liked both drinks on their own—let’s call it a tie.

6. Cheese: Peralzola (sheep, Spain)
Wine: Jam Jar Sweet Shiraz 2009 (South Africa)
Beer: Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter (Frederick, MD)
My verdict: Sorry, I had to leave right before the final pour! But the blue cheese was outstanding.

If you find yourself in the Washington, D.C. area this spring and have had your fill of museums and sightseeing, you might want to check out these food-related educational events:

April 12 (TONIGHT) at 6:45 p.m: Don’t miss the chance to hear famous food writer and former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl discuss her new book, “For You Mom, Finally,” with Washington Post food editor Joe Yonan in the Natural History Museum’s Baird auditorium. Tickets are still available for $25 ($15 for Smithsonian Associates members).

April 14, 7 p.m.: Chocolate: From Bean to Bar, a National Geographic Live event featuring chocolate maker Steve Devries and chocolate-shop owner Biagio Abbatiello, will feed your brain as well as your mouth. Learn about the history of cacao and how it is processed, then taste an international selection of fine chocolates. Tickets are $75 to $80.

April 17, 11 a.m.: Indian Cuisine on the Move, a Smithsonian Associates event featuring both traditional and modern Indian cuisine in a lecture and luncheon with Indian chef K.N. Vinod and food writer Monica Bhide. It’s already sold out, but you can get on the wait list and hope that an additional session will be added! (The same advice applies to the May events in which Bhide will host tours of Indian food markets.)

April 24, 1 p.m.: The Pennsylvania Ale Trail, a Smithsonian Associates event hosted by the Brickskeller, will shine a spotlight on the many fine craft breweries in Pennsylvania, including Yards Brewing Company, Sly Fox Brewing Co, Bullfrog Brewery, and East End Brewing Company. Drink up while soaking in the wisdom of beer expert Jack Curtin. Tickets are $82, or $65 for members.

May 18, 7 p.m.: New Beers of Scandinavia, a National Geographic Live event hosted by the Brickskeller. Learn about the rise of the craft brewing movement in Scandinavia from renowned brewmaster Garrett Oliver, while sampling several Nordic beers. Tickets are $75 to $80.

May 20, 6:45 p.m. Barbecue: Globetrotting with ‘Primal Grill’ Host Steven Raichlen. Learn about the history of barbecue around the world, and learn new methods to try in your own backyard. Raichlen will also sign copies of his new book, “Planet Barbecue.” Tickets are $25, or $15 for members.

June 11-12: Mark your calendars now for the Smithsonian Resident Associates’ second annual Savoring Sustainable Seafood program, combining receptions and tastings with in-depth panel discussions about the future of our oceans—and our dinners.

Beer and cheese bread, courtesy of Flickr user gin_soak

According to the Nielsen Company, the Super Bowl is the 8th-largest beer-selling event of the year. This sounds a little low, but I’m guessing it has to do with the season (July 4 is #1).

Although I enjoy a beer now and then, I find it too filling to have more than one or two in a sitting. It feels more like a meal than a beverage. In fact, why not turn it into a meal? Beer imparts great flavor to all kinds of dishes, and a surprising variety of cultures use it in their cooking. It makes sense. After all, people cook with wine all the time.

Here are five good ways to use your next six-pack (which leaves you one to enjoy while you’re cooking):

1. Chili. I tried a lot of chili recipes before I hit on one that had the right depth and concentration of flavor for my taste: this Game-Day Chili from Southern Living magazine (I substitute ground turkey for the chuck, and chicken broth for the beef broth, and no one seems to mind). The magic ingredient (aside from lots of spice), is dark beer. I’ve tried various kinds, including a chocolate stout and a brown ale, and all seem to work.

2. Pasta Sauce. Wine is used in tomato sauce all the time, but it never would have occurred to me to use beer until I saw this recipe for Pasta with Spicy Tomato-Beer Sauce on Saveur magazine’s site. Made with Italian Bock beer, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies and Kalamata olives, it sounds pretty intensely flavored, but delicious.

3. Seafood Stew. Many Latin American cultures add beer to their seafood stews, like this Arroz con Mariscos from the Food Network, or this Enchilado de Camarones from Steven Raichlen’s Healthy Latin Cooking.

4. Bread. Considering that beer’s invention was probably related to bread making, it seems fitting to combine the two. The blog Farmgirl Fare (which has an adorable home-page illustration) offers several delicious sounding recipes, including Beyond Easy Beer Bread with cheddar and dill, Whole Wheat Beer Bread and Onion Rye Beer Bread.

5. Dessert. As I discovered last St. Patrick’s Day, Guinness and chocolate make a delicious cake—if you measure carefully. Apparently, you can also use stout to make a Beer Cream Pie, as they did at the blog Beer at Joe’s. If you prefer lighter beer, you can use Belgian white beer to make these spicy White Beer Cookies, an entrant in the Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown.