Anthony Rants

Well, only two-weeks late, but thought I would share what we did to ring in the New Year. Matt and Kate came over for a six course meal with each course paired to an appropriate beer. Of course in order for the plan to work, each course was a reasonable portion of food, and each beer was only a half-pint (otherwise we wouldn't be able to make it through the meal!) Overall the food was good, there were some rough spots, but I think the majority of the problems originated with the fact that I have never prepared so much food simultaneously without resorting to lots of casseroles and prefabricated things. For the first course we had a citrus salad featuring a strawberry chardonnay dressing. I think it was a big hit. The beer accompanying it was Éphémère, another pretty big hit I think. It was really nice as an appetizer, but it definitely wouldn't be a session beer in my mind. It had a pretty high carbonation volume, smelled of tart apple, and a slight tart apple taste as well. The second course was a bread and cheese course. We had a warm sourdough loaf paired with cheeses from different countries. There was a particular cheese that had caraway seeds that was more popular than the rest. The beer we had for the second course was Witte by Ommegang. It was a pretty typical Belgian White. The third course was a butternut squash risotto paired with a small bit of baked butternut squash. This may have been my favorite course actually. The beer for this course was Kells Irish Lager by Rogue. This beer was pretty magnificent. It was everything that Killian's Irish Red ought to be and more (very much more). Next up was apple chicken sausage simmered in my very own Maple Nut Brown Ale and accompanied by skillet fried Yukon gold potatoes. This course was good, but I felt it really suffered because I made it too far ahead of time (or maybe we enjoyed the other courses for too long :p) The beer accompaniment was of course, Maple Nut Brown Ale by Benjamin Brewing Company :) This Brown ale really started out pretty rough, but I added a very small amount of all-natural maple extract, and after a few weeks of cold conditioning, it is really maturing into a nice beer. The next course was beef tenderloin medallions simply seasoned with salt and pepper served in a reduced Cabernet Sauvignon sauce, with sautéed green beans. I really had high hopes for this course, but the wine I used for the reduction did not really contribute a great deal of flavor, additionally I think the sauce sat too long and the sauce finally reduced down to mostly wine tannins :-( Green beans were out of season of course so they weren't really on their a-game. The beer for this course was Porter by Sierra Nevada. Not much to say about this beer. It was solid, but it wasn't necessarily anything special. The final course was chocolate truffles brought by Matt and Kate. They were very rich, smooth, and did I mention rich? :) The beer paired with dessert was quite predictably, Double Chocolate Stout by Young's. This beer was pretty good, but I wish I would have gotten cans of it because the cans use the same little nitrogen deal that Guinness uses (so it would have had a little creamier mouthfeel), it was still good and it worked well with the chocolate I think.

After dinner we played Spades, where Matt and I had our butts handed to us by the ladies. Overall it was a pretty fun time, plenty of food and drink and great company. I have lots more to post about Benjamin Brewing Company's latest adventures, the labels I have for the beers thus far, and other random things, but that will have to wait!

Well, I suppose since its official with paperwork and all, that I can reveal Matt as one of the newest employees at the Beckman Institute. He will be starting in December. Matt & Kate were up yesterday and today looking for a place to live, no final word yet on what they have chosen. Last night after having burgers at a kind of not-noteworthy place, we went to the Blind Pig. The Blind Pig is very noteworthy (at least in my mind). They have something like fifteen beers on tap, fourteen of them are what I would consider craft-beers, and one of the taps is occupied by Pabst (It is Illinois after all). Getting past the fact that the bartender was a little pissed I didn't start a tab, the place itself has a great atmosphere. They don't serve food, so its all business there: beer business. Matt & Kate had Rasputin Imperial Stout (a beer I consider a very worthy contender to Flat Branch's Oil Change stout) and I had a Belgian Strong Ale by the name of Delirium Tremens, which I would later come to find has a quite interesting history (oh, click that link, you know you want to). We retired pretty early, which is good, because this morning I did not feel well at all. I doubt it had any link to the small amount of drinking we did and more likely linked to the awful weather that blew into town. All day it has been rainy, windy, and cold. And most of the day I have been congested, achy, and cold.

I have officially started a new hobby. Well, I guess I officially started back in October, but it has been awhile since I have substantially written about stuff. After lots and lots of research (as I'm known to engage in right before a hobby), I have taken up the home brewing of beer. It is actually quite a bit like cooking, also quite a bit like cleaning, ironically enough. I have brewed two batches so far. The first was an American Amber Ale that I named after Anna, since she was so understanding and surprisingly supportive of the idea. Its called Anna Maria's Amber Ale. I may post the label that I have for it later. The second batch was a Nut Brown Ale (Northern English Brown to be more exact), it is yet to be named. The amber ale is just about ready to keg, probably sometime on Sunday or so is my best guess. The brown ale still has quite a bit of fermentation/resting left to do. In conjunction with this brewing enterprise, I actually ended up building what will eventually be a kegerator. Right now you have to open it to dispense, but eventually there will be taps mounted on the outside of it. Maybe I'll take some pictures and post about that whole setup later. Many people start home brewing by bottling, but the prospect of cleaning and sterilizing 48 bottles everytime I had a batch of beer did not really sound that appealing, so I've decided to keep only a small stock of bottles on-hand. I'll bottle some of each batch for kind of archival purposes, and also I will use bottles to give the beer away. At home, I'll drink it off of the CO2 dispensed goodness of the kegerator. My brewing sessions seem to last about six hours when it is all said and done, and I would say at least 60% of that time is spent cleaning, re-cleaning, or sanitizing some piece of equipment. The next batch to be made is a yet-to-be-named Chocolate Hazelnut Porter. That will bring me to 15 gallons brewed (or about 160 bottles), luckily I know someone(s) who is(are) moving to the area who likes beer :) I'm also hoping that maybe some of you people out there will take an opportunity to come and visit, if for no other reason than to sample the latest beer from the Benjamin Brewing Company.

Today, after I spent six hours trying to get two small combo-boxes to correctly display some database data, I confirmed a realization I had a few weeks ago. I no longer enjoy programming. I may be good at it, but it definitely does not yield any satisfaction. I am attempting to market my other skills at work, but seeing as how I was just promoted in August to uber-Programmer, its a long row to hoe... But I guess good things don't come easy? I'm hoping that when Matt arrives here, he lets me lend a hand to some sort of photographic enterprise. That should be different, exciting, and maybe give me an opportunity to explore the what-if (What if Anna made so much money, I could quit my job and do some sort of photo-thing for a job?)

This past weekend Matt & Kate came to visit. On Friday night, we went out for dinner at a bar called Murphy's located downtown in campustown. Its a great greasy burger / Leinenkugel's on tap kind of place. We also scored some great Leine's Oktoberfest mugs and T-Shirts with our beer. On Saturday morning I took a shot at replicating my great pancake success of late, of course, under pressure I cracked and the pancakes weren't very good. They were immensely dense, almost unleavened. I have some theories of what went wrong, but the number one suspect at the moment is an unrelated Murphy. After breakfast, we left Anna to do her homework and we went to the Farmer's Market in Urbana. Lots and lots of good things there, as usual. This time we left with some roma tomatoes and bell peppers (intent on making salsa). We drove around town for a little bit, taking in all of the sights of Chambana and headed home to make salsa and get ready for the Beer tasting / Chili cooking event in Urbana. The salsa I made was alright, overall it was kind of bland, a combination of a short integration time, and somewhat lackluster ingredients I think... (probably more of Murphy poking his head in on my cooking). We had a very nice lunch at a place called Sunsinger Cafe, after Kate requested we find a place that had a pile of vegetables. I think they fit the bill, and everything we had looked and tasted fantastic. I would definitely recommend the place to others looking for a quiet lunch spot... My only complaint would be the somewhat small tables, but other than that, everything was great. After that, we went to a huge wine/beer store called Friar Tuck's and got some beer and bourbon for the weekend. Then we headed off to the festival in Urbana.

First the bad: when we got there, the chili was pretty much gone. There were two places still serving it, so we got in one of the lines. As we got to the very front, the astute Kate noticed they were just serving Hormel chili out of a can! So, we jumped into the other line and had some of their chili instead. It was alright... but overall, the chili experience was a little disappointing. The beer experience was a little more interesting, but I think it was kind of crowded. They had 30+ tables of different beers (each table had 10-12 beers on it) that you paid a ticket or two to get a small cup's worth to taste. We tasted quite a few, including some of the local home brewing club's stuff (it was alright, there were definitely better ones that we tasted, but that doesn't discourage me from starting my own home brew adventure... that is definitely another post!). After we had our fill of beer, we headed home for a night of tolerable mint juleps (dang Murphy! interesting side note: mint juleps don't scale well, just make them one at a time. I think our downfall was trying to make four simultaneously), some beers, and an absolutely awful premier of SNL.

Sunday's breakfast was very good. Sunday's breakfast was eaten out at Merry Ann's diner in Champaign. The food was excellent, the service was quick and polite (as always), and the check was very reasonable. Merry Ann's is definitely our most favorite breakfast spot in town. After breakfast, we dropped Anna off for .. you guessed it.. more homework! And then we set out on our own assignment... Let's find Kate an Erector set. We searched everywhere in Urbana, and nearly everywhere in Champaign... and unfortunately came up empty handed. In the end, we decided some Tapenade would probably be just as satisfying as building something, so we went to Meijer and got the ingredients we needed for that and dinner.

The Tapenade actually came out pretty decent. Suprising enough, Matt, who insists olives are soaked in camel piss, actually ate some of the tapenade and appeared to tolerate.. maybe even like it! While we consumed tapenade in the backyard, I fired up the smoker for some smoked chicken. I butterflied and rubbed down the chicken as I normally do, and smoked it for the rest of the afternoon while we had our libations. We paired the smoked chicken with sautéd green beans and baked acorn squash (ala Matt & Kate). I think the meal was a big hit. The chicken was moist and smoky, the squash was warm and squishy, and the green beans were firm and tasty. Perhaps the most interesting thing was that Anna and I have never really had baked squash (not since we were kids anyways) and were pleasantly suprised to find that we both really liked it.

We had a really nice visit with Matt & Kate, and hope they come back soon. It is nice to visit with friends that you have shared many good times with. Plus Matt & I always seem to have something to jabber about (computers, photography, etc.!)

Well, that's all for now. It seems like I've now promised entries about my Japanese knives (which Matt saw and even got to cut with, so he may have to jump in and comment on them) and my growing plans for home brewing my own ales (and eventually lagers)... those will have to come later.