Places – Page 2 – A Good Beer Blog

BBQ Shack: Tail O’ The Pup, Ray Brook, New York

I had BBQ and specifically pulled pork three times on the road. State Street BBQ in Watertown, NY. Beale Street BBQ in South Portland, Maine. Tail O’ The Pup, Ray Brook, New York. I hate to rank good BBQ pulled pork but the Tail O’ The Pup’s sauced take was so soft you could have spread it into a paste with a butter knife. Beale Street’s was hearty and smoky while State Street’s was subtler, like a slow cooked Sunday pork roast. All good.

Tail o’ the Pup was also one of those places municipal planning standards would never accept in Canada to our great cultural loss. Part 1930’s roadside cottages. Part beer tent with its own band. Part diner set in the great outdoors.

Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, too. Who rents the cottages? Are there gangs of bikers out there who want that sort of thing? They must be people I would like to know.

Friday Bullets For Tra-la It’s May!

I was not so much in a production of Camelot as I was part of the production. OK, I raised curtains. I sat in a closet for a week’s worth of evenings when I was 14 and raised curtains. But I heard the “tra-la, it’s may song” more than most humans have and I really don’t mind it that much. I bet Iggy is saying tra-la this weekend. It is sort of like listening to Robert Goulet, so manly and mapled. By the way, when preparing for a conference I spoke at this week, I was quite pleased to learn that, no, I did not have a head shot for the materials. Why do people lean at a 17% angle for promotional head shots?

I am not sure whether buying a bit of Chrysler is a good idea for us all. I mean, I have not been in one since the old Dodge Diplomat died around 1993 – no, not true – I drive an inherited van here in 2003 before trading that in at Ford.
How to deal with invasive species – eat them. Shows them who’s top of the food chain.
I had no idea that the Edwards Opera House was so close. Now that I have a passport I may nip over for a bluegrass Saturday night sometime. Which reminds me – we are weeks away from the Watertown Wizards.
Stephen Fry on something other than Twitter – thinking about himself at 16.
Ted Reynolds, CBC 70s and 80s sports reporter and part of my youth passes away.
Why isn’t PEI just a column in the paper every day like “your daily smile” except it would be “look what happened in PEI today!” and it would have a story like this one about the Environment Minister telling everyone how great it was when he was a kid and dynamited beaver dams. And they sell citizenships for profit, too!
The season finale of Private Practice last night was the worst hour of TV ever but it was like watching a shopping mall burn – can’t stop staring as careers are destroyed.

That is it. Vintage base ball tomorrow. A three team event, too. We even have hats this year. And I will be sporting a hurlihee and a part well to the side. Huzzah.

The Hieronymi Were Here…As Were Steve and John!

So beer writers Stan and Daria and family were here getting a break from the camper on their world beer tour 2008. As it turned out, so were Steve from Beau’s and John o’ Church-key. Between them the lads drove 500 km to get here and as much to get home – nothing compared, however, to the Hieronymi land cruiser which hit the 10,000 mile mark yesterday. And, after hours of great beer and some good chow I threw together, I came away from what I will call the first Kingston Symposium on Craft Brewing realizing I pretty much know nothing about beer. Zippo.

Hanging around with such people of the beer is always a great education but listening to two such knowledgeable beer thinkers as Stan and Daria (who is also a recent winner on Jeopardy) over a whole evening with two of Canada’s most interesting young brewers was pretty amazing. Not to go blow by blow through the beers but I shared some Ontarians including our local Barley Day’s Wind and Sail Dark, some Stuart’s Natural and made some fairly snazzy scallops in a pan with a slug of Wellington Dark. Good Ontario and Quebec craft cheeses also shared the table.

We talked about beer price and value, the regulatory challenges of the Ontario market and the Canadian border as well as the opportunities a province that is trying hard to catch up to our southern neighbours provides. We also poured bottles of Steve and John’s brews including Beau’s flagship kolsche and Church-key’s West Coast IPA – as well as half year cellared bottles of Bog Water and Lactese Falcon, that beer that begs to be next to a rib-eye. Each of these showed really well and, in their comparison, begged the question as to which better expressed Ontario-ness: the traditional Algonquin Park canoe trip invocating bog myrtle or the funky blue cheese tang of the beer of the 22nd century. I just made that up. I am sure John will pick it up as the LT’s catch phrase.

To finish, we popped the tangy spicy dry and quite fascinating Fuego del Otono, a seasonal chestnut beer which is also very under-priced from Jolly Pumpkin. Stan and Daria had passed Dexter on a Saturday when the brewery was not open so it was fair to include it in their year-long continent hopping search for the essence of global local beer. By the way, that last beer is one of the ones that make me think there should be a web based auction for craft beer where beer lovers could set out what they would pay for a beer. If Ron at Jolly Pumpkin would set me aside a mixed case of beer like Fuego del Otono for pick up when I am in the neighbourhood, I would definitely pay $11.99 or a bit more compared to the $8.99 I paid for this one last fall at the ever excellent Bello Vino of Ann Arbor. Other beers of the moment might not get such a price boost from the set you own auction, if my suspicions are correct.

In the end, one in the morning came far too soon and, as with the best gatherings like this, I came away having added understanding as well as happily convinced in how little I still really know. There is so much to learn about good beer. For one thing, I now crave New Glarus Spotted Cow and may have to drive to Wisconsin just to get me some more.

Following The Hieronymi Around The World

I have to admit that beer blogging has given me far more than I have ever given it. Through beer blogging I have electronically met a particularly rich seam of the most gracious and generous folk in the English-speaking world. One of the finest is, of course, our pal Stan Hieronymus, author of Brew Like A Monk as well as a bazillion articles on brew – not to mention the blogger-in-chief at Appellation Beer.

Stan and the family are on a round-the-world tour trying all the local beer they can meet and next week I have the honour of hosting them for supper (and maybe more if the RV fits) as the south-easter Ontario representative of all things beery. I have put away a few fine local beers – including that growler or two I plan to snab at Sackets Harbor NY, my actual most local brewer as the crow flies. We’ll be over there next Sunday for the return of the annual 1870s vintage base ball game. I have invited a couple of interesting brewers to join in a small backyard symposium but am still a little at loose ends, trying to figure out how to make the moment worthy and fun.

Well, lo and behold, I just found an extra way to do the right thing by Stan – they’re keeping a blog of the trip called The Slow Travelers. More about big roadside attractions and less about about beer but that is good. It will help us get a sense of Stan, the family and my pleasant duties of their host. As far as I can tell, I need to make a giant paper mache dinosaur and place it by the curb to truly make the date a hit! We may have to see about that one.

Belgium: Canaster, De Glazen Toren, Erpe-Mere

can1 Here is a hint when you are traveling. If, after a tiring 600 km drive (to be followed the next day by another 600 km drive) you notice contract street sweeping equipment in the parking lot, get a new hotel. Street sweepers come and go in the night, you see. After idling their massive engines for fifteen minutes or so. It was like sleeping in a public works depot.

My only consolation was the bottle of Canaster I had brought. Labeled as a winterscotch-style ale I had brought it along as a reward for being me. It’s by the same good folk at KleinBrouwerij De Glazen Toren who made that saison I had last Thanksgiving. The beer is basically a Belgian brown with plenty of round brown maltiness, burlappy nutmegged yeast and some black tea and perhaps black malt astringency. It pours a thick sheeting cream head over chestnut ale. In the malt there is date and maybe dark raisin with a bit of a tobacco effect. It could have done with another something something but it was a very pleasant 9.5% brew that came across nothing as big as that. Plenty of BAer approval.

Not needing anything was the bottle of The Lactese Falcon Flanders Sour Brown Ale I picked up at Church-Key on the way home – you know, as a reward for being me. Yum – but I like the tastes of Parmesan cheese and Flemish sour beer and here they are in one brew. Plenty of roasted beef broth notes, vanilla, pear juice, balsamic, Worcestershire and Parmesan. Herself gets only molasses on schnozzal analysis. Somewhat controversial when it first appeared, here is a beer that intends to be itself – and one that may sort the style huggers from the brave and the free. I have another put away for a long sleep. I want to make sauces with it, soak meat in it – make welsh rarebit with it.

Death On Yonge Street

A sad view out of the front window driving up Yonge Street Toronto this noon hour. Is there anything sadder than a big outdoor video screen that has been turned off? That wasn’t in Blade Runner. Maybe the spinning LP neon signs that are either gone or busted. Oh for a barn that had the interior room for a more dignified retirement for one of those flashing 33 rpm beauties.

Three Days And Three Side Orders Of Onion Rings

I got to tick two new to me diners off the list during this weekend’s central New York, The Glenwood Pines Restaurant in Ulysses down near Ithaca as well as the Crystal Restaurant in downtown Watertown. I think the first place dates in part from the late ’40s while the second is an all-1920’s kinda spot. I never did take a photo of the quite admirable onion rings at Shorty’s, also in Watertown, though. On Friday night, on the way south, we walked into selection of NY state fish fry specials. I had a slab of haddock on a bun the size of your forearm. I wonder where they got the fish? Maybe Norway.

Saturday at noon, the double Pinewood special, as illustrated, set me back $8.95 and I had onion rings and battered corn nuggets, too. I had no idea what a battered corn nugget was but that was even more reason to try. Turned out to be a little lump of creamed corn in a sweet dough. Dandy stuff. I was seriously doubtful of my capacity to suck back the burger but it was delightful with a Genny Cream as the kids played the bowling game. A good place for having a beer as kids run around and the food was particularly good diner grub. Again, very reliable onion ring action.

The Crystal Restaurant was a different kind of experience but certainly still a good joint. As I mentioned, it is pushing 90 years and the interior is all original wood panel and tin ceiling with a deep patina of most of those 90 years worth of smoking. Warning: the angle of the backs in the wooden booths is particularly Presbyterian. Best diner coffee ever anywhere ever. Great smoky bacon and my hot pork sandwich was as creamy bland as the dish demands. The only way you can get me to eat canned peas is on a hot chicken or pork sandwich. A solid finale to a weekend of onion rings, too. The place is also a little quirky, enhanced to a certain degree by the young soldier, an assistant chaplain no less, who was talking on his cell phone in too loud a voice about how he was going to marry someone just to get an increase in his army pay. He seemed to have it all figured out even though the girl, astonishingly, seemed (according to the tale to which all were subject) to actually get wed to the heel.

The pre-school girls of one family in their church clothes asked to help the waitress clear the table and they carried their own glasses and plates to the kitchen wearing big excited smiles, maybe like they did every weekend. Anyway, even though the place serves a solid all day breakfast and burgers and such, the bar was a stream of cocktails on a Sunday noon. Manhattans and whiskey on ice were the main drinks. Apparently the Crystal makes an old style hot egg nog or flip sort of thing at Christmas that the locals swear by. Here is an archived NCPR report on the place.

Somewhere East Of Heuvleton

And you think you had it bad.

Baltimore Pit Beef For Christmas

Highlight of the last bit of 2007 (and have you realized that we are 3/4s though the first decade of the 21st century?) is going to be a trip to Baltimore. I got invited last Christmas to write a chapter of a book called Beer and Philosophy and now we are invited to the book launch.

Being a 20 watt bulb in the brightly lit world that is beer writing has a few perks and none is so perkier [Ed.: wow, did that came out wrong!] than the genial clan of more senior writers who will answer important questions like the one I posed to Lew Bryson about where to find the best BBQ in Baltimore:

The thing you want in Bawlmer is pit beef, a sinfully delish pile of rare, juicy beef piled high on a roll. There are several of these joints out on Pulaski Highway (like in this catty review: I liked Chaps, so there, nyah. I understand Big Al’s is closed now…sigh. More at this Chowhound link which also makes reference to the Double T local chain of diners (WELL worth your time for breakfast, my friend) and while some of them are not in the most savory of locations, the beef is nothing but. Pit beef is kinda like spiedies in that for some odd reason it’s never really traveled, but is definitely worshipful in situ.

Fabulous. Having already, in 2007, checked the wonderful western NY sandwich called a “weck” off my list of local US foods, the prospect of pit beef adds another layer of glowing orange to my vision of the next Yule. I found a great article from 2000 in the New York Times that further elaborates the concept:

Pit beef is Baltimore’s version of barbecue: beef grilled crusty on the outside, rare and juicy inside and heaped high on a sandwich. Several things make it distinctive in the realm of American barbecue. For starters, pit beef is grilled, not smoked, so it lacks the heavy hickory or mesquite flavor characteristic of Texas- or Kansas City-style barbecue. It is also ideally served rare, which would be unthinkable for a Texas-style brisket. Baltimore pit bosses use top round, not brisket, and to make this flavorful but tough cut of beef tender, they shave it paper-thin on a meat slicer.

Then there’s the bread: the proper way to serve pit beef is on a kaiser roll or, more distinctively, on rye bread. The caraway seeds in the rye reflect the Eastern European ancestry of many Baltimoreans in this part of town and add an aromatic, earthy flavor to the beef. Finally, there is the sauce. No ketchup, brown sugar and liquid smoke, as you would find in Kansas City. No Texas-style chili hellfire or piquant vinegar sauces in the style of North Carolina. The proper condiment for Baltimore pit beef is horseradish sauce — as much as you can bear without crying. And speaking of crying, you need slices of crisp, pungent white onion to make the sandwich complete.

This is all so excellent. One of my gripes as a Canadian is that there are few actual local foods. We can speak of Quebec cuisine (whether lowly comforting poutine or the selection of game that you do not get in English speaking Canada) and we can think of the seafood of Atlantic Canada but these are entire ranges of food based on local resources. A phenomenon at far too high a level. No, what I love about traveling in the US is that local thing on a bun that is made only in that neighbourhood or those couple of counties: Rochester’s garbage plate or the various regional BBQs of the Carolina, the pinnacle of one of which Lew encountered this week. Where is our Fat Boy fish sandwich with a wild blueberry frappe? Our humble hot or our bap and square? Where is our Chocolate Boston – which I have learned is made even more over the top at Purity Dairy by placing an entire sundae on top of a milk shake?

Power Turns On The Ferry

Yesterday, we took the Glenora ferry over to Prince Edward County. Easlakia is a ferry fan’s dream with five within an hour of HQ and more in the hinterland like those on the Ottawa river and Lake Champlain. Yet, I have never had the ferry captain put on a show like yesterday when, apparently as a surprise for one young passenger brought up to the wheelhouse, he did a couple of power turns. I got a bit of a movie of it: [Ed.: remember we use super slow technology for these short short films – in this case a 7.5 MB .avi file]. As you see the landscape zip by, appreciate that the camera is facing the bow and not one of the sides of the ship.