Worldwide Lager Challenge – Latin America November 30, 2008
Posted by pinchaque in Adventures in Beer.Tags: beer, lager-showdown
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Shortly after my Great American Beer Challenge post, I realized the problem was bigger than previously thought: there are countries worldwide that are brewing yellow lagers! I subsequently set out finding all the examples of mass-produced and widely distributed beers, regardless of country of origin. I then organized them into groups of 5-6 by region for their regional showdowns. The winner of each region will proceed to the final tasting.
Here are the regions and their beers:
- United States: Coors, Budweiser, MGD, Busch, Rolling Rock, PBR, Olde English 800, Mickey’s
- Latin America: Quilmes, Red Stripe, Dos Equis, Pacifico, Tecate, Corona
- Asia: Sapporo, San Miguel, Sinha, Kirin Ichiban, Asahi, Tsing Tao
- Germany: Beck’s, St. Pauli Girl, Spaten Lager, Hofbrau Original, Paulaner Lager
- Europe: Heineken, Baltika, Stella Artois, Pilsner Urquell, Czechvar
- UK + ex-UK + Italy: Harp, Steinlager, Foster’s, Birra Moretti, Peroni
I had already done the US group. I disqualified Olde English and Mickey’s because they are “malt liquors”, a different style. So the winner from the US is: Coors.
Beers of Latin American
Next up was Latin America! So on a warm auspicious San Diego November night I began to get these beers out of the fridge when tragedy struck: the Pacifico leaped from my hands, tumbled down the fridge shelves, and landed with a resounding splat on the tile kitched floor. There was beer and glass everywhere. The kittens came over to investigate and started licking the beer (they apparently were doing their own taste test) so we had to lock them in the bathroom while the cleanup continued.
Once that was done, Amanda did the single-blind pouring of the beers and I set about tasting them. One observation was that, as a group, these were all better than what I could remember of the US beers. Even the worst of this group was still quite enjoyable. But in the end the final rankings emerged:
Blind Tasting of Latin American Beers
- Tecate
- Corona
- Red Stripe
- Quilmes
- Dos Equis
This was actually quite surprising to me. I had thought Dos Equis would win based on those really good commercials they run regarding “the most interesting man in the world”. And I’ve had tecate before and was not particularly impressed. Nevertheless, when putting them side by side under blind conditions, I could pick my favorites without being biased by former experiences or advertising. That’s why they play the game, as they say!
The Great American Turkey-Free Thanksgiving Dinner November 30, 2008
Posted by pinchaque in Cooking, Food.Tags: 101things, Cooking, cookthrough, redsage
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Starring (in no particular order): Amanda and Chuck
Red Chile Chicken Potpie
I don’t mean to be a turkeyday grinch, but as far back as I can remember I’ve never truly loved the bird! It’s not that I think turkey tastes bad, just that given the choice I’d typically rather eat something else. So when Thanksgiving rolls around I typically pass on the opportunity to cook up a gobbler, and instead focus my cooking efforts on something I’ll enjoy more!
(This, of course, disturbs Amanda to no end so she feels obligated to purchase off-season discount turkeys and cook them under the cover of night.)
With my ongoing cook-through of Red Sage underway, the natural choice was to find a dish from that to prepare. And with Amanda my co-chef I knew we could make it through a couple recipes this Thanksgiving week. To wit:
- Red Chile Chicken Potpie with Mashed Potato Crust
- Chipotle-Cumin Breadsticks
- Sour Mash Blackberry Cobbler with Burnt Sugar Ice Cream
The potpie was probably the biggest production, taking around 6 hours to prepare. It was more of a “Shepard’s pie” than a real potpie, but the roasted garlic mashed potatos were tasty. The preparation also involved boiling a 1.5 frankenchicken of parts, making a chile puree, creating a roux, and lots of vegetable dicing. It was excellent overall, with the only change I would make being the future omission of the zucchini and squash. They had a strange texture and didn’t add much in terms of flavor.
Amanda prepared the chipotle-cumin breadsticks, wihch served to be a wonderful complement to the chicken, soaking up sauce and adding their own delectable flavor.
Our desert served the double-role of Amanda cooking a recipe from another one of our cookbooks: The Ultimate Ice Cream Book. She made the “burnt sugar” ice cream which is basically like caramel (I’m not sure how it’s different, actually). It turned out a bit thicker and sweeter and didn’t freeze as well as usual ice creams, so I think we should have added more milk. Anyway she DID add some bourbon in there (which I always do to keep ice cream from freezing too much), which played against the Sour Mash Blackberry Cobbler.
Sour Mash Blackberry Cobbler
Now the cobbler was also a Red Sage recipe. This cobbler had a batter on top (contrasted with biscuit or pie crust, the other cobbler types). The baking time was off (maybe because I had refrigerated the cobbler beforehand) so I got worried the cobbler wasn’t browning and turned on the broiler to finish it. But then it was still liquid inside so it could have indeed cooked longer. Regardless it was quite delicious and paired wonderfully with the ice cream!
Ichabod Ale - Alpine Brewing Company
What thanksgiving meal would be complete without good beer? Not ours, certainly. We enjoyed a bottle of Alpine Brewing Company‘s Ichabod Ale, a dark, rich, spiced beer. I grow nervous whenever I see pumpkins on a beer label, but this worked really well. The pumpkin flavor was mild, and the spices made this beer a natural friend for our wintery baked meal.
The Infamous “To Read” Bookshelf November 30, 2008
Posted by pinchaque in 101 Things, Books.Tags: 101things, Books
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My to-read bookshelf was out of hand! Every year for Christmas and my birthday my family buys me things off of my amazon.com wish list. Plus, for several years, I had a Borders VISA that got me just what I needed: free books! I love reading just as much as the next Lit major, but I was obtaining books faster than I could read them. So part of my 101 things list was to get my “to read” bookshelf under control–less than 10 books. Plus I wanted to finally face Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. Embarassingly enough, it had been sitting on the shelf for nearly two years. I decided to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone: by reading Consciousness Explained I would be under 10 books just in time for the holiday season. 
It took about 3 weeks to finish, which isn’t too bad. Consciousness Explained had been recommended to me about 8 years ago by a colleague at work. He said it was interesting and really explained how the brain works. I’m always drawn in by these books that float between science and philosophy. I’d since read Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, which was awesome for the first 3/4 then sort of petered out. I’ve also had the privilege of hearing Freeman Dyson speak about creatures that could survive while flying through outer space. The neat part about this intersection between science and philosophy is that it isn’t constrained by what has been experimentally shown to be true, but at the same time stays grounded in what we know. There is room for new ideas, innovation, and thought experiments.
I thought Consciousness Explained was thoroughly enjoyable. It’s remarkable how Dennett’s sense of humor really comes through in what otherwise may be considered a dry subject. He describes how we can be considered to be “conscious”, what it means to be so, and how is this different from non-conscious beings.
I particularly enjoyed the parts near to the end that described our experiences with color. How science has disproved the common notion that an object’s reflective properties define what color we perceive it to be. How some animals can see ultraviolet or infrared, which begs the question of how the world looks to them. Some people are color blind, so how do things look to them? One intriguing example is the following: if everyone on earth were red-green colorblind and an alien landed and told us they were different colors, we’d think they were insane. So why is it that we think one blue looks like another blue right now? Couldn’t they be different?
I often idly ponder my reading habits. I try to keep life interesting by alternating between fiction and non-fiction. Among the non-fiction I’ve been cycling through these philosophy-science books, business books, and technical reading. With fiction I have a few favorite authors (Joyce Carol Oates, for one) that I will read novels of, but for the most part I don’t like reading newer novels w/o first being familiar with the author. There’s too much disappointment in modern fiction! So instead I tend to read short stories–particularly the Best American series and Year’s Best Science Fiction. Then if I like an author, I’ll go buy his or her books. Michael Chabon has had several good short stories in these anthologies, so that lands me with my next to-read book: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It’s a Pulitzer Prize winner! 50 pages in and it’s good so far, we’ll see how it turns out…
