Taco – Page 39

Beer Blurb – 10/13/14 (The Brooklyn Lineup)

November 7, 2014 by Taco

Columbus Day.

Which means I have no class!

Having this break has been nice, I actually have tomorrow off too. See, I’m sick yet again. I was sick for about a week, then ok for a week, then I got sick again. In the week between SB was sick. So there has just been a truckload of sick in these parts. Thankfully I’m on the upswing, the break helped in that regard. Not that the break actually means I have less work to do, oh no, law school doesn’t really have breaks (and I’m not just saying that – our two week long holiday break is rife with responsibilities).

Anyways, since I was sick, and it was my week to pick where we went this past Friday, I chose to just go to a nearby market. It was quick and easy and since I was sick, that is exactly what I wanted. Turns out it wasn’t any cheaper, little markets around here have awesome food with horrifying prices. But we got to sample some of their food that we normally don’t allow ourselves, so that was nice. More importantly, since it was a long weekend, I decided to opt for a 12 pack instead of a 6 pack of beer.

I was really having a hard time deciding, so when a sampler pack from the Brooklyn Brewery caught my eye and as soon as I realized it was one of the “5 variety” packs (4, 2, 2, 2, 2) I went for it. Going on down to Brooklyn.

(All of these beers are from the Brooklyn Brewery)

1. Brooklyn Brown Ale
2. East India Pale Ale
3. Brooklyn Pilsner
4. Brooklyn Pennant Ale ’55
5. Brooklyn Lager

Its weird to say going on down to Brooklyn, but that is technically correct. Odd.

Anyways, this is one of those packs that contains 5 different types of beer, which, aside from the rare 6 variety twelve pack, these are the best kinds of 12 packs in existence. I’ve had the Brooklyn Lager before, it is their standard flagship, but I had not had any of the other beers.

Their Brooklyn Brown Ale combines some older English styles and adds an American accent of a firm hop character with some roasty undertones. I’m honestly not a huge brown ale fan these days for whatever reason, but this was a solid brown.

The East India Pale ale uses barley and hops from Britain, which a traditional IPA would. I’m honestly not sure on the difference between an EIPA and an IPA is, though EIPA’s tend to be a little higher ABV (this one is 6.9%). I used to be horrified of IPAs, in fact the earliest micro-brew I remember savagely hating was Dragonfly (which I still think is not a good beer). However, over time IPAs have grown on me, I’d even say I like some of them. I guess I’ve grown to appreciate high IBU’s. Anyways, this EIPA was good for what it was, but I don’t know enough about EIPAs to really compare it.

The Brooklyn Pilsner was the one I was most looking forward to. Its a full-malt style pilsner (i.e. from Germany) but there is also some hoppiness going on here. It was a good pilsner, oddly a little more murky than I was expecting though.

The Brooklyn Pennant Ale ’55 was the oddity, at least when I was looking at the box. I had no idea what a Pennant Ale was (I have very little knowledge of baseball lingo), or ’55 , but I did notice that the bottle looked like a homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was correct on that last part. The ale itself is an English-style pale ale, its fairly brisk for an English ale and there are some very, very subtle fruity tones mixed in with the hop aroma. I have to say, this is the best beer in the box. Even if you have been around a long time and hated the Brooklyn Dodgers (who won the world series in 1955, thus the name of this ale), or I guess if you hate their modern counterpart, this beer is still worth trying.

Lastly, the Brooklyn Lager was, well, a lager. It was apparently the first recipe every brewed by this brewery, and that sort of shows. Its a typical dry-hop amber lager, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It has everything you would expect from an American lager, but compared to some of the more exotic offerings in this box its just kind “there.” Don’t get me wrong though, I recommend it.

So overall, this is probably the best sampler pack I’ve had since moving here. Sure the Belgians put up a good show, but this sampler pack is just awesome. If you see it, you must buy it. If you don’t like it, send it to me. Or just send it to me anyways, that is ok too.

Until next time,
-Taco

The Biscuit, The Butcher, and the Whole Foods

November 4, 2014 by Taco

SB and I normally don’t go out to eat on Saturdays, primarily for budgetary reasons. Since we had just had our Friday night out, its normally (somewhat) easy to resist temptation on Saturday. Not so for today. We’ve been doing our shopping on Saturdays. We do this for a couple of reasons. First, our primary grocery store (Whole Foods) is crazy busy on Sundays. Second, we are busy studying on Sundays and don’t like having to mess with it. We also have no time during the week, so Saturday works best.

Anyways, we walk to Whole Foods, its about a 13-15 minute walk. On the way to Whole Foods is a place called The Biscuit (not to be confused with The Biscuit Bitch, a place we ate at in Seattle). SB had mentioned wanting to go there and I wanted to go as well. We were going to go on Friday, but I found out they are only open until 5pm which kind of killed that idea. Its not much of a logical leap that we put two and two together and decided to go to The Biscuit for lunch on our way to Whole Foods.

Its right on the corner of a fairly busy intersection, but its not far from our apartment at all. Upon entering, it became obvious that this was like most coffee/cafe places, crowded and cramped. On the same tone, this also normally means that the coffee and food are good, which they were. Maybe something about being a sardine and feeling like a hipster makes the food taste better, I dunno. I went with a 1/2 Helsinki Sandwich (Smoked salmon, cream cheese, pickled red onion, mesclun greens on potato dill bread), SB went with The Great Eggs-Scaper (Hard-boiled egg, red onion, celery, capers, mayo, Hebrew National mustard, red wine vinegar & greens on whole wheat), we both got coffee (her the light roast, I the dark) and then most importantly we decided to split one of their Lemon Scones.

While the coffee and sandwiches were good, the scone was better. It was a blend between a traditional scone and a huge buttermilk biscuit. The icing was lemon, but it also had lemon zest within the scone. In other words, amazing. As you can see from the picture we managed to find a table to eat at, but we were right next to (and by right next to I mean like 1ft away) from a woman teaching someone French who was speaking it extraordinary loudly. That got old quickly. However, crowded interior aside, it was a good food stop.

We then headed on down to Whole Foods for our shopping. Because we had also had a Peapod delivery this week, it wasn’t a big trip (we get big Peapod deliveries about once every three weeks). Since we only had one bag of groceries to carry, we finally decided to stop at a local butcher that we walk by on the way to the store, Savenor’s. They had recently re-opened after a remodeling. Each time we had walked by since they opened they had been pretty busy and we were normally laden with grocery bags. However since we only had one this time we went in. It was AMAZING. They had a really good selection of meat, from Japanese Beef (at 100$ a pound) to Quail Eggs, to Duck, to Chorizo, to all the ordinary meats and cuts you would expect from a butcher. They also had some drinks, glazes, sauces, etc. I quickly found bottled (glass) Coke and got one of those. Then we ended up getting some Chicken Chorizo (SB loves Chorizo) as neither of us had ever had any. All the meat in the store was local, they even had the farms listed that they got their meat from. They were all from New England. As I mentioned, the quality of the meat looked really, really good. Too bad we are too poor for most of it. However, come Thanksgiving we know where we are going.

An interesting side note, one of the owner’s was talking to SB and apparently one of the farmers they buy from was visiting the store. She was wearing a kilt (the farmer) it was kind of funny/cool.

Anyways, I just wanted to share our Saturday trip. Now I’m going to go be fat and play video games.

Until next time,
-Taco

Beer Blurb – 10/3/14 (Au Bon Pain + Estrella Damm Barcelona + A Bit of History)

November 1, 2014 by Taco

This week’s Beer Blurb takes us to a cafe known as Au Bon Pain as well as a sampling some Spanish beer known as Estrella.

This was a long week at school, a long, painful week. Not going into details here, but I was ready for Friday. Its actually 11:15pm now and I spent most of my night finishing up on school stuff. That actually violates my study rule, but I’m just entirely swamped at the moment. Its also cold and grey. This all ads up to SB and I being ready for some Friday night relaxation. Of course, we had to make a Target run first.

Target runs are a bit of a pain in my ass here.

You essentially have two options. Pay to rent a ZipCar or take the bus. The bus is cheaper and easier, so the Zipcar is only really good if you need something (like a wall mirror, for instance). The problem is that the Target is in sort of a sketchy area and there are not good cross-walks up there. The real issue, is that if you rely on the bus, you have to hardcore conform to its schedule, lest you end up waiting on the side of road with grocery bags for 30 minutes (or 2 hours, but I’m not even going to go into that rage). Another issue is that Target runs just don’t factor into our schedule. Our weeks are planned pretty solidly, ain’t no-one got time to go to Target.

So I came home early and we went and did it, QQ. Then we went home and SB cut my hair since stupid Patriots sports shows hog Friday night television and steal our Jeopardy!

The one cool thing I did find on our Target trip was a memorial marker, literally right on the sidewalk. That is one thing that is awesome about living in Boston, it just exudes history.

[For a very concise, but still interesting, explanation of the above memorial see HERE and HERE] – [On a similar note, read HERE for a story about our first flag, which is nearby the memorial, I need to go find it]

After that we decided to go to Au Bon Pain for dinner. It was SB’s turn to pick but I suggested it. She had been wanting to go there for awhile. We took off and SB took us in like.. the longest route humanly possible without actually going the wrong way (remember I have leg issues). Once we got there it became obvious that Au Bon Pain was basically Panera bread, except with better prices. Not that that is hard, Panera is like the most overpriced POS place in the world. Come pay 10$ for a 1×1″ sandwich, that is the Panera way. In fact, we paid less at Au Bon Pain in Cambridge that we did for Panera back home. I mean, holy God.

Anyways, Au Bon Pain was basically a Panera with more food and cheaper prices. Sounds good, right? Well the food and the prices were. But the service freaking sucked. I mean really sucked, and this is a counter order place, so service has to REALLY suck, for you to actually realize it sucks. The place was also freezing. I was not impressed. Not in the least.

Maybe I was spending too much time thinking about how I don’t like Panera to give Au Bon Pain a chance, but either way, I don’t like either of them. But Au Pon Pain is by far the better of the two, because its cheaper. Seriously, Panera is ludicrously overpriced, 2000$ for an apple.

The one cool thing Au Bon Pain had going for it was that the one we went to was the same one which appears in Good Will Hunting, so that was cool.

/Panera rant

After my pain at Au Bon Pain we headed up to a marketplace we like. On the way I almost got attacked by a squirrel. He squirrely emo raged and charged at me. No really, he actually charged at me. I asked for it though by getting all up in his business. I may or may not have ran from a squirrel. Its cool, he was still a better value than Panera bread.

For beer, I picked up some:

1. Damm S.A. – Estrella Barcelona

Before you ask, no, I have no idea what Damm means, nor does SB. Speaking of SB, she is actually the reason I tried this beer. Estrella is a Spanish beer, if you couldn’t tell. When she was studying in Spain she had regular Estrella. She described it as middle of the road, Budweiser type stuff [Side note, check out how decent Budweiser’s rating is compared to most macro brews, f*ck you hipsters]. Well, Estrella Barcelona, also from the Damm S.A. brewery, is a “Premium” version of Estrella. If you know anything about “Premium” beers you also know that it potentially means nothing, other than a higher price tag. Considering that I haven’t been able to find regular Estrella (in fact I couldn’t find any Damm beers back home), I can’t compare Barcelona to standard. Anyways, its a pretty decent beer. I’d rate it as marginally higher than Budwesier-tier. Its definitely a macro brew, but you don’t get many beers from Spain, at least in comparison to most European countries (excluding the French, no one cares about them). It was a very solid and bitterish beer, with hearty herbal or maybe even grassy undertones. The hops sort of take a back seat the to malt in this one. Not bad for a country that normally isn’t known for its beer. I look forward to drinking the other four 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

Beer Blurb 9/26/14 (Grendel’s Den + UFO Pumpkin)

October 29, 2014 by Taco

Hello all, its time again for another Beer Blurb/Friday night out.

It was an especially long week for both SB and I. Lots of school related stuff to turn in and for me specifically, a lot of organization related stuff popped up. But that’s for another post. We were also sick (me on the upswing, SB still in the midst of it). So we weren’t quite feeling a trip to the level we took last week. Instead we wanted something we could walk to and wouldn’t need to rely on public transit. Given how much stuff we have around us, you’d think this would be easy, but it actually isn’t. In fact, we are still struggling with having so many options to choose from. Its weird, the more we have to pick from, the more difficult it gets. I think there is some psychology there, surely.

Anyways, it was my week to pick (we alternate) and I found a place called Grendel‘s Den. I was drawn to this place because every day from 5:00 to 7:30 all their food is half price. This was reminiscent of the pervasive Happy-Hours in Seattle. There were really weird stipulations with it though, such as you have to spend at least 3$ (no biggie), to you have to sit inside, no patio seating (uh, ok?) and then no doggy bags (uh, what..?). So if you go and take advantage of half-price food, you better be hungry. The good news is that the food is well priced (for this area) and so you can eat for about 3.80$ a person during this time (it doesn’t apply to alcohol though, of course).

We decided to go, it wasn’t a long walk, it was a nice day, and it was half priced.

Grendel’s Den

The patio area was above ground actually, but the restaurant itself was actually mostly below ground. It had a nice vibe. For drinks, we went with the following:

1. Boston Brewing Company – Grendel’s Ale

2. Original Sin Cidery – Original Sin Cider

Grendel’s Ale only has three ratings and no real reviews on Beer Advocate, so apparently this is not as common a beer as I figured it would be. I’m not entirely sure if its brewed exclusively for Grendel’s Den or not, but that was my assumption and that is why I got it. Its from the Boston Brewing Company, which is apparently owned by Samuel Adams. It was pretty good, it was sort of a blend between a red and a brown ale, nothing too exceptional, but nothing really bad either. It was slightly above average strength for a standard ale, but I’m not complaining. SB went with the cider, if you didn’t guess that. You also probably guessed which was which in the photo above. I was actually surprised by just how clear the Original Sin Cider was. Of course it was still pretty good, it was very crisp for a cider and not sickeningly sweet, I liked it, SB liked it (obviously, since she finished almost all of it herself since we largely weren’t sharing due to sickness). We actually spent almost twice as much on alcohol as we did on food, just because of the food being fairly cheap and then halved from there.

I went with the Sonoma Wrap (Turkey, bacon, sundried tomato-goat cheese, guacamole, arugula, onion) and SB went with the Turkey & Havarti (on a baguette with pesto-mayo). The food was pretty good, though it took our server for-freaking-ever to actually take our food order. She took our drinks quickly, but then disappeared for awhile. Right about the time I was becoming angry, she came back, I think there was some confusion over whether we just wanted drinks or food as well. Anyways, that aside it was a good experience.

On the way home we strongly considered going through a nearby desserterie, but when looking through the window everything looked super rich, so we passed and just went to our normal market for treats. I also picked up a six pack of:

3. Harpoon Brewery and Beer Hall – UFO Pumpkin

(No I didn’t drink 5 beers since coming home, I was too lazy to take them all back out of the refrigerator just to take a picture)

I’m quickly becoming a big fan of Harpoon’s UFO (Unfiltered Wheat Offering) series. Though this wasn’t my first time having a UFO, it was my first time having their Pumpkin Ale. I like UFO, I like Pumpkin Ales, what could go wrong? The answer? Probably a lot, but nothing did in this case, it was very good. It was a bit on the “thicker” side for a Pumpkin Ale, but nowhere near a Pumpkin stout. Now there is an idea, a Pumpkin stout, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. This UFO Pumpkin actually had a nice blend of spices, so its a solid Pumpkin Ale in my book. I typically try to avoid Pumpkin stuff (and wearing Jeans) until October, but it was a long week and I’m in New England where Fall comes early. 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

—————

Dishonorable Mention:

MADD Virgin Craft Brewed Lager

I’m adding this after the fact, because I had it the next day. We were in a Walgreens (most stores around here don’t sell alcohol, its mostly liquor stores that have it) and I spotted some non-alcoholic drinks. I saw that the lager was only 93 cents, so I figured, eh why not? Some near-beers actually are not half bad, especially the German ones. Not the case here. First off, I don’t like MADD. Yep, you heard me. I think it was an organization that was founded with a good purpose, but has since become a worthless lobbyist mass. Even the founder left MADD because she didn’t like the direction it was going, and that was 29 years ago, so just imagine what it has morphed into today. I actually didn’t notice the “MADD” part of the can, if I had I would not have bought it. But I didn’t, and so I tried it. Ladies and gentlemen this may well be the worst beer I have ever tried in my life. There is nothing redeeming about this beer, other than that it cost 93 cents. It tasted like liquid field corn. Again, it was not bad because it was a near-beer, many of those taste just fine for what they are. This “lager” was freaking horrendous. Sorry MADD, but if you don’t want people to drink beer (they don’t, they rage against beer but ignore hard liquor, sound logic there) you’ll need to do better than this crap.

Beer Blurb 9/20/14 – (Asgard, Toscanini’s, and Grapefruit)

October 26, 2014 by Taco

Its time again for another Beer Blurb. Though these are quickly becoming more about beer and food than just beer, but the title shall remain.

This one is actually being written the day after, largely because I’m sick and haven’t felt like doing much.

Anyways, down near Central and Kendall squares there is a legendary place known as Toscanini’s. Its an ice cream shop, but its been called the best ice cream in the world by entities such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the London Herald. I have no idea if its the best ice cream in the world, in fact its probably doubtful that it is (its all subjective anyways), but praise like that makes one curious doesn’t it?

So, we decided we wanted to try out their ice cream and we planned our dinner around our dessert. Kind of the opposite of what you normally do, but whatever. SB found a place pretty much immediately adjavcent to Toscanini’s called Asgard. It was an Irish pub. I’m not sure why an Irish pub has a Norse name, but we won’t split hairs. I was sick and didn’t really care, so we headed out into the unseasonably cold temperatures. Once we got there (it was far enough that we needed to take a bus) we found that the place was absolutely packed. There was some sort of 5K Race registration/packet pickup going on. There was also no host in sight. Right about the time I decided I wanted to leave, the hostess came over and took our name. It wasn’t that long of a wait from there and we ended up getting seated fairly quickly.

I was sick, but that didn’t stop me from getting a beer. Our selection:

1. Carlsberg Danmark – Carlsberg Beer

2. Cambridge Brewing Company – Cambridge Amber

If you have a really good memory, you’ll notice that I’ve had the Cambridge Amber before. If you’ve followed the blog since its earlier inception, you’ll also know that I’ve had Carlsberg before. The Amber, is, as before, a nice Ambery beer with good malt tones. The Carlsberg was a Carlsberg, complete with its unique little twang of an aftertaste. If you’ve never had a Carlsberg, you really need to try it. Of course once you’ve had a beer straight from the brewery, its kind of ruined for you, even on tap. (If you couldn’t figure it out, the CBC is the dark beer in the photo).

We also had some really good food. SB had some macaroni and cheese (shells) with white cheese, Brussels sprouts, and corned beef. I had a corned beef sandwich, a salad with honey lime vinaigrette and onion soup (which had a piece of melted cheese over it). The food was really good.

They had lots of ruinic stuff on the walls and windows as a design element. One of them said “Yay”.

I have no idea what it really said, but I see Yay. Overall Asgard was good, it was a bit pricey (for us, not for the area), and the Irish theme seemed to be way under the Norse them, but a good experience nonetheless.

After that we headed across the street to Toscanini’s. I had read many times that the lines for this place can be HUGE. However, it was way cold for the time of year (think about 15 degrees below normal) so while there was a line, it was not out the door and down the block or anything crazy. They have 32 flavors each day, which rotate, they also have coffees, cakes, and the like.

We both got two scoops, SB went with Nocciola (Hazelnut, basically) and Heath Bar. I went a little more crazy with Burnt Caramel and Gingersnap Molasses. Again, while I can’t say if its the best ice cream in the world, it was very, very good ice cream. I favored the Gingersnap Molasses over the Burnt Caramel. I was actually expecting it to go the other direction, but the Gingersnap Molasses really surprised me. SB liked the Nocciola more than the Heath Bar, primarily because it was more unique. If you really want an idea of the kinds of flavors they have, I suggest looking at their rotating menu (click the “Today’s Flavors” button up top). Their prices were not bad at all for the location and the amount of ice cream you got.

Finally, closing things out, today I got a six pack of beer while we were out running errands. It was at a new liquor store that I had never been to before. It was sadly just as expensive as my regular liquor store, but the selection was different. They were really bad about pricing things, in that most things had no price tag (which seems to be a woefully common issues out here at smaller marketplaces). However some of them were marked. One of which was a grapefruit wheat beer. Yeap, you read that right. I struggled with the cost for all of 10 seconds then decided I had to buy it.

3. Binding-Brauerei AG – Schöfferhofer Grapefruit Weizen-Mix

So I like grapefruits and I like wheat beers. I also like oranges in my wheat beer. So I didn’t figure grapefruit would be too much of a stretch.

I have to say, I was very, very impressed. Its undoubtedly one of the best fruit beers I’ve ever had. It reminded me of Leinenkugel’s Orange Shandy, except it was even better. The Germans are just good at mixing fruit and beer, that is really all there is too it. It was a nice balance between an unfiltered wheat ale and well.. grapefruit. I think that even if you didn’t like grapefruit, but like wheat ale that this is worth trying. Conversely if you don’t like wheat ale but like grapefruit, its worth trying. SB was very impressed as well. She seemed to really like it, though she is a fan of a good shandy-type beer. Definitely marking down the Schöfferhofer Grapefruit Weizen on the “Do Drink” list.

Until next time,
-Taco

Beer Blurb – 10/13/14 (The Brooklyn Lineup)

The Biscuit, The Butcher, and the Whole Foods

Beer Blurb – 10/3/14 (Au Bon Pain + Estrella Damm Barcelona + A Bit of History)

Beer Blurb 9/26/14 (Grendel’s Den + UFO Pumpkin)

Beer Blurb 9/20/14 – (Asgard, Toscanini’s, and Grapefruit)

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