Dallas Food Blog

Jesse Hughey

Michelob Bavarian Wheat

​Last week, Pyramid's Haywire Hefeweizen proved a tad, shall we say, underwhelming. This week seemed a perfect opportunity to try a couple of macro-brewed attempts at craft-brew styles, just to put things in perspective.

After all, if a relatively small outfit like Pyramid can't get the wheat-beer style right, surely a lowest-common-denominator, masses-pleasing corporate behemoth like Anheuser-Busch couldn't do a better job, could it?

And then there's this new "Rye P.A.," a rye-grain version of an India Pale Ale that Michelob came up with. That couldn't possibly be good, could it?

Could it?

Jesse Hughey

Pyramid Haywire Hefeweizen

​A Pyramid PR representative recently sent a press release announcing the Gold Medal awarded to the brewery's Haywire Hefewiezen at the Great American Beer Festival, and offered to send over sample bottle or two.

As if she needed to ask.

Ben E. Keith beer distributors did her one better and delivered two six-packs, free of charge. One was a Haywire sixer, while the other was a mixed pack with three beers from Deschutes: the Jubelale Winter Seasonal, the Black Butte Porter and the Mirror Pond Pale Ale. 

It's hard to gripe about free beer. But I'll do my best.

Jesse Hughey

Stone Vertical Epic 09-09-09 Belgian-style imperial porter.

​San Diego's Stone Brewery is known for creating some monstrously, even arrogantly hoppy brews. So it was somewhat of a surprise when I sat down to try a pint of the recent 09-09-09 Vertical Epic Belgian-style imperial porter, and the first adjective that came to mind was "subtle."

Expectations are a big part of that. I went to lunch at The Ginger Man today anticipating my first-ever taste of Oskar Blues' Ten FIDY, which is by most accounts a wonderfully robust Russian Imperial Stout created by one of my favorite breweries. But it was not to be, as the bartender told me the bar wouldn't be ready to sell them until tomorrow.

But when life gives you lemons, beer lovers make shandies. So I ordered one of the Stone Vertical Epic porters, one of the pub's most recent arrivals.

​Fort Worth's Paul Hightower may make his living as a technical writer, copywriter and indexer, but one of the great passions in his life is beer. On his Dallas Craft Beer Examiner blog, he is a relentless and well-informed cheerleader for the best beers available in North Texas, whether they're brewed locally or abroad.

Writing a guide to Texas brewers would seem an obvious choice for a textbook author with such an extensive knowledge of the subject. As it turned out, though, his friend and fellow beer blogger Travis Poling had the same idea. So the two decided to collaborate on the authoritative, comprehensive map of the Texas beer landscape, dividing the state geographically by the regions where each lived and had family connections.

The result, Beer Across Texas: A Guide To The Brews And Brewmasters Of The Lone Star State, was recently published by Maverick, and proves to be a valuable resource to anyone curious about the state's breweries, beer pubs and brewing history.

I asked Hightower about his thoughts on Texas beer, his favorite places to pick up a six-pack, and why the self-proclaimed "National Beer Of Texas" merits just a passing mention in his book.

​A beer tasting event like last Saturday's Fall Beer Festival at the Fort Worth Flying Saucer is an easy way to try several new beers at once, hang out with fellow beer people and see a lot of hilarious T-shirts.

However, as I discovered, it's also an easy way to get a bad impression of a beer for a multitude of reasons that are no fault of the brewer's.

Saturday's festival in the Flying Saucer parking lot featured two dozen beers from American craft brewers, separated into East Coast, West Coast, Texas and "Cap'n Keith's Picks." For $15, you could try up to 10 4-oz. samples--and take home the sample-sized glass. For an additional $5, you could improve your selection and choose from the five premium brews in the "UR Not Worthy" tent, though you were still limited to a total of 10 samples. The diligent beertenders ensured nobody got more than his or her fair share by punching holes in each person's tasting card.

As I arrived late in the day, I started with the UR Not Worthy Tent to ensure I tasted them all before something ran out. What I didn't consider was that the strong-flavored and high ABV premium beers would throw the rest of my tastings into disarray. Still, totally worth it. Following are my tasting notes. 

Jesse Hughey

Brooklyn Local 1 with honey-pepper salmon.

​Brooklyn Beer brewmaster Garrett Oliver's visit to Whole Foods yesterday afternoon was first and foremost a cooking demonstration with beer pairing suggestions. But as Oliver described how the flavors of each brew complemented each course, he kept returning to a central thesis: When it comes to food pairings, beer is superior to wine.

"Sommeliers' number one question they're asked isn't about, say, 'What's the soil content in Napa Valley? What percentage is shale?'" he said. "No, it's, 'What wine should I serve with Thanksgiving dinner?'

"And the answer is, 'Beer.'"

No argument here.

Photos by Jesse Hughey

Transferring beer from secondary fermenter to bottling bucket.

​The day I have been waiting for since I bought my starter kit back in August finally arrived yesterday, as Lady Hophead and I popped open our first couple of "H.M.N.I." home-brewed beers. (The initials, incidentally, stand for "Hi My Name Is," for the name-tag stickers we'll probably use to label this first batch.)

It was an anxious moment. My mind kept second-guessing all the steps I'd taken and the potential mistakes I'd made. And there were plenty of moments where I could have screwed it up, from the supplies I chose to bottling.

Those potential mistakes started with the bottled water. Though the one-sheet instructions I received from Homebrew Headquarters were absurdly technical and assumed a level of expertise far beyond anyone buying a starter kit, one thing they did manage to make very clear was not to use distilled water. So, not wanting to mess with boiling the chlorine out of our tap water, I splurged for six Ozarka bottles--and didn't notice until too late the words "Distilled Water" in about six-point type on the labels.

But that's far from the only beer-ruining mistake I may have made in the complicated process.
 

​As it is now officially Rocktober, Oktoberfest beers are replacing summer brews on store aisles, bar coolers and tap walls.

Apparently, though, not all brewers have the traditional Oktoberfest German Marzen-style amber lager in mind for this month. New Belgium, best known for Fat Tire, has introduced a new golden ale, Hoptober, which bears little resemblance to the malty lagers that typify the Oktoberfest style. It's a refreshing--literally and figuratively--change of pace for the season.

In fact, it's one of the most interesting beers sampled lately, at least compared to Samuel Adams' and Paulaner's seasonals.

Arthur Guinness

​You may not be in Dublin, New York City, Kuala Lumpur or any of the other cities holding official Arthur's Day celebrations today. But that doesn't mean you have to feel left out of the party.

Not to be confused with the annual Great Guinness Toast every February 13, which is basically just an excuse to drink Guinness, today's holiday marks the 250th anniversary of the Guinness Brewing Company. At 5:59 p.m. local time (or 17:59; Guinness was founded in 1759, get it?), revelers will raise a pint to toast to founder Arthur Guinness. Performances by Tom Jones, Estelle, Sean Paul and the Black Eyed Peas (live in Malaysia: yet another reason to be thankful you don't live in Malaysia) will be televised locally on DirecTV.

Of course, Dublin being six hours ahead of Dallas, celebrations there have already been underway. But that isn't stopping local bars, especially Irish pubs, from joining in.

Jesse Hughey

Magic Hat Chocolate Belgian Stout, Fall 2009 Odd Notion

​Vermont brewing company Magic Hat has a fall sampler that is making its way to Texas beer stores, which according to the company marks the arrival of the brewer's full line of beers in the state.

Magic Hat is best known for its apricot-infused #9 (which got a nice little spike in popularity last week, including over at Dallas Craft Beer Examiner, on Nine Day). While it's not a Hophead favorite, it's a very well-done beer for what it is, and a pleasant change of pace for a summer beer.

The #9 will be part of the Night Of The Living Dead Variety 12-Pak, along with Circus Boy unfiltered hefeweizen, Roxy Rolles Autumn red and the Odd Notion chocolate Belgian stout. As it happened, samples of the stout and red arrived at City of Ate HQ just as the cool front rolled in with the unrelenting rain and it started to actually feel like fall. Uncanny timing. Maybe Magic Hat really is magic.

Jesse Hughey

Franconia's Oktoberfest

​Eins, zwei, drei, g'suffa! (One, two, three, drink up!)--Bavarian toast

The beginning of Oktoberfest 2009 in Munich is still more than a week away, but the celebrations are already cranking up locally. Just as you can already find Halloween costumes and decorations at some stores, German and German-inspired Oktoberfest beers are already making their ways to stores and bars.

Which is as it should be.

Tonight at The Old Monk, Dennis Wehrmann and Gavin Secchi of Franconia will tap a keg of the McKinney brewer's Oktoberfest. That's fun enough, but what makes the event special is that it's no mere stainless steel keg. Rather, the beer is in a 200-year-old wooden cask and the tapping will actually require a mallet and wooden tap handle.

Other Oktoberfest celebrations around town include Tuesday's Oktoberfest Beer Dinner at Humperdinks (2208 W. Northwest Highway), the Gingerman's day-long 18th annual Oktoberfest October 3, and, of course, Hophead fave Bavarian Grill, which celebrates October 19.

With that in mind, a sampling of Franconia's 2009 Oktoberfest seemed in order--even if it were from a run-of-the-mill steel keg at the Gingerman.

Mikal Beth Hughey

Libertine Bar owner Simon McDonald serves Leffe, Hoegaarden and Duvel ales in their corresponding glasses.

​The importance of serving wine and spirits in the correct style of glass is pretty well established. Order a Cognac at even the most laid-back of bars and it's unlikely that the bartender will pour it into a shot glass. Beer, on the other hand, rarely gets the same respect.

Unless you're at a place that specializes in craft beers, you're likely to get your brew--regardless of style--in the all-purpose pint glass. Hell, bartenders at Stan's Blue Note will even pour an IPA into a Mason jar. Beats a Dixie cup, at least.

But does the glassware really make that much of a difference?

Mikal Beth Hughey

​A liter a day keeps the doctor away. --Old German proverb (at least according to the Bavarian Grill's Stein Hour menu)

Along with a handful of other local eateries, the Bavarian Grill in Plano is in the running for GermanDeli.com's designation as The Best German Restaurant in America.

Kuby's may have great sausage, Jorg's Cafe Vienna may have delicious schnitzel and Edelweiss may boast its patronage of such celebrities as John Wayne and, umm, Mark Davis. But thanks to its dedication to beer, Bavarian Grill has the Hophead vote--despite the accordionist's stab at "Smoke On The Water."

Things didn't start off so promising, though, thanks to a waitress and a beer menu that both proved less than helpful.

​This week, Sigel's announced that it is taking early orders for a dozen 6-liter bottles of Unibroue's La Fin Du Monde golden ale. Catch is, these collector's items come at the eyebrow-raising (or unibrow-raising) price of $219.99 a bottle. And that's a discount: the "regular price," according to Sigel's, is $249.99. One ebay seller is even asking $299.99--plus shipping!

Such an extravagant price would be more understandable if this were some rare, ultra-limited brew. But La Fin Du Monde is relatively easy to find. In fact, you can generally pick it up at Central Market and specialty wine and beer stores for as little as $6.99 for a 750-ml corked bottle.

No doubt it's a lovely ale. A deceptively drinkable tripel (9 percent ABV), it's a rowdy, bubbly Belgian-style (from Quebec) brew that's equally malty, yeasty and citrus-hopped. If Leffe and Duvel had a love child, it might taste something like La Fin Du Monde.

And yet ... one could buy eight of the Champagne-style bottles to get six liters of the same beer for as little as $55.92. Why would anyone pay nearly four times that amount for a single bottle?

Hophead turned to Sigel's Beer Buyer Bruce Calhoun for the answer to that question.

​There's something enticing and romantic about the idea of making one's own beer right at home. Along with home wine making (yechh!) and the few in Kentucky--and elsewhere--who manage home spirits, it's the last frontier of legal DIY intoxicants.

Set up a meth lab in your trailer and ... well, you're resigning yourself to a life of paranoia and rambling explanations to the neighbors as to why you're mowing your lawn at 3 a.m.

But homebrewing? Ain't no law against making your own beer. In certain quantities.

I recently headed up to Homebrew Headquarters to buy a starter homebrewing kit. God help me, I haven't even tasted a drop of my creation and I already think I may be hooked.

Jesse Hughey

​May a grand Constellation be formed by a union of American virtues. --Revolution-era toast, per Richard J. Hooker's "The American Revolution Seen Through A Wine Glass" (though we like to think that beer mugs were hoisted to these words as well).

Two British ales recently proved to be real head-scratchers for Ye Olde Hophead. That's not to say they weren't enjoyable--quite the contrary on both accounts. But each offered a surprise of some sort.

The first was Samuel Smith's India Ale, from Yorkshire's oldest brewery. Printed on the label of the 18.7-oz bottle is the familiar legend about IPAs' development as an ale heavily hopped to preserve it for shipment to India, a story upon which this installment of Hophead touched.

One might expect an ale with such a hop-centric origin story to back it up with a pretty intense blast of hops. One might be wrong.

Jesse Hughey

​Two weeks back in this column, Oskar Blue made a pretty convincing case that high-quality beer need not be kegged or bottled to taste great. In fact, as commenter Paul Hightower pointed out, you can find a Texas example of high-quality craft beer that comes in cans.

And no, that's not a reference to Pabst Lone Star.

Southern Star is a new brewery that began production just over a year ago in Conroe, some 45 minutes north of Houston. The company makes just a handful of beers, including a crisp lager, a rauchbier lager, a stout, a blonde ale and the signature Pine Belt Pale Ale.

Pine Belt is available on draft and in four-packs of 16-oz. cans, a beer delivery method that Hophead heartily endorses. Who doesn't love a tall boy can on a hot summer day?

Jesse Hughey

 When you think about brewing hot spots, what come to mind? Some obvious international destinations include Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the Czech Republic. As for the U.S., craft breweries are everywhere, but we think of the West Coast--especially Portland and Seattle. There's always (for better or for worse) St. Louis and Milwaukee, too.

But Hawaii?

Believe it or not, the state actually has a few well-respected breweries, including Mehana, Waimea and Kona Brewing Co., the latter of which produces a very satisfying pale ale: Fire Rock.

Fortunately, it proved far more drinkable that another Kona beer, the carbonated coffee beverage known as Pipeline Porter. Granted, that beer has its enthusiasts. Hophead is not one of them.

While the tastes of these two Kona offerings have little in common, they do share one trait: an odd disconnect between the nose and the actual taste.

Jesse Hughey

Last year, Oskar Blues added five 100-gallon tanks and increased its brewing by more 64 percent over 2007 in order to keep up with increased demand. That the Lyons, Colorado, brewery experienced such a rapid growth probably wouldn't surprise anyone who has tasted its excellent flagship beer, Dale's Pale Ale, or other offerings like Gordon's Ale (a Hophead favorite). What is surprising is that the Oskar Blues beers are primarily available in cans.

Cans carry a stigma among the beer-snob crowd. This is in spite of the many advantages, including its lighter weight and having no risk of breaking or light spoilage. Yet some connoisseurs claim to pick up on a distinct metallic taste when they stoop so low as to drink beer from a can. Whether cans actually change the flavor of a beer is open for debate--and will be likely the subject of a future Hophead experiment. It could easily be that most beers available in a can would taste foul whether they're drunk from the can, keg, bottle or Waterford crystal.

That's not the case with Dale's Pale Ale. According to the brewery's home page, the idea of canning its beers began as a joke.

But then we discovered that the belief that cans impart flavor to beer is a myth. The modern-day aluminum can and its lid are lined with a water-based coating, so the beer and the can never touch. Cans, we discovered, are actually good for beer.

Last week's Hophead featured the Kansas City brewery Boulevard's Saison, part of the company's Smokestack series. Though not a life-changing beer, the Saison was impressive enough to warrant further investigation into the Smokestack series. A recent night at home with pizza seemed a perfect opportunity to pop the cork on the other Smokestack bottle crying out for attention from the fridge: the Double-Wide India Pale Ale.

A bit of background: Despite the name, India Pale Ales, or IPAs, are not Indian in origin. Rather, they began in England as a heavily hopped variation of pale ales (ales brewed with pale malts). Popular lore has it that these beers were more highly alcoholic than pale ales, and that the higher alcohol by volume (ABV) and extra hops were intended to help the beer survive its export to India, though those assertions are debatable.

Whatever the reason for their creation, IPAs are wonderful beers for those who like strong, bitter, hoppy beer. And that goes double for double IPAs, such as Boulevard's Double-Wide.

Mikal Beth Hughey

Great Brewers recently launched its "Beer Sommelier," an online program that purports to pair beers to a variety of meats, grains, vegetables, cheeses, breads and sweets. "Masterfully select the best beer styles to pair with any dish," the Web site boasts.

With the Libertine Bar's Brass Knuckle Corn Dog Beatdown set for Saturday, it seemed an ideal opportunity to find out what beers would best complement a battered and deep-fried frankfurter.

That's when the first problem arose: corny dogs aren't listed. Perhaps Great Brewers could tone down the "any dish" claim.

Oh, well. So the sommelier isn't perfect. Finding the right suds to wash down a corny dog would take a bit of thinking.

At the Kessler groundbreaking ceremony last weekend, a music critic was overheard calling Oak Cliff "the Brooklyn of Dallas." It's not a new sentiment. According to an 1890 flyer by Dallas Land & Loan Co., "Oak Cliff is to Dallas what Brooklyn is to New York."

Whether or not the analogy is accurate, it seemed appropriate to try an offering from Brooklyn Brewery on a recent visit to Eno's Pizza Tavern.

Though Eno's beer selection isn't huge, it offers 20-something microbrews, making it something of a destination bar for Oak Cliff beer lovers (sadly, it doesn't have much competition). It was also, you'll recall, the site of a homebrewing competition a couple weekends back.

Before getting to Brooklyn's Local 1, though, the menu's description of Oskar Blues' Gordon's Ale ("Strong ale/Between Imperial Red and Double IPA") proved irresistible.

Mark C. Austin

Hophead wasn't the only one thirsty for beer at Bonnaroo last weekend.

Hophead spent a four-day weekend at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. The music, comedy, people-watching and general chaos of the thing made for an outstanding trip. But one of the highlights was the accompanying "Broo-er's Festival," a biergarten featuring some 20 brewers ranging from tiny local outfits to Anheuser-Busch.

As it turned out, two personal favorites from the bash are unavailable in Texas. And, as conversations with one brewery's brewmaster and another's marketing manager revealed, they're happy to keep it that way.

Hopefully entrants in Sunday's homebrew competition come up with something better than Skittlebrau.

Whether you've got your own specialty beer you're dying to share with the world or you just like free mystery drinks, make sure you block out some time Sunday afternoon. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, June 14, Eno's Tavern in the Bishop Arts District in Oak Cliff will hold the Bishop Arts Summerfest featuring a homebrew competition.

The restaurant has been accepting applications for several weeks. So far, a handful of amateur brewers have registered about a dozen different brews, says Eno's general manager Trent Smith. But if you've got bottles ready to go, the competition will accept applications (with a $25 entry fee) right up until the event.

Mikal Beth Hughey

The comment thread in the April 14 10 Questions with Jim Schutze, the Dallas Observer's "investigative curmudgeon," got City of Ate thinking about his hometown brew, Stroh's.

"Some people cry for the Old Country. I cry for Stroh's. Many's the Stroh, many's the Stroh. Oh, Stroh's!" Schutze wrote in a reply to Amy S's question "Schlitz, Hamm's or Stroh's?" Of course, many's the Texan with similar nostalgic feelings for Lone Star. But how do the two beers match up against each other?

There are few things Lady Hophead loves more than beer, but singing is one of them. So naturally, karaoke--which combines those two loves--is like heroin for her. If you were to offer her the choice of concert tickets for a double bill of Blondie and Madonna or the chance to sing '80s classics into a cheap mic to a few friends at some dingy bar, she would have to think before answering.

So when we heard the sound of amateur singing blasting up from The Social House's downstairs lounge, I knew there was no turning back.

The place is pretty if a bit sterile: very modern-contemporary with polished hardwood tables and booths made of black vinyl doing an excellent impression of leather. It feels like the place tries a bit too hard, which isn't surprising considering that the owners' other venture is an ultra lounge.

Our bartender-- this young lady--hadn't even finished pulling our pints of Maredsous 8 and Chimay White before my wife was at the DJ table asking about his playlist. I was more interested in the beer list--which came sandwiched between two stained hardwood slats. It was the first time I'd ever seen a drink menu presented in something I could use to refloor our den. Very fancy.

The actual beer selection, while more than adequate, wasn't quite as impressive.

For every wound, a balm. For every sorrow, a cheer. For every storm, a calm. For every thirst, a beer.

Summer is nearly here, which explains the sudden cloudiness. I'm not talking about the weather; I mean the cloudy pints of seasonal unfiltered wheat beer offered at your favorite beer pub. And, while the place puts just as much thought into its wine selection as its beers, and while it isn't big enough to boast the overwhelming selection of an Old Monk or Flying Saucer, Zymology is on my short list of favorite beer pubs.

What the selection lacks in sheer size it more than makes up for in the thought that owners Sam Dickey and Ben Verdooren put into the 20 drafts and 25 or so bottled beers they offer. In fact, I'd just as soon have a shorter list to choose from if the selections are almost all top-notch beers. Plus, as Dish has already explained, the food ain't half bad.

Remember the great ska craze of the mid-90s? My memory of that era is a bit cloudy, but from what I recall it was a thankfully short-lived phenomenon in which kids rediscovered English ska punk from the '80s, which itself was a rediscovery of the original version of ska, a Jamaican dance music that English mods listened to, a trendy precursor to reggae in the '60s (which went on to influence later punk bands). Suddenly punk bands wore suits and formed a weird truce with the band geeks who knew how to play horns for a third-generation ska revival that rivals only the swing-dancing fad that followed in its stupidity.

Hang on, I'll get to the beer in a moment.

I had friends that were into ska punk, but I held my tongue and tolerated repeat plays of Reel Big Fish, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and other ska or ska-influenced bands. I could have done more to stop the spread, but I didn't. Maybe if one had gone so far as to permanently label himself or herself as a ska fan by, say, getting a Less Than Jake tattoo, I'd have intervened. I like to think that if one had started a business that's only tangentially related to music and named it "Ska" I'd have tried to talk them out of it.

OK, now: I wasn't around when Dave Thibodeu and Bill Graham brewed their first batch of beer in 1995 and decided to call it Ska. It's probably too late to suggest another name, and judging by the song on the brewery's web page (music warning), the guys' love of ska outlived that of the general public anyway.

Last month, Ben E. Keith began distributing beers from the Durango, Colorado, brewery, including Ska's True Blonde Ale and Pinstripe Red Ale. After the jump, my thoughts on both.

Patrick Michels

I have bought perhaps half a dozen Michelobs in my entire life. Compared to Anheuser-Busch's flagship Budweiser, Michelob is a serviceable brew. But the pricing is pushed just enough that it makes more sense to go with the much better imports or small production beers.

Michelob recently sent a bottle apiece of the four beers included in its Spring/Summer Sampler Pack: Shock Top Belgian White, Hop Hound Amber Wheat, Michelob Honey Wheat and Michelob Dunkel Weise.

Hey, at least it wasn't an Ultra, Light, and Amberbock pack. Because the box includes a "tasting session" sheet, I grabbed some office mates for a random taste test.
 

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough. --Mark Twain (and with Dogfish Head's super-strong beers, barely enough really is enough)

When I was a kid, my Papa Salfi had a framed poster in a guest bathroom from which I first learned about the effects of alcohol. It had a numbered series of lines on which he had signed his full name. By the seventh or eighth, his signature had devolved into an illegible scrawl. The tenth was just a crooked line. Printed across the bottom was the moral: "You can't control a car when you drink. You can't even control a pen."

My notes from last night's Dogfish Head Brewery tasting at the Flying Saucer in Addison reminded me of that. Thank God I didn't get behind the wheel.

It was a vertical tasting, which is when you compare a recent beer with an older one of the same type. This is not recommended for a can of Coors Light. Only heavily hopped, highly alcoholic beers can stand up to a two- or three-year shelving. It was the "highly alcoholic" part that eventually did me in.