From the dept. of things you might (or might not) want going down yr neck:
I'm not (y'all might have noticed) not from Texas and so hadn't ever heard of it but apparently there was a small Dr. Pepper plant there that was still bottling Dr. Pepper made with sugar. It was known as Dublin Dr. Pepper (cos it was made in Dublin, TX). And now it's closing. I think it's mostly a story of big company bringing the hammer down with no concern for the amount of harm done to a small community where a whole bunch of jobs are about to disappear. Altho from reading a bit online, it seems like there's maybe a side-bar story of a bit of over-reach -- maybe not much in the grand scheme and completely understandable (if you've got something that becomes a hot commodity/trendy product, you want to seize the chance to move more units, even if there's an agreement in place restricting where you can sell and you have to get a little grey market) but enough to give the big money boys an excuse to drop the aforementioned hammer.
So I've been hearing these really obnoxious ads on the radio for Dr. Pepper 10 (and when I say "hearing" I mean the first few seconds before I change the station). And I've read a lot of internet scorn about the DP10 campaign, which is basically a loud, dumb "ooh, our diet soda isn't for the ladies but only for manly men like you." Srsly? I mean, do I even have to get into the myriad ways that's offensive and stupid? No, I didn't think so. And, besides, if I did, I'd be here all night writing. Anyway, apparently there are also TV ads cos one aired when we were watching 30 Rock on-demand (and thus no fast-forwarding). I was out of the room but Sarah confirmed that it is, in fact, incredibly stupid and offensive. So it's not just me, then. And, no, I'm not linking to that crap.
Let's wrap up on a much more positive note: earlier this week I went to Drinks with Fullsteam. Sadly, they were brewing in the back so we couldn't meet in the production area, which was the original plan. Still, it was super fun and interesting. Small group (15 or so folks, I think) and the guys from Fullsteam were there to talk about what they were doing and answer questions. I'm sure nothing they told us was confidential but I didn't take notes so I won't go into specifics cos I don't want to get anything wrong. But they talked about stuff like how they decide what kind of R&D projects to work on, how they scale up from test batches, what kind of things they're working on, the 300 mile project, issues with sourcing ingredients. One interesting thing discussed was how they can brew something exactly the same from one run to the next and yet have people say it tastes completely different, often in ways that contradict each other (oh, it was darker last year... no, it's darker this year). Not that I'd know anything about that...

Following up on yesterday's seasonal beer post, here's a brief write-up of Bell's Christmas Ale. Which I think I tried last year but I'm not sure so it's maybe not all that memorable. Bonus comment-mention of the Xmas ale from Great Lakes, which I agree is excellent. They were sampling it at last year's beer festival and it was one of my faves. Alas, Great Lakes (based in Cleveland) doesn't distribute here in NC.
If you're watching the new season of Top Chef, you really need to be reading Hugh Acheson's blog on the Bravo site. His blogging is up with some of the stuff Bourdain was writing in earlier seasons. The one for this week's show is some primo snark. To the extent that I'm wondering how long before the network or the producers reel him back in. So, enjoy it while you can. I had been thinking that it was too bad he wasn't on the show more (aside: I'm over how Top Chef, in all its iterations, makes a big deal of announcing someone as a "regular" judge only to have to missing for half the episodes) but his blog's actually better the week's that he's not there. Cos then he's just watching the show on TV and recapping. En fuego!

Got up this morning, said "rabbit, rabbit" (like you do) but the magic wasn't working too well as I discovered after driving over to the radio station that I'd left my access card at home so I had to turn around and drive back and get it. End result was that I started about 10-15 minutes late and was feeling discombobulated for the whole show.
But, yes, it is indeed the most wonderful time of the year. And, no, I don't frakkin' mean Xmas. Altho now that it's officially December at least I can hear Christmas music w/o wanting to stab someone in the neck. No, I mean winter beer season. Longtime reader/sufferers will recall that I'm a huge fan of Great Divide's Hibernation. I have previously declared it my favorite beer. Evah! And that's still true. I also like the Heavy Seas Winter Storm (by Clipper City) which has been around for a few years. Last year's new arrival on the winter seasonal front was Red Nose from Natty Greene. That moved quickly to near the top of the list. This year, my new pick is Wassail, from Full Sail. Oddly enough, I've been aware of Full Sail for years because I bought a Full Sail branded pint glass from a thrift store. But I'd never tasted the beer (they're based in Oregon). Either they've expanded and are shipping nationally from Oregon or they've started contract brewing on the east coast. The beer is excellent and the name (which reminds me of an MST3K sketch where Crow and Servo are wassailing and using it as a shake-down scam on Mike) is just a bonus. They really should put that stuff in cans though.

And so it begins...
We're all less than a week out from Thanksgiving. Which (you'll know this if you've been reading this blog for a while) my cousins have dubbed the Pie Holiday. What can I say? My family, or at least that side of my family, is into food. Especially pie. Anyway, as in previous years, I'll be marking the looming food-pocalypse with some thematically appropriate linkage and ramblings. Up first, beer pairings for pie. Beer and pie... fabulous idea! Why have I never thought of this myself? Oh, I'm sure I must have, at some point, been still finishing a beer I had with dinner while I was eating pie but I don't think ever in a planned way. Also, I can't bring any specific tasting experience to comment on these selections. The only one of these I've tried is the Smith's Winter Warmer (altho I haven't had this year's version yet). I haven't been terribly crazy about the few beers from Weyebacher or Southern Tier that I've tried. But I have enjoyed a couple of beers from Founders.
More beer thoughts coming up. And possibly some pie experiences as well.

Here's an awesome interview with Garrett Oliver. He's the brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery and the editor of the new Oxford Companion to Beer. The headline, of couse, is ridiculous click-bait (cos, y'know, an interesting interview with a thoughtful guy... who'd want to read that? but, hey, he says that something sucks; man, now I've got to know). He does answer that question but that's hardly the main point of the interview. Lots of interesting beek geeky stuff just in the interview. Looks like I'll have to be picking up the book at some point.
I'm not on Twitter. I've just never figured out what it's for. But, anyway, last week on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart was riffing on something stupid Herman Cain said (I know... fish, barrel, etc; but the man is running for president and we've seen what happens when you ignore the stupid shit people say when they're trying to get elected) and he started using the hashtag #idonthavefactstobackthisup. Checking tonight to see if anyone had picked up on it and there's some pretty good stuff. TDS writers have contributed some good ones but my favorite is:
If you say "Herman Cain" three times in a mirror, a Godfather's Pizza appears at your door. #idonthavefactstobackthisup

As if yesterday's afternoon of tasting things and agreeing or disagreeing with people about how they tasted wasn't proof, got further confirmation tonight that, yes, taste really is subjective. So you might have noticed that it's fall and therefore pumpkin beer season. I'm on record as thinking that Dogfish Head makes the only drinkable pumpkin beer. But, y'know, I don't like to be too close-minded about these things. Thus, when I saw two different glowing write-ups on the Southern Tier Imperial Pumpking, I thought I'd give it a try. Feh! I'll give them this, it wasn't overly spiced which is usually what I hate about pumpkin beers. They tend to taste like a beer that was filtered through a pie. But the Pumpking tastes more like a beer that's been filtered through a squash. Do not want. The problem is that now I've got half a bottle (they only sell it in those big, two-glasses-per bottles) of nasty beer sitting in my fridge. I'm thinking it might actually be good for cooking, since it's problem is an excess of vegetable flavor. Or maybe not and I should just pour it down the drain.

Spent the morning laying down more insulation in the attic. Yes, it's almost exactly as much fun as it sounds. But on the upside, having accomplished such productivity before lunch meant that I was able to escape any feelings of guilt from spending the afternoon at this year's World Beer Festival. Oh, who am I bullshitting? I am generally not the sort of person who has to deal with feelings of guilt for spending a Saturday afternoon doing something fun. Overall, it was a lot like last year. But that was a lot of fun and this year was too. Was sorry to see several faves from last year (Natty Greene, Skull Coast) either didn't make the trip or didn't survive. Pleased to see that sour beer, which looked like a growing trend last year, was little seen this time around. Funny thing I discovered reading my post from last year is that one of the things I liked this year and thought was a new discovery was actually one of my faves from last year (that would be the cask IPA from Legend in Richmond, VA). Doh! Other things of note from this year's edition are a slight stepping up of the food game and an excellent panel on food and beer pairings. Charlie Deal (Dos Perros, Jujube) served small plates of chicken mole and he and three brewers each picked a beer to pair with it. The audience got to vote on which beer they thought went best. That was a lot of fun, altho the logistics of trying to serve a bunch of people a plate of food and 4 different cups of beer and have the contestants explain what they were serving meant that the food was pretty cold by the time we got to tasting it. I imagine that's what it's like to be a judge on Iron Chef. My fave pairing was Charlie Deal's pick, a Smuttynose saison. Having made the food did give him, I think, a bit of a home-field advantage. Plus I really like saisons. Most of the friends I was with went with the Foothills porter. The overall audience winner was the Mother Earth beer (I think that was also a porter), which was actually my least favorite pairing. Altho I do like the beer in general. The other surprising thing from last year's post was the positive mention I gave to the Roth cinnamon porter. Whatever positive feelings I had at the time didn't last much past the end of the month because when I saw it today my memory was basically "oh, there's that porter with way too much cinnamon." The mind, it is a funny place.
Anyway, good times indeed. I wanna consult my program to get the names right for all my faves and it's out in the car and I'm not feeling like actually moving my ass out there to find it so that'll have to happen at some future time TBD.

Fun new beer discovery time! Was shopping at the Durham WFM last weekend and came across an end-cap display of Guinness Foreign Extra. I'd never heard of it before but (according to the internets, so it must be true), it's an extra stout (7+% ABV) from Guinness, originally for the Caribbean markets but expanding into other regions lately and just arriving in the US this summer. Good stuff. Gets the House of Dioxin stamp of approval. Not as asskicking as an imperial but definitely hitting harder than regulation Guinness. I'm not gonna get all beer geeky with a description and tell you it's redolent of peat bogs or whatever. I'll just say that if you like stouts, porters, etc. then you might like this too.
Protip: it's on sale at 4.99 for a four-pack. Not sure how long that'll last.

A note from the ongoing mainstreaming of craft beer culture -- Boston Brewing is selling a rauchbier. It's pretty non-aggro both in aroma and flavor. The aroma has hardly any smoke at all. Unlike, say, the Fullsteam smoked porter which is very in-your-face. And the flavor, while definitely smoky, is pretty mild and subtle. I wouldn't say it goes all the way to what the beer geeks call "sessionable" (meaning, you could drink a lot of it in one "session") but it's good enough that I regret that there were only two in the sampler pack I bought this evening. If I had to give a quick capsule description, I'd call it a starter rauchbier or a rauchbier for people who don't like rauchbiers. But since I'm kinda one of those people, I liked it. To be fair, my experiences with rauchbier go way back. Altho I remember thinking that drinking a rauchbier was like licking a forest fire, that was at a point when I hadn't tried nearly so many different kinds of beers. Hell, that was at a point (before the US craft beer revolution) when it was hard to find that many different kinds of beers to try. So, big ups to Sammy Adams. Sure, they're not marketing it as a standalone. As far as I can tell, it's only available in their fall-themed sampler twelvepack. The same way the Old Fezziwig is only in the holiday twelves. Maybe that's not true everywhere but it's definitely true here in NC.
Slightly related (hey, pizza and beer... its a classic combo): interesting piece from Serious Eats about the Neapolitan pizzeria experience. There's no place local that's really doing the full-on Neapolitan thing at this point. Bella Mia trends that way but filtered thru NYC. Rockwood was like that in the early days but they were a bit too far ahead of the market and they made a lot of tweaks during their run, mostly (I felt) to bring things back more in line with what "most people" expect from a pizzeria. The closest I've been to is probably Pizzeria Basta in Boulder (they're so artisan, they worked with people to create Neapolitan style "00" flour grown and milled in the US) but that was a special event so we were eating off-menu. Anyway, interesting stuff. Seems pretty basic to me. altho I guess if these are the common confusions and problems customers have at Neapolitan style pizza joints it's no wonder Rockwood had to spend so much time tweaking their menu and technique and everything.

Back in my first post about Asheville, I mentioned French Broad Chocolate Lounge. We'd heard good things about (I think we even might have walked past it on our last visit but hadn't gotten around to going in. Which I now regret retrospectively because it's outstanding. We decided we wanted some dessert later on Sunday night so we strolled over. Gotta say that's one of the advantage of staying downtown -- the ability to just walk places. Monday we didn't take the car outta the hotel parking lot until it was time to go to the ball game. And if it had been a little cooler, we could've walked there (like I said) and not driven anywhere all day. But I digress. Sarah did some reading up on the Chocolate Lounge and one of the things people on the internets talked up a lot was the porter a la mode. So that's what I was planning to have. I don't think Sarah had a specific dessert in mind. Alas, when we got there, they were out of the porter. I suppose I could have subbed in another beer but I decided instead to go for their "unadulterated carrot cake" and, yes, they mean what they say. Just straight up carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and no stinkin' walnuts or raisins interloping. Seriously good. Not just the best carrot cake I've ever had but one of the best slices of cake of any kind. I've had other cakes that were as good. The chocolate cake at Magnolia Grill was definitely better. But if a Karen Baker cake is the only thing I can think of that's obviously better, well, it should be clear we're talking about some damn fine cake. Meanwhile, Sarah had a dish of maple bacon ice cream.Yes, I said Maple Bacon Ice Cream. I had a taste and it was mind-alteringly good.
We went back on Monday after the Tourists game and, almost inevitably, it wasn't quite as breath-takingly awesome. I did get to try the porter a la mode. Porter with vanilla ice cream. Once I got past the first few sips and the cognitive dissonance of the drink in the float being beer and not soda, it was damn good. Sarah had a pecan tart. I didn't have a taste but she said it was excellent. Just maybe not quite as excellent as the ice cream.
If we'd had any appetite left after dinner on Tuesday, we'd probably have gone back again. But we didn't, so we didn't. Next time for sure.