Due to space concerns and not giving The Local Taphouse’s food at the Brewers and Chewers event in my last post any coverage whatsoever, I decided to do one dedicated solely to the food and the beer (see previous post here discussing brewery-industry-journalisty types and wonderfully esteemed, scintillating company it was too). It never felt like we had enough time with either person which indicates to me that the event was a roaring success.
I already mentioned Bob’s Armpit by Wig & Pen frontman Richard Watkins so I’ll skip that and head onto Sierra Nevada’s Kellerweis. Look, I’ll confess upfront that I didn’t make any notes on the beer…but I do remember enjoying this with the mixed leaf salad with Stone & Wood Pacific Ale mustard dressing, a beer that’s clocked up an impressive accolade best read about on Oz BrewsNews. You can also buy a copy of The Critics’ Choice to Australia’s Best Beers which I highly recommend (full disclosure: I do know several of the contributors).
Sorry, my table. I stole a lot of the tomatoes. I’m destined to suffer a similar fate to St Augustine for such crimes…(when he’s not talking about his racy past and how sorry he is about that, he also goes on about how wracked with guilt he was at stealing pears from a neighbour’s tree as a kid. Read his Confessions if you don’t believe me). Beautiful salad: nice mix of leaves and the dressing was subtle but special and an excellent appetite-whetter.
Not really paying attention to beer and food matching but desperate to get just as many Sierra Nevada beers into me (responsibly: Tristan and I shared a single bottle of all of the ones we had for the whole night), next up was the Sierra Nevada Summerfest lager, 2011. Fresh off the boat!
This was drunk alongside two courses – field mushrooms with chorizo sauté with Brewdog Tokyo (eeeee!) and beef empanadas with 8 Wired Big Smoke porter. Both courses were phenomenal – juicy, sauce-soaked-up mushies and the beef empanadas I could easily have done with another though given the generous servings, that probably wouldn’t have been wise.
Raising the culinary bar even further, two generous dishes designed to complement each other were served yet again – Moroccan spiced couscous steamed with Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, with roast vegetables served separately. The second actual dish however was the most moreish for me of the evening – BrewDog Paradox Isle of Arran lamb neck tagine with snow peas and tomatoes. The meat was melt-in-the-mouth tender and again, greedy sot that I am, it didn’t feel like there was enough to go around. Heavenly. The couscous soaked up the tagine’s sauce making sure not a drop was wasted! Bless you couscous. Our table companions opposite us TJ and Chris were also celebrating its deliciousness.
Forgive me, but I did not have a beer that matched any of these dishes, drinking ‘rogue’ if you will: in fact the word ‘iconic’ comes to mind to describe my next shared beer…as does two songs (replacing the word ‘atomic’ for ‘iconic’).
Then it was onto their Torpedo IPA. What a treat to enjoy these beers guilt-free as well as fresh…I’m not implying I would judge you for your decision to drink grey, but personally, it was something that did bother me when I chose to do it though the temptation and the lure to try a beer I’d never had before was just too great. I’m like Jonathan Safran Foer being all private about eating meat as described in the first chapter of his book Eating Animals (which for the record I never intend to give up).
Dessert time! Oh lord. I said I would only have half a slice but it was just too fab to share.
To finish the sumptuous dinner we had a Feral brown ale gingerbread pudding served with crème anglaise and butterscotch sauce. What a perfect end to a glorious evening. The gingerbread flavouring was fairly subtle but the sauce! Absolute gustatory gleefulness.
TJ, the lovely lass across from me was proudly extolling the virtues of a damn good dark beer from very early on in the evening. Finally, after going through all the beer on the beer menu I’d not previously tried, it was time to get our SN porter and stout on.
The amount of positive things I have to say about The Local Taphouse, you’d seriously think I worked for them (I don’t) but they just do so much for good beer. Aside from the dishes being fantastic as stand-alone dishes, I felt like they had a small element that connected each to the previous one served, the progression was natural.
If Brewers and Chewers runs next year for Good Beer Week and how Steve & co. managed to run it so effortlessly this year given it was a brand new format is awe-inspiring, you really ought to make an attempt to get to it. Things really can only get better from this point onwards.