WombatNation

Note for my vegetarian and vegan friends. Nothing to see here. Move along.

We endured the spiral sliced ham shaped line at Blue Bottle Coffee this morning to buy 10 pounds of heritage-breed pork. Despite the chaos and lack of signs explaining how to pay or pick up your pork, everyone seemed to eventually figure it out, and no Walmart Black Friday incidents broke out. The free coffee, sausage and bacon after the long wait were pretty awesome, especially the sausage. I can hardly wait to cook the sausage we got in our bag. It was crazy good.

Chris Cosentino of Incanto was there, waiting in line with everyone else to score some pork. Although he obviously has a direct source for his restaurant, it was cool to see him there, relishing the experience with the rest of us.

We got a 1/4 rack of chops from an apple-fed Berkshire, some pork belly from an apple-fed cross between a Mangalitsa and a Berkshire, a ham hock from an apple-fed Mangalitsa and two bags of sausage.

For dinner tonight, we tried to make schweinshaxe from the ham hock. While an interesting experiment, it was a bit disappointing in the end. The next time a recipe calls for what sounds like too much cloves, I’m going to go with my gut and use much less. The meat came out a little too tough. I think we went way, way too light on the salt. That will teach us next time to use a real German and not a random recipe on the Internet next time we come face to face with a trotter. At least it looked great when it came out of the oven.

After tasting my way through many beers, though a fraction of the total, at Dimond Oaktoberfest in my hood, I made my way over to Cal for 99 Bottles of Beer, a beer symposium, fair, workshop and exhibit.

After getting the lay of the land at the beer fair, I started at the back with an Eel River Acai Berry Wheat Ale. Very light wheat ale with a (surprise) subtle berry flavor. Not my favorite, but maybe good for weaning someone off American industrial light lagers.

While I missed the workshop on beer packaging, I’m sure that the person from 21st Amendment was talking about their canned beers. Proper canned beers these days use an inert liner that does not impart a metallic taste to the beer. The aluminum cans’ opacity obviously is even better than brown bottles for preventing reactions between isohumulones in the beer and blue light that produce skunky flavored mercaptans. Okay, I’ll put the book down, now.

My next taste was about half a can of 21st Amendment Brewery Hell or High Watermelon Wheat. The watermelon taste was not subtle. Being a Southerner, I looked around for salt. I would absolutely drink this on a hot summer day. Unfortunately for 21st Amendment, their hometown of San Francisco has about four of those a year. I bet they could sell a lot of this in Texas.

Dan was drinking his IPA at the Bison Brewing booth, so I decided to follow his lead. Great aroma hops perfectly balancing the malt. Just what my palate needed.

Symposium Time. First up was Charlie Bamforth, a malting and brewing science prof at UC Davis. He was a fantastic speaker, combining a high speed history of beer with hilarious anecdotes and comments. I could listen to him for hours. I now wish I had purchased his book Grape vs. Grain while he was signing books before the symposium.

Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing then spoke mostly about the effort in 1989 to produce a beer very much in the brewing style in ancient Sumeria over 5000 years ago. Clearly, he loves his work. They’re cooking up a big new project at Anchor, but Fritz wasn’t ready to reveal what it is. Fritz was also a great speaker.

Bruce Paton spoke briefly about food and beer pairings. The Cathedral Hill hotel is closing very soon, so there is only one more food & beer dinner on schedule with Rob Tod from Allagash. He said he will be a “free agent” after that. Bruce said he refers often to Garret Oliver’s book The Brewmaster’s Table, which I have been busily reading along with Randy Mosher’s Tasting Beer. I was hoping Bruce would talk more about how he chooses beer for food, but he mostly works in the opposite direction. I guess that makes a lot of sense when the beer dinners often feature the beers of a particular brewer. I asked him more about this during the Q&A at the end. He had talked about complement, contrast & cut (cut as in clearing the palate) when choosing pairings. I asked if he favors one approach over the other. He replied that he first looks to complement food with beer, but if he can’t find a good complement, he looks for contrast. I think that’s very useful advice.

Finally, Christine Hastorf from Cal talked about the archaeology of beer, mostly in Egypt, the Middle East and the Andes. Her talk tied together very nicely with Maytag’s talk. She showed off a small kero that is typical of the tumblers used to drink chicha, a corn-based beer, in the Andes. My father-in-law gave us a carved wooden kero that he acquired while they lived in Bolivia and he was going on digs at Tiwanaku with Ponce. Christine guessed that it was from the Colonial period based on the photos I showed her. We really should get it dated. The wood has a really well-worn patina that makes it look fairly old.

I caught the tail end of the tour at the Hearst Museum. Ira Jacknis was telling interesting and amusing about some of the 130 or so beer-related artifacts on display. I’ll have to go back when I have more time, because,…

… it was porter and stout time for me during the closing minutes of the Beer Fair. First up was the Triple Rock Stonehenge Stout. Very dark and chocolately, but perhaps only faintly druidic.

I also had what I think was a porter from Butte Creek. I wasn’t taking any notes, so after a day of tasting, my memory may be a bit off, though I definitely liked it. Damn, next time I bring a notebook, or walk around with a voice recorder saying “Note to self, …”

A fine day of beer tasting came to an end with the Bison Brewing Chocolate Stout. Loved the cocoa flavor and the rich mouth feel of the beer. I’d put it somewhere in mocha-land.

The second annual Dimond Oaktoberfest was even bigger than last year’s event. Unfortunately, I could stay only for a few hours, because I was also planning to attend the 99 Bottles of Beer beer symposium and beer fair at Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley. More on that later. Of course, a lot worse things could happen than having multiple major beer celebrations on the same day.

The Dimond District had quite a few German Biergartens back around the turn of the century. The closest thing we have today in our neighborhood is Oaktoberfest. However, a fantastic group of businesses have opened in the past few years and the heavy retail traffic will hopefully bring us a brewpub like establishment.

The Oktoberfest event itself was free and very well organized. There were the traditional booths filled by non-profits, school groups, commercial sponsors and local businesses. The Bill Brand Memorial Biergarten was a lot bigger than last year’s biergarten, with a lot more participating brewers. The Mad Zymurgists showed up and handed out free samples of homebrew, as well as ran a homebrew contest.

I decided to spend $20 on a souvenir stein with 10 tastes and 2 full beers, instead of 4 full beers. This turned out to be a very savvy move, as the alleged 2 ounce tastes ended up being anywhere from 4 ounces (the mark on the glass) to 6 ounces. I think none of the people pouring wanted to look cheap by offering just a tiny taste. I salute them.

I started with a Bison Brewing (not listed on the t-shirt, but definitely there) Reunion Double Wheat. It’s a pretty powerful wheat ale with a lot of carbonation and a distinct lemon flavor with subtler coriander and orange aroma. I would definitely drink it again.

Then I went for the Orange Kush Wit Beer from Ale Industries. A little googling on the beer’s name suggests an, uhh, unusual possible ingredient. I just tasted hops, though. And, my god, the surprisingly orangelicious flavor. I’m thinking they didn’t just stop at an orange peel or two. Florida called and they want their crop back.

Next was the Iron Springs Oktoberfest. I didn’t like this quite as much I expected I would, though it was a pretty straightforward Märzen. I’ll try it again another time to make sure it wasn’t me with crazy expectations for the first Märzen of the day. It was probably me.

I probably went for the Linden Street Brewery Urban People’s Lager too early, as I wasn’t quite ready for the hop bite, which was stronger than I remembered. Maybe it was the food I was finishing off that wasn’t working, because by the last swallow of beer, I was really enjoying the lager. My glass was once again empty, but my palate felt crisp and clean.

The Beach Chalet Ocean Beach Oktoberfest seemed more like an amber ale than a Märzen. It was a little sweeter and less spicy than I was expecting. This was my wife’s favorite. It was pouring with huge carbonation, but not as much as Drake’s tap, which sprang a leak and nearly sprayed our backs. So sad to watch so much beer spray pour onto the ground. I thought about doing a Homer and diving (in slow motion, of course) with mouth wide open below the cooler. If I had been out of beer tickets, that would absolutely have been me.

I headed over to the corner of the tent for a Thirsty Bear stout. I’ve had the Kozlov stout at the brewery a few times, but this tasted different. Of course, maybe that’s the five previous beers talking. Seemed a little bitter for an Irish stout. Otherwise, silky smooth with a very creamy head.

On the way out I scored a Rubicon Amber. Very sweet malt with tons of caramel. If they told me they juiced the fermenter with a couple bags of those cubic caramel candies that I seem to see only at Halloween, I would totally believe them.

But it wasn’t just about the beer. I had parts of two delicious, soft pretzels with mustard from La Farine Bakery, part of a ground beef meat pie my wife picked up from some vendor and a boar sausage. I would have gone for the La Farine apfelstrudel, but I was feeling a little full by the end.

Sadly, in 2008, Oakland lost two restaurants that served excellent fried chicken. Having grown up in South Mississippi, I know my way around deep fried poultry, and I can tell you that the cooks at The Southern Cafe and Declancy’s Welcome Table knew what they were doing. Both closed mid year, but somehow I soldiered on.

Tonight my wife and I found a suitable, albeit more expensive, replacement at Casa Orinda. It’s an Italian restaurant with a Western theme (no Ennio Morricone background music, though), but they serve a wicked fried chicken plate. The mashed potatoes and gravy are delicious and the biscuit with honey is divine.

The place was packed early on a Sunday night, so we ended up eating at that bar, which is generally fine by me. The friendly bartender even shared some info on how the chef gives the biscuits a really buttery flavor without using much butter.

And they’re not a one trick pony, either. The orecchiette with broiled chicken and portobello mushrooms in a marsala sauce was also very, very good. The beer lineup, all in bottles, was just okay, though I did enjoy a Lagunitas IPA. Probably not the best pairing with the orechiette, but it was what I was in the mood for.

And thanks to the best of 2008 list at Oakland Magazine for tipping me off to Casa Orinda’s fried chicken.

Some of my vegetarian friends say they won’t eat anything with a face, thus allowing them to opt out of fish, but still snack on oysters and clams. Well, I will eat things with a face, but not if the face is still smiling at me. Maybe I’m crazy, but doesn’t this look like a ploy to convince kids that cannibalism is okay? Eating clowns, sure, but other kids? I don’t think that’s right.

[Via TreeHugger via Green as a Thistle]

This afternoon I volunteered at the Alameda County Community Food Bank with some Voxify co-workers as part of a work sponsored event. We processed 2500 pounds of food and were able to completely sort and shelve 1500 pounds of that total. It was a great experience and I highly recommend helping out, especially this time of year and with the current state of the economy.

Food banks used to get most of their food from grocery overstock. However, improved technology and better supply chain management software has cut off much of that source. In addition, second tier grocery chains now buy up most of the remaining oversupplies, as well as items close to their expiration dates, for resale at deep discounts. That doesn’t leave much on the table for the food banks.

I was stunned to learn that approximately half the food that ACCFB now distributes is fresh produce. The great thing about it is that fresh produce is a much healthier source of nutrition for those most in need of a good meal. However, it also brings added cost with respect to storage, distribution and short shelf life. If I remember correctly, ACCFB now has a 120,000 square foot refrigeration room at their new location. They also have two big trucks devoted to deliveries that allow them to deliver the produce, along with other foods, while it is still good.

Food donations aren’t enough to cover existing needs, though, so ACCFB also buys food. Since they buy in such huge quantities, they have significant purchasing power. ACCFB is a member of Feeding America, formerly known as America’s Second Harvest.

While donating food to food banks is a great idea, I don’t recommend buying food solely to donate it. Your money will go a lot farther if you allow them to pool it with other donations and buy much more food for the same amount. Also, it allows them to better fill the gaps in what they currently have on store. However, if you’ve already bought non-perishable food and it’s still in good shape, but you don’t expect to eat it, then definitely donate it.

ACCFB is also planning a demonstration kitchen for their new facility. This is really important, because a lot of the organizations and people receiving the now much greater amount of fresh produce aren’t always prepared to cook a variety of healthy recipes. This educational training is a very admirable new part of the outreach effort of ACCFB.

Of course, I’ve simplified the flow of food through ACCFB. They have a great one page flow of food diagram in a PDF file that tells more of the story.

One of the many interesting parts of volunteering at ACCFB is learning about the pig’s bin. Food without ingredient lists, open bags of pasta or cereal, etc., all go in a huge plastic bin to later become pig slop. However, four items are not allowed in the pig’s bin.

• coffee
• chocloate
• top ramen
• cup noodle soup

Even if coffee isn’t bad for them, I can understand farmers not wanting their pigs to be hopped up on caffeine. Chocolate is bad for dogs, so it’s not a stretch to imagine it being bad for pigs.

But if Top Ramen and Cup Noodle soup isn’t suitable for pigs, then why do so many college students and others subsist on so much of it? Maybe it’s the incredibly high sodium content (at least in the “flavor” packs) that makes it bad for pigs. Maybe they don’t want to cure the ham until later. I couldn’t find much about it on the interwebs, though I found one article that reports that farmers are picking up the scrap ramen and noodles from the floor at a Nissin plant. The article wasn’t clear as to what animals were being fed the noodles. Next time I volunteer at ACCFB, I’ll ask why they ban the sodium bombs from the piggies.

Bottles of Kvas

We had another huge potluck lunch at work today. I made pastalaya with chicken, andouille sausage and pork shoulder.

A Russian at work brought a few bottles of Kvas, a fermented, mildly alcoholic beverage. It tasted like a pleasant blend of Guinness beer and a carbonated cola drink. Maybe that doesn’t sound all that tasty, but it really is.

Besides the beef tenderloin, beef tongue with horseradish, falafel, hummus, pita bread, sauteed greens with garlic, ratatouille, Spanish rice, cornbread muffin, vegetarian chili and lasagna, I had two chocolate chip cookies and a cannoli. I’m waiting for my stomach to stop hurting before going back for walnut pie.

This Saturday there’s an Oktoberfest celebration in the Dimond district from 11 am to 6 pm only about 6 blocks from our house. Obviously, we’ll be there. Local brewers Linden Street, Pacific Coast Brewing, Trumer and Triple Rock will be pouring their beer, plus there will be beer from New Belgium and traditional Bavarian brewer HB.

The Dimond district has a long history of having beer gardens, though sadly it’s been a long time since the last one closed.

There will be free valet bicycle parking (Biergarten Radlparkplatz) at Fruitvale and MacArthur provided by the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. Since I plan on getting the commemorative beer stein with 4 beers (only $20!), it’s probably better that I won’t even have to bike home.

I’ll be ready to order my bier and bratwurst and toast my fellow drinkers appropriately (Prost!), since I brushed up on my German a few weeks ago for the visit to Vienna as part of our vacation. I actually managed to have a few short conversations on that trip, so those three years of night classes weren’t all for naught.

Linden Street Brewery in Oakland has been throwing open houses on every Friday for the last 6 months or so, with free beer (two beers, usually their Common Lager and a beer from Drake’s), free food (contributions to the basket by the taps help buy next week’s food), and a shared gas grill (my friends and I have used it for bratwurst and tri-tip). It’s gotten to be too much, so William Brand reports on his blog that Adam says they are scaling back to just the first Friday.

Although being able to go there on any Friday was great, I had been wondering how long they could keep it up. I usually made it only once a month anyway due to other plans, so I’ll just have to plan farther in advance.

While I am thrilled they have finished brewing a batch of Black Bottom Lager, I’m even more excited that the city will be inspecting their equipment very soon, possibly this coming week. Hopefully, that will lead to PG&E hooking them up with gas to run the brewery.

Love this cartoon by Ben Sargent on the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch. Over the last few months I’ve turned on quite a few friends to the rich and varied aroma and flavors of Belgian beers. Although it’s just a cartoon, I agree with William that you obviously shouldn’t stereotype the palette of a person based on their appearance. I’ve met plenty of people whose appearance belies their appreciation for food and drink of complex flavors. And, of course, many highly sophisticated people who are content with rarely straying from the bland likes of fast food, Coke, Pepsi, Bud and Corona.

Via William Brand’s blog via Jay Brook’s blog.