Thursday’s beer events started off with a Meet the Brewer event, and this time John Najeway & Mitch Akerman from Thirsty Dog Brewing Company are scheduled to be on site at Skipper’s Bar & Grille at 4PM. I get a sampler of each of The Thirsty Dog selections, including Airship Light, Hoppus Maximus, Old Leghumper, and Siberian Night. By the time I finish my platter, the brewers are still not yet here, but apparently on their way. While waiting, I tried the wonderful Dark Horse Lager from Elevator Brewing Company, and hear an interesting rumor that is circulating. The word going around is that an employee at Willoughby’s Brewing Company was supposed to bring more Peanutbutter Coffee Porter to the festival — but apparently that person got fired the night before when they hit a female employee on the behind with a wooden spoon.
I have tickets for another formal tasting at the Ohio University Inn, this time with yet another brewer from the Cleveland area, Cornerstone Brewing, and master brewers Eric Rothschiller and Jay Cox. They came very well prepared with handouts and brewers notes and gave one of the better presentations that I attended this week. Eric defined a beer geek as someone 24 x 7 is thinking about what would be the best type and amount of hops to use for your next beer; while a beer aficionado is one who just enjoys good beer without thinking about where and how it came from. Despite his encouragement not to become a beer geek (beer aficionado’s lead much more balanced lives), this event has definitely sparked an interest for me to get my feet wet in home brewing. Eric also talks about how water, comprising of 98% of beer, is the most important ingredient and how Cornerstone currently does not filter their water. As he states, “To be honest, I’m surprised we make a decent beer”. They also have a strong opinion on serving fruit in your beer glass as seen sometimes with Wheat or Belgium Ales, “If the brewer intended the beer to have an orange flavor, he would’ve brewed that flavor into the beer itself”.
We taste Liquid Soul, a belgium pale ale with spice including orange and bit of licorice root. The brewers claim this is their ultimate session beer. Erie Blue is a Raspberry and Blackberry flavored beer which we reminded me of Dogfish Head Black & Blue, only a bit milder with the fruit flavor not overpowering the beer as one might think. Seven is an IPA that originally started with seven different hops, seven malts and an alcohol content of 7%. Today, I believe he said it was made exclusively with Centennial Hops, but they’ve still kept the name. Finally, Angry Gorilla is a German-style Hefeweizen with 103 strains of yeast, giving a distinct papaya and mango flavor.
After the tasting, Sally takes me downtown for the premier event of the week — The Brewer’s Ball at The Blue Gator. Tickets to this event were $49/person (and although it was supposed to be sold out, there were many empty seats available). In addition to having a gourmet 5 course meal with each course paired with a different Ohio microbrew, we would have several speakers including Pat Conway, President & Founder of Great Lakes Brewing Company. I am seated with a very nice couple who have came down from Cleveland, Bob and Deb. I ask the guy sitting next to me where he’s from and what brings him to town, and he replies “Well, they asked me to come down here from Chicago”. I take a look a peak at my program guide and realize that he’s Bob Skilnik, author of 9 food and beer related books and who has appeared on on several TV shows including “The View”, Fox News and ESPN2. I gathered that he had somewhat mixed feelings about the festival. Although he gave high praises for the format of the festival itself, I got the impression he was somewhat disappointed in the turnout for some of his scheduled events (like the brewers, he has been traveling bar to bar in part to promote his beer books).
I thought the meal was very well done, and for this special occasion I put my vegetarian taste buds the night off and decided to indulge in all courses. The first course was an Imperial Dortmunder poached scallop over a creamy parmesan risotto paired with Great Lakes Imperial Dortmunder. This was followed by a French Onion Soup topped with gruyere cheese paired with Buckeye Brewery Hippie IPA. Next was a Watermelon salad with feta, honeydew, microgreens and toasted pistachios with a raspberry ale and basil vinaigrette paired with Thirsty Dog’s Cerebus 10 Dog Ale (Belgium Triple). The main course consisted of braised boar with mixed mushroom and purple fingerling potatoes, topped with a roasted corn sour cream server with Jackie O’s Drawn & Portered Porter. And desert consisted of Black velvet cake layered with Imperial Stout creme brulee, topped with java stout ice cream and paired with Jackie O’s Black Betty. I totally enjoyed the meal and felt everything paired together rather nicely.
As the appetizer is served, Pat Conway, President and Founder of Great Lakes, is brought to the front to say a few words. He talks about the Imperial Dortmunder — and he tells us that it’s the exact same ingredients as the award winning Dortmunder Gold, only made with larger quantities for more flavor. He also talked about Eliot Ness, who in real life was a close friend of the family (and nothing like what you see from Hollywood). According to Conway’s mother, Ness never carried a gun and did frequent the bar that is now The Great Lakes Brew Pub. Conway says that it is true you can find a 38 caliber slug embedded in one of the beams that hold up the bar at Great Lakes. But when he walks by the bar and hears a bartender tell about how that slug was intended for Ness, he just shakes his head and smiles at this embellishment. He also talks about how the Dortmunder was almost named “Hiesman” in honor of John Heisman, namesake of the Heisman Trophy, who used to live on top of a hill overlooking Great Lakes. But when the Downtown Athletic Club heard of their plans, they immediately threatened a lawsuit and the name was changed to Dortmunder, being a city in the center of Germany. It wasn’t until much later that he found out their copyright only applied to excellence in sports and that Great Lakes would’ve had no problem with the original name.
Conway also talked about how Great Lakes nearly could not make their famous Christmas Ale this year. The reason had nothing to do with a shortage of hops or a shortage of barley, as many have suspected, but rather a shortage of honey — a problem that still is unsolved today. Last year, they were able to find enough resources to make their Christmas Ale, but as Conway puts it, “When bees stop pollinating flowers, the least of our problems is that there won’t be enough Christmas beer to go around”. This lead to a moving discussion on the upcoming Burning River Festival in Cleveland on Saturday, August 9th. This annual event sponsored by Great Lakes, celebrates environmental friendly organizations and companies and promotes awareness and education for ecological conservation and environmental protection. I was very impressed with the sincerity. If I remember the numbers correctly, I think he claimed that Great Lakes Brewing, a multi million dollar company, has only a $1500 monthly waste bill — and they are working to reduce that to zero.
After the ball, Bob and Deb and myself go out for more beer sampling. We head to the Casa Nueva, where I turn them onto my new favorite beer, the Paw Paw Wheat. At the Casa Nueva, we run into Pat Conway and I get a chance to meet him in person. I tell him what a great trip I had in my recent visit to Cleveleand, and how impressed and amazed I was that I could visit his establishment with my vegetarian wife and two very picky children and how nobody left disappointed (an amazing feat for my family). He pulled out a business card and gave it me, saying that it’s illegal to print and give away something with “free beer” on it, but if I present that to the bartender, that may be good for a complimentary beverage (wink, wink). At this point, I’m ready to change all my children’s name to ‘Pat’, and I ask him if it would be possible to get a picture, which you can see above (the lady on the right is Melody Sands, the marketing director for Ohio Brew Week).
We finish the night off at 19 S. Court Club & Bar, where the Maple Porter from Ohio Brewing Company is being featured. It’s a fine porter, but we can’t taste any maple in it all. We run into another brewer from the ball, and I gather that he wasn’t as impressed with menu as I was. I had to push him for specific criticism’s, but I am always interested in other’s people’s opinions — particularly if they have more experience than me. Some of his comments, which I don’t necessarily agree with, were that the scallops were originally supposed to be wrapped in bacon, but there was no bacon flavor to be found, and the risotto should be light and fluffy, not packed together in a cake-like patty. He didn’t think the French Onion Soup and Hippie IPA went well together, and he thought the Belgium Triple was past it’s prime and the Black Betty served too young. On the other hand, he did have praise for the watermelon salad, and thought the boar was good (although would’ve been better had we been served a steak knife). I always thought the high gravity Belgium beers improved with age and was surprised by some of his comments, but as I said, although I don’t necessarily agree, it’s interesting to hear someone else’s professional opinion. We end up all sharing a taxi back to the Ohio University Inn, and I’m quite surprised my wife is not angry for waking her at 1AM so that I can tell her about my wonderful evening.
beerlover
July 25, 2008