Girl Scout Cookie Beer Pairing...Minnesota Style!

For this past chilly February Jack Of All Brews homebrew club meeting, we tried something new as a special tasting event.  Last year I saw some tweets and facebook posts about pairing craft beer with the highly anticipated yearly release of Girl Scout cookies and was intrigued.  This year we decided to try this as a club event, and here are our results!

Looking at a few articles and blog posts on the subject from last year, I realized that many of these beers were not available in Minnesota (or were so rare that they might as well be.)  Why not stick with Minnesota craft beers only?  Challenge accepted!  Our treasurer Steven--who's daughter is a Girl Scout--supplied us with the necessary sugary discs for this tasting.  I took my Tuesday afternoon to visit a couple of local liquor stores for the perfect beers.

By the time we got to the cookie pairing our group had dropped from about 25 to around 15--more manageable, but still a lot of people to enlist in an organized write-up.  And hey, this was after tasting a lot of homebrews earlier!  I ended up just taking (spotty) notes as people exclaimed or commented on their thoughts.  I've attributed a few of the quotes.

Do Si Do's/Peanut Butter Sandwich and Waconiator Dopplebock

I had planned on using Schells Firebrick--thinking that a malty lager would be a good pairing with this fairly dry peanut butter cookie, but discovered a rare bottle of this even maltier seasonal from my own city's local brewery.

* Nice. Good.

* Maltiness matches well with peanut butter.

* The dopplebock seems less sweet with the cookie.

* The cookie makes it taste better (Bryan).

Shortbread and Steel Toe Wee Heavy

What to pair with a buttery sugar cookie famously from Scotland?  Why not a strong caramel-like Scottish beer like a Wee Heavy/Scotch Ale?  Steel Toe is one of my favorite breweries and I was happy to find a bottle of this locally.  Other potential options for this pairing would be other malty UK beers like English barleywine or old ale.

* Warm alcohol clears the sweet buttery mouthfeel of the cookie.

* Not sure they mix well--the cookie is in one side of the mouth and the beer in the other.

* (Sarajo discovers dunking the cookie in the beer and the whole thing turns for the better!)

* All out dunkage!

* The beer and cookie have similar flavor notes, but this might be better with another beer.  Helles?  Pils?  Bitter?

Caramel DeLights/Samoas and Brau Brothers Moo Joos

Ideally I wished for a coconut stout but Town Hall's Three Hour Tour is long gone for the season.  I opted for the thick and milky Brau Brothers milk stout contrast a bit with the coconut and caramel of this cookie.

* Works with the caramel and chocolate!

* Cookie overpowers the beer.

* The beer overpowers the cookie.

* Flavors seem muddled together.

* Smoke shows up in the flavor of the beer with the cookie involved.

* Too much Yin, not enough Yang.

* Somewhere in between complementary and contrasting.

Lemonades and Surly Furious

Lemon icing topped shortbread cookies?  Lets get away from malty and roasty beers for once and try something citrusy like a strong IPA.  Surly Furious is a MN classic and has a bit of English malt and yeast character as well as a strong hopping.

* This was actually my favorite of the pairings--the lemon glaze on the shortbread really accentuated the citrus hop bitterness in the beer and made it taste even more Furious! (Eric)

* Sour of lemon rind!

* Yin and Yang!

* Thins the beer, but makes it better.

* (This beer was very polarizing--we were divided "emotionally" on this one about 50/50.  Some loved it, some hated it.  Certainly the most interesting of the pairings we tried.)

Tagalongs/Peanut Butter Patties and Fulton Worthy Adversary Russian Imperial Stout

This is my favorite cookie--laden with thick peanut butter, crisp cookie, and a somewhat waxy chocolate coating.  The strong flavors in this need something strong to stand up to it so a Russian Imperial stout is a good choice.  There are not a lot of RIS beers in Minnesota that are available in the bottle (other than Surly Darkness) but Fulton's Worthy Adversary is now year round!

* The beer is too bitter for the cookie.

* Not a good mix at all.

* Each are good on their own, but not together.

* (Several people did not like the beer.)

* This is my favorite pairing--smooth.  (Mike)

* The beer is thin, could be more chocolaty.

Thin Mints and Mankato Brewery Mint Stout

Thin Mints are probably the most popular cookie, and as a result we went with two pairings!  the first was a bold move when I discovered Mankato's Mint Stout sitting on the shelf right next to the other beer I had planned for this.  The pairing of like with like can be amazing, but other times can fall a little flat so this one was a bit questionable.  But hey, how could we pass up the opportunity to try?

* (A collective groan goes through the room as I pull out this beer.)

* Eric, what have you done?  What have you done??? (Chris)

* These wash each other out.

* Pairs well.

* These are a different type of mint and just don't quite go together.

* The cookie makes this beer taste better than on it's own.  But it still isn't good.

* Pepto-Bismol mixed with an after dinner mint.

* Like brushing your teeth, then drinking a beer before you go to work.

Thin Mints and Fulton War & Peace 

Fulton's War & Peace is a Peace Coffee infused version of the Worthy Adversary Russian Imperial stout.  Several other folks have suggested a coffee infused RIS (such as Alesmith Speedway Stout) to pair with this cookie, and this was the only local one I could find!

* The best pairing for Thin Mints is a glass of milk.

* I get chili or chipotle pepper from this pairing.

* Tannic notes from the coffee beans?

* Beer seems thin with the cookies.

Overall Experience

This was a fun event for our brewclub to try out and everyone had a good time.  What we discovered overall is that cookies and beer just aren't incredibly great together.  Most of the beers ended up tasting thin or more bitter after tasting the sweeter cookies.  In the end though, we got to eat cookies and drink beers, so everyone won!

Terra Waconia & Waconia Brewing Company Dinner

So our sleepy little town of Waconia now has its second brewery!  Waconia Brewing Company is open for business!  I will be doing a full write-up on them soon, but wanted to do a quick blog post about their first beer dinner that occurred Thursday the 30th at Waconia's own Terra Waconia restaurant.  This is the second time I've been at a beer dinner for Halloween there, and they do a great job of getting you in the mood!

This particular event started right across the road at Waconia Brewing's tasting room.  Several of us dressed up for the event--I as Indiana Jones and Sj as Willie the shrieking maiden from Temple of Doom (complete with bugs in her hair and stuck onto her clothing!)  We were greeted warmly and a large platter of cheese, meats, and olives provided sustenance for us hungry patrons.  Within minutes, Tom the brewer handed me a new hoppy and complex Belgian pale ale made with an experimental hop.  Once most of us had arrived, we got a quick tour of the brewhouse (my first time being in there) and then headed across the street to the restaurant.

The small entry way to the restaurant was coated in white plastic with artful bloody hand prints and gore spattered across it.  Once you moved into the building, the windows were blacked out and the place was lit by flickering scattered candelabra and individual candles in wine bottle holders.  Cobwebs with suspended spiders coated the old tin ceiling and many of the walls, grabbing out at passers by.  Creepy horror music led a disturbing tone to the darkened surroundings.  A freakish doll hung from a fan.  Another doll on the bar held half its face and scalp in one hand...  All of my pictures are pretty sad due to the low light, so keep in mind that things looked better than this!

Sj and I got to sit with Dave and Sarah Manley this year and had some great conversations while waiting for each course to arrive.  Strangely much of the talk revolved around Halloween and horror themes...  The kitchen staff were all decked out in bloodstains and gore, working by headlamps so as not to break the mood for us diners.

Our first course was a seafood cake made to look like small bloody brains on a plate.  This was very good, but the texture was as squidgy as the brains it was supposed to be!  The pairing was with Waconia's kolsch and was a good one in my opinion.

Second course was a most disturbing squished and decomposing rat dish!  Made of potato carved into a ribcage, beets, beef, and a beet "blood pool", this was one of the craziest looking dishes I've ever had.  Tasted great!  I believe this was paired with the IPA, nice and refreshing for a palate cleanser after lapping up all that blood...

Did I mention the dead rat being the craziest dish?  Yup, but only until the next plate arrived!  This plate of finely shaved duck in broth, topped with hideously worm shaped gnocchi was my favorite of the evening.  Gotta tell you, it was hard taking that first bite!  Paired with the Waconia Amber, also a good combination.

Last dish was Eyeball Soup.  A melon soup served in a wine glass with floating lychee "eyeballs" with a firm apple pupil inside.  I'm not a melon fan so this was not my favorite of our courses, but still totally fun.  The texture and shape of the lychee was so spot-on for eyeballs that this was tough one to eat!  This was paired with the Waconia Wit, perhaps the only pairing I didn't love.  The beer itself was fine, but the soup and the beer seemed to clash a bit.

After the dinner was served, Chef Craig Sharp came out in his freaky clown mask with a devil doll to give us one last scare!  This was a great dinner, filled with scares, good food, good beers and good friends. 

St. Patrick's Day Feast: Eating Your Beer

For nearly every St. Patrick's Day in the last 10 years I have been working and unable to drink beer.  For a huge beer geek like me this is a problem, and one which I seem to always forget about when the time comes to request days off on the schedule.  This year my schedule was free until I helped out a co-worker by taking this day for her.  Oops!  Maybe next year I'll remember...

So this year I decided to cook with beer instead, using some Irish beers I happened to have hanging out in my beer fridge.  I discovered a set of Irish cuisine recipes in this month's Beer Advocate magazine, written by Sean Paxton (The Homebrew Chef.)  I have cooked several of the fancy-foody recipes from his website with fantastic results.  I also tried his beer-centric fare at two NHC award banquets, so I felt confident in the source material.  I have made recipes from beer magazines that left out critical ingredients or steps (Draft) before, but have become a better cook in the last few years and make sure to carefully appraise these recipes before getting into the swing of preparing them. 

The main course was a pot roast with carrots, mushrooms and turnips braised in a crock pot all day with Guinness stout.  I just happened to have a four pound elk roast taking up space in my freezer and thought this would be a perfect time to use it.  Elk is very lean meat with very little fat and marbling, so cooking it correctly can be difficult.  Elk burgers and steaks are often a bit tough and dry if not left fairly rare, so I wasn't sure about how this would go.  In theory a long slow braise should get even the toughest cuts of meat to become more tender.  I first browned the meat in a pan and then placed it in the crock-pot.  Using the pan again (with all the yummy juices and fat still in there,) I placed the veggies in it and cooked those up.  My recipe called for 6 hours on high, but I would recommend either cutting the roast into a few pieces before cooking to increase surface area or to give it longer in the crock.  My roast was certainly cooked enough, but not really forkable, requiring use of a knife to cut it up at serving.  Very tasty though, as elk has a strong flavor compared to farm raised beef.

Along with the elk, I cooked up a heap of colcannon: a mixture of mashed potatoes and kale.  This was really tasty, but not the healthiest thing in the world (lots of butter and half&half in it.)  I figure this just evened out the decreased fat from using elk instead of beef.  I used most of a bottle of Smithwicks for boiling the potatoes and another couple ounces in the finished product.

 

Once the roast was done and the colcannon was warming, I reduced the strained pot juices and made a very tasty gravy from it.  As usual I had a bear of a time making the gravy the correct consistency, and think it may have stemmed from not reducing enough.  Eventually, with half of my kitchen covered in flour, I got it right and served up a tasty meal.  Sj had a Guinness with it and I gazed longingly at it while she drank.  The meal was very flavorful and filling, just what you want for St. Patrick's day.  And I have a week's worth of leftovers to keep the celebration going.  I did get my beer with dinner the following night, so all was not lost!  I highly recommend Sean Paxton's website (linked above) for some great up-scale recipes.