My First Time, Pt. 1

Twelve beers. Eight courses. Seven hours.

This is an idea we all have had on occasion, because it makes perfect sense and we all know just how much fun it would be, but it takes a certain someone to do what needs to be done to really make it happen. In our case, that person was Jason.

Our resident food arteest was finally tired of waiting around for everybody else to get their acts together, so one night a few weeks ago he had me over, all innocent-like. He poured a couple of his homebrews for me - I didn't realize that I was being softened up before he hit me with the body blow of his first menu for this as-yet-unnamed food 'n beer event! Reeling, I went for my notepad and we knocked noggins to come up with beer pairings that could go toe-to-toe with an adversary who's pedigree ranged from traditionally French to nouveaux Windward, experimental Meso-American to Californian potage. When the dust settled we had done it: a menu that made no excuses for its almost complete lack of cohesion, but each individual dish would be delicious and fresh at the least, and truly palate-expanding at the most. Their pairings were a smattering of complimentary and contrasting flavors and textures, each beer as adventurous in its own right as the dish with which it was paired.

Beer #1: Cantillon Grand Cru Bruocsella 1900

We were too excited to wait. We had to have it. My buddy Benny has been hip to lambics since he and his wife Hannah visited me last summer and enjoyed a touch of the Boon Oude Kriek; he was thrilled to find this brew at our local package store. The Bruoscella is extremely unusual to see in the US, and is the only beer of its style that is imported to our hither shores. An unblended lambic is more comparable to a single malt whiskey than anything else in these terms only: it is the rare single batch that is so finely crafted that it can be bottled and sold as-is rather than being mixed with other lambics or refermented with fruit to cover up its flaws. It is not for the faint or uninitiated, and we dove right in.

There is no need to belabor it. This beer is amazing - if you love lambics. It is dry, dry, sour, tart, pucker up and kiss the barnyard ground in the morning mist delicious. It has almost no carbonation and would be amazing if you have the fortitude to cellar it for a decade or so. I would imagine that the almost stinging citrus peel would mellow and become more like fresh-split cedar, but I don't really know. We were too excited to wait.

Beer #2: Krait Champagne Lager

OooOOOooo - Champagne Lager! Sounds fancy!

I'd been holding onto this beer for a couple of years waiting for a good opportunity to pull it out. I wanted to note and celebrate Benny and Hannah's visit as well as the first successful as-yet-unnamed beer dinner event, and what else would a bunch of Brewdies toast with?

The Krait was tasty, slightly toasty, and might be something that I'd buy again if I ever saw it, ever. It reminded me more than anything of the DeuS Brut des Flandres, an ale also made in the Champagne region using traditional techniques to ferment, settle, and remove the yeast. The Krait was even more clean and pure than the ale, no surprise really, and the Champagne carbonation was fine pinpricks on the tongue. The flavors this let through were a bit of a revelation for me: the beer was oh so subtle, but fruitier and more full-bodied than my favorite light lager, the Weihenstephan Original. Three cheers for cross-border collaboration.


By this time the food had started to come out, and no bad thing either. We were able to put Jason's home-candied walnuts & gorgonzola together with the Broucsella, to great effect. As one would imagine, it takes a certain kind of cheese to stand up to a real lambic. A real gorgonzola does it, and all kinds of fun, fermentation-related flavors follow. The walnuts were sweet enough to cut the bite of the beer just a bit, and added their own woody, nutty flavor to the mix.

Beer #3: Fantôme Saison Printemps 2009

I love this brewery, and I love this beer. Benny had kindly served me up a bottle during a recent visit to Los Angeles, and it reminded me just how extraordinarily well they make 'em. This one is perfect for a spring afternoon in Flanders, terribly refreshing but obviously chockablock with good stuff - nutrients that will sustain you 'till eveningtime. A faint sweetness with Fantôme's characteristic spicy funk made it a match for my own addition to the menu: baby portobellas with the stems pulled cruelly from the caps, chopped up and mixed with goat cheese and basil, the mixture then stuffed unfeelingly back into the caps, rolled around a bit in some sourdough crumbs and quickly fried in very hot olive oil until the crumbs are browned but the cheese isn't runny, while muttering unintelligibly to one's self. The secret to this dish? telling the mushrooms just before they go into the pan that you're going to "destroy them all." Fried mushrooms & cheese with beer under any circumstances is good - with beer of this quality one really feels lucky.

So why not have another?

Beer #4: Fantôme Saison

Their year-round flagship ale, this Saison is a bit of an iconoclast. Saisons, like most Belgian beers, are more of a concession to the inherently human need to name things than a strict style, but on the whole they tend to be dryerish, can be a little spicy with some pepper esters, but ultimately are a showcase for truly excellent barley malts and endemic Belgian yeasts which produce slightly tart and citric but mainly bready beers. Fantôme, in all fairness, is all over the place. Sometimes french-bready, sometimes San Francisco sourdough, the only real certainty from batch to batch is that, if you close your eyes and try, you can actually see Belgian farmhands in the field popping a bottle in the heat of the mid-afternoon and quaffing deeply before finishing the day's harvest.


With these four beers open we were able to do some experimenting with our next appetizer. Jason and his missus Missy throw this one together when they have apricots and nothing better to do: Apricots. Split 'em, pit 'em, & stuff 'em with chevre. Wrap 'em in prosciutto and then into the oven just until they're warmed through and as messy to eat as possible. Served with a drizzle of syrupy real balsamic vinegar and a pinch of shredded basil.

This treat has something for each of the beers: tangy apricot skin and sweet meat for the lambic, herbal basil and creamy cheese for the lager, and a full rounding-out of the saisons. Oh, and prosciutto. If a beer doesn't go with pork, pour it out and start over.

But all of this was a prelude. Appetizers were all well and good, but Jason's goal with this nascent group is to push his own boundaries as a chef; we were about to find out what that really meant. From the freezer he pulled a container filled with a bright orange concoction, flecks of green here and there. Into the conspicuous corn-chip cups he had brought went a tablespoon of mystery, and out from the kitchen it came. "All at once," he said, and all at once we popped the entire construction into our mouths. Sorbet, obviously, said my tongue. Cold and sweet, but what's that bit of tang... and suddenly my mouth erupted into a firestorm of delicate spice and fine frutiness that I was unable to parse - and the unmistakable peppery bite of cilantro. I don't think I have ever fully appreciated the true depth of flavor hidden behind the heavy-handed heat of the habañero pepper. Beer #5 was Big Sky's IPA, and it did just what it was supposed to do: popped those peppery esthers right to the top of our mouths where we could taste them again, and then washed them away, preparing us for our second bite of Habañero sorbet - if we dared.