ManekiNeko

Please, if you have the time to let let me know what you have and what you like and what you'd do, I'd love some opinions.

If you use cast iron or enamel cookware on a regular basis, make sure that if you opt for an induction cooktop, it can handle them. My brother has a ceramic induction stovetop and he regrets not paying extra for the gas stove (which was an option when moving into his new house). I don't recall off the top of my head what brand he has, but he cannot use cast-iron or enamel pots and pans as they get too hot and can cause the stovetop to shatter. Whee! Hot shattering ceramic!

If you don't use cast iron/enamel, don't worry.

Hmmmm ... interesting experiment ... drink scientifically determined quantity of rosé ... say, six bottles ... in Provence (have wife take notes of the effects the next day, if she is in a condition to do so) ... bring back same quantity to U.S. ... repeat procedure.

I don't think Science or Nature would publish the results. The Lancet, maybe.

I actually haven't ever had Dale's Pale while sober, but I remember quite enjoying it when hammered a few months back. Others may be able to comment further.

I'd call it a pale ale in the British vein in that it's more malt-centric than the typical American pale ale. It's quite good. It's very similar to Stone's Pale Ale if you've had that.

As for the oxidation problems with canned beers, I can't think of any canned beer that I would want to cellar. They are pretty much all meant to be drunk now. An 18-24 month window is more than adequate.

I'm comparing a Hacker-Pschorr Munich purchased at German Gourmet with a Scrimshaw Pilsner purchased at Lost Dog Cafe. The Hacker-Pschorr is fresh and interesting; the Scrimshaw is yogurt-smelling and moribund. To restate the obvious: Treatment from brewery to refrigerator accounts for quite a bit - there's no question in my mind that the Scrimshaw is damaged.

Cheers,

Rocks.

Yeah, Scrimshaw, when handled properly, is an exquisite pils. I suggest remedying this debacle with either a Hop Pocket Pils or the Troeg's Sunshine Pils. Or you could hunt down a Scrimshaw in better shape....

As far as local beer, DC doesn't have good local beer...

Say what now?

You obviously have not had the schwarzbier from Gordon Biersch. Or Cap City's Kolsch. Or Bourbon Stout from the Chophouse.

To the OP: Health Bar doesn't suck and should at least fit the bill for cheap vegetarian and decent microbrews. Not that the other options bandied about have been lackluster in either department, either.

At the risk of sounding like I'm making light of this situation: Veganism doesn't kill people, people kill people.

Go ahead, be a vegan. More bacon for me.

I remember hearing about another Mid-Atlantic brewery that had planned on canning, but can't remember who it was.

New England Brewing Company, mayhaps? They are available in NoVa and are quite tasty. The Elm City Lager is nice and delicate.

And the Reef just got it on tap recently. Beats the pants off alagash any day.

That I'm in complete disagreement with, but I'm pretty much prejudiced against the American wheat beer style.

I will give it a shot soon -- I've noticed that Bourbon has it in bottles.

Oberon is their best seller and was pretty much on tap everywhere in Chicago before Bell's pulled out of Illinois. It's probably their most "user-friendly" beer, not that that is a bad thing.

Here is how serious they must be taking their beer - their Beer Menu is up on their publicist's website, but not their food menu.

Not bad, but I'd like to see some Cantillon and good examples of American takes on Belgian-style beers on the list, too (Victory Golden Monkey, Allagash's entire lineup, Ommegang, and Russian River immediately spring to mind). But anyplace that makes a commitment to carrying Saison Dupont and Houblon on draft piques my interest.

I'm hoping I'll have good reason to go there and celebrate something in a few weeks.

Anybody else heard of this? Or know where I can try one (no matter how foul it sounds)?

Well, our friends at Budweiser are more than happy to help you out in your quest:

http://home.comcast.net/~nriech/No-Fkin-Way.jpg

Mmmmm.... clamato

Get thee to a Latino-oriented grocery store.

This is not a photoshopping job at all. The source is this guy on BeerAdvocate who searches the website of the gvmt agency responsible for label approvals and posts the more interesting results on a weekly basis.

Drinking at 10 AM? That's a little early -- even for me.

Beer: it's not just for breakfast anymore.

I forgot to add my verbiage on this beer. It's a solid example of a wee heavy. Nice malty depths with a hint of smoke. If you're hankering for a local example, head to Vintage 50 in Leesburg and try Bill Madden's Wee Heavy. He went to the brewing school in Scotland (it's name escapes me, but the place is very prestigious), and I'm fairly certain his recipe is derived from that experience.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway!) I'm DYING to find a bar that serves this so I can ask a pretty female the following question:

"Excuse me, Miss - could I possibly interest you in an Old Chub?"

Well, BP has Gordon on tap right now. No reason why they couldn't get Old Chub, either on tap or cans.

Not exactly a gadget per se, but a makeover for a favorite gadget.

Sweet, but I think Sir Mix-a-Lot (my KA mixer) requires something more blingy than the flames. I'll suggest it to the proprietors of FlameKA.com...

If you want to nuke the site from orbit, try Tait Ballbuster. It would make Rocks cut out his tongue.

Are you sure that's not Taint Ballbuster?

While I'm not the original poster, thanks for all the suggestions. A friend of mine turned me onto Shiraz's awhile back. She liked them for the pricepoint and because they don't need to be aged. Both of us being fresh from college, cellar space (or closet space for that matter) wasn't in the picture.

My friend went by the other night and said there was plywood up and it looked like it had closed down. Has anyone been by the last few days that can confirm or deny this? He had never been before so maybe he went to the wrong block or something.

Your friend is geographically challenged. I stopped by on Friday, braving the wintry mix, and the place was very much open. They are apparently doing healthy enough that the bathrooms have been redone recently (within the past few months). Probably the best place for good beer in Silver Spring, but I don't frequent SS enough to make a more emphatic statement.

...Though I still loathe Sandra Lee. Has anyone caught this show? It's as if the editors of a lad mag were given carte blanche to make a cooking show, but without the chicks in bikinis cavorting about. The set is a raucous orgy of "dude" things: Pinball machine, NASCAR-themed fridge, tiki bar, bumper pool. The food is pretty much pimped out burgers and sandwiches with treacly/bizarro cocktails. He occasionally has his friends on as guests, but they have nicknames like "Mustard" and such.

I think I'm not the target market for this show.

Arrowwine now has one left. $12.

They must have had more, since they now have two left.

I'm enjoying a glass of this right now while dinner is cooking. The various links and verbiage said this would be good for seafood, so I opted for some mussels and sacrified a small amount of the wine in the cooking liquid. I also chucked in some shallots, lime juice, salt, pepper and olive oil. I suspect the mussels might overpower the wine a bit, but I'm thinking the wine will put up a valiant effort anyways. Maybe I should've splurged and gotten fish instead.

Zee wine:

Straw yellow, completely clear. Aromas are kinda melony, kinda lemony. For a white wine, it's fairly dry, but my yardstick on the opposite end would be German whites so I don't have the widest experience here. Still, it's fairly sweet but not, like, cloying or anythng. Lotsa citrusy flavors like grapefruit and lime. Not tasting the minerals per se, but that might be me just calling it "dry." More experienced winos might have some more developed vocab in this regard.

Anyhoot, I'd repeat this. If this is a yardstick for Muscadet, call me a fan.

So many responses come to mind, but the most appropriate is Trader Joe's.

The last time I was in the Bailey's Crossroads TJ's the ground almonds were with the baking goods rather than the intact nuts.

I would also suggest a Hallal or Indian market.

Surely you have a coffee/spice grinder? While not great for large quantities, it'll do the job.

What the hell, I'm game for this. Hopefully the powers that be will keep the selections as reasonably priced as this one seems to be. I do like minerally dry whites and I don't think I've had a muscadet (veltliner and Alsatian whites, yes) before so this will be a good experience.

Framboise is rather sweet, the bottle I tasted was more, Leffe meets Delerium with a little more sugar, I agree it was sweet. Finish is not spicey like a Chimay, but I wouldn't say Framboise sweet, it wasn't sickenly sweet like lambics but it resembles a Belgian still. This is their first attempt, so I enjoy the creativity of trying something new.

I guess I was engaging in a little hyperbole. It's nowhere near as sweet as the Jolly Rancher inspired Lindeman's, but certainly sweeter than I was expecting from the description. I was hoping for something a bit dryer. I certainly don't regret trying it, which is what I usually say about DFH products. Worth getting if you're adventurous. You certainly won't find a comparable dessert wine or bubbly rose of this quality for ~$13.

We got this in earlier in the week. Haven't tried it yet, though. Big bottles, too.

It's interesting, as I pretty much expected it to be. A tad too sweet, almost cloying, to my tastes. Kinda picked up some powdered sugar-style sweetness rather than acidity or tannins from all that was done with it. I was hoping for something like Festina Lente, but got Lindeman's Framboise with some orange overtones instead.

Sawdust? Really?

Cellulose powder isn't too far from sawdust when you think about it.

Fruit beers are typically very expensive to produce (and you generally can't charge that much more for them), which is why they're made so infrequently.

I wonder what (if any) effect there would be from adding the blossoms themselves to a brew. Might have to do a little homebrew experiment with that, maybe in the fermenter: "dry blossoming" as opposed to "dry hopping"...

I dunno, I see fruit beers at brewpubs on a fairly regular basis. Unfortunately, they are normally of the "insert fruit flavor into crappy bland American wheat beer" stripe and are not anything worth getting excited about. The local exception to this was the Prickly Pear beer from John Harvards (RIP). Maybe a loss leader or something.

Cherry blossoms aren't all that fragrant, so I doubt there'd be much of a flavor addition.

I forgot to mention what Hanami means earlier, though I figured DC denizens might have had a good guess.

Picked up Smuttynose's Hanami Ale on a whim at Arrowine last night, mostly because the label is so dang kawai >^o^<. Brewed for springtime, this is obviously the perfect beer for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Why no local brewers thought of something like this earlier is beyond me.

It's basically a Belgian-style pale ale with cherry juice added to it. Don't serve it too cold or there's an overly tannic, almost metallic twang on the first sip. Otherwise, there's a lovely tart cherry flavor (I'm talking real cherry flavor here, not Luden's cough drops) balanced by a beer something not quite unlike a weaker (in abv) Delirium Tremens. Crisp and refreshing, but with enough oomph to it that it should take the edge off a crisp spring afternoon (or morning if you're a lush).

ETA: forgot which store I bought the beer at. ~$9 a 6-pack