Friday Froth: Nepenthia, Part 1

"Nepenthes pharmakon," its says in the Odyssey. Literally: "anti-sorrow drug," or "... a drug which eased men's pains and irritations, making them forget their troubles." 

Smiles abounded on a hill in the woods of Oxford, Connecticut, as B. United International opened both its doors and taps on a brilliantly sunny day this May for Nepethe, a one-day event. The beverage importer's stated mission is to bring the most spectacular examples of low volume, hand crafted beer, mead, cider, and sake from around the world to the U.S. The collected industry representatives (and I) weren't there to forget, though. There was too much to learn. 

I've mentioned B.United, and the beers they import, more than a few times here on CTBites, and they've been an impressive lot. Home base in Oxford is hardly less impressive: I crested the facility's driveway to see what appeared to be a series of interlinked red barns, some with flagstone facades, in land cleared of the surrounding hardwoods and, in places, very recently planted with grapes, figs, kumquats...

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UPDATE: American Craft Beer Week in CT

You may have already seen our original post on American Craft Beer Week in Connecticut, and we'll keep you updated as we learn about more events. 

Our first update comes from the folks at The Ginger Man in South Norwalk, who have recently announced a week's worth of food and beer specials. Highlights include The Great Wall of Hops (Mon.), wherein IPAs will take over the brass wall of taps, followed by a home brew demo night on Tuesday. Thursday will feature barrel-aged and vintage beers, Friday's special is a bucket of five American craft beer cans for $20, half price large-format bottles of the same for Sunday, and a cask ale and BBQ event on the patio for Saturday. See complete details on food and drink specials below the jump. Cheers.

Second, the folks at CT Beer Week have a massive list of updates on their events page here. Scroll down for a list of 35+ events and specials around the state. Mouse over each individual event, and a bubble will pop up with links and details.

American Craft Beer Week in CT Starts May 11th

American Craft Beer Week was created in 2006 by the Brewers Association to promote American craft beers and protect the independent brewers who make them. The first Craft Beer Week had only 124 participating breweries, but by last year there were over 1,300 official events in all 50 states, with who knows how many local promotions on top of that. May is for drinkers, people.

Connecticut is home to some of the best beers in the country - a fact regularly ignored or glossed over in even regional beer reporting - but this year marks the first ever Connecticut Craft Beer Week, which runs May 11-18 to coincide with American Craft Beer Week, May 13-19. We have some highlights from around the state below, and we'll update this post as new info comes in over the transom. Feel free to tell us about events you've heard about or will be attending in the comments.

The first event of CT Beer Week opens the taps at the Rising Pint Brewfest, where over 230 craft beers from 70+ brewers will be on offer at Rentschler Field in West Hartford.

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Ginger Man Brewmasters Beer Dinner May 6th

View the complete menu below: 

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300 Seat Beer Garden @ Harbor Point Opening in Stamford

Imian Hospitality, in collaboration with Building & Land Technology, announce The Beer Garden @ Harbor Point. Beginning in early May beer enthusiasts will have a new venue to call their own, Stamford’s first ever waterfront beer garden with over 300 seats, craft beer, and food trucks. And now we are excited for Summer. 

With a carefully curated roster of 24 craft beers on draft showcasing hard to find ales from Dogfish Head, Captain Lawrence, Curious Traveler and local Connecticut brewers Thomas Hooker, Half Full and Two Roads, it promises to be a beer lover’s nirvana. The Beer Garden will also feature a reserve list of large format bottled craft brews for the true connoisseur. In addition, master mixologist Jason Clark has created a collection of hand crafted American-centric cocktails that provide a refreshing alternative to great beer.

A rotating collection of Gourmet Food trucks slotted along the Beer Garden’s driveway will provide a culinary bounty that will contribute to the innovative and unique character of the Beer Garden. Lobster Rolls & Crab Cakes from Lobstercraft, Wood Fired Farm to Table Pizzas from Skinny Pines, Sandwiches from Hot Off The Grill, Authentic Caribbean from Maddy’s and Gourmet Grilled Cheese from Melt Mobile

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Friday Froth: A Real Mouthful

"Slow food" takes on a new meaning when applied to me. I am, and always have been, an exceptionally slow eater. A childhood friend of mine nearly landed me in the school psychologist's office after he convinced so many people, including a school administrator, of his theory that I was obsessively chewing eat bite a certain number of times before I'd take the next one. I had to eat in front of an assistant principal before people would let it go. The real reason is I just talk too much. Well that, or I just zone out while wandering along some neural pathway; and I'm nearly always served last at restaurants. It's like there was a secret memo passed around the service-industry: "This man not to receive food until all others at table at least 45% done with their meals." 

I talk too much, but I haven't written nearly enough about Two Roads Brewing in my childhood home of Stratford, Connecticut. We're going to work on that today.

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Friday Froth: The Ground Beneath Our Feet

The swings in temperature lately set me back thinking about the equally wild temperamental capriciousness of the Greek gods. Just as it's not too difficult to convince me to go out for a beer, it only takes a slight hint for my mind to go in a Hellenistic direction, and springtime seems to always provide the nudge. It's a happy accident, then, that I've recently had a few beers fit to tell a tale. 

The Greeks made their gods powerful, but they didn't need them to be infallible. The Olympians were more like people; they had pride which could be swelled or injured, love, hatred, jealousy, sexual appetites, creative instincts and, every once in a while, they'd strike a deal.

One of the most famous of these deals (well, if you're a classical mythology geek) is the story of Hades falling in love with Persephone and opening the Earth to swallow her so she could be his queen in the underworld.

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Friday Froth: Bouncing 'Round The Room

A while back, I was reading about the defenses ostensibly neutral Switzerland has constructed around its countryside. Mountainsides rigged for landslides, underground fortresses capable of protecting most of the population, alpine meadows, dotted with cows, under rocky peaks which would rotate away and send forth squadrons of attack aircraft from interior runways - the punctual, predicable Swiss were capable of some pretty heavy surprises. There's a part of the Jura mountains with a nickname I like: "Franches Montagnes": the Free Mountains, which holds another surprise, beer from Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes. 

An import this exotic is, of course, the work of Oxford, Connecticut's own B. United, which is how I had several pints of BFM's La Douze. "Douze" is French for "twelve" - from the Latin "duodecim" and giving us our word "dozen" - and was brewed for the BFM's twelfth anniversary. The best categorization I can offer for this one is a Belgian Pale Ale. Douze is an unassuming golden color and had a light head as it was poured when I encountered my first pint. There is a light floral aroma, but it's very subdued. Richness - that's what comes through on the first taste. The ethereal essence of Belgian yeast floats its bouquet above a surprisingly toasty body. 

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Friday Froth: March Madness...Beer News & Reviews

March Madness has once again taken hold of America's mind, and I do not give a damn. I care about the tournament for exactly as long as the Huskies are still in it and, since they're out of the dance completely this year, I've been looking elsewhere for marginally productive entertainment. People like bracket-based tournaments, it seems, because there are a ton to be found on the intertron this month. Beer brackets, news and reviews follow in this week's Froth. 

Paste magazine, which is a pretty good source for new music and movie info, has the superbly named Top Of The Hops IPA Challenge, in which their editors purport to whittle down a national selection of brews in the quest to find America's best IPA. The bracket falls utterly flat, though, having taken cues from every other "national" review in history and leaving Connecticut beers completely off the list, despite having a Northeast region to the tournament. NEB's Gandhi-Bot remains the best IPA I've had in my entire life, and should have been the '99 UConn in this particular madness, but this is what you get when people from Atlanta grasp at a college sport not named football.

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Friday Froth: Different Shades Of Green

Welly, well, well, my drinking droogies - what's it going to be then, eh? Me? I'm going hybrid for the holiday, and downing a few pints of Black Velvet (I like to make it equal parts Guinness and champagne). It certainly does chase the grey away. But we can't rush into things, oh no. The sight of the crowds, of too much Kelly green, too fast - especially when contrasted with tanning bed orange - presents a shock to the system few mortals can bear. Thus it was that I decided to ease up and down and through a palette of greens in the Costa Rican jungle. To prepare myself for St. Patrick's Day, you see. 

It's a strange feeling, while sipping a cold beer in a palm hut, to find you somehow have wifi. The distraction provided by the ability to check the score of the UConn game is occasionally a welcome one, though, since Costa Rican beers are nearly as indistinguishable from one another as they are terrible. They don't merit much expatiation, so on to the bullet points:

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