Filtering by Tag: Beer
The Beer Garden at Harbor Point Hosts Community Plates Night
Beer
The Beer Garden at Harbor Point is hosting Community Plates Night at Harbor Point on Wednesday, June 19 from 4-9pm.
The event is free, and open to the public. A percentage of all drink sales at the Beer Garden and food sales from Lobster Craft, Hot Off the Grille, VanChetta, the Rolling Rotisserie food truck & Mr. Frosty Mobile Ice Cream Truck are going to Community Plates to help connect food available for rescue with people who need it.
All of the festivities are in the name of helping to end hunger in Fairfield County. For questions about the event, please contact communityplatesevents@gmail.com or we'll see you there.
Friday Froth: Nepenthia, Part 1
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"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 Nepethia, 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.
UPDATE: American Craft Beer Week in CT
Restaurant BeerAmerican Craft Beer Week in CT Starts May 11th
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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.
Ginger Man Brewmasters Beer Dinner May 6th
Restaurant Beer Dinner Events Beer
View the complete menu below:
300 Seat Beer Garden @ Harbor Point Opening in Stamford
Restaurant Beer Dinner Food Truck Stamford Beer
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
Friday Froth: A Real Mouthful
Beer
"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.
Friday Froth: The Ground Beneath Our Feet
Ingredients Friday Froth Beer
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.
Friday Froth: Bouncing 'Round The Room
Friday Froth Beer
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.
Friday Froth: March Madness...Beer News & Reviews
Ingredients Friday Froth Beer
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.
Friday Froth: Different Shades Of Green
Ingredients Friday Froth Beer
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:
Friday Froth: Beers to Sample While Waiting for Spring
Ingredients Friday Froth Beer
Between typing, I'm looking at surging whitecaps. The water glints with the stray sparkle of sunshine, but mostly it's the blue color of anodized chrome, evening off to a shallow green. It's cold, and the wind knifes into any exposed skin wherever it can, but there's that sunshine. Random patterns run across my chest and face, and I hold up a palm like a screen to see the fluid waves of light move on its surface. The Sun is starting to burn stronger - it's holding off the darkness for longer each night. I smile, sip a Whale's Tale, and try to remember where the hell I put my notes.Spring beers are already starting to hit the market, it seems, like Magic Hat's Pistil, which has replaced the Vermont brewer's previous spring seasonal, Vinyl.
Victory looks ready to release several new beers this spring, including the K-Bomb and Ranch double IPAs, NATO IPA (made with American, English and German ingredients), and Swing Session Saison.
Nola Oyster Bar Opens in SONO
Restaurant Norwalk SONO Seafood Beer
With very little fanfare, Nola Oyster Bar will open its doors this weekend in SONO in the space formerly occupied by Wasabi Chi on the corner of Main and Washington. As CTbites announced a few weeks ago the menu will primarily focus on seafood from Maine to New Orleans.
The previous open interior has been completely redesigned into three dining areas. The bar area features both a long bar with numerous stools for cocktails and dinner, while the two dining areas occupy the remaining space. The rear dining area is convertible for use as a private dining area.
Chef Dan Kardos is overseeing the kitchen and a sneak peak at his opening menu confirms the seafood focus with variety of options. Included are traditional raw bar selections of oysters and clams plus several crudos. “Small Plates” offer several varieties of cooked seafood including braised mussels, an oyster pan roast and several renditions of oysters. The entrées maintain the seafood focus with poached lobster, shrimp and grits, and other grilled and roasted seafood, but expands into a few non-seafood selections that include hanger steak, fried chicken, a combination bacon-cheeseburger. CTbites was told that the menu will expand rapidly over the first few weeks.
Stay tuned as CTbites revisits Nola Oyster Bar in a few weeks for an in depth review.
Friday Froth: Face Heater
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The holidays are over, football is over, it's still cold, and meteorologists are gesticulating like Kermit the frog introducing the next act. It's time for strong drink.The boys at Lagunitas Brewing in California screwed up their first try at making a barleywine ("Gnarlywine," natch) in the late 90's, but they were left with an interesting recipe wherein they threw in some brown cane sugar. The resultant brew wasn't what they were going for but... it was pretty good. Pretty damn good. They called it Brown Shugga, and it became a big hit for them when it was released every winter. In the winter of 2010-11 though, they hit a snag. The brewery was expanding, and construction forced the brewers to choose: do we make the time-consuming 'Shugga and cut production on our staple beers, or do we cut 'Shugga, and risk pissing people off? They went with option two.
Friday Froth: Here and There
Friday Froth Beer
Holding my eyeball in my head at an altitude of 36,000 feet was a new experience. I was excited to get out to Utah during ski and Sundance season, yes, but the best part was having finally kicked the cold that had been holding me down like the Hand of the Man since before baby new year started crowning. I was enjoying the novel luxury of breathing through my nose when the plane ascended through 20,000 feet or so and the sea level air pressure trapped in the bone behind my eyebrow went all slumlord and attempted to evict my right eye for the next five hours. I didn't know an ex-cold could turn me into Popeye, but upon landing I did know this: I needed a drink.
Red Rock Brewery in Salt Lake City is a sort of brewpub which is in many ways along the lines of Southport Brewing Company on our shores. I had never seen one of their beers in a bottle, much less a double IPA, so I ordered one straight away.
New Haven Meatball House
Restaurant Late Night Beer New Haven Comfort FoodAs a part of our ongoing effort to cover more of the state, we will be publishing more frequent, shorter posts on some of our favorite spots in New Haven, Hartford and beyond. If you have a place you love or would like us to cover, please email us!
New Haven Meatball House
Cuisine: Comfort Food, Late Night Dining, Craft Beer
Price: Less than $10 (per entrée)
Our Highlights: Chicken meatballs with pesto, beef meatballs with tomato sauce, black garlic mashed potatoes, spiked milkshakes
Hours: Open Daily, Monday - Thursday at 5 pm, Friday - Sunday 11:30 am
Online: Official Website | Facebook
Four types of meatballs, four types of sauces and three ways to eat them. Do the math and that could keep any comfort food-seeking foodie returning to explore the menu at New Haven's Meatball Shop on Chapel Street. Owner Bob Potter, the man behind New Haven's popular meat mecca, Prime 16, and the East Rock neighborhood tequilar bar, c.o. jones opened New Haven Meatball House in mid-2012.
Friday Froth: Winter Update
Ingredients Friday Froth Beer
"You shouldn't be scared of spiders," I remember my mother telling me. "You're much bigger than they are." At the time this line of reasoning seemed like neither a straight line, nor particularly reasonable, but I had no adequate retort at eight years old. Spiders were little, misshapen beasts from hell's own imagination then, and they remain so now. Doubly so, since now I know about things like the Brown Recluse, but that's not important. A spider I can hit with a magazine before turning on my heel and shrieking away. I am millions of times larger than a cold virus, and that hasn't stopped it from kicking my ass. So take that, 1987 Mom. All this is to say I haven't been drinking a lot of beer lately, but here are a few tidbits from the scattershot days in which I've been both awake and able to breathe over the past month.Sixpoint in Brooklyn literally turns out (at least one) new beer every month. See their single-hopped Spice of Life series for just one example. In that vein, I finally had the Pacifica version which came out in November, and can still be found on tap here and there.
The Great Wall of Stouts Beer Event @ The Ginger Man
Restaurant Beer Dinner Norwalk BeerFriday Froth: Winter Update
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OK, first off: big news yesterday, as Westvleteren 12 hit retail in the United States for the only time ever. This is absolutely one of the world's finest beers (it scores a perfect 100 with over 1,300 reviews on BeerAdvocate), and the only way to get it, apart from this super limited release, is to travel to the St. Sixtus Abbey in Belgium. The sole reason Westvleteren 12 is available at retail (for an eye-popping $85/six pack with two glasses) is because the abbey needed a new roof. You can read all about it here, but Fairfield County residents will have to skip over the border into New York to places like DeCicco’s if they want to experience this ultra-rare elixir. A complete list of retail locations can be found here, so good hunting.
