The Lumi Wine Wall

I’ve got a fairly decent size wine collection, but I wouldn’t call what I do with my bottles “cellaring.” That implies that I’m intentionally saving it for a future date when the wine has matured or perhaps become more valuable. The hundred or so bottles of good juice that are in various racks and shelves around my house are merely bottles I haven’t drunk yet. I’ll get to you soon enough, my pretties!

So I’ve never invested in a full cellar system or a large wine fridge, since I like to keep my favorite bottles within arms reach. But there’s nothing wrong with displaying your collection in an attractive manner, and that’s where the Lumi Wine Wall comes in. The designers behind Lumi have come up with a great idea to recycle the staves from used French and American oak wine barrels and use them as an attractive way to store and display your bottles. Thanks to the curve of the barrels, the ends of the staves sit flat and stable against the wall, but the middle of each plank protrudes a few inches from the mounting bracket to allow for a specific angle for each hole cut to hold the neck of seven bottles in each rack. The holes are cut to store the wine at the proper angle to keep the cork wet while holding the bottle firmly in place.

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Worst of all, since I hate to waste food, we end up with bags of vegetables all over the crisper of our refrigerator which we sometimes discover a couple of weeks too late. The once-beautiful green leaves have turned brown and slimy and I get really depressed. Fortunately, a clever and thoughtful woman from Maine named Sally Erickson has come up with an excellent solution: Vejibags.

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That question was, of course, rhetorical. Of COURSE your beer (or other bottled beverage) deserves a bottle opener as simple and useful as the Hermetus Bottle Opener and Resealer that Kaufman Mercantile sent me to check out. Made in Germany, the Hermetus Bottle Opener and Resealer is a metal bottle opener that easily opens any bottle, but then it is also able to glide over the top and make a tight seal that helps keep beers from going flat or spilling.

Why would you need such a device? Simple…

This IPA is not only strong but it is huge. And while some of you might be able to drink this on your own, there is no way I could. That leaves me with two options; I can either wait for Judie and Kevin to come into town and share it with me, or I can use the Hermetus Bottle Opener and Resealer to save some for another time. Here’s a look at it in action.

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It’s summer, and that means it is time for lemonade. (Actually, I love lemonade, so all year long is lemonade time.) The problem is that lemonade is made with sugar, and more and more studies are suggesting that sugar is not only addictive but is a toxic poison. (Yeah, I know the words “addictive”, “toxic” and “poison” are strong, but I’m just referencing the words used in places such as here and here.) I even spoke about it last fall during the Jewish Holy Days and encouraged my community to begin taking their health more seriously. (Read it.) (According to one study on average, we now eat 130 pounds of sugar PER YEAR!)

The problem is that I love sweet things, and I really do love lemonade. So when trying to cut down on my sugar intake, I turned to Crystal Light Lemonade. It is tasty, and the label even says “Natural Lemonade”. That’s all well and good, but have you ever actually LOOKED at the label? It lists chemical after chemical after chemical!

Seriously, the ingredients in beverages like Crystal Light look more like a laboratory research project than something anyone should consume. Still, for a couple of years I drank this stuff by the gallon. It was even a staple in my diet when I first went on South Beach and dropped a significant amount of weight.

Maybe it has something to do with seeing 50 looming before me in two years, but a few months back I decided I was done putting these chemicals into my body. I turned to water but, as great as a cold glass of water is on a hot day, I missed the lemonade. So Elana and I began experimenting. First we squeezed fresh lemons and limes, added some liquid stevia to taste and enjoyed. It was tasty, but it was also a good bit of work each time I wanted to make a new pitcher of lemonade — and the liquid stevia Elana uses is pricey.

So we experimented a little more, tried different brands of lemon juice and powdered stevia, and we finally came up with a recipe that is quick, tastes the same each time we make a pitcher, is fairly inexpensive, and, perhaps most importantly, tastes great.

What do we do? We take half of a 10 oz bottle of Santa Cruz Organic 100 Percent Lemon Juice, mix in 1/2 tsp of Trader Joe’s Powdered Stevia Extract, add filtered water (we have a reverse osmosis system), and mix the concoction. It takes no more time than mixing a batch of Crystal Light and, unlike the chemical drink, it’s healthy.

A 10 oz bottle of Santa Cruz Organic 100 Percent Lemon Juice is about $5. Buy it.

A 2 pack of Trader Joe’s Stevia Extract is $24.99 Buy it.

That means each half-gallon pitcher of lemonade is about $2.60. And if you make the lemonade weaker, then the price obviously goes down. It is fast, delicious and healthy. Summer is practically here; give it a try!

The second main reason for decanting is to aerate the wine, since everyone know that wine opens up if you let it breathe. Especially younger vintages of highly tannic wines like Cabernet Sauvignons and Syrahs can have a tendency to be very “tight,” meaning that the flavors can be a little astringent and would probably benefit from either a few more years in the bottle or at least an hour or so to open up after you pop the cork. But who’s got the patience for that?

That’s where decanting comes in handy. By pouring the wine through an aerating screen, or even better over something that will form a thin film of liquid for a more gentle a total exposure to oxygen, you can simulate years of aging (or hours of opening up) almost instantly. You may have seen those pour spouts that claim to aerate wine in gadget catalogs or in-flight shopping magazines. While those are helpful, there are many oenophiles who believe that basically bubbling the wine is too harsh a treatment for something that the wine maker spent years introducing elegance to.

The Travaso Gemini Wine Decanter is much more gentle on your fine grape juice. In addition to being an impressive piece for barware/sculpture, the Travaso utilizes a glass sphere to create a super-thin film of wine to expose to the air. The sphere is partially full of water, which serves two purposes. First it adds a little weight to keep the decanter stable while you pour. Secondly, and even more ingeniously, it allows you to store the sphere in your refrigerator for when you want to slightly cool your wine while you decant it.

In truth, most of us serve our white wines too cold and our red wines too warm. Unless you have a cellar system to store your collection, most of us keep our whites in the fridge and our reds at room temperature. Actually, white wines taste best at around 50°F, and most reds exhibit best between 59°-64°F. You’ll notice that neither range is near refrigerator or room temperature. My easy fix is to pull white wines out of the cold a half hour before I plan to drink them, and I put my reds in the fridge a half hour before opening. But with the Gemini, you can cool that delicate Pinot Noir by a crucial few degrees and be ready to drink within minutes instead of hours; that’s my kind of technology!

The final reason to decant is strictly for the sheer stagecraft of the ritual. Restaurants that use Travaso decanters as part of their wine service usually see about a 30% increase in wine sales, because neighboring tables watch the sommelier pouring for somebody else and think “I gotta get me some of THAT!”

Seriously, a proper decanting service employs some sort of external light source like a candle or a small light to show off the color and character of the wine before it hits your glass. At home or in a restaurant, using a decanter like the Travaso Gemini really does enhance the experience of drinking a fine bottle, and for what a great bottle costs nowadays, why not maximize the enjoyment?

A final benefit that this particular decanter has is the fact that it is tall enough to actually decant your wine back into the bottle if you’d like to open it up, then let it open up, then close it back up to take to a party at a friend’s house. The only quibble and warning that I have about the Gemini is that since each decanter really is like a custom piece of sculpture, the capacity of the glass vessel that stores your decanted wine is not always consistent. The one that I tried didn’t quite hold an entire 750ml bottle of wine, which could lead to a really big mess if you tried to pour the whole bottle in too fast and overflowed it all over your table. I could just see myself panicking and reaching for a towel while trying to stop the flow of wine. My next vision was of my clumsy butt knocking over the entire contraption and then sleeping in the doghouse for the rest of my adult life.

But if you use it correctly and carefully, the convenience of being able to grandly decant your wine and then pour it by the glass by simply raising your vessel up to the plastic collar at the bottom of the Gemini is pretty darn cool. At $199.00, it’s not a cheap addition to your home bar, but think how dramatic your next wine tasting will be. If it makes ten $20 bottles of wine taste like $40 bottles after a proper decanting, the Travaso Gemini Wine Decanter can essentially pay for itself in no time. That’s the kind of rationalization I can get behind. Cheers!

The Travaso Gemini and Grapevine Wine Decanters are available at the company website and at selected wine stores and restaurants.

MSRP: $199.00

What I Like: A gorgeous piece of sculpture for your home bar that provides a dramatic presentation of your wine service; It actually improves the taste of younger wines by allowing them to open up thanks to exposure to air.

What Needs Improvement: It’s a little bit tall and unwieldy, but that’s what provides the drama; Just don’t knock it over or allow it to overflow, and you’ll be the best sommelier on your block!

mmmmmmm … can you smell the Starbucks Blond Roast Veranda Blend?

I love coffee. When I used to eat ice-cream, coffee was my favorite flavor; by that I mean the coffee ice-cream that really tasted like coffee, not that subtle flavored stuff some brands offer. And when I used to eat cake I loved anything with mocha. And each morning I still brew a pot of coffee in my Cuisinart coffeepot and polish it off before starting my day. In addition to liking coffee, I also happen to like convenience; that’s where my Keurig coffee maker comes in. Lately, I’ve been enjoying Starbucks Blond Roast Veranda Blend in it. It has actually succeeded in turning me into a fan of Starbucks coffee.

You see, as much as I love coffee I have always found Starbucks coffee to be far too strong. I don’t want to drink coffee flavored water, but there is such a thing as too strong and that was where I always placed Starbucks. When I was out and wanted a cup of coffee, Dunkin Donuts was my coffee of choice. The Starbucks Blond Roast Veranda Blend changes that. It has a rich, full coffee flavor, but it is lighter. As the company puts it, the Starbucks Blond Roast Veranda Blend is “flavorful without being overly bold”.

And since they are offering Starbucks Blond Roast Veranda Blend in K-cups, those of us who have a Keurig coffeemaker can enjoy this “flavorful without being overly bold” goodness in the comfort and convenience of our own home. I’m a fan.

Check out all the Starbucks Blond Roast offerings here on the product page.

MSRP: $19.95 for 24 cups

What I Like: Flavorful but not overpowering; K-Cups are convenience and brew a surprisingly fresh-tasting cup of coffee

What Needs Improvement: K-Cups are pricey and wasteful

Source: Manufacturer supplied review sample

Nate Kutsko is a born problem solver. His day gig is a partner with his father in a handyman service that has earned a reputation for coming into houses and being able to fix just about anything that needs repairing, from plumbing to electrical to woodworking. In his home workshop, Kutsko likes to tinker around with projects, especially with wood.

He noticed that when he and his friends were picnicing outdoors at concerts or at Nashville’s Steeplechase, it was really difficult to find a flat surface to serve your food and drink on. So he added two adjustable stakes to a flat board and voila, the Picnic Dock was born.

But I’m not talking about the Picnic Dock today. First I have to admit a personal problem. I’m a chopaholic. Yes, it’s true, I love to practice my kitchen knife skills and will mise en place all the onions, garlic, celery, carrots etc. in the kitchen if you don’t stop me. For some reason, I just appreciate the zen moments of working with a good chef’s knife. Consequently, I own a whole lot of cutting boards. Like twenty. That’s the real problem. Well, that and the forty knives that I have to keep sharpened.

With a name like “Kutsko,” (not to be confused with these guys) it was pretty logical that Nate started to experiment with some wooden cutting boards. As per usual, he looked for a problem and then thought about the solution.

When chopping veggies, one of the hardest parts is keeping your completed trimmings together and transferring them to your bowl or pan without scattering them all over the floor or counter. Kutsko came up with the brilliant idea of leaving a raised ridge down both sides of the board to trap the vegetable pieces and guide them into your final receptacle.

The Trapeziod Channel board comes in three sizes, either in a set or separately.

Another popular option is the Rhombus board. It is unusual in that it allows you to use either side depending on whether you are right or left handed, and on which direction you like to sweep your cuttings while you work.

The Trapezoid took a little getting used to when I first tried it out. The raised edge of the board looks like you might catch your knife on it, but in actuality you should be cutting perpendicular to your onion, carrot etc. and down the middle of the board, so it’s not an issue. The large board is plenty big enough for almost any kitchen task, and it makes for a dramatic serving tray as well.

After you’re finished chopping, it is simple to swipe your mise en place down the narrow end of the board into whatever vessel you are assembling your dish in. (Note: be sure to use your hand, a kitchen scraper or the back side of your knife to sweep the cuttings. You never use the blade of your good knives, do you?!)

The Rhombus has a channel cut below the level of the cutting surface that felt a lot more natural to work with, although it did take up a little more space on my counter top. For lefty or righty use, just flip the board over to position the channel on the other side. If you’re ambidextrous, that’s half the clean up!

Use the flat surface to chop on…

…then simply sweep everything into the channel and into your bowl. Yes, you’ll notice that I use cheap exam gloves when I cut up a lot of onions and/or garlic. That’s a power user tip if you don’t want your hands to repel vampires for a week.

Most of my cutting boards are synthetic, not wood, but these hard maple Kutsko boards are really pretty. Nate recommends that you always wash and dry your boards by hand and periodically seal them with walnut oil for protection. There is always a concern of cross contamination when cutting meats, so maybe these would best be used for just your fruits and veggies. Cut that chicken up on a non-porous plastic board, and be sure to wash it thoroughly between each use.

If you have more questions about Kutsko products, check out their informative FAQ
on their website. Nate has also put together some informative videos on how to properly slice and chop vegetables and how to use and take care of your new cutting boards.

Kutsko cutting boards are available at www.kutskokitchen.com and at a very limited number of retail outlets. They range in price from $20-60, but they are really unique tools for your kitchen that would make very unique gifts or great additions to your counter top.

MSRP: $20.00-$60.00

What I Like: Cutting boards I didn’t already own. Go figure! Innovative solutions that look striking in your kitchen.

What Needs Improvement: I wish that a plastic version was available, but since these are handmade, the cost of dies would be prohibitive. Just take care of the wood.

Source: Manufacturer supplied review samples

It’s time for slightly embarrassing admissions here at Gear Diary: I can personally vouch that when I was in college (hmmpty-hmmph) years ago, I learned that it is possible to smuggle an entire eight-pack of 8 oz. Little Kings Cream Ales into a movie theater stashed within the various pockets of a denim jacket. I mean, have you seen the price of concessions at the movies lately?!

Unfortunately, I can also verify that when you drape said blue jean jacket around the back of a theater seat, there is a very high probability that at least one of those little 8-oz. evidence bomb bottles will slip out of the inside pockets. At this point, three things may happen, two of them very bad. If you’re lucky, and you don’t deserve to be since you snuck beers into the movies, the bottle might just hit the floor with a clunk and remain intact. More likely, the bottle will begin a loud and inexorable roll down the sloped floor of the non-stadium seating configured theater. As it bumps against the heels of everyone sitting directly in front of you like some deranged game of Plinko, it’s not too difficult to trace the path back up to identify the guilty party. The third, and by far worst, option is that the bottle will break. leaving you sitting on top of a hops and barley bidet. Not fun at all, plus cleaning up in the dark is a real pain.

So the easy answer to these problems is … don’t do that. But again, have you seen the price of concessions at the movies lately?! Luckily, after all these years since I first encountered this situation, technology has come to the rescue. Two different solutions have emerged over the last year that cheekily address the problem of transporting beverages on your person and keeping them cold along the way.

The first is the Beer Hunter Jacket from Enjoi, a manufacturer of skateboard clothing and equipment. Although the jacket is available in any color you like, providing that you like olive green, and the styling is rather military-chic, the Beer Hunter jacket is a very utilitarian piece of clothing. In addition to a zip-off hood and both button and zipper closures, the Beer Hunter jacket features four button-down insulated pockets on the front which can each hold a couple of your favorite beverages.

The inner lining is decorated in a floral Hawaiian print to serve as a counterpoint to the drab exterior of the jacket’s design. Perhaps the idea is that when you reach inside your breast pocket for a quick nip, you can be reminded of a tropical vacation that you may never take while you stand outside in the cold at a Green bay Packers game waiting to use the Port-O-Let.

If you’re a fan of the bottle over a can, there’s another nice touch of genius dangling right in front of you. The zipper pull on the Beer Hunter is actually a functioning bottle opener. I’m sure that there are some of you out there that learned while you were in college how to open a bottle with a Bic lighter or the bumper of a truck, but I refer not to depend on one of you Beer-gyvers to be nearby when I’m on the wrong side of a cold bottle of beer. You know which side of the beer that I’m talking about, the outside.

If you have a powerful thirst, the inner breast pocket will hold a 32 or 40 oz. bottle of beer, or what we like to call around these parts, “A Lunchbox Special.” Because nothing warms you up on a chilly day like malt liquor … I’m sure it would hold a thermos of soup, too if that’s more up your alley. Of course, these types of bottles don’t need that cool bottle opener zipper pull, so you won’t get to show off your talents as the eminently prepared boy scout of your drinking troop.

Even more over the top and specifically designed is the Drinkmaster Hoodie from Zane Lamprey. While the Beer Hunter jacket would work fine as a nice utility coat even if you never put a can or bottle of anything in the multiple pockets, the Drinkmaster Hoodie is more like the Batman utility belt of drinking. In addition to deep side pockets and a bottle opener zipper pull like the Beer hunter, the Drinkmaster has many more features designed specifically for your partying fun.

The outer breast pocket is stitched specifically to accommodate a round can and is insulated with neoprene so it’s like having your own personal beer coozie on you at all times.

The inner breast pocket is sized to fit a flask, because as any Southerner will tell you, there’s nothing classier than a gentleman reaching inside his jacket and presenting a flask as if out of nowhere as if by magic at exactly the appropriate moment. (That means not at a wedding, but possibly at the reception if it’s a cash bar…)

There’s a snappable ID pocket to make sure you don’t lose your license and possibly to keep it tucked away so that you don’t drive when you shouldn’t be anyway. There’s even a place on the label to write your name in case you lose your jacket or somebody needs to identify you if you happen to forget your name. That’s when the warm hood might come in handy in case you find yourself sleeping it off outside.

Perhaps the strangest feature are the insulated drinking gloves which are attached to the ends of the sleeves and can be tucked up along your forearms when not needed. They keep your palm warm and your fingers free for pull tab opening, although I can’t say that I’ve ever wished that I had drinking mitts ready at hand.

While certainly, these products are designed with tongue at least partially in cheek, we spend a lot of pixels here talking about ways to carry our gear with us at all times. So why not give the same treatment to your beer as you do your gear? These products are like the SCOTTEVESTs of booze, but without all the Shark Tank drama.

Hmmm, that x-ray view does look awfully familiar.

Life is short. I see that all the time in my work, and I have seen it far too often in my own life. Life is too short to fill it with worries about the small stuff, and it is too short to fill it with bad people, bad experiences, bad food or bad drinks.

Speaking of drinks; I have long been a scotch drinker, but  just as often as not I enjoy relaxing while sipping tequila. Recently I decided that, except when making margaritas, I would begin drinking higher-end tequilas, and I decided to have some fun with it. Each time I buy a new bottle of tequila, I’ll try a different brand and, along with enjoying it, I’ll write it up here on the site.

First up, a tequila that Judie and Kev recommended to me years ago, Tres Generaciones Anejo.

Tres Generaciones is a super-premium tequila produced in Tequila, a municipality of the state of Jalisco, Mexico. The brand was first created in 1973 by Don Francisco Javier Sauza. His goal was to honor the three generations of the Sauza family of tequila makers beginning in 1873.

The History:

In 1873 Don Cenobio Sauza founded Sauza at La Perseverancia distillery. He was, in fact, the first person to distill spirits from the blue agave plant and refer to it by the name “tequila”. He was also the first one to export the beverage to the United States. Don Cenobio Sauza’s son, Don Eladio Sauza took over the business from his father and grew it by opening branches in Monterrey and Mexico City and a concession in Spain. In 1931, his son, Don Francisco Javier Sauza took over the business.

Thus three successive generations of the family started, expanded and then further expanded the business.

In the 1970s, ’80′s and 90′s a series of takeovers resulted in the brand eventually becoming part of Fortune Brands.

Tres Generaciones Tequila comes in three variants:

Tres Generaciones Plata is 100% blue agave, is triple-distilled but is bottled unaged.

Tres Generaciones Reposado is 100% blue agave, is triple-distilled and is aged for at least four months in American oak barrels.

Finally, Tres Generaciones Añejo is also triple-distilled 100% blue agave that is aged for 12 months in toasted American oak barrels; that’s what gives it the dark, rich color.

I priced Tres Generaciones Anejo locally, and it ran between $40 and $50 for a 750 ml. That’s in keeping with most of the other premium tequilas I’ve considered but is substantially more than the pedestrian Jose Cuervo Gold I use for margaritas. Everything about this tequila says “premium”. The bottle is beautiful with a nice copper-colored accent around the neck and the cork stopper topped by wood adds to the premium experience.

Add in the hand-numbering on the back, and this is every bit a $40-$50 tequila.

One of my issues with some higher end tequilas is that they are so refined that they lose the “tequila flavor and edge” that I enjoy in a sipping tequila. Fortunately that’s not the case here. The agave comes through the rich, smokey flavor of the tequila as does the oak and, what others have described as, citrus. That smokiness also comes through in the aroma when you first open the bottle which allows the experience of enjoying the tequila to begin before it is even poured.

If you are looking for a sub-$50 sipping tequila, then you’ll want to check out Tres Generaciones Anejo. There’s a reason Judie and Kev brought a bottle to the lake last summer, and we needed to find another rather quickly!

You can learn more about Tres Generaciones Tequilas here.

Have a tequila you think we should highlight next? Email us here with the subject “Check out this tequila next.”

I’ve often said (including here on Gear Diary, I think), that in the kitchen you’re either an Alton or a Mario. “Altons” refer to Alton Brown, the Mr. Wizard of the Food Network who combines science and math with recipes to teach you how to cook and why precision is important. I’m an Alton. “Marios” are more like Mario Batali, cooks who throw in a dash of this and a sprinkle of that and never measure anything. My girlfriend is a Mario. Well, maybe she’s more of a Maria…

These two archetypes can work well together in a kitchen, as long as everybody knows what their strengths are. Altons tend to be better bakers, because baking relies on chemical reactions to make bread rise and delicate balances between the ratios of flour, butter, liquid etc to create fluffy pastry and pillowy yeast rolls. You can’t be messing around with science in situations like that, or you’ll end up with fallen soufflés and burnt biscuits.

I had my attitude confirmed recently by no less of an authority than the man generally considered the best American-born chef living today, Thomas Keller. The award-winning chef/owner of French Laundry, Per Se and Bouchon Bakery visited my hometown of Nashville recently, and I had the extreme good fortune to share a lunch with him as part of my day gig as a food writer for www.foodrepublic.com. He was promoting his new cookbook Bouchon Bakery, which he cowrote with Chef Sebastien Rouxel. One topic that we discussed was the precision necessary to be a good baker.

His advice was pointed and specific.

“Buy a scale that measures in grams. If you don’t have a scale, you’re not going to be successful. In fact, the idea of cups and teaspoons and tablespoons is really archaic and probably should be illegal….Pastry and baking is all about precision. Every time you scoop a cup of flour it’s going to be a different weight, I guarantee. Think about the recipe for a pound cake. It’s a pound of flour, a pound of butter, a pound of eggs, a pound of sugar. It’s not a cup. They don’t call it a cupcake.”

So I immediately went to my Amazon wish list and added the KD-8000 Baker’s Math Kitchen Scale. This particular model ticked off all the boxes which Chef Keller suggested: inexpensive, easy to use, easy to clean, ability to scale ingredients within a recipe and a tare function. The only shortcoming was that it was not precise to within a 1/10 of a gram like some of the recipes in Keller’s book, but that’s probably a little more accurate than I’ll ever need. Within a gram is good enough for me.

Here at Gear Diary, we do a holiday gift exchange, and most of us use Amazon Gift lists as a starting point to pick a present for online friends who we’ve never actually met in person. My Secret Elf was kind enough to quickly harvest the scale off my wish list and send it to me, and I’ve been a baking fool ever since. Actually, I’m a baking smarty, not a fool.

The scale runs off of batteries, but has an optional AC cord available. I’m fine with batteries, since the extra cord running across my counter would clutter up my work surface and the scale turns itself off after a few minutes anyway to save batteries. It comes in two parts, a base and a detachable platform that hold whatever you are weighing. This allows for easier storage since you can tuck the platform between a couple of sheet pans in your cabinets if necessary.

Baking is often messy, so I appreciate the clear plastic cover that swings down to protect the buttons on front of the scale. With both wet and dry ingredients flying around my kitchen, the detachable cover is much easier to clean than the whole scale. The controls are simple to use. There’s a power button, a tare button (which resets the scale to zero), a mode function to switch between ounces, grams etc. and a button which enables the percentage weighing mode, which is very helpful for scaling recipes bigger or smaller.

To use the scale, you can either weigh each ingredient on the platform, or take advantage of the tare function to simplify the process considerably. Rather than measure out cups, tablespoons, ounces and other measurements, all you need to do is take an appropriately sized mixing bowl and set it on the scale. The display will read whatever the bowl weighs. Then hit tare to reset the scale to zero and account for the weight of the vessel. If the recipe calls for 3 cups of white flour, it’s a simple Google check to discover that 3 cups weighs 375 grams. (This weight to volume conversion differs depending on what you’re measuring, so check online in advance.) Then all you have to do is sift in your flour until the display reads 375 grams.

If the next ingredient is 3 tablespoons of salt, just hit that tare button again to reset the weight and add salt until it reads 54 grams. As long as you zero the scale out between every added ingredient, you’ll be accurate and only have to mess up one bowl instead of all the cups, bowls and spoons in your kitchen. Look at how many things I’d have to clean up if I did this the old way.

And this is all it takes now.

More precision and less clean-up? Count me in! And the KD-8000 will be a very valuable addition to my kitchen tool collection. Thanks Secret Elf!!

The KD-8000 Baker’s Math Kitchen Scale is available at Amazon and many department stores.

MSRP: $36.50

What I Liked: Inexpensive. Easy to use and clean up. Precise to within 1 gram. Makes baking easier and much less messy.

What Needs Improvement: Not much really. For the price, you can’t expect accuracy to .1 gram, and my cooking skills wouldn’t take advantage of that much precision anyway.

Let’s have a look:

The Brewery: Oskar Blues Brewery Lyons Colorado

The Beer: Dale’s Pale Ale

Color: Reddish orange

Head: Excellent head retention with good lacing

Let’s have a taste:

Aroma: Seriously hoppy/piney nose with malt trying to fight it’s way to your olfactory receptors. Awesome!

Flavor: Following the nose, your palette is inundated with hop flavor and bitterness with the sweet malt trying to cut through. GOOD LUCK!

Alcohol: 6.5% by Volume

I finished this brew (and the review) while supping on homemade chicken and rice stew. The Dale’s and the scratch proved to be a great pair.

In the brewery’s own words: “A Huge Voluminously Hopped Mutha of a Pale Ale”.  If you’re a hop-hound, (you probably already know about this one) you’ll love it. Don’t let the can scare you, it’s more easily recycled and doesn’t affect the flavor. In fact, Oskar Blues has the distinction of being the first craft brewery to can their beer. Now, over 150 craft breweries are following suit.

Up next: Dale’s Big Brother…Deviant Dale’s.

Click to Enlarge: Info graphic courtesy of Oskar Blues

While I cut way back on my coffee consumption after I stopped working for Borders, I still appreciate a well made cup of coffee. The coffee snob in me won’t touch flavored coffees, but I do like the occasional mocha flavored treat. In the course of surfing around the web today, I came across a coffee-like product so delicious and unusual sounding, I ordered a bag right away. What was it? CHOFFY!

What’s a Choffy?:

CHOFFY IS BREWED CHOCOLATE! 100% PREMIUM COCOA BEANS ROASTED AND GROUND TO CREATE A RICH DRINK THAT PROVIDES LONG-LASTING ENERGY AND WHOLE-BODY WELLNESS.

Richer and more robust than hot chocolate, it brews just like coffee. But unlike coffee, it supplies you with long-lasting energy without the crash or other negative effects of caffeine. In fact, the only thing that’s addictive about it is the taste!

So, unsweetened hot cocoa, roasted and brewed like a coffee bean. How could I resist ordering it right away? I am a bit skeptical of the health claims, but more importantly, I want to know how it tastes!

Even better, I noticed while browsing their site that they offer multiple gift packages and bundles. I know a few people who love coffee and chocolate, and if Choffy is as good as it sounds, I know what I am ordering them for the holidays!

Stay tuned to Gear Diary, as we will have a review of Choffy as soon as my order arrives!

After a two-day brine in a simple solution of water, salt, sugar and a few favorite spices and an overnight stay in my refrigerator to dry the bird out a little bit to help ensure a crispier skin, I applied my favorite wet rub under the skin and all over the outside and got ready to smoke it.

Of all my outdoor cooking devices, and trust me when I say I have a few of those, I prefer to use a simple electric kettle smoker because it’s easy to fire up and keeps a very even heat level throughout the cooking process, which is really important during the seven-hour + smoke that a 14 lb. turkey requires. Unfortunately, over the years the heating element of my smoker has begun to wear out and it seems to lose a couple of degrees off of the top temperature every time I use it which can drastically increase the cook time. I’ve replaced the element once already but wasn’t smart enough to consider this before embarking on this year’s turkey.

I always use my iGrill when I’m smoking to monitor both the temperature of the meat and the cooking area simultaneously. As the morning progressed, I tracked the graphs of the probe inserted inside the thigh of the bird and watched it steadily creep upwards toward my desired temperature of about 175°. I was mildly alarmed when the temp seemed to plateau at about 150° and stayed there for a while after four hours of cooking. I did some mental arithmetic and thought I could still get the bird cooked in time for the expected onslaught of relatives who were expecting a big meal that afternoon. Then, the turkey’s temperature graph apparently reached a point of inflection and began to head down. Uh oh, nobody wants an undercooked bird.

I decided that I needed to employ an alternate cooking method in a hurry. Since most of the smoke flavor is contributed in the first couple of hours cooking anyway, I could have gotten away with finishing the bird in the oven just to bring it up to a safe temp, but I had already promised the oven space to my girlfriend who had lots of other dishes planned to go in and out of the oven during the hours leading up to supper. Plus guy=outdoor cooking, right?

So I figured I could crank up my Medium Green Egg and still complete the cooking over smoke and fire, thus preserving my man card. With time running out, I had to get the Egg up to cooking temperature in a hurry. Fortunately, I had the nuclear option available to me thanks to a trick I’ve learned from friends on the competitive barbecue circuit. I unhooked my propane tank from my gas grill and attached a 100,000 BTU garden torch. (NOTE: do not try this at home. Or at least don’t say that I suggested it.) After a quick Johnny Human Torch impression, the coals were hot and ready to roll. Here’s a picture of a friend of mine using this method on my Primo grill to give you an idea of the power I brought to bear. And how much fun it was.

Of course, there were still a few flare-ups, but I was prepared with a new product that the folks at Grate Chef had sent me earlier to try out. Flare Down is a specially formulated spray designed to help you safely put out grill flare ups while you are cooking out. “But why can’t I just use a spray bottle of water, Chris” you might be asking. Spraying water on a grease fire is extremely dangerous and can lead to just making the problem worse. If you don’t believe me, just watch this.

Flare Down uses a mixture of potassium salts and water to create a food-safe solution that can help put out grease flare-ups without affecting the taste of whatever you are grilling. Available for about $6.00/bottle at Grate Chef’s website, Flare Down is a must-have safety accessory for any frequent griller.

Luckily, Thanksgiving was saved and the turkey came out on time, very juicy and tasty. Our guests raved over the sweet, smoky flavor that my mix of hickory and apple wood added to the meat. They didn’t have to know how close they came to eating bologna sandwiches for dinner…

If you read my review of the Primo smoker vs. the Big Green Egg, you may remember that one of my complaints about my Egg is that it is impossible to add more wood to it during the smoking process without completely disassembling the whole shebang and having to find safe places to put the meat you are cooking and all the hot surfaces of the grill and the smoker parts. Recently, I have discovered another brand of kamado-type ceramic smoker that addresses that issue in a very clever way.

The Saffire Grill Company is based out of Illinois, and is a relative newcomer to the world of ceramic smokers. Their product is similar to the Primo and the Big Green Egg, but with a few new innovations. They have added an expanded cooking surface by providing a grate that can sit on top of the main grill in case you want to cook several items at the same time. They also have a cooking grid elevator that sits inside the charcoal compartment to raise the grill to the level of the edge of the smoker when it’s open. If you’ve ever tried to cook a homemade pizza in a ceramic smoker (and you should, like today! It’s delicious and a lotta fun.), then you’ll recognize how useful it is to be able to slide your dough flat across the pizza stone without the risk of burning off all of your wrist hairs or dropping the pizza in the fire.

But the biggest innovation is their ingenious “Smokin’ Chip Feeder.” This is a tray which fits through a slot in the side of the smoker which allows you to add chips on top of the fire and below the cooking surface without even having to open the lid of your smoker. Because remember, “Lookin’ ain’t cookin.” Every time you crack open the lid, you add time to your process by letting out heat and smoke. Instead, you can just pour your favorite flavor of wood chips down the chute without interrupting the cooking cycle.

Now I already have two kamado smokers, and I don’t think that I can justify buying a third. But if I was in the market for one, I would certainly give strong consideration to the Saffire. They are available on Amazon for under $900 or you can consult the company website to find a dealer near you. With their bright red paint job, they sure would look sharp on your patio when grilling season kicks off again next spring, and Christmas is coming…

Come to think of it, one of these babies would really dress up my back deck. Maybe I can start laying the groundwork with my girlfriend now. Don’t tell her what I’m up to!

Today we heard about the filing by Hostess Bakeries for ‘wind down’, meaning that they are seeking to close operations. The sad news will reportedly impact some 18,000 workers across 36 plants. Hostess has spent all of 2012 in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection working to reorganize operations to find a way to stay afloat.

Unfortunately, according to the Wall Street Journal, this year has seen commodity costs rise and demand for products decline. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the major union for the company declared a work stoppage last week that shut down the majority of operations.

This sort of news – thousands of jobs lost as a venerable old company folds – is never welcome, and certainly in these continued uncertain times major job losses at the holidays is very difficult. At the same time, I always struggle when a union considers a proposed contract ‘untenable’ … and ends up with massive layoffs instead.

On Facebook today I have seen loads of outpourings of nostalgia about Hostess that hearken back to childhood memories of the sweet treats – very often with an admission that the person couldn’t even remember the last time they had something from Hostess.

That is certainly true for me – I used to enjoy some of those things as a kid, but remember having a Suzy Q in my late 20′s and being shocked at how appallingly sweet it was, and never having anything since.

Here are some of the famous Hostess snacks:

• Mini Muffins
• Zingers
• Sno Balls
• Twinkies
• Fruit Pie
• Donettes
• Ding Dongs
• Ho Hos
• Suzy Q’s
• Cup Cakes

What was your favorite? Also, how do you feel about the demise of Hostess, the union striking in bankruptcy, and anything else about the situation?

Maybe the only possible thing wrong with a bottle of good wine is that it comes in a breakable container. It is so sad to watch a grown man (me) cry when a bottle accidentally gets knocked off the counter and hits the floor with a crash. Not to mention the mess that broken glass and red wine can make on a floor.

We used to joke that if you ever dropped a glass in my family’s kitchen that everyone would be banned from that room for a month by my mom and her fear of slivers in our slippers. If we had ever shattered a whole wine bottle, I imagine she would have made us sell the house and move.

So here’s where the extensive line of quirky creative wine caddy steel sculptures from H & K come in handy. Not only are they a good way to protect your expensive bottle until its time for drinking, but they’re also fun little sculptures to dress up your home. Additionally, they would make a wonderful way to dress up a gift bottle instead of the same old raffia bag or brown paper sack. Spend a little less on the bottle and more on the presentation, and all you have to do is pop the head on the bottle to wrap it.

Each piece is made with recycled materials by European craftsmen and comes with certificates of authenticity to ensure that you’re not just giving some knock-off. Their website features over 150 designs divided onto various themes, sports and professions, so there’s sure top be something for the oenophile (that’s a fancy word for “wino”) on your holiday shopping list.

The prices for these objets d’art range from about $40 to $90. I received the Elvis impersonator edition,

and think it is an absolutely hilarious way to display my “drunka’ drunka’ burnin’ love.” As much as I like it, it will probably end up as a gift for the holidays, with the hopes that maybe they’ll return it back with a different bottle in it for my birthday. Now to start checking my list to see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice…

Find the perfect gift for the wine lover on your list at the winecaddys.com website.

“Thankyavurrymuch!”

In what surprisingly became a rather hotly debated topic here recently, we discussed the importance of staying hydrated. As was noted, water is the more important than food in terms of survival. But for too many, their liquid water intake is through sugary and caffeine-loaded soda and coffee and energy drinks. The best way to get your liquid water is … from water. For me I am happy with plain water, and have a 30-oz TupperWare cup at my desk all day to offset the heat/AC vent blowing dry air about six feet away from me.

But for many, the thought of drinking plain water all day makes them feel like they are dying inside … so we have had successful ‘individual drink’ flavor packets like Crystal Light – which were too much for some, too little for others. This led to the advent of ‘custom flavor’ drops such as the Mio from Kraft which arrived in 2011. Now Coca-Cola has released Dasani Drops, the calorie-free flavored drops companion to their popular Dasani Water products. I was selected to act as a ‘Taste Leader’ and was sent a sample-pack before they hit stores. Let’s take a look!

The Hype:
Taste has always been a matter of preference. Starting this fall, DASANI, America’s No. 1 favorite water brand, will give people across the country the power to create their own personalized taste experience by putting flavor at their fingertips. DASANI, which introduced the innovative new PlantBottle® packaging nationally in 2011, is again bringing something new and refreshing to the water category. DASANI DROPS is a zero-calorie liquid beverage enhancer that allows people to add a veritable burst of flavor to their water.

The Reality:

For me as a consumer I really care about several things in this sort of product: taste, price, convenience, mess, portability, and nutrition. So let’s walk through all of them:

Taste:
Given the choice between soda and some of the lightly flavored water products available, I would choose the water (except when I am going straight for caffeine). I am not a fan of energy drinks such as Red Bull, and I will drink the G2 Gatorade (the ‘lighter’ flavored one) but really only when exercising … and I am definitely NOT a fan of the heavily sugary-tasting soda or juice products. I state that as background for what I like in terms of flavor.

As shown in the video (below), I found that a single squirt of Dasani Drops per 8oz of water provided a good balance of flavor that reminded me of water drinks I enjoy. I had my entire family try out a variety of flavors, and the kids definitely had heavier hands, but in general we found that two squirts for a 16oz glass was plenty of flavor and a hint of color that everyone enjoyed. We tried four squirts of the Mixed Berry in a 30-oz cup and the kids enjoyed it more than Lisa and I!

In general it tastes just like similar flavored water products, so if you like those, then you will certainly find a balance you enjoy with Dasani Drops.

Price:
I wasn’t given pricing on Dasani Drops, but this CBS spot estimates $4 per bottle and the Mio sells for ~$3-$4 per bottle that makes 24 drinks. I would assume a similar price – $4 for the 32 drink bottle, $12.50 for a 4-pack (Amazon pricing for the Mio). Compare this with ~$14 for a 60-count pack of Crystal Light singles and the pricing isn’t too bad. It would break down to about $0.12 for each Dasani Drops flavored water.

Portability and Convenience:
Having a product that has a one-way valve for dispensing, a snap-lock cover, and a bottle that is rigid enough to prevent accidental dispensing all adds up to something you can easily carry in your lunch bag or computer bag without concern.

Mess:
I have two teenage boys … which should say enough. When there is a mess to be made – they are ALWAYS up to the challenge. But with the Dasani Drops valve and cover, it is simple for them to dispense the product, flip the lid shut … and I have not seen a bit of mess.

That might seem obvious, but while we’ve never used the Mio drops we HAVE used Crystal Light singles, and there always seems to be a sugar mess and the ripped off top left behind.

Nutrition:
Have you ever looked at the ingredient lists of flavored water products? Typically some artificial sweetener, a flavor stabilizer, some colors and natural flavors and not much else. Not ‘fruit juice’, but ‘natural flavor’. In other words … a chemistry experiment. As you see from the ingredients of the Strawberry Kiwi flavor pictures (no way you could tell which flavor from the ingredients list), there is neither strawberry nor kiwi involved in the making of the drink.

Some have expressed concerns about the colorants and other ingredients, in particular Acesulfame Potassium which is another sweetener that some think might be a carcinogen, but studies are too old and unreliable to know either way.

But I do say ‘chemistry experiment’ for a reason – my wife has sensitivity to coconuts but had no issue with the pineapple-coconut flavor.

Look at it this way – Dasani isn’t marketing this stuff as healthy or nutritious, but rather as a way of flavoring up ‘boring’ water … and more importantly having CONTROL over the flavor level in your water. Their point is that rather than guzzling soda, you can flavor up some water and cut down on the caffeine and sugar loading. And quite honestly … they’re right.

Conclusions:

Dan wrote about the Aqua Zinger, a way of infusing natural fruits into your drinks. Personally I have enjoyed simply having a fruit snack (currently loving apple season in western New York) along with water. There are other all-natural alternatives such as Capella Flavors for Water. Those contain all-natural concentrates, propylene glycol (same as all flavor drops), water and stevia (natural sweetener), and cost about the same (or less) per drink. My point – it IS possible to get all-natural flavor supplements for less than these all-chemical solutions.

But those of us who like water by itself; who infuse their own water; who seek natural products … we are not really the target for Dasani Drops. The target is those who are trying to cut down on soda but don’t like plain water; they like flavored water but find most brands to be too strong or too weak; and they want a product that offers them flexibility and convenience. For THAT person, Dasani Drops is perfect.

Here is my hands-on video of Dasani Drops:

Review: Dasani Drops

Where to Buy: Dasani.com or your local retailer (when available)

Price: Estimate ~$4 for 32-drink bottle

What I Like: Great flavor; no mess; convenient and well designed bottle; competitive pricing

What Needs Improvement: No natural ingredients;

Source: Manufacturer provided review sample

125 members of the media along with a score of craftbrewers and homebrewing elite met at noon Friday, inside Denver’s Grand Hyatt Pinnacle Club Peak Ballroom on the 38th floor for a working media luncheon consisting of a five-course pairing luncheon and briefing. The theme was “homebrewing and its connection to the craft brewing community”, and the idea was to “highlight a few commercial beers that were inspired by their homebrewing roots.”

Are you a homebrewer who has ever considered going pro? This luncheon was all about people like you!

all photos by Kevin Stanford

It’s easy to forget that just about every craft beer you can buy in the specialty beer case at your grocery store was created by brewer who likely started as a homebrewer. Just as so many famous tech companies were founded in their creator’s garages, so too were the origins of many craft beer companies.

We were welcomed to the luncheon by Julia Herz, Craft Beer Program Director, of the Brewers Association.

Julia is an award winning homebrewer, Certified Cicerone^TM, BJCP beer judge and all around beer lover. Her focus at the association is on resources and education on craft beer, general statistics on the craft beer industry, beer styles and trends and beer and food pairing.

Julie explained that we would be enjoying a five course lunch paired with the beers on our menus. Most of these bottled or canned beers were in the large ice bucket (shown above) in the centers of our tables.

Our first speaker was Kim Jordan, President, New Belgium Brewing Company, in Fort Collins, Colorado; she also serves on the Brewers Association Board of Directors.

The other side of the New Belgium story isn’t as romantic as bicycling through Europe, but it gives testament to our dedication and hard work. And it goes like this: Jeff, an electrical engineer by day and tinkerer by nature, builds a homebrewing kit in his basement out of repurposed dairy equipment. His Belgian inspired brews garnered enough praise from friends and neighbors that Jeff and Kim take their basement brewery commercial in 1991. Kim, social worker by day and mother to two always, began the marketing process by knocking on their neighbor’s door. Anne Fitch was that neighbor and her watercolors are the artwork we continue to use on our labels today. With labeled bottles and local encouragement, the first Belgian-style beers brewed in the United States were officially for sale. Bringing Peter Bouckaert, a Belgian Brewmaster working at Rodenbach, on in 1996 helped influence our love of sour beers. Moving forward, Peter would take the brewing reins as Jeff began pursuing other interests. In 2009, Jeff moved on completely and we have continued to flourish with Kim, Peter, and a team of dedicated employee-owners at the helm.

One of the first things that Kim mentioned was that there are more than 1500 craft breweries in the United States, and there are nearly a million homebrewers. She said that whether they know it or not, most Americans live within 10 miles of some kind of brewpub or brewery. I’m guessing that’s a number that mainly applies to people in urban settings, as our closest brewpub is about 40 miles away. (sad face)

She also gave a bit of back story, as to how at one point there had been a question as to whether the Brewers Association should just be for trade professionals, or whether it should include homebrewers as well. In the end, they realized that keeping trade professionals and homebrewing aficionados together would only improve the energy of the entire organization.

Kevin Crompton, from Epic Brewing Company, located in Salt Lake City, Utah, was our next speaker.

Admittedly, beer geeks, foodies and epic adventure junkies, the three [David Cole, Peter Erickson, and Kevin Crompton] share a passion for making and drinking fine ales and lagers. The EPIC team has a strong belief in doing everything “all out.”

Epic Brewing’s Brainless on Peaches was the 2011 Great American Beer Festival silver winner for a Fruit Beer. I had to pass on tasting this “welcome beer”, because I am allergic to peaches; it did have an amazing aroma, though.

Kevin mentioned that Epic is the “first brewery in Utah since prohibition to exclusively produce beers containing greater than 3.2% alcohol.” As a result, it keeps them from having beer on draft in Utah; 100% of their beer sold in the state of Utah have to be sold in bottles (draft beer sold in Utah can’t be more than 3.2%).

Epic Brewing Company opened its doors in July, 2010, and they have grown extremely fast. They are currently at 600 barrels fermentation capacity, and they are casting out 25 – 35 brews a week, which is “kind of crazy on a 10 barrel system.”

Brainless on Peaches is a barrel-aged beer;  they take an existing brand, called Brainless Belgium (a Belgium gold strong ale)  and they add it to chardonnay casks that have been freshly drained within 30 days, and then they add a pound of fruit puree per gallon into the casks, so “62 gallons is 62 pounds of fruit puree” per cask!

They went with peach puree over fruit extract for the more juicy flavor profile; they wanted a “nice fruity aroma and an aftertaste of fruit”, but they didn’t want something “like a Jolly Rancher”. The beer is very wine-like, because it is aged in wine casks. The Belgium beer they use as a base weighs in at 8.5% alcohol, and after the aging process and the extra fermentation in the wine casks, it weighs in somewhere between 10.5 – 11% alcohol, and it is extremely dry.

“It’s a very delicious beer that is very bright.”

Kevin started as a homebrewer in 1991; about a year later he applied for a job to manage a homebrewing store. He worked there for about a year and a half, before realizing that he was “on to something cool [with his homebrewing], and he wanted to make a career of this.”

He applied at various microbreweries, giving them samples and hoping they would be impressed enough that they would give him a job, “but it didn’t work out that way.” He finally got a job as a tank washer in 1994; “I probably washed about 50,000 kegs until I was promoted in the cellars.” He said that in the brewing industry, “if you work hard and you have focus, there is nothing you can’t accomplish”

Kevin is now the head brewer at Epic Brewing Company, and they have grown to the point that they are trying to expand and open a second location in Colorado, which he inadvertently announced right then and there. Ooops.

Now started our luncheon with pairings; while we enjoyed the course and its beer accompaniment, a speaker from each brewery would come and tell us a little bit about themselves or the beer we were enjoying …

First up was Scott Baer, Director of Brewery Operations for Telegraph Brewing Company, from Santa Barbara, California. He said that his title is a “fun and grandiose” designation that he has earned as the most senior of three employees at Telegraph Brewing Company. Telegraph was founded just over 7 years ago. They specialize in Belgium inspired ales.

Each of Telegraph’s brews is carefully crafted in small batches in our traditional copper-clad brewery. We respectfully employ brewing techniques proven over the centuries while eschewing modern shortcuts that might make our lives easier but inevitably lead to less distinctive beers. However, just like you, Telegraph Brewing Co. isn’t afraid of trying something new. That’s something you’ll discover on taking your first sip of our beer. We are proud to be a small part of California’s rich brewing heritage and we hope that with each pint you can taste the perfect blend of the past and the future.

As our braised pork belly appetizers were delivered to our tables, we passed around and poured freshly opened bottles of Telegraph’s California Ale.

Scott developed an interest in beer while in college, and he tried his hands at brewing his own. He was educated as an engineer, so his homebrewing approach was “systematic and thorough. [He] did a lot of research before actually brewing his first batch,” but he quickly developed a passion for it. Four and a half years ago, he walked into Telegraph Brewery with his resume in hand responding to an opening they had. They took a chance on him, and he has been there ever since.

He said that “craft brewing, much like homebrewing, is such a fulfilling combination of hard work, ingenuity, creativity and productivity.” California Ale was born as a homebrew, conceived of by the owner and original brewer at Telegraph, Brian Thompson. It has an emphasis on West Coast hops (like centennials and cascades), combining that with a “traditional Belgium brewers emphasis on unique beers, creative, and interesting yeast characteristics.”

California Ale is a hybrid-style beer that they sometimes have difficulty labeling, but they prefer to refer to it as a “Belgium inspired amber ale”, and in fact it won its gold medal in the French – Belgium Style Ale category at last year’s GABF.

California Ale is a deep copper color, with effervescent carbonation that they achieve through bottle conditioning. “The aroma is earthy and subtly hoppy with the promise of caramel and hints of citrus, and the taste follows through on that promise. The malt character is robust, and the hops are in balance, and the finish has a lot of fruity esters.”

Scott said that Telegraph feels that California Ale pairs very well with savory dishes, and I would have to agree, based on tasting it with the braised pork belly we sampled.

Randy Mosher, one of the three partners at 5 Rabbit Cerveceria in Bedford Park, Illinois, was our next speaker. He asked us all to go back about 140 years, back to the middle of the last century, and think about the attitude of the day, especially in the US; it was about work, about commerce, and it was about industry. He said, “we started to develop a culture of national brands, of things like soup, and bread, and cheese, and things like that. And that went on for a number of years, and it turns out that there was this notion that we, humanity, were headed for inexorable progress; that this was the was the ultimate idea of modernism that dominated the 20th century, and that technology would get us there.”

“It turns out that this technology was really good for things like making airplanes, but not so great for bread, and cheese, and beer. You know, we use that phrase ‘the greatest thing since sliced bread’, which [defined] what this era meant, but it turns out that the things you have to do to make bread sliceable, it’s like what Garrett Oliver calls a ‘food facsimile’. It’s not quite food. So what we are seeing today, is this desire to return to products that are more human than stale. And these extremely intimate products are the things that we put in our mouth — food, and drink, and bread, and coffee, and cheese, and all those things — we don’t want giant corporations dominating that. We don’t want marketing committees and advertising; people really want to know the people who produce their products, they are looking for products with meaning, with soul, and with a purpose. And that is the underlying purpose that drives all this [the craft brew movement].”

He went on to say that in the 70s, there wasn’t any good beer in the US; “there was nothing left! It was this desert, this barren vacuum in terms of beer, and in the great American fashion, we just started brewing it in our basements.” Randy finds it exciting that even today, “in this beer paradise that we are living in, with 30% market share in Portland and Seattle, there are still people homebrewing; they want to get their hands dirty and do it.”

Randy started his career as a graphic designer; he worked in advertising, and he fell in love with beer in the 1980s, and he started homebrewing. He started piling up notes and wrote a book on homebrewing. At a book signing in the Map Room bar in Chicago, he got into a discussion with two other men of Latin American descent about their project, which was to “reinvent Latin American beer for the 21st century.” He found that really fascinating, and “one thing led to another, and eventually the others decided he was useful enough to the organization that they took him in as a partner. ”

The name 5 Rabbit embodies the mysticism, color, and playfulness of this rich Latin heritage. Based on Aztec mythology, it provides deep roots to our vision of Latin America that inspires our beers and everything else we do. We are 5 Rabbit and we have come to liberate the true spirit of beer.

5 Rabbits has been in business since May 2011; they have been contract brewing, making about 2500 barrels a year right now. They also have a 30 barrel, four vessel DME brewhouse that is going to be delivered on Monday to a 2500 square foot facility in Bedford Park, on Chicago’s south side. They are really excited to get their hands on their own beers, and get out of contract brewing to make their own beer.

So to digress for a moment, 5 Rabbits is trying to “reinvent Latin American beers, and that doesn’t mean copying current Mexican beers. In [their] mind, that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything that is uniquely Mexican. It’s more like American Lagers, which started out as German beers, and sort of developed a little bit.” They wanted to do something that was distinctly Latin American, so they looked at the wildly varied flavors of Latin American cuisine and they drew inspiration from that.

Our intermezzo, a spoon of pumpkin sorbet, was paired with 5 Rabbit’s Vida y Muerte, which they jokingly call their Müerzen. Because it is their fall beer, they decided to drink as with the day of the dead, so their rabbit has bone ears. It starts out as an Octoberfest grist, and then they hop it up a little bit and ferment it as an ale. The beer has Mexican cinnamon, some allspice and other flavors.  They also use an Argentine milk caramel, called dulce de leche, which gives it a really nice caramel flavor.

According to Randy, “the overall effect of the beer is a bit like graham crackers, and that’s a flavor everybody loves.”

Our next speaker was introduced as a ”geologist turned brewpub maverick” who had worked his way up as a small business owner and one of the founders of Wyncoop Brewery. It turns out that he is now the current Colorado Governor, John Hickenlooper.

Governor Hickenlooper started with, “what can I say? You guys are my peeps in every sense.”  He then said that he brewed his first batch of homebrew in Washington County, Maine, in the summer of 1971; he said that beer was “very inexpensive, but not exactly digestible. They opened the Wyncoop in 1988, and he said that now, 4.6% of the beer consumed in Colorado is craft beer; 4400 jobs are created in that craft process. He said we need more artisan craft-based industries like craft beer, with people taking the time to put in for the creation of individual batches, and then other people saying this is worth the extra 50¢ or 75¢.

According to the Governor, the GABF brings $7 million to the local economy, and that it is a beacon to the rest of the world. He said that he hears more and more, that foreigners who visit are talking about craft beer as part of the experience of visiting the United States. He also mentioned that California has almost twice the number of breweries that Colorado has, but they also have seven times the population; so he said that “just doing simple math, they are five times behind us.”

As they began to bring out our entrees, our table mate Todd Steven Boera, the head brewer for Catawba Valley Brewing Company in Morganton, North Carolina stepped up to the dais to speak. Catabwa Valley Brewing Company was founded in 1999 by the two owners who started out with a homebrewing Christmas gift, and from that grew into a love of craft beer.

“For a long time, Catabwa Valley focussed on traditional, pretty basic recipes, doing things from red ales to IPAs with a few specialties set aside — Coconut Porter and one of the first black IPAs to hit the scene — but since then we’ve moved into the direction of doing a bunch of Belgian style ales and a lot of barrel aging, and moving into the sour categories of brewing beer. We really try to go out of the box, and it couldn’t have come at a better time, because that seems to be where the public wants to be moving towards in drinking, getting their hands on exciting beers. Todd has been brewing at Catabwa Valley for four years, and before that he started homebrewing in 2002, “reading the books of many of the people in this room that gave [him] ideas and gave [him] inspiration.”

He wasn’t sure where the quote originated, but Todd Steven says he often hears that “there is a homebrewer behind every craft brewing company in the country,” and whether that is true or not, he said that “it pays a great deal of attention to how appreciated homebrewers are, and how necessary homebrewers are in the craftbrewing professional arena.”

Todd Steven said that he talked his way into the job at Catabwa Brewing Company, “[he] was traveling around Europe and was in Belgium and in Portugal, and [he] was sending emails to the owner saying, ‘I’m coming back — you have to hire me!’, and that worked! I’m not really sure how that worked!” He started as the assistant brewer, and quickly moved to the head brewer, working on “really cool beer recipes like the ones y’all have in front of you.”

At Catawba Valley Brewing, micro is the operative word. Scott Pyatt efficiently divides his time between brewing and selling. A phone call to the brewery is almost always answered by his recorded voice: “If we’re not here, we’re delivering beer.” You gotta believe him.”

Catabwa had two beers to serve with our entree; La Saison Noir and Loretta; both were poured in the kitchen and served to us at the table, so I don’t have pictures of their containers.

La Saison Noir is not a typical style of beer, but Todd Steven noted that you will be seeing more and more breweries releasing their interesting interpretations on saisons. “And again, that’s the homebrewer side of the craft beer industry trying to push the limits, saying well, saison meant something thing for a very long time, but we can change it and make it something even more unique.” So La Saison Noir is their “interpretation of a black saison; it is fermented with a blend of five different Belgian saison yeasts, so it has a really beautiful phenolic character on the nose. To get the beer to turn a little bit black, they use a dark Belgian candy syrup, “so you don’t have the cloying nature from using roasted or caramel malts as much.” The beer is 7.8% alcohol, although it doesn’t drink like it; “it goes down with a really nice chocolatey, dry, tart finish.”

They released it in the summer, which Todd Steven said might have seemed a bad decision at first, but it stole the show for them for a while. Catabwa Valley likes to craft their beer around stories; he said that people want to know a bit more about the story behind the beer. Which brought him to our second beer, Loretta. Todd Steven said he was watching the travel network, and he forgets “who it was, but they were eating cantaloupe and cayenne pepper sorbet in Portugal, and so the idea was crafting a beer around those two ingredients, because it seemed like such a unique flavor combination.

Loretta is a Belgian Blonde, it’s 7% alcohol, it’s fermented with a Belgian Trappist yeast, and it’s aged in a secondary fermenter with crushed North Carolina cantaloupe and cayenne pepper.” Adding the cayenne pepper doesn’t make it a spicy “hot-pepper” beer, it just warms the beer; it is “just enough to stop in and say hi, and complement the cantaloupe really well.”

A pic Todd Steven brought of him doing cleanup from a time when a cantaloupe bag broke open

Catabwa is going to continue working on all of their flagship beers that are “really solid, but [they] are having a really great time working on the line of Belgians and sour beers.” This is both Catabwa Valley and Todd Steven’s first Great American Beer Festival, and they are very excited to be here.

Todd Steven Boera from Catabwa and Kev

Catabwa Valley Brewing Company’s La Saison Noir is on the left, and Loretta is on the right

Julie came back to introduce Jeff Erway, from La Cumbre Brewing Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico; they won the 2011 gold medal IPA with their Elevated IPA.

Jeff Erway, is the founder, president and master Brewer at La Cumbre Brewing Company. In 2002 he graduated from college with a Bachelors Degree in Jazz Performance, and he moved to the Navajo Nation with his then friend and now wife Laura, to teach music. In their free time, his wife and he had time to travel all over the country in search of good craft beers; he says that in the course of five years, they visited hundreds of breweries.

In 2003, while passing through Flagstaff, Arizona, they stopped at Homebewers Outpost, a local homebrewing store. Before then, the thought of homebrewing  had never really crossed his mind, but they went in, Jeff met the owner, and after talking with him for 20 minutes, Jeff picked up what has been “probably the most important book in my life, How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time, by John Palmer.” He studied that book, and “probably read it 20 times.”

These beers are all we have. They are our pride and joy. No million-dollar ad campaigns. No fancy marketing, just the best beers we can make, served the best way we know how. Come on in to the brewery and try them all. They are all classic interpretations of classic styles, brewed with the finest ingredients available in a time-honored way with a passion that is fueled by our brewer’s absolute and unwavering dedication to the craft.

Over the years, he had the opportunity to hang out with homebrewers who had turned pro, and he decided that not only did he love their beers, but that they were his kind of people. “They were humble artists with an honest, blue-collar flair.” It didn’t take him long to realize that “teaching just wasn’t [his] gig.” So he read and he brewed, and he read and he brewed “sometimes three batches a week”, and he would stay up late at night “dreaming of some day when he would be speaking to all of you about what I do and how I got here.”

In 2006, after a number of successes in homebrewing competitions, he was encouraged by a number of local craft brewers to make the leap and get a degree in brewing. In 2007, he enrolled in the American Brewers Guild. He completed that program in June of the same year, and was immediately hired by his “favorite New Mexico brewery at the time, Chama River Brewing Company.” He eventually made head brewer, and he stayed there until 2009. He left his position on January 1, 2010, and began the task of getting his own brewery up and running.

La Cumbre Brewing Company opened their doors on December 10, 2010, and they have grown to be the 4th largest craft brewing company in New Mexico, as well as the second largest in Albuquerque. What La Cumbre represents to Jeff, “is a complete lack of compromise; we make beer first and we write budgets later.” In so many ways, he says, their story is “the story of our industry. We are friendly and forthcoming with our fellow brewers, because that’s how I got into this industry, that’s what attracted me to it.”

Elevated IPA, which won the IPA gold medal at last years GABF and the bronze at this years World Beer Cup, was our last beer with the entree. Jeff said that to make it, they “use a total of eight hop varieties, and we are adding approximately four pounds of hops per barrel.” Elevated IPA is just over 7% alcohol, and they are just over 100 IBUs (International Bitterness Units). With it, they are “aiming for a bracing level of bitterness, but not so much as to overpower the malt.” He said, “for those idealists, and I used to be one of them, shaking their head at their use of hop extract. This typically allows for the use of much more aromatic hops in the boil, without plugging my heat exchanger.” Their beer is FRESH; they are typically tapping a 14-15 barrel batch about every six days.

“Unlike many of the incredibly gifted and creative brewers that you’ll find here this week, I find great freedom in the classic beer styles. I don’t go about reinventing wheels, but what I do is make my beer the best I can, within the style guidelines. When I go out and drink a German-style Pils, I know what I expect, and if I don’t get that, I feel like I’ve been cheated. With Elevated IPA, I am not trying to redefine the style, but simply to make the finest American IPA that I can possibly can.”

Our next speaker, Charlie Papazian, is a bit of a living legend; he is the founder and President of the Brewers Association, the founder of the Great American Beer Festical, and he is the author of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

The Brewers Association is an organization of brewers, for brewers and by brewers. More than 1,400 US brewery members and 30,000 members of the American Homebrewers Association are joined by members of the allied trade, beer wholesalers, individuals, other associate members and the Brewers Association staff to make up the Brewers Association.

In 1970 Charlie brewed his first batch of beer as a college student at the University of Virginia.  He was introduced to a neighbor, an “old-timer who brewed during Prohibition. He asked whether I wanted to taste his homebrew; I’d never had homebrew, I’d never heard of homebrew, I didn’t know what it was like. He said, ‘Well, if you’re interested, I’ll get the good stuff; I’ll go down to my basement and get the year old stuff.” And this was basically Prohibition style homebrew; a can of malt extract and eight pounds of sugar, aged for a year in his basement, and it was pretty intriguing. And it had flavor.”

The old-timer gave him the recipe (“five lines on a 3×5 card”), and Charlie and his roommates made their first batches of beer … and they dumped them down the bathtub. “They were kind of undrinkable, but we figured out a few things. We found dried brewers yeast instead of bread yeast, and we found corn sugar instead of cane sugar, and we started making stuff that all of our friends really loved, and we loved it, too! And to this day, that spirit of what happened in those first ‘homebrewing enjoyment parties’ and what is happening at the Great American Beer Festival, and what is happening all over America — whether it is professionally craftbrewed or homebrew craft brewed — there is something essential in common with all those experiences. One aspect of it, one of the questions that I asked myself, I think, back in 1970, because I didn’t really enjoy drinking store bought beer — I just drank it as a college kid, because it was cheap and you could get a little buzz on it — and I asked myself, WTF? Where’s the FUN? And that’s what it was about. It was fun. But that’s not the message I want you to take away from this. I really think that what’s going on with craft beer and homebreweing is the fun aspect of it, but the interaction is all about captivation. Craft beer is captivating; homebrewing is captivating. Everyone who takes it and experiences it in a group setting, or alone, is captivated by the whole experience and the idea of craft beer. You can’t say that about non-craft beer. And people take it  in their own directions. The reason that I brew, and I still brew it these days, I have five homebrews on tap and two fermenters lagering beer right now, I enjoy it. I don’t brew beer because I have to; I don’t think any professional craft brewer in this room or in America is starting their business, the business of craft brewing, because they had to. It’s because they were captivated by craft beer and the whole ambiance that it creates, and they wanted to do it. There are so many businesses, and so many other things we do because we have to do it; so many things that are made because we have to do it, but you don’t have to make craft beer, you don’t have to start brewing. Everyone who’s in it wants to do it because they have been captivated by it. And that’s the message that I want to give you, that after 40 some odd years, I am till making beer because I am still captivated, and I think all of us are here because we are captivated by the experience that craft beer offers.”

Next was Gary Glass, the Director, of the American Homebrewers Association.

The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) educates homebrewers, and protects and promotes one of the coolest hobbies in the world—homebrewing!

• Founded 1978 by homebrew author and Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian in Boulder, Colo.
• More than 30,000 members

Gary wanted to tell us a bit about the state of homebrewing today; they survey their members, they survey retailers, and they have collected stats. “Right now there are a little over a million people homebrewering in the United States. That’s probably a somewhat conservative estimate, but at least a million people are making beer or wine at home. There are 1327 homebrew clubs in the United States, which is about double what it was 10 years ago, and there are 761 homebrew retail shops.”

Right now, homebrewing is experiencing  the most rapid growth in its history; “what this is showing is that in the midst of one of the worst economy since the Great Depression, we have this segment of homebrewing that is growing at double-digit growth, and accelerating at double-digit growth.” As has been mentioned before, there is no shortage of great craft brews available in most stores; people can get just about any kind of beer that they might want from a store. People are getting into homebrewing because they want the experience of brewing for themselves. Bringing homebrew supplies into places like Whole Foods makes the hobby that much more accessible.

The “go local” movement definitely supports local craft brews, but “as far as beer goes, it doesn’t get any more local than brewing at home.” There’s also been a demographic shift in the people buying beginner kits; it used to be people who were in their 30s or 40s, people who had bought a house and had a family, that wanted to start a family. Now, almost 50% of the shops out there say that their primary age groups for buying beginner kits are people under 30. With a new age group that is really passionate about homebrewing, this is a trend that is not going to die out; it is going to accelerate.

“As a homebrewer, you are not beholden to any customers who buy your beer. You can experiment, you can do whatever you want, and if it doesn’t come out great, it’s not a big deal. That is what homebrewing is all about.”

By now, we were all done with our entree and ready for dessert, apple crepes which had been paired with Flying Fish Brewing Company’s Exit 4 and Maui Brewing Company’s La Perouse White.

First to speak was Casey Hughes, Director of Operations at Flying Fish Brewing Company, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Casey got into the brewing industry in 1995, which was also the same year he graduated high school. He went to college for a “little bit — two months — then went down to Key West on vacation”, and ended up getting a job at a local brewery there. His parents were not thrilled, but they “are much happier these days than they were back then.” Casey couldn’t legally drink alcohol for the first three years he was at the Key West brewery; he was there for seven years until that brewery closed down, and then he moved to New Jersey.

He decided to start making some wheat-based beers there, based off the Jersey Turnpike. “When you think New Jersey, you think ‘What exit are you from?’ So we decided to make a series of beers based on what the exits are, and to bring some light and fun stuff to New Jersey.  Our brewery was one of the first breweries to start making Belgian-style beers in the early 1990s; we figured Exit 4 is the exit where we’re at, so we started off with that. We decided to do an American version of a Belgian Trippel. I really like dry Trippels, I don’t like super sweet beers, so I figured what would go great with it but a lot of American Hops in there, so we made this nice 10.5% Trippel, and dry-hopped it like an IPA, pretty much.”

Flying Fish Brewing Company is located in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, approximately seven miles east of Philadelphia. In a state that once boasted 50 breweries, it is the first microbrewery in Southern New Jersey and the first new brewery built in that part of the state in more than half a century. From its opening in late 1996, Flying Fish has tripled its capacity and become the largest of the approximately 20 craft breweries in the state.

Casey was a brewer before he became a homebrewer, and he actually made wine before beer. He loves the Philadelphia area and its huge beer culture, and he enjoys going around and meeting with the clubs and other homebrewers; they all share tips and ideas with each other.

Exit 4 is a nice and dry beer, that has hints of peaches and apple; it worked well with our apple crepes.

Garrett Marrero, Maui Brewing Company, located in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii came next, and he jumped right in to tell us about La Perouse White, what they call “liquid breadfruit”, which is a collaboration beer that they did with “their good friends Dogfish Head Brewery.” Sam Calagione had come to Maui to visit while on vacation in Hawaii with his little girl, and he asked if he and Garrett could brew together while he was there. Garrett said, “‘no problem!’ And so it starts off as ‘well, maybe we’ll do a homebrew just for fun’, and then it was, ‘oh, we’ll do a pub special!’, and then it became a national release, 400 barrels, 3,000 pounds of breadfruit, which is an indigenous species of fruit in the South Pacific, as well as Hawaii, and we decided on toasted papaya seeds used as a spice.”

Maui Brewing Co. has built a reputation for creating hand-crafted beers brewed using only the finest natural ingredients. Founded in 2005 by Garett Marrero and Melanie Oxley, Maui Brewing Co. is one of Hawaii’s fastest growing companies and the islands only microbrewery.

La Perouse White is a “very unique beer; I think that we are doing things that most people don’t think about. And I think that’s where our basis in homebrewing really is. You know, we really do what Gary [Glass] said, we get to brew what we want to drink, and a lot of these recipes — a lot of these ideas — come in that thought process. Well, let’s just try it!” So we did …”

La Perouse White is about 8.2% alcohol by volume; it is an Imperial Golden Ale brewed with breadfruit and toasted papaya seeds. Garrett said that they “did collect all of the [bread] fruit and all of the toasted papaya seeds by hand; I have never eaten more papaya than I have in my life than I did this summer, so it’s something that we were very committed to.” Maui Brewing Company has become “somewhat of a serial collaborators“; Garrett says, “I usually call it a vacation write-off project for those out of state brewers who come to visit us.”

Their next beer will be a Belgian-style Stout brewed with chocolate and chipotle, “we’re using Big Island chocolate and Hawaiian chili peppers. Again, using local ingredients. In the spring, we are doing a saison, a locally grown lemongrass saison with Tomme Arthur from Lost Abbey Brewery, you may or may not have heard of him,  fantastic brewer. But like I said, serial collaborators. And I really think that is the essence of what craft beer is all about; its a sense of place, it’s community, it’s the brotherhood of what craft beer is all about.”

“We’re known for a beer called Coconut Porter; when we first started doing Coconut Porter, it was ‘what kind of beer? I don’t know about this’, and now there have been so many evolutions. A good friend of ours from Iron Hill Brewery was doing a beer last year for a special event, and he asked ‘how do you use the coconut?’ I just emailed him the recipe, and said ‘hey, this is what we’ve done different, and maybe in your style it would work this way’. But, it’s all about an open book, and to share. And if we all believe in sharing, then we all grow together. It’s very different, a paradigm shift in thinking from the large domestic billion-dollar plus American and non-American crowd, domestic lager producers. I think they don’t allow photos in the brewery, Miller doesn’t talk to anybody about, Bud doesn’t talk to anybody, wherever else. You would never see them all in the same room like this, sharing beers and sharing recipes, and we think that what sets us apart from that culture. Community involvement is something that is very important I think to all of us, with breweries like of course, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada, even the local small craft brewery that’s a half-barrel system in the garage. They all are contributing to the community in one way or another, whether that be by job creation, by green efforts and sustainability, donations, obviously. We do a lot of ‘in kind’ donations to non-profits to help them raise money. So, I think this is something important, and it really helps bind the local brewery to its audience, because where you are really defines what your brewery does in a lot of ways, and you can communicate to your audience why you do what you do; you form a relationship, and you pick your product not based on whether it is 50¢ off today or not, but based on the relationship they have with this company. And I think that this is something that, it goes across all sizes of breweries that are represented here at GABF.”

For our cheese course, we opened our last bottle, Blushing Monk, while Dave Engbers of Founders Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, spoke.

Dave started by saying, “I am proud to stand here in front of everyone and say that beer changed my life; craft beer changed my life. Like a lot of adolescents, at the early age of about 15 years old, I started stealing beer off my parents back porch. And I started experimenting a little bit, as kids do. And something huge happened to me when I was 17 years old. I’m the youngest of four children, and at the age of 17, my oldest brother, who had moved out the day he graduated from high school, he’s about 10 years older than myself, so, I really didn’t know him. We had kind of lost contact, he was a hippy, lived in a commune, and all of that kind of stuff, and we kind of reconnected and so my 16th or 17th birthday, I flew out to California and really got to know my oldest brother. He asked me two questions; he said, ‘do you smoke? or do you drink?’, and as a young kid, I said ‘yeah, yeah I smoke. And I drink’, and something huge happened that day, he introduced me to craft beer. Our first stop from the airport was a little store, and we picked up a Mendocino County Red Tail Ale, and it was literally, I’ve got goosebumps right now because it changed my life. I tried a beer that had so much flavor, and it was so different from anything I had ever experienced. That really piqued my interest. And then, growing up I had the opportunity to travel to Europe, and one thing that I saw about beer that I thought was so interesting, was how it works socially. Beer was a huge part of the culture in Europe, and I hadn’t seen that in the United States. I mean, beer was a novelty. And another thing that happened fairly soon afterwards, going to college, and again, being the fourth youngest of four children, my mom was a great cook. She was always in the kitchen, teaching people how to braise, saute, do all these fun things, so food and flavor was always a big part of our family life, and at the age of 19, my parents bought me my first homebrew kit. And I thought, ‘I’ve got pretty cool parents!’ And it’s kind of funny, because I am looking over here at Charlie [Papazian], and I’m thinking, well, that guy — we don’t know each other very well, we’ve met maybe a few times — but you changed my life. If you could only see my book [The Complete Joy of Homebrewing]. If you could only see your book on my shelf; it is worn, it’s seen better days, it’s spilled, it’s got all these beautiful spills all over it, and I love it. Thank you so much.”

Dave went on to college, where he met his partner, Mike; their pipe dream was to start a brewery. They both worked for beer wholesalers, and they would talk about starting a brewery. Out of college, Dave became an elementary teacher; he did it for a year, but something in the back of his mind was saying, “you have to do this.” He decided that he wanted to live without regrets, and so he called his partner Mike, and he said “we are young enough that if this works, it’s great. And if it doesn’t work, we can bounce back and do something else.”

They started Founders Brewing Company in 1997, and the first few years were a struggle. “I’m not happy to say that we lost money our first ten years, but it is kind of the reality. And we struggled trying to find our voice, and after our first two years, and losing literally hundreds of thousands of dollars the first couple of years, and literally being on the brink of filing for bankruptcy, we said, ‘if we are going to go out of business, let’s do it on our own terms. And we said, from now on, we aren’t looking at the popular styles. We’re going to do things our own way, and like so many folks who have been up here today, we brewed beer that we wanted to drink. And that’s now our slogan, ‘Brewed for us.’ We don’t brew beers for the masses; we’re brewing beers that make us happy. We are very fortunate to be in an industry where the craft beer enthusiasts are extremely engaged in our industry. And with the advent of the internet, we’re extremely accessible. We have folks that call us, and we are very open; we love having brewers come to our brewery. We love opening our doors and showing you what we do. Our entire industry is almost collaborative; we like to help each other out.”

The Founders Family, a group of passionate beer enthusiasts, has grown around this simple philosophy: “We don’t brew beer for the masses. Instead, our beers are crafted for a chosen few, a small cadre of renegades and rebels who enjoy a beer that pushes the limits of what is commonly accepted as taste. In short, we make beer for people like us.”

In 2007, they moved into their new facility, and that is when their business really took off. They were doing about 5000 barrels a year, but their first year after moving in they doubled their production to around 10,000 barrels a year, the next year was 19,000, the year after that was 28,000, and last year they did 43,000, and this year they are on track to brew 90,000 barrels.

Dave said that their responsibility as brewers “is to brew the best beer that we can.”

Blushing Monk was presented to us in a champagne glass, and it was an absolutely gorgeous effervescent raspberry color and flavor. Dave relayed a conversation he had had with Jason Heystek (their head cellarman) about how much raspberry they used, and Jason’s reply was, “oh, about $20,000 worth.”

Dave Engbers from Founders Brewery, and our pour of Blushing Monk

Blushing Monk is a beer that I think I could serve to my friends who don’t really like beer; it was like champagne without the bubbles and without the headache later, and it was perfect with cheese.

After a few closing remarks, our pairing experience was over.

And afterward, I was left feeling that I, along with the other 124 members of the media attending the luncheon, had just been privy to something amazing.

To be able to have all of those esteemed brewers in the room, and to hear them talk about their experiences as homebrewers and craftbrewers, was an inspirational treat that I know neither Kevin nor I will soon forget.

So, what is a KeyShark you ask? And what does it have to do with football tailgating?

Well, I’m glad you asked. A KeyShark is a lightweight, but strong, bottle opener that is designed to fit on your keychain.

I have to say, though, that when it first arrived I was a little skeptical. It’s pretty darn small and pretty darn lightweight. It was taped to a business card… and it was WAY smaller than the business card. I was sure it was going to bend on the first steel bottle cap. Nonetheless, I dutifully stuck it on my keychain and set off for Champaign-Urbana.

As you can see from the photo below, the KeyShark is indeed rather small. Smaller than the keys next to it on my keychain. The small size makes it unnoticeable when carrying around.

Most importantly, it works well. It was easy to open a bottle and it didn’t have the least amount of give when prying off a bottle cap. It looks cool, too.

The promotional photos we were sent showed the user with their thumb and fingers set back from the tip of the KeyShark (first photo below). I found for me it was easier when I placed my thumb over the front end of the KeyShark, as shown in the second photo below.

The KeyShark doesn’t really have a sharp edge to it, but you never know what might catch the attention of the TSA folks. Bob from Cranky Monkee noted that the KeyShark falls into the TSA category of tools under 7″ and should be allowed, so you shouldn’t need to remove it from your keychain before traveling by air.

The KeyShark is available directly from Cranky Monkee’s website. Shipping in the US is just a buck.

Oh, and aside from getting to test a functional, but fun new gadget, the next best part of doing a review of the KeyShark is getting to enjoy the, uh, byproducts of the review process. Cheers!

MSRP: $4.99

What I Like: Small, light, and gets the job done.

What Needs Improvement: It’s a tiny bottle opener with a shark-like shape… I wouldn’t change a thing at this point. Give me a little more time to “experiment.”

Hi. My name is Kevin, and I like beer…a lot!

Other things I like: Judie (well, actually, I love her), my kids (I love them too), Otis (my dawg), fresh air, wide open spaces, rain and… did I mention? Beer!

I developed a taste for the stuff (beer that is) during college. At the time, it probably wasn’t as much a taste thing as it was a social thing, if you catch my drift. I have plenty of vintage stories about Colorado’s 3:2 beer (swill), and escapades with cheap beer bought in bulk with my buddies.

After some time my palate refined a bit, and at some point past that a good friend suggested we begin brewing our own beer. We did, and after a couple of weird (not so tasty) batches of homebrew, we got it right! By the third batch, we had ironed out some of the initial problems, and we had finally achieved the desired outcome… a delicious batch of our own, home-brewed beer!

That was 1998. Since that time I’ve been home-brewing on and off (mostly on) over the years; I’ve also been exploring the ever-growing world of craft brews. The wide range of regional small-batch offerings these days is nothing short of amazing. With all sorts of flavors, strengths and styles available; if you know where to look, you can find some incredible brews from relatively unknown (outside the craft brew crowd, anyway) sources.

A couple of things happened over the last few years that really kicked my passion into high gear. The first was visiting Windsor, England, last October. While on an extended layover, Judie and I explored the town and found several ancient pubs; in them, we were able to sample several cask ales in what I would imagine were ideal circumstances (e.g. cold and rainy English setting). The second was when Judie arranged for me to spend some one-on-one time with Russell Gardner, the certified cicerone (another word for complete beer-expert) at the Public House in Las Vegas during CES. I… was… in… heaven. Russell and I spent more than three hours together pairing foods and tasting craft beers, both from the Public House and his private collection. Those two experiences were enough to inspire me to learn even more about craft beer, and to take my own homebrew efforts to the next level.

Beer is awesome; brewing it, talking about it, and drinking it are things that I enjoy greatly, and I want to share my enjoyment of it with all of you. So join me as we explore some common and not so common craft brews.

Cheers!

And let’s start… right now.

This evening I pulled a new (to me) beer, Nelson Imperial IPA, from “the vault” — our dedicated adult beverage cold storage facility. This was a brew that Judie and I had found at Leucadia Liquor, a store we discovered while on a late night walk in Encinitas. To digress for a moment, this place was amazing! We were in awe of all the beer goodness lining the shelves and coolers. There were tons of local California craft brews, and flavors we had never even heard of, even from the brands we were familiar with.

This place made our local (well, 40 miles away) beer source look anemic! We went, we were awed… we bought.  Before we left, we had purchased $80 worth of new beers. I had heard of a few, but others were brand new to me. (We would have bought more, but space was limited in the family wagon.)

Let’s check this brew out…

The Brewery: Widmer Bothers Brewing, Portland Oregon

The Beer: Nelson Imperial IPA

Style:  Double IPA, short for India Pale Ale with extra kick! If you know what I mean.

Color: Copper-Orange

Head: Good, solid with staying power.

Aroma: Hints of spice and pine buried in hop goodness. And such a slight hint of alcohol. This one is strong at 8.6% ABV

Flavor: Up front creamy malty followed by good, but not overpowering hop kick, and ending with a slight hint of alcohol.

I found this to be a well balanced beer, with creamy malt and lovely Nelson Hops (among others). A great beer! Probably a personal favorite, although I’ll have to order it online if I want another. Thank you “Brothers”!

MSRP: $7-10

Widmer Bothers Brewing

I love beer. Personally, my go-to choices are anything Sam Adams and Guinness. But really, if it’s not Budweiser or Coors, I will happily drink it.

And while I have had many political conversations OVER beer, I have never politicized beer…but leave it to analysts to put together a graphic overlaying democrats/republicans/voting involvement and beer choice. Of course, this isn’t 100% accurate. After all, as I said above, I love Guinness and Sam Adams, which indicates I have a split political personality.

The whole analysis is pretty neat, so be sure to check out the full article at National Journal.

Via Autostraddle

Ok, so the title of this recipe might be slightly exaggerated, but the great thing about it is that you can make it with practically any ingredients, so while my fully customized frittata may not be your favorite, the base recipe can be used to make one you think is pretty darn good!

Sarah and I eat this for breakfast almost every morning, but it would make an equally good lunch or dinner. I love it because it stays well for a few days in the fridge, and only requires 10 minutes of prep time. This covers two days of breakfasts if we each grab 1/4, and it reheats beautifully in the microwave. Best of all, it keeps us from drifting to Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks in search of a quick meal first thing in the morning!

Carly and Sarah’s favorite breakfast frittata (makes 4-6 servings):

8 eggs

1+ cup(s) of spinach

1-2 small tomatoes

3-4 slices Canadian bacon

1 small sweet potato (or 1/2 of a larger one)

2 garlic cloves (chopped)

2 TBSPs coconut oil (divided)

1/8th of a cup cheese (optional)

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

You can make this frittata and skip the sweet potato, but I think it really adds extra flavor, depth, and nutrition. I start by shredding the potato like it is a hash, and cooking it up with one tablespoon of the coconut oil in a frying pan along with the garlic. Once it is cooked through and getting a bit crispy, take it off the heat and let it cool slightly.

Meanwhile, chop the spinach and tomatoes. You want the tomatoes in bite size pieces, and the spinach in reasonably small chunks. Crack the eggs in a large mixing bowl, and whisk them until they are smooth. Add the spinach and tomatoes, and whisk again to coat the veggies well. Then add salt and pepper to your taste. Finally, chop the Canadian bacon into small pieces, and mix that in as well.

Melt the other tablespoon of coconut oil (usually around 20-30 seconds in the microwave) and coat a 9in pie plate with it. Then transfer the slightly cooled potatoes to the pie dish, and spread them like a “crust” along the bottom. If they haven’t gotten terribly crispy in the pan, you can pop them in the oven for 5 minutes, but then you will need to wait for them to cool again. Otherwise the eggs will scramble when they touch the hot plate and potatoes. Once the potatoes are in the pie plate and cool enough, pour the egg mix on top. If you intend to add cheese, sprinkle it on top at this point.

Pop it in the oven for 30 minutes. If not eating right away, let it cool completely, then wrap it tightly with plastic wrap and keep it in the refrigerator. Slice, reheat, and serve.

Variations can include other veggies, different meats, and if you want mini portions, try making the frittatas in muffin tins!

Umami translates roughly from Japanese into English as “pleasant savory taste.” It is described as kind of a cross between brothy and meaty, and probably the best way to evoke it is to think of the slightly funky flavor of soy sauce or teriyaki which isn’t the salty or sweet component.

When Japanese cooks want to introduce umami into their foods, they usually start with a Dashi stock, which is a thin soup made from kombu seaweed and dried bonito fish flakes. Trust me, it’s better than it sounds. Italians seek umami from mushrooms and Parmesan cheese in their red sauces and Chinese get it from cabbage and leeks.

However you get it, umami adds a degree of awesomeness to many things that you can make in your home kitchen, and now California chain Umami Burger has made it even easier for you. You don’t even have to be able to boil water and steep fish flakes thanks to their new Umami Spray. Despite the fact that the spray bottle looks like something you’d use to clean your bathroom, it’s actually filled with a water-based spray flavored with kombu and “seafood essences” (ick?) to let you umamify your burger right on the grill during cooking.

They suggest you can perk up your salads, smoked fish, sushi, pasta, vegetables, chicken or beef or even just mist the entire plate to turn up the volume on your meal. At $15/bottle from the company’s website, it’s not cheap but what price can you put on adding a whole extra set of tastes to your buds. Especially if you don’t have to cook any fish flakes…

Perhaps due to the sensual pleasures that were promised from the creamy hot food and the atmosphere of sharing that was encouraged by multiple people using the same pot to dunk food into on the end of little pitchforks, fondue had a reputation of being a real swinging food. Y’know, like this. In actuality, smart people wanted to put extra clothes on rather than take them off when exposed to chocolate/marshmallow napalm or urns of bubbling hot oil like some medieval fortress defense device.

So modern fondue fans have to bring something new to the party. Why not fondue at work? Despite the fact USB ports are relatively low voltage for powering a heating element, the mad scientists at ThinkGeek.com have invented a tiny “Fundue” pot for your desktop. Since it is relatively low-powered, they suggest that you not try to cook meat in oil or hot broth like at a Melting Pot restaurant.

But you certainly can melt creamy chocolate or soft cheeses in this desktop version. Thanks to the “Oil-Guard™ technology,” hopefully any papers or technology on your desk will be protected for splatters, but I’d definitely clear the area before firing this puppy up. I’m simultaneously encouraged and concerned by another feature. Encouraged because the specs list an “auto-power off mode,” but concerned because they promise that this feature will offer “decreased loss of life risk.” Eek.

The Fundue comes with six included fondue forks that come in different colors so that you remember which piece of cake is yours at the bottom of its delicious chocolate dunk tank. There is also a recipe book included, but if the sample recipe that is listed on the website is any indication, maybe you’d be better off experimenting on your own:

2 Packets of Chinese Soy Sauce
1 Packet of Ketchup
1 Packet of McDonalds BBQ Sauce
1 half and half packet
4 Slices Of Kraft American Cheese
Plug your Desktop Fundue™ into your computer, heat for 10 minutes, then dip in! ThinkGeek recommends leftover Pizza Crust from last weeks meeting as the ultimate dipper. But it’s also a great base for dipping Hot Pocket morsels and leftover steamed dumplings as well. And for the truly adventurous, let your Pop Tarts swim in this fondue and enjoy a bit of sweet and savory bliss at your desktop! Five stars!

Clearly the recipe, and in fact, this whole item is kind of tongue in cheek, so don’t take it too seriously. But at only $29.99 on the ThinkGeek.com website, it would make a fun gift for a geeky friend with a sense of humor. Or for your uncle who still hasn’t shaved those sideburns or ditched the dickie from the 70′s.

Shut yo’ mouth!

Photo from http://www.barbecue-smoker-recipes.com

Anyone who is slightly befuddled by the title of this post probably isn’t a member of the cult of ceramic grills, which are also known by their Japanese name of kamado grills. I used to be one of those people who sneered at my friends who went on and on about how wonderful their Big Green Eggs were and how they could cook perfect ribs or chickens or pork shoulders all the time because of the incredibly well-insulated ceramic grills’ ability to hold a constant temperature for so long.

“They’re just weak,” I thought. “Part of being a pitmaster is the ability to constantly adjust your heat source and air flow to try to compensate for flare-ups and hot or cold spots in your grill.” Heck, I even bragged about how well I could smoke meat on my gas grill, thanks to the use of a smoke box and wood chips. Then I broke down and bought a ceramic grill…

You can officially color me a member of the kamado zombie cult now as I sing their praises to anyone who will listen. In fact, after I bought my first ceramic grill, a Primo XL for our cabin up in the mountains, it wasn’t a month before I bought a Medium Green Egg for the back deck at my house. Why are they so amazing? Take a look at this illustration from the folks at Big Green Egg:

The design and construction of ceramic cookers allows for an incredibly efficient use of charcoal to maintain a constant temperature inside the cooking area. As opposed to thin-walled kettle grills or gas grills that for safety reasons have to have multiple open area for fumes (and heat) to escape, kamados are almost completely air-tight. With just minute adjustments of the air vents below and above the fire box, you can achieve and maintain temperatures as low as 150 degrees for smoking fish or as high as 800-900 degrees for searing a steak Pittsburgh-style.

Because the energy usage is so efficient, you burn much less charcoal than with a traditional grill. These grills use natural lump charcoal and can hold a temperature overnight while you smoke a pork shoulder. Gone are the days of setting your alarm for the middle of the night to wake up and restoke the fire. You should never use any starting fluid in these grills, especially because the porous ceramic walls of the cooker will soak that nasty stuff up and make all your food taste like a petroleum product. Yuck.

Now that I’m the proud owner of two of these grills, both of which are manufactured in Georgia, I’m in a unique position. No, not broke, but close. These things are pretty darned expensive, but I keep trying to rationalize the cost by my savings on charcoal and propane. My unique position is that I can directly compare the Big Green Egg and the Primo, two of the most popular ceramic grills on the market.

First off, let’s look at the Egg.

The round shape of the Big Green Egg maximizes the surface area on the grill vs. the footprint of the entire cooker. This has pros and cons. Actually, I purchased the smaller Medium Green Egg, but there are sizes from a tabletop version for a small urban patio up to an XL Green Egg that can cook two 20-pound turkeys or twelve steaks at one time. The guy that sold me his Egg told me that he’d been warned that everyone who buys a Medium eventually wants to upgrade to a larger size, and that’s how I got such a good deal from him. For my family of two, the Medium Egg seems perfect and is easy to drag around the deck out the way when not in use, thanks to the wheeled “nest” that is available as an option.

The Medium Green Egg heats up quickly and evenly. It’s the perfect size for making personal wood-fired pizzas on the grill, and we’ve gotten pretty proficient at this fun process in my house. It’s great for firing up to smoke a couple of chickens that we use to make chicken salad or breast meat for sandwiches for a week’s worth of lunches. With the addition of a ceramic plate setter, you can block the direct flame and use indirect cooking methods to smoke meats instead of putting them directly over a fire. More on that later.

Temperature adjustment comes from sliding open an inlet on the bottom of the Egg and by adjusting the louvered top that sits on top of the dome. This cap is removable for cleaning, which is an advantage since it tends to get gunked up from soot and grease after a long smoking session. Unfortunately, this also means that it can fall off when you open the lid, and when you’re talking about expensive ceramic, you’d hate to have a heavy piece of cast iron crack your lid. Another reason to be careful when opening the Egg is that the rapid influx of air into the controlled environment can cause instant flame ups that could ruin your meat or more perilously, set your face on fire. YouTube is full of cautionary videos showing these infernos, so they recommend that you “burp” your grill by opening the lid just a little bit at first to avoid a rush of oxygen into the hot environment.

On the whole, I’ve been very satisfied with my Medium Green Egg for its intended use, but I do prefer my Primo XL. Here’s why:

As much as a circle is the perfect geometrical object for maximizing surface area, ribs aren’t circular. Unless you’re cooking a pizza or the world’s biggest burger, most food just lays out better on the oval grate configuration of the Primo XL. The oval fire box is also easy to divide with an optional ceramic wall that allows you to build your fire on one side and smoke your meat indirectly over the other side of the grill. (An aside, both these grills have a whole lot of expensive accessories available, and you WILL buy some of them. Factor that into the final cost of your investment. I mean, you gotta get a pizza stone, right?)

The Primo also allows you to use extended grill racks to cook meats at different levels, and therefore variable temperatures, within the cooking area. This is great for cooking ribs or a chicken directly on the grate while smoking a brisket or pork butt slower and at a lower temperature at the same time.

The configuration of the heat adjustments for the Primo XL are very similar to the Big Green Egg, with the main difference being that the cap is not removable. That’s good for safety, but does necessitate that you clean it often lest it freeze up on you. When you’re done cooking on either of these grills, you can put out the fire quickly and safely simply by closing the upper and lower vents. Unlike your Weber kettle that you have to let burn out, the coals on a ceramic grill can still be reused for your next cookout.

The lid of the XL is very heavy though and it opens to a point that is almost perfectly balanced when open. That means if you sling it open and let go, it can easily rebound against the spring of the heavy-duty hinge and close with a crash. That could be dangerous to both the delicate ceramic and also to your delicate forearms which could get chopped by a hot heavy ceramic guillotine. Again, be careful and burp that thing.

The final advantage that really seals the deal for the Primo in my opinion is how much easier it is to add coals to during a long low and slow smoking session. Even though these grills hold temp so well for so long, sometimes we’re talking about an 18-hour cook time for an entire pork shoulder. At some time during that process, you’ll probably want to top off your charcoal supply.

With the Egg this requires you to open the lid, remove the meat and the grill, use long asbestos gloves to take out the hot ceramic plate setter and pour in some more chunk coal before repeating the assembly in reverse. This takes quite a while and really lowers the temperature of your cooking environment and the meat you’ve been cooking. Not to mention that you have to figure out someplace safe to stack all the hot elements of the grill that you removed during disassembly. I have a wooden deck, so there’s not a lot of good places to put a hot greasy grill grate and a glowing ceramic plate setter.

However with the Primo XL, here’s the procedure to add more charcoal if you’ve had the foresight to leave one half of the grate off over the partitioned section with the indirect heat source: open the lid (burp it!), pour in more charcoal, close the lid again. That’s it. Quick and easy with a minimum loss of heat, because remember what I told you last year, “Lookin’ ain’t cookin’!” Every time you open that lid to add coals or to check your meat, you’re probably adding a half hour to your cook time.

In the end, most people would be happy with either of these fine products, but if you like to smoke big pieces of meat, you’ll probably prefer the Primo. And you’d probably be the kind of person I’d like to hang out with.

The Primo XL is available from grill distributors around the country.

MSRP: $1,259.00
What I liked: Nice large cooking surface. Consistent cooking environment. Easy to add coals midway through cooking process.
What needs improvement: Heavy lid can slam down if opened too vigorously.

The Big Green Egg is also available at grill shops everywhere.

MSRP: $749.95
What I liked: Easier to move around than Primo. Better for smaller patios and decks. Less expensive than Primo. Perfect oven for home wood-fired pizzas.
What needs improvement: Top vent cap can fall off, potentially cracking the Egg or leaving a greasy dent in your deck. Difficult to add charcoal during cooking.

I love working in the kitchen, but I have to admit that I’m a total chicken when it comes to using a mandoline. Knives don’t frighten me, since I keep them really sharp with my whetstone and have pretty decent knife skills. But when I finally broke down and bought an expensive mandoline, I had heard so many horror stories of chefs cutting the ends of their fingers off while carelessly using these razor-like slicing and julienning machines, I made sure to get a really expensive one with all the safety options. And then I actually bought a kevlar glove to wear while I used it.

So I actually only used it once, with nervous sweat dripping off my nose and flavoring my mise en place. Then I put it back on a high shelf of my kitchen cabinet, out of sight and out of mine.

Fortunately OXO has come up with a simple and safe mandoline that is easy to use and not nearly as intimidating.

The OXO GoodGrips Handheld Mandoline is a sturdy inexpensive piece of kitchen gear that will simplify your slicing work in your home kitchen. The device has an adjustable slicing surface and a detachable safety handle to protect your hands and keep you away from the sharp cutting blade.

The depth of your slicing is easily adjustable with a slider on the side of the mandoline which allows you to cut potatoes, squash, carrots, peppers or anything else that you need sliced for a recipe. The thickest slice setting is perfect for making home fries or potatoes au gratin, and the thinnest slice is almost see-through.

The slicer is easy to grip and has a convenient curve at the end across from the handle that allows you to position it stably on a cutting board or to hook it over a bowl to catch your slices.

The safety handle has short plastic spikes to firmly attach it to whatever you’re cutting to allow for safe handling. Simply by moving the handle back and forth across the blade you can quickly produce a pile of sliced vegetables, working like a hot knife through butter.

So why buy a bag of Ore-Ida’s when you can make up a batch of home-made french fries in seconds? Or dress up your boring salad with fresh disks of beets and rings of bell peppers. With this easy to use and quick to clean piece of kitchen gear, you no longer have any excuse to be lazy (or scared) in the kitchen.

In fact, OXO and Gear Diary want to empower one lucky reader to add a little panache to his or her cooking by giving away a free Handheld Mandoline Slicer. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post that says “I want one!” and we’ll draw a winner on Wednesday May 9. It’s just that easy!

But still be careful using this, like you would any piece of sharp kitchen equipment. We want to be sure you have all ten fingers to type comments for future contests!

OXO GoodGrips Handheld Mandoline is available at many kitchen supply stores or direct from the company website.

MSRP: $14.99

What I Liked: Easy to use. Simple to clean. Feels sturdy and safe while in use. Great price.

What Needs Improvement: Wish I’d found it earlier when I was such a little wuss about my old mandoline.

The fine print–
1. This contest will be open until May 9, 2012. The winner will be announced shortly after.
2. Shipping address must be in the USA
3. If you’re entering this giveaway using Facebook connect, you MUST have your Facebook page set to accept messages from non-friends so we can contact you through your page if you are the winner. If you are unsure how to set your privacy settings to allow this, feel free to contact us for assistance or read Facebook’s instructions.
4. The winner will be announced on the site and will have 24 hours to contact us. After 24 hours a new winner will be picked.

The cooking geniuses at GrillGrate.com have developed what they call the “Meathead’s Temperature Magnet.” If someone calls me a meathead, I take it as a compliment, so I was happy to see this product. There are so many things to like about this particular cooking guide, it bears closer examination.

Instead of just the typical beef, pork and poultry categories that most doneness charts offer, the Meathead Magnet gives the USDA minimum and what they call the “Chef Temp,” or optimal cooking temp for eight different classes of food. Beef, lamb and venison are lumped together with a recommended Chef Temp of medium rare at 135-145°. Pork and veal have the same suggested temperature, but they figures to be medium for those meats. Fish is always a tough one for me to gauge, so it’s nice to have a reminder affixed right on my grill that anywhere between 130-145° is probably good to go.

There really isn’t a range for meats like ground beef, hot dogs or pork shoulders and ribs. Instead, the Meathead Magnet just gives you the minimum safe temperatures. You don’t want to mess around with undercooking those products. In a novel addition, the magnet actually has a color-matched printed “rainbow of meat” to show you what shade beef steak should be at ranges from rare (125°) to well done (165°.) There’s even a picture of raw beef in case you don’t remember what the steak looked like before you fired up the grill.

This ultimately useful guide should always be at hand thanks to its magnetic backing. Even if your grill doesn’t attract magnets, like mine doesn’t, fear not because the durable construction will still survive outdoors if you just leave it out next to the grill or with your bbq tools. (You do have a whole box of gadgets for your grill, don’t you?) Plus you don’t have to worry about staining it with BBQ sauce or your juicy steaks.

GrillGrate.com is better known for their flagship product which sits atop your grill to help sear your meats and protect your cooking surface from flare-ups. I have not actually seen one of these in person, but if you have any experience with the Grill Grates, please feel free to share your opinions in the comments.

I can speak to the efficacy of the Meathead Magnet, and thanks to the good folks at Grill Grates, I can share one with you. In preparation for the official kick-off of grilling season (be it Easter or Memorial Day in your particular climate), leave a comment that shares you absolute favorite thing to cook on the grill. On April 10, we’ll choose a random commenter to send their very own Meathead Thermometer. If you want to leave a whole recipe for your famous jalapeño poppers or your procedure for grilling the perfect steak, we’d love to show off how smart you are.

The fine print–
1. This contest will be open until April 10, 2012. The winner will be announced shortly after.
2. Shipping address must be in the USA
3. If you’re entering this giveaway using Facebook connect, you MUST have your Facebook page set to accept messages from non-friends so we can contact you through your page if you are the winner. If you are unsure how to set your privacy settings to allow this, feel free to contact us for assistance or read Facebook’s instructions.
4. The winner will be announced on the site and will have 24 hours to contact us. After 24 hours a new winner will be picked.

Grille Grate’s Meathead Temperature Magnet

MSRP:$4.99

What I liked: Crams an amazing amount of information into a small space. I really like the real life meat temperature pictures.

What Needs Improvement: Maybe they could include some double-stick tape for non-magnetic surfaces.

So the easy rule of thumb is to take white wine out of the refrigerator twenty minutes before you eat and put red wine in the fridge at the same time. But easy isn’t exact, and this is after all a techie blog. Let’s add a little rigor to the process!

Enter, my trusty Thermapen instant read thermometer. I reviewed this incredibly useful piece of tech here on Gear Diary in the years before the Great Server Crash of Aught-Eight, so that post is lost to the ages, but here’s a link to another article I wrote about Thermapen at another site.

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Now far be it from me to tell a man (or a woman for that matter) how to use their BBQ grill. Like politics and religion, grilling is a topic where advice is rarely appreciated or even more rarely followed. I’m sure you’re great at cooking a steak over charcoal or gas, and I wouldn’t tell you to your face if I thought otherwise. A. because you’re feeding me and B. because you probably have fire and sharp BBQ tools within arm’s reach.

Maybe you’re one of those people who can judge a steak’s doneness by comparing the surface of the meat to the firmness of the fleshy part of your thumb pad. Good for you then. (Please, oh please, don’t cut into a steak while it’s still on the grill to check whether it’s cooked enough. Meat must rest after cooking or you’ll just let all the good juices out!) But as techy types, gadget enthusiasts should strive to introduce some rigor into their grilling methods and cook to exact internal temperatures whenever possible. For example, I like my steak to come off the grill at precisely 122 degrees and allow it to come up to a beautiful pink medium-rare while it’s resting. You are letting it rest, right?

If we can employ some cool new iPhone technology to help out with these methods, so much the better. Enter the iGrill Bluetooth® cooking thermometer from www.igrillinc.com and the free accompanying “Steak Time” app from Omaha Steaks. So shoo the dog out of the kitchen and put your steak on a high counter to bring it to room temperature while we investigate these fun kitchen tools. continue reading

Right before we left for CES we received a review sample of the Happy Hour Bottoms Up Timepiece. The Bottoms Up is a nice-quality watch with a large, impressive face, a wide, comfortable band and… a bit of a surprise. Here’s a look with a video that will make clear what is special about this watch. continue reading

On the way back from a meeting at the Wynn Hotel we passed by a small kiosk for IcePan. IcePan is ice cream that is made right in front of you while you watch. It is never put into an ice-cream maker but, instead, is made using a pan kept at 35 degrees below zero. (Yeah, it is cold.)

We shot a video of it being made so, without further ado… I scream, you scream, we all scream for IcePan Cream. (Yeah, I went there.)

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