Friday saw the release of Half Acre‘s collective hat tip to America’s most sexually articulate rock duo, Ween. They had been hyping this collaboration with Short’s Brewing since Ween came to town back at the end of June.

Right from the nose you know this is a Half Acre effort. Aside from the noticeable addition of guava there is the recognizable Half Acre musk that anyone who has enjoyed a Daisy Cutter will notice. It’s almost moss-like. I suppose some might find that description less than appealing, but I’m running into a block trying to find a more appropriate way to explain what strikes me as a moist, earthy, almost fecund smelling aroma that Half Acre has mastered. There’s some slight evergreen and citrus, but really I fall back onto those terms out of social habit and not out of an honest response to what I smell. And the guava tends to occupy those scents with this brew leaving the earth tones of the beer to really stand up.

But, sticking my nose in the beer is not the part of this past time that keeps me coming back for more, I happen to actually fancy the drinking of the stuff. And drinking Freedom of ’78 is pretty enjoyable. Again, a lot of similar notes to the Daisy Cutter – that delicious Half Acre biscuit is there for sure, does that come from their yeast or from Victory malts (or both)? Then follows an expertly balanced hop bitterness with less flavor than the DC, and then the guava coming on the back side of the flavor with plenty of personality, but not overly sweet. Where a fruit beer like Dogfish Head’s Festina Peche is just too much for me to enjoy more than one, the Freedom of ’78 kept me company during the 12 hour smoke of our brisket as well as accompanying the ceremonial consumption of said beast.

On a side note: I was drinking Freedom of ’78 from a growler yesterday and I must say it was a bit better than the bomber I’m sipping on now, but I suppose that shouldn’t be a huge surprise. The guava flavor was a bit more pronounced and the slight alcohol flavors weren’t as prevalent as they seem to be in the bottled version. Also, the head retention and body was a bit better from the tap, but, again, that’s nothing that should be terribly surprising. I guess the moral of the story is buy it in a growler while you can and stock up on bombers for when you can’t.

Once again, my hats off to Half Acre, they continue to bring unique and interesting one off batches of beer to Chicago in addition to the stables of their portfolio all the while hoisting that delicious freak flag for tasteful degenerates like Ween. If I had a cult I’d give serious consideration to using this beer as my kool-aid.

God speed.

Last weekend was remarkable, one for the record books. Friday I got up at 6 in the morning and dawn patrolled with Trevor. We came home around 9:30am and toured through several New Glarus brews in honor of his *cough* 43rd birthday. We hit the Enigma, the Old English Porter, the Two Women Lager and the Golden Ale. We wrapped up our impromptu celebration with Dark Horse’s Perkulator, their dopplebock with coffee which seemed the proper elixir to get my head back in the working game for a while. Alas, the Perkulator’s power to inspire work is not as powerful as the brews wicked ass label would have you believe.

Like any good morning of drinks, this one inspired us to eat steaks for dinner. Trevor went home to wrangle his daughter for the afternoon and I hopped on my motorcycle for a visit to the Paulina Meat Market to pick up 4 prime new york strip steaks. Nobody gets cuts in Chicago like Paulina and nobody is as eager to charge you as Paulina either. Honestly though, if I’m going to get jacked for my meat (heh heh) I’d prefer to get jacked at Paulina. Their staff are consummate professionals, butchers with a great understanding of their product that are always willing to share that wisdom with their customers. And they’ve got the mustaches to prove it.

It’s hard for a fat alcoholic to stay focused in Paulina, the place is wall to wall of the finest cuts of meat you’re bound to find anywhere. Packaged in all kinds delicious manner. Someone needs to create a religion where Paulina is the reward for a life well lived. Of course, that “life well lived” would require plenty of time spent at Paulina in proper preparation for that sweet, sweet after life as well. So to help bide my time waiting for my number to be called I developed my shopping list into a respectable effort. In addition to the 4 new york strips, I would pick up 6 of their Jumbo Grilling Wieners, some bisquits to go with our dinner and, at Matt’s recommendation, a package of 6 veal cheeks.

The Jumbo Grilling Wieners were transcendental. The wiener is about the size of a baby’s arm, which is to say slightly smaller that John Holmes’ private collection. I shit you not, these wieners were at least 10″ long with about 3.5″ of girth. The flavor was of the finest beef I’ve had in a dog and the snap was audible. I don’t know who the wizard was that developed these Jumbo Grilling Wieners, but when I start my religion with Paulina as the after life that guy is probably going to have to be the first pope or at least get some kind of sainthood or a holy day or something.

I dropped off the steaks at Trevor’s and we each had a Jumbo Grilling Wiener (I just enjoy hearing that combination of words). Did I mention the snap on these things? Later that evening we enjoyed all the beauty that is a new york strip with our lovely brides under the fantastic summer night with a sultry soundtrack of Tejano music oompa-paing from Trevor’s neighbors.

Saturday I was up again with the sun to spend a lovely day of relaxation in the blistering summer heat smoking a pork shoulder. Something we’ve learned with these pork shoulders is that you definitely want to get boneless pork shoulders. The bone-in pork shoulder has too many layers of fat and other junk that makes it more challenging to pull. There’s enough fat in a boneless shoulder to keep your meat plenty juicy.

Sunday was a banner 4th of July as a bunch of us headed out to Winnemac Park for the best 4th of July celebration in the city. Amateur pyrotechnicians flooded the baseball diamonds to assault the skies with professional fireworks. There was nothing planned about this assault on the neighborhood and nothing regulated about it either. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate freedom than to stroll through a city park while literally hundreds of people indulge in illicit fireworks displays without any bother from police.

Monday I awoke from my long night of yelling at explosions to drop into the Wilson pool for the first time. 1 year of work and daydreaming finally paid off. I did eat some shit a couple times, but I managed to stay up at least as much as I fell. After we finished Dawn Patrolling Trevor dropped me off at the Fireside Lounge in Ravenswood to enjoy some delicious Arrogant Bastard Ale and a sandwich with our crew of delinquents. We spent a few hours putting sobriety in it’s place before hitting the Foster Street Beach. After a couple hours drinking delicious Daisy Cutter from cans and playing catch in the water we packed up our goodies and headed back to the Fireside for some more cocktails. After a few more beers we made a bee-line for Chicago’s best pizza, Pequod’s, and indulged our sun-satiated selves on a couple large pan pizzas (garlic, basil, onion and pepperoni on one and sausage, mushroom, giardinara on the other… definitely with a side of ranch, sucka).

Still not quite finished, we retired to Matt’s for some 12 Year Macallan with an ice cream chaser.

It was a banner weekend, my friends, the kind that reminds you just why you built that nervous system in the first place.

Wow, holy shit, all this was just a preamble to talk about the amazing meal we had last night. Remember those veal cheeks I picked up at Paulina on Friday? Me neither. Well, I finally got around to cooking those buggers Thursday night. And what an amazing treat it was. You could literally eat these these without teeth, you certainly didn’t need a knife.

Strange thing these veal cheeks. They’re about the size of a pancake when you get them, or, more specifically, the size of a 6 month old calf’s cheek. When you cook them they puff up into something more the size and shape of a small hamburger patty. At first they tend to get very hard, but over the 3 hours that you cook them they eventually turn into the most tender piece of meat your liable to come by.

Here’s the recipe I basically used courtesy of Ron Eade and the Ottowa Citizen. I skipped the juniper berries and replaced the veal stock with reduced chicken broth for no other reason than I didn’t have those ingredients. Essentially, it’s a beef bourgingon that’s a bit easier to make and much more tender. Imagine a pot roast that literally dissolves across your tongue and you’ve got a fairly close approximation of what this majestic little monster tastes like.

– Six veal cheeks, each about the size of a closed fist

– 1/3 cup (75 mL) olive oil

– Salt and pepper, to taste

– 3 1/2 cups (875 mL) of robust low-salt veal stock

– One small piece dark chocolate, about 7 grams

For the marinade:

– 1/2 large carrot chopped

– 1 medium onion, chopped

– 1 teaspoon (5 mL) dry thyme

– 1 large clove of good garlic, chopped

– 1 bay leaf

– 10 sprigs of Italian parsley, chopped

– One 750-mL bottle dry chardonnay

– 6 juniper berries

1. Place all marinade ingredients in a stainless steel saucepan; bring to boil and simmer 5 to 7 minutes to evaporate the alcohol. Cool to room tremperature, then immerse veal cheeks in marinate. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

2. At noon the next day, preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Remove meat from marinade and strain to separate liquid and solids; reserve both. In a saucepan, bring liquid to boil and simmer until reduced to 1 cup (250 mL). Set aside.

3. Pat cheeks dry with paper towels, season lightly with salt, pepper, then lightly dust with all-purpose flour. Heat about 1/3 cup (75 mL) canola oil in a heavy cast-iron Dutch oven and brown cheeks well on both sides, working in batches if necessary to not overcrowd the pot. When browned, transfer cheeks to a plate and, in the same Dutch oven, saute reserved vegetables from the marinate for about 4 minutes.

4. In a large saucepan, warm veal stock to almost-boiling and toss in chocolate to melt; stir to combine. Return cheeks to the Dutch oven and nestle over the bottom, trying to not overlap. Add reduced marinade and veal stock just to cover and bake, covered, until meat is very tender when pierced with the tip of a paring knife, about 3 hours.

5. When done, carefully transfer intact cheeks to an ovenproof casserole with a lid, and set aside. Strain liquid into a clean saucepan (discard solids) and simmer to reduce to gravy consistency, stirring as necessary to avoid scorching.

6. About 40 minutes before serving, pour thickened sauce over cheeks to cover, and return to oven to reheat. Serve with side dishes that will take best advantage of rich sauce.

Chicago’s favorite beer brewing, god fearing, patriots Half Acre are at it once again, brewing a beer tribute to the everybody’s favorite tiger riding, mollusk licking, heathens WEEN! They’re pairing up with Shorts Brewing and Piece to make Freedom of ’78 a guava IPA in honor of Gene and Dean. And what’s more, to celebrate this and the unholy high holiday of Ween stopping back through Chicago they are offering a 15% discount to anybody with a ticket to the show.

So go bring your ticket to Half Acre, get loaded on the best beer in Chicago and dance your ugly self silly to the musical stylings of two of the finest degenerates still working in the music industry.

Amen.

Well, I’m back from Belgium. The few remaining hairs on my head are properly blown back, my heart is stoking along a steady 100* from all the kindness of the many wonderful Belgians we met, and my liver is seriously pissed off at me, trying to show me who the boss is of this round, tubby, shithouse. I’ve got many stories to tell, and I will in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, hey, we’re back in the good old U.S. of A and there is no shortage of beer business to be had here in the land of poorly dressed thick necks.

At the top of the agenda is this weekend’s Beer Hoptacular. You might remember Matty’s mention of this from last month and the very lovely photo that accompanied it. Well the Hoptacular is now upon us and promises to be an event any serious beer lover would be foolish to miss.

Do the math: craft beer is blowing up, Chicago – with the likes of Half Acre, Metropolitan (holy crap have you tried the I-Beam yet? It’s their Alt beer and it’s awesome and, you lucky guy you, it’s on tap at Small Bar Logan right now) and all the fine things happening in the Logan Square area – is finally beginning its ascent to become the great beer city it always promised it could be. And now, in addition to all those gold standards, we’ve got this here Beer Hoptacular threatening a potential annual beer bacchanalia wherein fat, bearded, beer-loving beer-geeks can indulge all of their D&D-esque predilections into a stinking, ritualistic orgy celebrating that finest of cereal based intoxicants and plant bittered brews.

Come on! Seriously, what are you waiting for? Where else are you going to be able to drink your favorite beer while learning about home brewing and badgering your favorite local brewers with stupid questions all the while having your ears peppered with panelists discussing this fine titan of a beverage?

It’s a great time to be an alcoholic in Chicago, my friends. Why not come out an raise a glass to celebrate it?

American Craft Beer Week is May 17-23 this year and it looks like the lovable trouble makers over at Half Acre will be hosting a party for it on the 22nd.

If you’re looking for other ways to show your support for American Craft Beer Week besides drinking great American craft beer and attending one or more of the many events going on around the country, then why not lift that fat, digital finger of yours and salute this great nation of beer drinkers via these here internuts.

Here’s one good suggestion on how to support great beer from Julia and Andy of the Great American Beer Festival:

Go to American Craft Beer Week on Facebook and click the LIKE button at the top. Then encourage your friends to do the same. One lucky “liker” will receive a pair of all session passes to the Great American Beer Festival!

Not on Facebook? Go to the ACBW’s Events Page and find a celebration to attend during the week.

It’s a great time to be an alcoholic in America!

I just scrubbed this from Half Acre’s blog. Sounds awesome, almost awesome enough for me to jump on it despite it being so spendy. Check it out:

Half Acre is taking part in a big collaborative beer dinner on Feb 22, 2010.

Every year, Mindy Segal, owner of Hot Chocolate on Damen, throws a celebratory anniversary event. This is her 5th anniversary and she’s put together a beer dinner that promises be stellar. 7 chefs & 7 breweries.

Check out the lineup of talent:

Benjamin Caulfield of Three Floyd’s passed apps…House made charcuterie
Nick Lessins of Grate Lakes Brewing Co passed apps

Aric Miech…Hot Chocolate (starter) with Half Acre Beer Co

Bill Kim…Urban Belly/Belly Shack (soup) with Lagunitas

Paul Kahan…Blackbird/Avec/Publican/Big Star (Seafood/Fish) Three Floyd’s

Michael Kornick…mk/dmk (poultry or game) Goose Island

Rick Bayless…Topolobombo/Frontera grill (meat) Surly Brewing Co.

Paul Virant…Vie restaurant (composed cheese) Revolution Brewing Company

Mindy Segal…Hotchocolate (dessert) Piece Brewery

Tickets are $150 per person and will likely sell out fast. See Hot Chocolate for details.

A friend gave me a bottle of the infamous 3 Floyd’s Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout a few weeks ago. I decided to use it punch up a pot roast I was making. Here’s the recipe:

* 3 1/2 lb of beef shoulder or boneless chuck roast
* 1 Tbsp olive or grapeseed oil
* Salt, pepper, Baldridge’s to taste
* 1 large yellow onion, chopped or sliced
* Mushrooms
* 8 cloves of garlic, peeled
* 1 cup of 3 Floyd’s Dark Lord
* Several carrots, peeled and cut lengthwise
Cover your beef thoroughly on all sides with the salt, pepper and Baldridge’s. Take a stove friendly slow cooker and add some olive oil to the bottom, bring it up to heat. Brown every side of your roast. Once browned pull out the roast and scrape the carmelized fat off the sides and bottom of the slow cooker and mix around in the oil. Add in your Dark Lord and onions and garlic and mushrooms.
Bring the heat down low and put your roast back in there. Leave cooking for at least 3.5 hours. About 30 minutes before serving put in your carrots. Eat.

In other Imperial Stout news, it looks like Half Acre’s Big Hugs Imperial Stout is now available at their store. I’m leaving to pick up a couple growlers right now.

Chicago has a new haunt for beer lover’s in the North Center neighborhood, the Bad Apple. Doing their best to take their place among Chicago heavy hitters like Kuma’s, Small Bar and the Map Room, Bad Apple tries to mix an educated collection of draught and bottled beers with tasty, beer friendly – and often beer prepared – food, and the Bad Apple succeeds more often than misses.

I’ve been to Bad Apple twice now. The first was last Friday before Matt and I went to the 5th Annual Festiv-Ale at the new Half Acre Brewery and, speaking frankly, it was a pretty disappointing experience. I had read some extremely positive reviews on both BeerAdvocate and Yelp, making some pretty great claims about both the beer programming and the food. Excited to try a new bar in town we ducked in for a pre-Festiv-Ale drink.

The first thing I was struck by is that Bad Apple is clearly not a bar. It has a bar, but it is definitely a restaurant with a bar in it. Now, whether the owners would admit this or not is not immediately clear to me as it seems they haven’t totally made up their mind on this. When you walk in the front door the first thing you see is a bar – low hanging red globed lights, an exposed brick wall and several flatscreen tvs – opposite the bar is about a half-dozen high-sitting tables with stools. They’ve worked the hardest on this first of three rooms. It’s clean, modern, and trying a bit too hard. The room seems to be designed to reflect well off shiny shirts and waxed chests. Not my cup of macho, but it is forgivable.

Unfortunately, the other rooms – the back room and a side game room – have been given much less consideration. Strange layout and cheap furniture force you to take a second look at the front room undoing the rather thin veneer of pretense and paint that may have first fooled you. Bad Apple is just not a warm place, it looks like it might have been decorated by a forty-something day trader redecorating his “man cave” after a divorce. No personality, but a tangible, uncomfortable ache to be liked. But by who?

Our interaction with the staff on our first visit was pretty negative, too. Two of the three people we interacted with were rude even as we went out of our way to be friendly. Fortunately, last night, on my second visit, our waiter was much different. Friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable he helped make me want to repeat our experience.

One last negative thing and then I’ll stop focusing on the Bad part of this Bad Apple. The music has been pretty terrible both times I’ve been in there. After enjoying our beers for about 20 minutes last night all the sudden the pretty crummy sound system in the game room started blatting out the Austin Powers theme song – no shit. At first I thought some douchebag’s cellphone was going off, but it slowly became obvious that this was coming out of bars speakers. The rest of the night was a mix of 80′s and dub. Bad Apple could go a long way in bringing in someone with musical taste to help them design their sound system as well as their audio programming. With the vibe they seem to be going for they might want to consider hiring a DJ or two to spin some tasteful, down-tempo beats and help them out with their paper-thin monitors.

Ok, the upswing of Bad Apple? Two things. Two very important things. They’ve got a great beer selection. Last night, if I can remember correctly, they had Left Hand Milk-Stout, Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold, Two Brother’s Heavy Handed, Founder’s exceptional IPA, Goose Island’s Matilda, Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter, Karmaleit Triple, New Holland’s Really Delicious and Surprising Charkoota Ale, One of New Belgium’s Lips of Faith series, and several others I can’t recall. They had Surly Cynic the first visit there, but, even without Cynic last night, they had their bases well covered. Bad Apple offers a beer menu, which, in itself is great, with all of their beers well described with region, tastes, and ABV listed.

The other upswing? The food we had was amazing. We started with their Montreal Poutine. If you read this blog at all you know I’m apey about Poutine. As far as I know there is only one other establishment in Chicago where you can get Poutine, Small Bar. Small Bar serves their Poutine with a shift away from the traditional faire, they replace the brown gravy with a sausage gravy. It’s an amazing twist on the classic dish, so I was curious to see if Bad Apple would follow that lead or go the traditional brown gravy path. I was happy to discover Bad Apple went with the brown gravy, and it was an amazing brown gravy. Seriously, it was so good my wife and I sat there rubbing our fingers through the remaining gravy doing brown gravy nummies until the waiter came and took the smudged plate away from us. There is a distinct flavor to this brown gravy, but I can’t peg it for the life of me. It may just be a gang of garlic and salt, but I think it’s something else. There is a flavor in that gravy that I’ve only noticed in thai dishes previously and it works amazingly. And it goes exceptionally well with the Charkoota Rye.

For our main course we took the strong recommendation from our waiter and had the Slow Burn burger. Chili peppers and garlic sauteed throughout the day on top of a bacon and white chedder hand packed patty and cooked to order. The only time I really notice the grade of meat in a burger is when it’s exceptionally good or terribly bad and the Slow Burn definitely made me take notice. The bun and burger literally melted in my mouth and, coupled with the delicious pepper saute, covered my mouth in a delicious, subtle, but thorough coat of easy warmth that hung around several minutes after each delicious bite of the burger went down. Slow Burn is an incredibly appropriate name for this burger. Masterfully made to have heat, but deliver it gently over time and with surprising sustain, dip this wonderful little beast in a just a dab of the table mustard and sit back and let your taste buds find their tone. I can safely say this burger is the best I’ve been able to enjoy here in Chicago and, believe me, I have had a king’s ransom of burgers. I’ll say that again: Bad Apple’s Slow Burn is the best designed burger I have enjoyed in Chicago to date. And kudo’s to our server for recognizing the brilliance of this burger and being able to read his guest’s well enough to know to recommend it.

Ah yes. We also got our hand cut fries covered in truffle oil. Mother of Pete, if you ever make your way to the Bad Apple, and, despite said drawbacks, I really think you should, you must have your french fries covered in truffle oil. It’s like an extra $.75 or something menial, but the deep flavor of the truffle just pops on the crispy fries and is an ideal compliment to the burger. I have heard a lot of good things about duck fries, though I have yet to try them. I’d be willing to bet they couldn’t be any better than the truffle oil fries I had last night.

So there you have it. Chicago’s Bad Apple, it’s not without it’s flaws, but it’s upswing makes passable the bummer atmosphere. If they could get their aesthetic a bit warmer, find comfort in a personality, and lose that offensively dumb apple with the mohawk they could have a really fantastic place. Until then, I will be visiting again to try the goat cheese fondue and their Ebel Weiss ham and swiss, but if they could get their comfort level up they might not ever be able to get me to leave.

Oh, hey, guys, get a freaking website too, eh?

Seriously???

A week or so ago I knocked off work early and headed for  Small Bar, a favorite pub of ours here in Chicago, with some friends.  As I was enjoying a delicious local brew, the Daisy Cutter Pale Ale from the good people over at the Half Acre Beer Company and chatting pleasantly, a lull in the  conversation allowed me the opportunity to roll my head around the room a bit.  As I did so,  my eye was caught by a quote written on the chalkboard overlooking the barroom. Well, maybe it wasn’t the quote that caught my eye since I can’t remember it, but the name of the quoted: Michael Jackson. 

My immediate reaction was, “I’ll be dipped in shit, I had no idea that The King of Pop was a beer aficionado. I always thought he was more into Jesus juice.”

After reading the quote, it didn’t take long for me to put two and two together and realize that this was not the King of Pop but an all together different animal. My interest was piqued. 

But I’m lazy and I drink a lot, so, as with most things, I stuck that information somewhere behind Daisy Cutter number three and followed other pursuits.  Planning, of course, to explore more later.

That later turned out to be this afternoon when, while  searching for information on bear hunting or deer hunting, take your pick, I had a Freudian finger slip and accidentally typed “Beer Hunting“. What appeared at the top of the page was, Michael Jackson – Beer Hunter.

When I’m hit on the head with something twice in a short period of time I usually investigate it and who among us could not help but investigate a wonderful moniker like Beer Hunter. 

It sounds like the stuff of legend, a darkly clad figure slinking in and out of alleyways, ducking into barrooms, sitting in the corner, hiding behind a newspaper, one eye winking over the rim of a heavy stout, quietly ferreting out alcoholic deliciousness where ever it might hide. That would be a hell of a job, part Sherlock Holmes and part town drunk. I immediately wanted to be a Beer Hunter.

As it turns out Michael Jackson is, or was, one of the worlds foremost experts, not only on beer but also on Scotch Whisky. Unbelievable, how in the world can I not have heard of this man?  We share not only a wife but a sultry, smokey eyed mistress to boot.  

After a few hours of internet searches I am fairly convinced that I am one of the few people interested in such things as Beer and Whisky and not acquainted of this wonderful English Gentleman.  How I missed him is a mystery and I had to post about him in hopes of helping the others out there like me.

I have just purchased his book, The Ultimate Beer Guide.

Here’s a excerpt from the introduction to his Beer Companion:

“Within the world of food and drink there lives a family blessed with eternal life.  The family of the fermented, there is an elemental appeal to those foods and drinks that are fathered by fermentation.  There is within them a sense of the wild.”

Here’s a wonderful Michael Jackson video interview, chatting with the old chap shortly before his death in 2007.