Specifically, I moved to the UK. That’s right, the land of plentiful porters, sumptuous stouts, allegorical ales… I moved in practically next door to Jane Austen’s old place, so brace yourself for a lot more where that came from. I apologize in advance.

Although I’ve been absent from the blog, I have been all to present in the pubs (as evidenced by my constant stream of oohs and aahs about the ales on Twitter). And last night really marked the ultimate housewarming for my UK life: the Alton Beer Festival.

Mama, I’m home. The eagle has landed. Aunty Em! Aunty Em! Manamana.

Yes, these are the things that went through my head most of last night along with “This one’s my favourite. No… THIS one’s my favourite. No…. THIS ONE IS MY FAVOURITE!!!!”

I was firmly planning on having a bit of every beer at the festival. Ambitious? Yes. Achievable? Not so much. 84 local beers on tap and 12 ciders. Supposedly the volunteers manning the kegs were pouring half-pints, but I don’t think I ever got less than three-quarters of a pint. Yet somehow I got through 16 tastings. And they were glorious! We were supposed to vote at the end of the night on our favourites, but I totally failed to use my ballot.

Instead, here’s a recap of my personal front runners:

Best Beer Name: Pressed Rat & Warthog (from Triple fff)

Best Beer Description: ‘A scrummy / lineout ale’ (for Hogs Back England’s Glory Ale)

Easy Drinker: Betty Stoggs (from Skinners)

Most Original: Fruit Bat (a raspberry beer from B&T)

Best Porter: I Can’t Remember (from Triple fff)

Favourite Left Hook to the Jaw: Hop Head (from Dark Star)

Overall champion? I actually couldn’t choose from amongst the beers, because there was a cider that just blew me away (sshhhh- don’t tell). I literally couldn’t stop smiling and had 2 pints of the stuff even though it meant abandoning my tasting plan. Mr.Whitehead’s Strawberry Cider was simply spectacular. It tasted like happiness and a perfect summer day and a hug all at once. And in the middle of February, far from home, it pretty much made my month!

Thank you to the wonderful volunteers who put on the Alton Beer Festival- not only for assembling an amazing line up of totally awesome beers, but also for being the best damn bartenders I’ve ever met.

Unlike beer-running, I would not personally recommend beer-yoga as a positive addition to a drinker’s fitness regimen.  I bring you this valuable life lesson thanks to a painful, sweat-soaked Sunday.

I recently launched into the world of hot yoga, mainly as a way of combating the usual winter blahs.  Unfortunately, I did not truly understand what “hot” means in this context.  Sure, I may have thought it meant that you instantly become incredibly sexy by attending the classes.  It’s an easy mistake to make, if you’ve ever seen the contingent of beautiful butts that exit the studio every day.  I quickly learned that what “hot” yoga really means, is that you are forced into a crowded room for an hour and a half of abnormal sweating in contorted positions, as they continuously blast heat into the room in an apparent attempt at torture.

The real problem with my beer-yoga approach, is that instead of sweating like a normal person in this heated cell, I just leaked beer through my pores and all over the floor.  This had two effects.  First, it made me want another beer so badly I had difficulty standing up to the instructor’s persistent torture (“Now, stand just on your big toe, pretzel your legs around each other, bend your arms backwards and balance in an awkward squat for 45 minutes”).  Second, it made me realize that drinking excessive amounts of homebrew prior to hot yoga was just a waste, since it was clearly just pouring out of me almost as fast as I  drank it. Highly inefficient.

Let me pull a Rick Perry here and screw up my numbered list with the one positive to come out of the beer-yoga: deep beer-related introspection.  I spent a great deal of time trying to distract myself with fantasies of beers I would drink to recover from sweating like cheese left out in the sun.  I came to the conclusion that I have not been sufficiently diligent in my beer blogging, particularly when it comes to documenting all my recent homebrewing.  In the next couple weeks, you can expect some exciting updates to the site, and a return to the former glory of regular (rather than once a month) posts. For that, you have the puddle of sweaty beer on the floor of the hot yoga studio to thank.

My great-uncle joined the air force and never returned to the arms of my great-aunt in New Zealand.  He was shot down somewhere over the North Atlantic.  Another great-uncle served in the merchant marine.  He told my dad that he would sleep next to the munitions so if his ship was attacked by a German U-boat, he would be the first to go instead of drowning or freezing to death in the frigid North Atlantic as the boat sank.  One of my other great-aunts and her daughter were captured when the Dutch East Indies fell to the Japanese, and spent years in a POW camp, experiencing conditions that we can’t even begin to imagine.

Today, we are a different generation from those who fought and died in World War II by the tens of thousands.  Even so, we have brave men and women, who leave the safety of North America to fight abroad, trying to bring the same security to others that we enjoy here.  My boyfriend’s little brother fought in Afghanistan, manning one of those big-ass guns on top of a Humvee.  For over 7 months we agonized for his safe return- keeping in touch with him by phone and email, an unimaginable luxury in previous wars.   Another friend served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo, fighting against the overwhelming human misery and chaos brought about by hatred and ethnic ‘cleansing’.  Two amazing men I sail with fought in Vietnam- one as an attack helicopter pilot.  His helicopter was shot down over enemy territory, causing irreparable damage to his leg but miraculously not taking his life.

We’ve lived in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity, and the fog of war has receded to trouble only a few unfortunate countries.  This did not happen naturally- peace was not at all a predetermined outcome of human progress.  The peace that we all take for granted was bought in blood and loss and grief by generations that came before.  Let us remember and honour the incredible courage, conviction and strength that created the safety and security we enjoy today, and hope that we never have cause to really understand their sacrifice.  Thank you.  We must never forget.

You’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with a beer blog.  Well, yesterday my brothers, their wives and my niece joined me in the brewing of a special batch of pale ale.  In honour of the tremendous sacrifice made by soldiers all around the world, of the hardships endured by those they left at home, and in acknowledgement of our Campbell family motto, this brew will be labeled Ne Obliviscaris: Forget Not.  When it is ready, I will drink to remember.

This year is different.  This year I’m ready for the zombie apocalypse (just in case).

Some of you may be wondering “why?”.  I’m going to ignore you, because if you haven’t put thought into how you would survive everyone around you turning into a homicidal cannibalistic walking corpse that never sleeps, clearly you need to take a long hard look at your priorities.  It’s called risk assessment.

The more sensible ones amongst you are probably wondering “how?”.  I won’t lie to you, it ain’t easy.  You need a sharp mind, undying courage (if you do become a zombie, you don’t want to be a wussy one), incredible stamina, and of course… beer.  In short, you need to become a Beer Runner.

Katy’s Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

Step 1
Sit on your couch and acquaint yourself with your potential enemy.  If you’re like me, and can’t actually watch scary movies because you get so scared you can’t sleep for months, try less horrifying but equally informative selections like Army of Darkness, Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland or HBO’s The Walking Dead. Close your eyes as necessary while letting your imagination run wild to the sounds of human flesh being devoured.  This will come in handy for Step 3.

Step 2
Drink Unibroue’s Fin du Monde.  First and foremost because it is a totally delicious Belgian Tripel that hides its 9% under a great blanket of sweet malty fruity yeasty goodness.  Second, because you need to be able to complete Step 3 while mildly intoxicated in order to condition yourself for the inevitable sleep deprivation and subpar physical performance that will plague you during the zombie apocalypse.  Third, because it has the perfect name to prepare you for the end of days.

Step 3
Get off your couch and go for a run.  Choose a wooded trail, dark alley, or deserted side street as part of your route.  If you start to get tired, sore or out of breath, picture zombies shuffling towards you, their decaying hands reaching out to claw at your living flesh.  Then run faster.  If you want to stop, imagine that you are on your way to a safe haven for humans, perhaps a military base or brew pub that has held out against the dead in order to protect the living.  Every moment you delay is a moment closer to death.  Literally.  There’s a zombie right behind you!  RUN!!!

Step 4
Get home, check the house for zombies (including closests and behind curtains because you don’t want to be a cliche zombie victim), lock the doors.  Enjoy a well-deserved Dead Guy Ale from Rogue Brewing.  First, because it’s a well-balanced German Bock that is probably the ideal beverage for re-hydration.  I’m sure there are a lot of electrolytes in there.  Second, to celebrate the fact that you are on your way to being a Beer Runner instead of a zombie.

Extra Credit
You may want to consider running with your beer in case you cannot go back for it (because the zombies have cut off your return route).  Try using one of those nerdy hydration running belts for beer bottles.  Don’t use cans, because they cannot effectively double as a weapon in case of close-quarter zombie combat.  Don’t use a full beer bottle in these cases. Sometimes the bottle won’t smash through a zombie’s skull the way you would expect and  if it did you would spill your beer into the zombie’s brain and that is alcohol abuse and the other zombies will punish you for it.

Testimonial
You may be skeptical, but zombie apocalypse training really is the best way to drink beer and run.  Everything tastes better with the thought of imminent (or avoided) doom in your mind, and terror is a powerful motivator.  For example, today I ran 13km, not because I wanted to but because otherwise the zombies would eat me.  A loop around Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park was exceptionally fast and freaky, as I pictured zombies stumbling out of the bushes to chew off my arms.  And beer has never tasted as good as it did this evening, when I staggered through my zombie-free apartment straight into the bath to enjoy my Dead Guy and dinner tacos in peace.

I am far from being the only Beer Runner, nor am I the only one improving my fitness for the  zombie apocalypse.  But I would hazard a guess that I might just be the first Beer Zombie Out-Runner.

Also a valuable tactic for bear attacks.  On that note… happy pre-Halloween!

I’ll let you think on that for a moment, if it isn’t already obvious.

I love beer.  I love writing about beer.  I love being back online in order to share my writing about beer with those of you foolish enough to pay any attention whatsoever to me.  I love having defeated the cyber-nerds (Shera style), despite it taking 6 months and some moolah, to bring you my latest beer review:

Lighthouse Brewing‘s Overboard Imperial Pilsner.

Yaaaarrrrr *said in a throaty, piratical voice*

I’ll kick things off the plank by saying that I normally don’t get too excited about pilsners.  They always seem… a little land-lubbery to me. Dried out, washed up, not fit for sea travel.  Easy drinkin’, definitely.  But not something to get too hyped up about unless one is planning on drinking 24 of them in an hour, in which case a big kick of flavour is not really a winning quality.

But this Pilsner?  First off, it has an awesome label… the kind that I would seriously (while drunk) consider getting tattooed on my bicep (which looks bigger when I’m drunk), perhaps with “Mom” over top.  The label is what drew me to pick it off the shelf.  The flavour is what would draw me to do the same again.

Bold, feisty, adventurous… and 8.5%!  After a few (one) of these, that tattoo is sounding like a pretty great idea.  On an empty stomach, after a rough day (metaphorically at sea), this pilsner packs a helluva punch!  I would walk the plank for this big brew any day, as long as that ended with me stranded on a tropical desert island with Johnny Depp and cases upon cases of Overboard.  That could happen, right?  Fingers crossed.

SIDE NOTE: Happy to be back after a serious case of the Nerd Hack… but have a lot of beer drinking to catch up on!  Please be patient as we do our best to get back into the swing of things in time to celebrate our First Blog Anniversary at Thanksgiving!

These uber-nerds seem to feel that taking over a light-hearted website that wants nothing more than to encourage people to try new things and live a little, is acceptable behaviour.  Naturally, we disagreed.  We spent days on end in somewhat of an existential crisis.  We wrung our hands.  We hung our heads.  We felt violated and helpless.  It wasn’t pretty.

But then we emerged from those dark days with a new mission: to restore Women Love Beer Too to its full, feminine, drunken glory.  To initiate a vengeful Reconquista, computer-style.

With our foaming pint glasses and flaming keyboards, we are doing battle against the forces of sobriety and web-hacking.  Please be patient with us while we scourge our site of all non-beer related malarky.

UPDATE: Islamic enthusiast were purged from the site only to be replaced by Moroccan marauders sometime in August.  Needless to say, it has been a bit of a nightmare but with some professional help of the nerd-tastic kind, we will be back to the bar stool any day now!

For this task, I called on one of the most celebrated male chefs to show us how to get ‘er done.  Jamie Oliver has been accused in some circles (i.e. by most dudes I know) of being a bit of a ponce, but boy does that man know how to handle sausages.  In fact, he provided almost the perfect recipe for this evening’s signature dish.  I say “almost” because the Naked Chef decided to cook with white wine instead of beer.  What ridiculous thoughts were flitting through his pretty blonde head, I will never know, but to make this a real man’s dinner I used beer (obviously).

Choosing a beer to cook with is normally an agonizing process for me.  But tonight, Beer Brats did all the choosing.  You may remember that last week I enjoyed some Tree Brewing Hophead Butter Chicken sausages from them… well this week I pulled some equally spectacular sausagey goodness out of the freezer: R&B Brewing Red Devil Pale Ale Chorizo sausages.  Clearly, the only beer I could cook with had to be the same as the one the sausages were made with!

The Red Devil Pale Ale is divine manly.  Super duper manly.  It’s big, bold, and I could just sit back and drink these babies all day long while watching a bunch of apes distinguised gentlemen patt each others’ butts pass the pigskin.  Put these masculine qualities inside a real pig skin, and you have yourself one delectable sausage.  Then fry up that same sausage and let it simmer away in a pan filled with the same pale ale… and you have yourself a successful sporting analogy breakaway meal.

Although I followed most of Mr.Oliver’s recipe quite closely, I did make one major concession to my feminine instincts and the Canadian Food Guide.  Vegetables.  I find it surprising that a chef who actively promotes healthier diets across the UK would have a dish that was composed almost entirely of pasta and pork, but I suppose his testosterone just got the better of him.  I added in some broccoli, zucchini, red pepper, celery and green onions, and frankly I think it made the dish better while still being totally man-tastic.  The spiciness of the chorizo sausages and the red chilies gave the dish a lot of character that no amount of veggies in the world could emmasculate.

All in all, this is definitely the best pasta dish I have made in eons.  From here on in, I plan to ‘man up’ in the kitchen more often… like next week when I’ll be making my third sausage-series dish.

BeerBrats is a Vancouver company that creates the best sausages I have ever had.  Unlike many of my statements, that is no exaggeration at all.  As I have said before, beer makes everything (EVERYTHING) better, and these sausages are no exception.  BeerBrats partners with various local breweries to produce incredibly innovative and superbly delicious little tubes of meat.  At the Farmer’s Market last weekend, I pillaged the BeerBrats booth and made off with three different types of sausages to experiment with for the next couple Tasty Tuesdays.

It was a tough call, but I selected Tree Brewing’s Hophead IPA Butter Chicken Sausages for last night’s meal.  Even just saying that name makes me drool all over my desk.  Coincidentally, last night was also ‘clean out the fridge’ night so I basically dumped out the vegetable drawer into a wok and created a curry-ish veggie stir fry with coconut rice to accompany the sausages.

While the blend of aromatic spices (cumin, cayenne, turmeric, mustard, garlic, ginger, coriander) went really nicely with the jumble of veggies (purple cabbage, broccoli, red pepper, red onion, zucchini, mushrooms), all of these were mere backup dancers behind the spotlight of butter chicken sausages.  I think it is safe to say that I could happily live entirely off these sausages.  They were lean, sweet with some gentle spicing and conjured up images of a truly spectacular butter chicken dish.  Not to mention the impact of the beer!  Tree Brewing’s Hophead IPA lends the sausages a malty, very lightly hopped, lingering sense of perfection.

When I had finished my meal (and licked the plate), I would have been devastated if I hadn’t peeked in the fridge to check on the two other packs of fancy-pants BeerBrats sausages I have for next week.  And the week after that.  And then I’ll just have to go back to the Farmer’s Market and get more.  And more…

]]> http://womenlovebeer2.com/2011/beer-sausage/feed/ 4 http://womenlovebeer2.com/2011/romancing-the-bean/ http://womenlovebeer2.com/2011/romancing-the-bean/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:38:59 +0000 Katy http://womenlovebeer2.com/?p=1529 With V-day having come and gone, some may be saying that love is no longer in the air, that we’ve all moved on, that things are back to normal.  I disagree.  While I think V-day is ridiculous at the best of times I (if you love someone, why on earth do you have to get them over-priced flowers and lame cards on one single day of the year?!) and evil at the worst of times (if you’re alone, surely this does not need to be emphasized so dramatically?), I still made a special effort for my Gentleman Companion yesterday.  A special effort which is sure to last much longer than the usual V-day treats.

Some of you may have your own opinions on what constitutes an appropriate ‘special effort’ for Valentine’s Day, and frankly you can keep your lingerie, candles, edible underwear, massage oil and lord-know-what-else to yourself as what they really are: delusions of a troubled mind.  Because ‘special effort’ obviously means chili.

I set out to make a an awesome chili that I have decided to call ‘Romancing the Bean’.  Why?  Because I accidentally used about 6 times more beans than any recipe in its right mind would suggest… and it only made the end product better.  I was shockingly organized and rehydrated some pinto, navy and mung beans overnight so they’d be all ready to go V-day afternoon.  Dried beans look so small and unsatisfying.  So I added some more.  And then some more.  When fully rehydrated, it turned out that I in fact had about 12 cups of beans instead of  the 2 cups I had intended.  It also turned out that  Creed from The Office knows what he’s talking about… mung beans really do smell like death.

Not off to the best start, I nevertheless persevered.  Anything for love and food.  I had read an impressive article in Cook’s Illustrated at Christmas that gave tips for making the best chili ever, so I thought I’d give some of them a whirl.  First off, I made my own chili paste in a food processor using 3 cerrano peppers, a lot of cracked chili seeds, cayenne pepper, corn meal, cumin, coriander, veggie broth and… cocoa powder.  Weird, but true and a wonderful idea.

Once the paste was made (approx. 5 minutes), I got a large red onion chopped up and into Nancy to sautee in some olive oil.  I then threw in a handful of pressed garlic cloves (I really really like garlic).  After a few minutes, before the onions became translucent and floppy, I dumped in a jumbo can of diced tomatoes, the chili paste, veggie broth, the obscene amount of rehydrated beans and… molasses!  Another strange addition suggested by Cook’s Illustrated that turned out to be solid gold.  Leaving Nancy alone to bring this mixture to a boil, I turned my attention to the cow.

I was going to make a veggie chili since that would be my preference, but I had then remembered the most important thought I have ever had on relationships.  They are not just about compromise, as so many people would have you believe.  They are about each acting to make the other happy as much as possible, rather than acting selfishly- when both sides do this, it works like magic.  Sometimes this means compromise.  Sometimes this means beef in a veggie chili.  The best part of this attitude, is that usually acting unselfishly has unforeseen benefits.  In this case, adding beef to the chili opened up the opportunity to cook with beer!

I reached deep into my beer cellar/camping-snowshoeing-gardening-house-cleaning storage closet and pulled out a lovely pale ale from Magic Hat Brewing in Vermont (even if you couldn’t care less about them, go to their website because it is really cool!).  This was the last of an especially thoughtful Christmas present from my friends who smuggled a delightful selection of craft beers from the Eastern US across the border during American Thanksgiving (thanks guys!!!).   Although I was reluctant to “waste” such a delicious gift beer in cooking, I knew it was the right choice.  I sometimes get too carried away when cooking with beer and choose an overly dominant brew, resulting in a meal that just tastes like solid beer (see my complaints about my beer risotto efforts).  Not this time… this time the pale ale was absolute perfection.

Instead of the more commonly used ground beef for chili, I used stewing beef.  Another fun fact from Cook’s Illustrated revealed that ground beef usually gets very dried out during the long cooking process for a good chili, resulting in a bland taste and unsatisfying texture.  Using steak (too pricey for my liking) or stewing beef (cheap and dirty- just right) are good alternatives.  I split the beef into two portions and started browning the first in a large frying pan.  Once the chunks were browned all over, I put them in with the beans et. al. and then cracked the beer.

Using the beer to deglaze the pan seemed odd, but it worked like a hot-damn!  The beer lifted up all the juices that had stuck in the pan, so that I could pour the whole concoction into the chili.  Then I repeated the process with the rest of the beef and the rest of the beer.

This is not me. But it is eerily similar to a horrific photo of me in sweatpants with a feather boa and rubbing my beer gut in a "sexy" way. I was going to share that photo, but lucky for you I couldn't find it.

And then all I had left to do was put on my sexiest sweatpants, “brush” my hair (with my hand, not a brush), and recline completely un-seductively on the couch, while Nancy took care of the chili in the oven for about 2 hours (at 325°F).    When my Gentleman Companion got home from a rough day of carpentry, he was greeted with the most incredible aromas of death (mung beans), garlic, beef & beer (love).  Serving my Romancing the Bean chili with that scary-good foil-wrapped garlic bread from the store made for the most passionate, love-filled meal of the year (no talking, just stuffing our faces with beans).  And again for lunch the next day.  And dinner.  And for the day after that.  Seriously, we have enough leftovers to last until we too begin to smell like mung beans.

]]> http://womenlovebeer2.com/2011/romancing-the-bean/feed/ 2 http://womenlovebeer2.com/2011/superbowl-xlv-visualize-game/ http://womenlovebeer2.com/2011/superbowl-xlv-visualize-game/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:58:56 +0000 Jho http://womenlovebeer2.com/?p=1409 Inspirational Pre-Game Speech:

“You have spent the past few days visualizing all the beers you will drink and food you will eat during Sunday’s game. You have spent most of the winter NOT conditioning your mind and your body – focusing only on your stomach and liver – to successfully execute your plays. You have seen yourself out-play your opponents (common-sense, moderation, willpower) time and time again. And in the end, you have visualized yourself eating and drinking copious amounts of everything that others would have laughed at you for, deeming your determination and ambition as foolish, but in the end, you WILL beat your opponents.

Close your eyes, relax yourself, slow your breathing, and picture yourself going to the bar or rolling yourself over to a couch, and the crowd responds loudly to your entrance. You are fired up, you’re staring at a fridge or a bar menu – you take a look around, absorbing what you see, what you hear, what you smell and you allow all of it to energize you! You take it in as if it is liquid energy. Your adrenaline starts pumping (or maybe that’s just your clogged arteries).

You get in your teammate’s (barfly’s) faces and you let them know how ready you are! The stage is set and it is YOUR time to perform!”

That’s right, baby! As I write this Super Bowl XLV is less than 3 DAYS AWAY! Actually, although we want the world to know that “Women Love Beer Too”, these two women who write this blog unfortunately don’t love football. I feel like I also should tell you that I stole most of my pre-game preamble above from www.pregamespeeches.com. But hey, just because we don’t like football – doesn’t mean we don’t love a great excuse to spend a Sunday afternoon drinking and eating whatever we want and getting super rowdy! In fact, seeing as we spend most Sunday’s doing this anyway, we’re sure to get a lot less raised eyebrows at the bar this particular Sunday. Sooooo….YEAH AMERICAN FOOTBALL!!!

On that note, let’s get to some tips of what to eat and drink this Sunday…

FOOD

Ideally you want to stay away from anything natural, low calorie, or sensible in any way, shape or form (STOP reading now nagging, annoying health advocates. You know who you are…!). Vegetables must be limited to garnish and as throw-at-tv / fan projectile-use only.  Remember, it’s only once a year…so if you are relatively healthy for most of the rest of the year, I say GO NUTS! Some of my personal evil foods to enjoy: