A Lesson In Beer: Brew 2.0

On Thursday I joined the fabulous Rannie Turingan and b5media’s own Accordian Guy, Joey DeVilla for a night of beer tasting, photos and laughter at The Air Canada Centre. Hosted by Molson and organized by the lovely Meghan Warby, I didn’t anticipate the night that started at a little before 6 to go so late…but to my delight the time flew by as we all got to know a little more about beer.

Before the seminar began, I started with a Rickard’s White, which I quickly learned works extremely well with citrus. Simple and palatable gets a surprisingly major boost from a slice of orange, boosting it from ‘good’ to super tasty.

The menu for the night:

Canadian with Grilled Chicken Skewers
Coors Light with Hamburger Sliders
Heineken with Sweet and Sour Fried Oysters
Rickard’s Red with Steak Satay w/ Onion Soubise
Rickard’s White with Grilled Shrimp w/ Orange Sauce
Corona with BBQ Duck Tacos
Creemore Springs Lager with Smoked Brat on Potato pancake w/ Tomato Jam

The result:

Once satiated/cheerful/tipsy drinks blogger.

The Canadian was a nice place to start and the chicken was delicious. The Hamburger Sliders stole the show when it came to the Coors Light. They were so amazing I could forgive the beer their paired with for being a far less remarkable choice. Heineken is a purpetual favorite of mine – so it wasn’t surprising to me when this little glass was done right quick. The Oysters weren’t so bad either.

The Rickard’s Red paired nicely with the steak, but I was far happier to go back to the Rickard’s White (even if the shrimp were too lime-y for my taste). Corona…always another excellent choice. And I enjoyed the tacos very much even if the sour cream to taco ratio was a wee high. The Creemore was also delightful as usual. Not sure how, but by some miracle I found room for the Bratwurst…and they didn’t disappoint.

So what else did we learn from this evening of fine food, great beer and brewery education?

Beer is tasty. Okay, fine I already knew that. But this just reminds me that there are other (more upscale) ways to pair beer than gross greasy nachos.

Ads for beer are lies. At least the photos are. The ridiculous amounts of froth spilling all over the place is unreasonable…more appropriate is about a dime-size of head.

The glass you use makes a difference. clean, cool, room temperature. Oils from your hands or any dishwashing soap residue is going to mess up the glass and result in a less than tasty beverage.

[Images: Rachel Segal]