Howdy Reader!

This is a post to let you know that for the first time since I started writing Beer & Nosh two years ago, we’ll be taking a little break. While I’m gone I’ll be getting married to beautiful girl and amazing girl, doing a little honeymoon travel across Europe to celebrate, and taking a much needed vacation.  That said, I’ll be traveling camera in hand, so you can expect lots of content when I get back.  Maybe even some photo essays while I’m abroad – we’ll see.  In the meantime, I’ll still be posting to Twitter so you can follow my exploits there.

This break seems like a good time to take stock as well.  I’ve been posting to Beer & Nosh for almost exactly two years.  Two Hundred and Fifty-Eight posts later, what started as a small project that only my Dad read (Hi Dad!) has grown into something much, much bigger. It’s helped me refine my culinary and brewing point of view, understand what makes for great food and beer, both in the kitchen and on the restaurant floor.  It’s opened up phenomenal friendships and professional relationships with local chefs, butchers, brewers, sommeliers, cicerones, restauranteurs, farmers, food bloggers and lovers of great food of all stripes.

One of the most rewarding parts of this blog has been the opportunity to plan beer dinners. It’s easy to play blogger/critic and say how things should have been done (Note: I’m plenty guilty of that too) but it’s much harder, and much more rewarding to go out and build something new.  My dinners at Scalas Bistro – both the first beer dinner I ever put together, and last year’s epic Mostly Barrel Aged Dinner successfully combined classic San Francisco Cal/Italian food with great local beers.  Then there was Notoberfest – an indulgent free for all of Ryan Farr’s never-ending parade of pork, Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream and Steve Altamari’s beer. Everyone keeps asking when there will be another one.  It isn’t planned or scheduled yet, but yes, there will be another Notoberfest.   How could there not be?   Thanks to everyone who has attended these events, and I only hope you’ve had as much fun at them as I have.

Creating these dinners, getting to collaborate hands on with local talent, and present in person to a welcoming San Francisco crowd has been an extraordinary experience.  The reaction to both my work on this blog, and these events has proven over and over again that there is a market in San Francisco for great beer and food, and the constant string of announcements of new beer-related openings hammer the point home.

So, with all of this in mind, I’m very excited that when Beer & Nosh comes back in late August, I’ll have some announcements to make for a new project – one that brings much of what I’ve learned here to bear, and will bring local beer and local food together in a whole new way.  We’re creating something just for San Francisco, designed with the local beer and food lover in mind.  It’s one of those “You got peanut butter in my chocolate!” kind of moments.  It’s gonna be…

See you in August.

- Jesse

Dontaye Ball of Good Foods Catering can do a lot more than just smoke a piece of pork, and wants you to know it.   When I heard “All Bacon Dinner” I immediately thought of heart clogging, one note, smoky, greasy food.  What I found couldn’t be farther from that imagine grease spill.  Dontaye deftly uses bacon as seasoning, spice and fat to enhance a well rounded, surprisingly classical dinner.  His all-bacon dinner isn’t just a pile of smoked pork (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) but here his aspirations aim quite a bit higher.  His meal is collection of perfectly seasoned food, bolstered by a great collection of seasonal veggies. It’s an invitation into his home and kitchen, to sit around the table with this mother, family and friends and enjoy a great community meal.

So, join me, Dontaye, his Sous Rhea and front of house Kamael for a underground dinner in Dontaye’s home?

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It’s summer, and that means time to break out the grill and throw down a few sausages.  While beer and sausage is as cliched a pairing as there is, it’s one ripe with possibilities.  Sausages go way beyond some ground pork or beef and a casing.  As the chefs on display at CUESA’s Sausage & Beer Party proved.  Offerings ranged from Chris Cosentino’s Mortadella Dog to Dennis Lee’s Kimchee Dog to Taylor Boetticher’s Crepinette Sandwich. All of these modern butchers and chefs busted out the big guns, and served juicy sausages bursting with flavor. Ryan Farr even wrapped his in bacon, and served it on top of a peach slaw, just to be sure you knew it was summer.

To go with these (mostly) porcine offerings, the SF Brewer’s Guild brought out summer beers aplenty – offering up kolsch, belgian goldens and even a Double IPA.  A good time.  The best pairings balanced the beer’s crispness against the fat of the sausage – and since it was a textural contrast, nearly all of these summer brews made a great companion for the sausages.  Which was good, because in this crowded space, it was impossible to line up and check each sausage with each pairing.  Sometimes you have to just relax, and enjoy the weather, people, food and beer.  Welcome to Summer.

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Local: Mission Eatery wants to be much more than a restaurant. It’s a combination of a sandwich shop, bakery, cookbook library, pop-up restaurant, and cooking class space.  I’ve tried most of these iterations – the brioche at Knead is outstanding, the braised lamb sandwich is my favorite, the prix fixe dinner is an outstanding deal for what you get, and the cooking classes turn out to be fun too.  Not content with just making beer, Elianna and I have had a budding interest in cheese making. So we ventured over on a wedsday evening for a cheese making course taught by Jacob Des Voignes, the regular chef behind the sandwiches.  (Other classes are taught by outside experts.)

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Black Star is a classic American Pilsner, with a light dry hopping touch.  It’s crisp, clean, and great for a summer day.  It’s interesting to see a craft take on a style so thoroughly consumed by corporate beer behemoths.   Chad Newton’s Parcel BBQ is exactly what it claims to be – classic american BBQ, served sans silverware.  Great pickles too.  More pictures:

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Opening day of Hapa Ramen seemed to go smoothly.  Water boiled easily, and three hundred servings of ramen went out the door without incident (OK, maybe a few plastic things were melted.  but that’s a sign of too much heat, and that’s a happy problem is have under the circumstances.)

My bowl was rich and flavorful, with well textured fresh noodles and a perfectly cooked sous vide egg that clung to the noodles after the yolk streamed out into the broth.   My informal survey of ramen slurppers revealed a happy crowd.   Checking every batch of noodles individually for doneness is time well spent.

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On Thursday nights on Clara street, you can smell a wisp of malt aroma drifting through SOMA.  Follow the aroma down a thin alley street, by garage doors and parked cars, and you’ll find an open garage as the source.  Poke inside and you’ll find  Patrick Horn of Pacific Brewing Laboratories and Bryan Hermannsson of Clara St Brewing adding hops and pouring pints for welcome guests.

Welcome to the Clara Street Brewing Collective.

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One last post on my epic Portland adventure, then it’s back to business as usual at ye ‘ol SF beer blog.  Luckily, this last one is a great one.  For our last brunch in Portland, we headed over to Screen Door.  I was forewarned that I would be getting the chicken and waffles.  They were right.

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When I planned my trip up to Portland, there was one brewery above all others I was interested in visiting: Cascade Brewing at the Raccoon Lodge.  They brew inspired, sour ales that are uniquely American. Their beers have slowly been creeping into San Francisco area by way of City Beer Store and Beer Revolution (You can find their Apricot, Cherry, and Sang Rouge beers on well stocked local shelves.)  I imagined these beers came from a place lined with rows and rows of barrels, holding a huge variety of sour ales.  I was not disappointed.

Brewmaster Ron Gansberg gave us an outstanding tour, which included samples of their beers in all different states – from fermenters, to half-aged barrels, to finished product.  One or two were even “chunky.”  As Ron explains it, even after the beers have finished aging, it’s only partway there.  It’s the blending process that allows them to finish the product, and create a final brew.  These final products are all about balance – sweetness balanced with tartness, and the fruit balanced with savory undertone – these beers scream to be paired with meats that love fruit pairings – duck, lamb, and pheasant come to mind.

So join us won’t you, at a tour and tasting of the barrels at Cascade Brewing.   If your web-browser support scratch and sniff technology, now would be a good time to turn it on.

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I first met Dontaye Ball at the Underground Farmer’s Market a while back.  Once we setup a black-market exchange program of homebrew for BBQ, we both knew quickly we were going to get along just fine.

Shortly there after, I was contacted by a television network, and invited to make a demo tape of me, interacting with people and food.  With little to no planning, expertise, or even microphones, I set off at the Alemany Farmer’s Market to make a movie.  After a few false starts with other vendors, I ran into Dontaye and his piles of smoked pig, and knew I had found my subject.   So, we filmed the video, eat mightily, and I went off to edit it (poorly.)  I never did hear back from the world of TV, but that’s probably for the best.  I was left with this video.

Good Foods Catering seems to be having something of a moment right now – what with winning awards from SF Weekly, taking the top spot at SF Food Wars, and praise from vegan-loving Mission Mission.  The Ball family seems to be suddenly on everyone’s radar.  So enjoy this mouthwatering look at their operation, just please excuse the 2AM public access production standards and camera shy host.

And spoiler alert – there’s a puppy at the end.