guest post - ryan

and for your reading pleasure today, a guest post by ryan:

Rebecca has asked me to guest post for a little while now and last Thursday at Yaletown I agreed to write about my most recent beer tasting this past July long weekend.

Back in March I came back from Europe with beers from Germany, France and the UK and finally had some people over to give them a try. These were the consensus picks of the day:

Germany

Ok, probably not the best start to a beer blog post but we poured a Erdinger alcohol free lager that tasted surprisingly good. My colleague bought it for me while i was there as an example of what well made beer can taste like, amazing! It went perfect with the goat cheese and Masala Vista Doro my guests brought, mmm.

The Victory Prima Pils in the photo is not a German beer but a gift from the Half Pints brewer that we had to have as it was going bad. I've never had such a hoppy Pilsner before! It would have been even better fresh.

I digress...

Next up was was a Rauchbier, this beer was the smokiest I have ever smelled and tasted. It went great with the Gorgonzola blue cheese and baguette that magically appeared.

France

Fleurac and La Bracine, both Triple IPAs (i believe as my french needs work.) They actually had great hop characteristics, as if they were from the west coast! The La Bracine was deemed the best of the two.

We had these with the IPA Peanut Brittle I made a few days earlier. I'm a big fan of the Home Brew Chef and took this recipe, Hophead IPA Beer Peanut Brittle Recipe modified slightly to have brown sugar in it as well. Reviews around the table were good, phew! Good thing they got the second batch i made :-) Apparently candy needs to reach a certain temperature otherwise it won't get crunchy, lesson learned.

UK

There was only one we tried from from London and it was The Kernel Imperial Stout. Smooth, caramel goodness paired with a fresh double chocolate chip cookie. Our taste buds were happy.

We had a few more beers, a little scotch and a copy-cat recipe of Nuba's cauliflower dish to finish off a fabulous 8 hour Saturday.


**Hint** - the weird pink and green spiky thing is actually called a Dragon Fruit, you can find them at most Chinese markets and even Granville Island. Turns out, it makes a perfect palette cleansing food between beer tastes!