So, I’ve been homebrewing for a solid five months now, and have a solid seven batches of homebrew to show for it. It’s pretty satisfying, I have to say. (The complete list should be here, but I’ve been a bit delinquent in updating the archive).
Anyway, I took a look at our fridge and our “cellar” (read: shelf in the spare bedroom) today, and realized that I can think of no reason to buy commercial beer for some time. Well, there will always be reasons (visitors who don’t appreciate the homebrew; inevitable trips to neighborhood bars; equally inevitable trips to breweries and brewpubs where growler-fills are offered), but they are the extraordinary. For day-to-day needs (aka a beverage with dinner), the homebrew operation seems to have things covered.
The cellar right now has: a pale ale, a porter, a wheat beer, two IPA’s, and a thrid IPA that will be ready to drink on Saturday (It’s a Blind Pig clone–I’m excited). Granted, that’s not the most versatile array in the world–I admit it’s skewed toward the hoppy end of the spectrum–but it affords plenty of choices.
Plenty of choices means that each evening when a meal is simmering on the stove, I spend some time contemplating which beverage will best accompany the evening’s dinner. Sometimes it’s wine, sometimes it’s water, occasionally it’s milk, but a good amount of time, it’s a beer I want next to my plate. Today, it was most certainly beer, and I do have to say, the pairing was sublime.
Ever since the Liars’ Club left Mission Beach, I’ve had an insatiable craving for completely unhealthy, extremely comforting grilled sandwiches (it’s a weakness I’ll never be ashamed of). Right around the same time of the unfortunate closing, I was (generously) gifted a Le Cruset set that happened to include a griddle pan. Having the pan stare me in the face in the kitchen, and having the Liars’ Club sandwiches completely vanished from my radar, I knew I had to put an end to my cravings. Enter the grilled cheese.
I think I learned how to make grilled cheese in 4th grade; maybe earler. But regardless of the timeframe, I count it as one of my top-five childhood foods of all time, along with mac and cheese (mom’s version from scratch; not out of the box); english muffin pizzas, blintzes, and spinach quiche–the first “foodie” food I probably ever enjoyed (I think I was 3). Curiously, all of these favorites involve cheese; I just realized that now…
Anyway, as far back as last Saturday, it was declared that Wednesday would be grilled cheese night. The ingredients were nothing special: fresh-baked white bread (unsliced, from Vons), Tillamook extra sharp cheddar, a ripe tomato, homemade caramelized onions, homegrown rosemary, and as a treat, sorpressetta. Somehow the ritual of assembling the sandwiches, buttering the bread (the key is to melt the butter and brush it on), and waiting patiently as the Le Cruset did its work, was as special as it was 20 years ago when I stood around the kitchen watching my mother do the same. All the waiting gave some time to consider a beverage accompaniment too, and I settled on the Vanilla Porter we had brewed some months ago.
It was the smokiness of the caramelized onions that caught my attention first, marrying with the rich underlying tones of the porter. But then it was a hint of sweetness in the cured meat, and the buttery edge to the toasted bread that seemed to embrace the sweet vanilla notes. I spent several bites going back and forth, creamy sandwich to creamy beer–what I deemed a perfect pairing–before I realized I had made this marriage happen.
I’ve eaten in a lot of restaurants and appreciated a lot of wine pairings, but there is nothing like realizing that a beer you made and a meal you made somehow perfectly go together. I’d like to claim that it’s my appreciation of the craft that keeps me homebrewing, or the pleasures of spending an afternoon outdoors, firing up the burner and watching a pot come to a boil (it really does, you just have to be reeeeaaaaly patient)–and it’s definitely in some part both of these–but somewhere, underlying the pleasures of creation are the pleasures of consumption–there’s nothing like the satisfaction of (re)discovering the merits of something you yourself made. While a painter may never be able to see his art in the eyes of his spectators, or a musician be able to hear a song through the ears of his fans, a brewer can always know the pleasures of tasting his beer just as his friends will taste it. And no matter how much I enjoy the brewing process–experimenting, improvising, panicking when something unexpected comes up–I can’t deny that it will always be the pleasure of tasting, and enjoying, and sharing that will give me the most satisfaction.
I never thought I’d be one to take up a hobby, but looks like I’ve found my leisure-time calling.
Tags: food pairings, homebrew