Beer Episode: Want a liveblog?

And here are the pics

First course (salad course) was a spring dish, asparagus with two types of beets and a fine herbed goat cheese and the pils. The delicate pils was nicely matched to the gentle and creamy cheese and the gently sweet beets.

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The second course (cheese course) was a pear and stilton cheese tart served with an "Imperial Mild Ale". Disturbingly this was an appropriate description of the ale. Really high alcohol content without the burn, high hop content without the bitterness, nice malts without the syrup heaviness.

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The third course (small meats course) was a very fatty short rib slider paired with an American Strong Ale. This is the point when the night was getting to much for me as this course and the following were just too fatty and creamy to be enjoyed. The sauce was really good and it paired really nicely with the robust and metallic ale, but the meat flavor itself was much too gristly for my taste.

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The fourth course (main course) was a blackened redfish with artisan peppered bacon served over creamy sweet corn polenta and whole sweet corn kernels paired with the Imperial/Double IPA. The disturbingly creamy and "light" IPA was very well paired to the creaminess of the polenta but still held up well to the very expertly seasoned redfish. Not too hot, not too bland, the fish was prepared well if a bit overdone but almost too rich with the cream-based polenta and bacon pieces mixed in.

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The fifth course (usually the German course) was a smoked artisan pork sausage with apple bits served over apple and beer-braised kraut paired and artisan mustard paired with an Imperial Stout. Because Lagunitas' stout has chocolate bits, I was subbed Sierra Nevada Stout. Both were completely inappropriate for the dish as the delicate and light tasting sausage were completely drown out by the creamy stout. Imagine a delicate lemon pepper chicken served with two ladles of beef gravy on top. The beers by themselves were ok, and the meal by itself was ok, but the combination was awful. The better choice here would have been the pils.

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The last course is the dessert, an espresso fudge brownie served over a cream espresso sauce and paired with the Cappucino Stout. According to chim, this was by far the hit of the evening. A perfect pairing and a special favorite for the coffee lover. The brownie was knife-cuttingly thick and rich and the sauce quite creamy on top. The creamy stout matched up well.

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Because of the short notice and my allergies to caffeine (and hence no chocolate) I was substituted a fruit cup with a just-released Buckeye Strawberry Tart. Very artificial flavored like a Skittles or something, it was a decent match with the fruit if it was more realistic tasting. The neon red color wasn't helping the natural-feeling of it. The picture does it no justice.

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And the master of ceremonies was the chef Greg Tushar.

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All in all it was the worst beer pairing we have been to yet :lol:. Still a nice experience and sat with very nice people, but still not a very good success. Next month is Unibroue and the chef loves pairing with Belgium style beers, so this should be quite good.
 
This sounds a little unsuccessful as compared to the last one you went to...

It was. The best, by far, has been the Dogfish Head pairing. Of course when you start with epic beverages like that, you can't really go wrong.