Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Super Bacon Dogs For The Holiday

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To celebrate International Bacon Day I modified a decadent comfort food my wife came up with a few weeks ago. She takes a hot dog and slices it down the middle, filling it with cheese. Then it’s wrapped in a Pillsbury crescent roll and baked in the oven. I call them “super dogs” for no particular reason other than it rolls off the tongue nicely. Today I added a slice of bacon to each one to make “super bacon dogs.” I ate five of them, boy were they tasty.

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My daughter Alice slicing the hot dogs.

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Ready to go in the oven.

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Fresh from the oven and ready to eat.

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Afterward, my wife Sarah had a special bacon treat for dessert.

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Chocolate-covered bacon on a stick, which a friend of my wife’s from work discovered at our local candy shop (thanks Brian). They come in both milk chocolate and dark chocolate.

First Beer & Bacon Festival Scheduled

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Ah, to be in Baltimore in the fall. The sound of pirates, the taste of beer and the sizzling goodness of bacon. That has all the makings of a wonderfully wacky and enjoyable event. Clipper City Brewing has just announced the 1st annual Heavy Seas Beer & Bacon Festival — Pyrates, Pigs and Pints. It will take place on Saturday, September 19, 2009 at the brewery in Baltimore. If you don’t recognize the significance of September 19, it’s Talk Like A Pirate Day.

From the press release:

Clipper City Brewing Company, brewers of the Heavy Seas brand, is a proud supporter of National Talk Like A Pirate Day and a true fan of bacon the world over. In the hopes that all those aspiring pirates will join them in the celebration of this heritage, the brewers have banded together to create the 1st Annual Beer & Bacon Festival on September 19th from Noon – 4pm. Tickets are limited to the first 350 who sign on board and the day will be filled with over 15 types of bacon from all over the world to sample, ten beers to sample, the bacon explosion, live music from Dirty Secret and even HUMAN BACON — walking around. Many of Baltimore finest restaurants, bars and foodie haunts will be on hand including: Alonso’s, Bad Decisions, Ciao Bella, Crazy Lil’s, Abercrombie, Captain Thom, Marsh’s Chili, Whisky Island Spices, Pussy Kat Punters, Sweet Kascade’s, Kooper’s, Slainte, and many more.

It includes a bacon tasting! Now that’s a great idea. I need to attend more bacon tastings.

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Happy International Bacon Day

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bacon
Happy International Bacon Day everybody. It’s a relatively new holiday, to be held each year on the Saturday before Labor Day Monday. If you’re a regular Bulletin reader, you already know of my unbridled love of bacon. I already had some for breakfast and am now plotting how to work it into the rest of today’s meals.

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It’s no secret, of course, that beer and bacon work very well together. Rauchbiers and other smoked beers often have bacon aromas. But as far as I’m concerned, bacon pairs nicely with many styles of beer. But what about a bacon beer?
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Well, it turns out that at least two breweries are making one. First, Garrett Oliver is making one for the bowling alley, Brooklyn Bowl, that’s across the street from the Brooklyn Brewery.

Using a special malt smoked in the same room as the bacon made by Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams of Tennessee, he’s making a bacon barley wine ale. Picking up the story from the New York Times:

[Brooklyn Brewery] plans to brew about 15 gallons of barleywine with that malt. In the meantime, he’s been infusing a brown ale with the flavor of Benton’s bacon fat through a technique known as “fat washing.” (Nick Fauchald described the process in this profile of the bartender Eben Freeman.) Oh, and the bacon-fat-infused ale was also aged in bourbon barrels, because bourbon and bacon go together like, um, beer and bacon.

Eventually, the barleywine with the bacon-smoked malt and the bourbon-aged, bacon-fat-infused ale would be blended to create one monstrously bizarre beer.

“One of two things will happen,” Mr. Oliver predicted. “Either this will be the most amazingly disgusting thing you’ve ever tasted in your life. Or I shall rule the earth.”

A little closer to home, the Uncommon Brewers down in Santa Cruz are also working on a Bacon Brown Ale. Given their track record of successfully using uncommon ingredients in their beer, I’m actually optimistic that they could pull this off. Bacon is being used these days in all manner of different ways, so it’s only a matter of time before somebody perfects a bacon beer.