The Great Orlando Beer Festival

Man, I love beer. I can’t drink a lot of it in one sitting, but beer is what I choose to drink at a bar, and the bars I choose to drink at tend to have good beer. If they don’t, well, then I guess I’m drinking water.

So, imagine my excitement when I found out that on this Saturday, the first annual Great Orlando Beer Festival will be happening from 2 pm until 7 pm downtown in the lot for the Club at Firestone. At $25 a ticket for advance tickets, it’s not cheap, but there will be unlimited beer samples. UNLIMITED! Okay, really the limit is what you can intake which, in my case, might be around the $25 mark. Judging by the list of breweries participating at the event, it’ll be money well-spent. Flying Dog Brewery, for example, puts out excellent beer I’m well-acquainted with from bringing it over to friends’ houses. Our very own Orlando Brewing will also be involved, as well as Red Hook, Lagunitas, Otter Creek Brewing, Rogue and more. Food will be available for purchase, as well as a live band, but really, it’s all about the beer.

Sadly, I’ve asked around and it looks like a handful of my best beer-lovin’ friends will be working. If you’re lucky enough not to fall into that category, it’s $35 to enter the day of the event and $25 if you buy early, so if you think you’d like to attend, get your tickets Friday and save yourself ten bucks. If you’re the designated driver, you get in for $10, and can get free non-alcoholic beverages. You can buy the tickets online, or you can visit one of three locations where they will be selling tickets for the festival:

• Redlight Redlight - 535 W. New England Avenue, Winter Park (near Park Avenue)
• Underground Bluz - 12261 University Boulevard, Orlando (near UCF)
• Orlando Brewing - 1301 Atlanta Avenue, Orlando (near AMTRAK station)

If you’re seriously broke, but still want a piece of the action, you may still be able to volunteer to work at the festival. Some free schwag, like a t-shirt, may be your reward. If you happen to be pouring a beer for me, I don’t like that much head on mine, thanks.

For directions to this wonderful brouhaha (or… brewhaha?!), you can click here for a Mapquest map and some written directions, or simply GoogleMap “42 West Concord Street, Orlando 32801,” which can give you a good idea of the what and the where. Also, the website says you can park in the Courthouse parking lot, but there’s also parking on the street along Orange Avenue and along some of its side streets. The metered parking is waived during the weekends, unless there’s been a change in policy, so you should be good to go.

The event is meant to be “a celebration of craft beers,” which is a fantastic way to get people introduced to microbreweries across this great country, as well as a handful of popular tasty beers that people enjoy, such as Guinness and Blue Moon. A portion of the proceeds are earmarked to help out our local Habitat for Humanity, which goes to show: drinking good beer leads to good things.

You can ruminate on what drinking bad beer will get you on your own.

A Sweet Sting

I had previously written about different beer recipes in Casey’s Concoction and Other Fun with Beer, and was intrigued by the “bee sting,” which is a mixture of dark beer and orange juice.

So, sometime after work last week, I had a little time to kill before I watched a film with the Florida Film Festival, so I scooted by Stardust and asked Alli for a half glass of ACME Pale Ale, and a Clementine Izze. For those of you unfamiliar with Izze, it’s a “sparkling juice” beverage, much like carbonated soda, but juice and really tasty. I poured half of the bottle of Clementine Izze into my half-filled glass of ACME Pale Ale, and the result was delicious! It was a light and wonderful afternoon drink that ensured I wouldn’t be incapacitated to drive later, since I only had one (or only half a beer), and it was thoroughly refreshing. Since I’m a lightweight with alcohol, I wanted to have a bit of a beer, but not enough for me to feel unable to drive to the cinema later. This drink was ideal for that.

I’ve dubbed it the “sweet sting,” and it’s sure to be a Summer ‘08 hit for me, especially since summer in Florida has already begun to seep into our fleeting springtime days. If you’d like to recreate the drink, I would suggest any type of pale ale, heifeweizen or Czech pilsner as the beer. Izze can be purchased at Whole Foods and also at some Publixes, or you can have a go at it at Stardust like I did. If you can’t find Clementine Izze, be creative, and let me know what you come up with!

Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux

Earlier this evening, I went to Stardust with the intention to have dinner there, but with the parking lot full and the chairs loaded with people, I opted instead to check out a new place I had my eye on as it was opening.

The sign for Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux had intrigued me when I passed by the little strip mall the restaurant was nestled in, or rather, going to be nestled in. At the time I had noticed it, the cafe was still in the process of “coming soon!”, so I was sort of waiting until I had seen it was open for business. Sometimes, the time it takes for a restaurant to open can be lengthy, but it didn’t seem so with Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux. I believe it was sometime earlier this week or last week that I had seen its little “Open” sign alight above some curtains.

Since Stardust was crowded, and I wanted to try out the place anyway, I scooted on over to Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux. Now, when I think of people who ride bikes in Orlando, I’m more inclined to think of the group of youngish folks behind Orlando Critical Mass: the bike punks who work it with their cut-off jean shorts, longish hair, tattoos and a disdain for automobiles. I had fully expected for Bikes, Beans & Bordeaux to be a bike punk haven, but when I entered the small cafe and was met with light wood veneers, little tea candles and low lighting, “bike punk chic” was not what I had gotten.

The proprietors, a husband and wife, greeted me eagerly behind a couple and baby seated at a little bar area. The husband, who later introduced himself as Darrell, kindly directed me to the menus in a couple containers mounted on the wall near the entrance. “The Beer & Wine menu is two pages!” he informed me as I looked at the fixtures. I grabbed them, although I went with getting some organic English Breakfast tea in the end, but it should interest you to know that their house beers, served in bottles, include beer from Orlando Brewing, and there’s a bunch of wines I’m woefully unfamiliar with, because I’m not a wine person, but I’ll list some for you winey folks: Chateau Paradis Casseuil Blanc, Bordeaux, France; Moon Mountain, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sonoma Valley, California; Echelon, Pinot Grigio, Clarksburg, California; Chateau La Nerthe, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Rhone, France.

Although I was not interested in getting any beer or wine, I was very keen on getting some food, and was torn between the Tour Mediterraneen and the Caprese Panini. After a fevered deliberation at the cash register, I decided to go with my first instinct and ordered the Tour Mediterraneen: Smothered with hummus, this tasty creation is served up with lettuce, tomato, red onion, sprouts, olives, cucumber, feta cheese and drizzled with Greek dressing on Italian bread. Upon ordering the sandwich sans onions, I was told that they were out of the bread, but offered multigrain or honey wheat in its stead, of which I chose the latter.

When I got the sandwich, it came with a bag of Sun Chips (although you could also opt for carrot sticks), a pickle and, interestingly, a tiny bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans, which I later tucked away to eat in whenever I got in a candy mood, or to give away to someone, as I’m not particularly big on jelly beans. My sandwich was delicious. The only thing I would have liked to have made it perfect was to have had a fork to scoop up the stray tomatoes, olives and feta that would slip out from between the bread. I loved the flavor of the Greek dressing, and the cucumbers tasted so wonderfully fresh and crisp.

Ah, Sandwich Nirvana.

I had texted a few of my friends while I waited for my sandwich, because as I studied the menu, I could definitely see many of my friends liking the place. The food is both vegetarian and non, and in addition to beer and wine, they have a nice selection of different coffee drinks and organic teas, as well as smoothies. Plus, they’re open at 7 am every day for breakfast, except for Monday–they’re closed.

As I ate my sandwich, drank my tea and read a book I had brought along with me, the place began to fill up, and what struck me was how warmly the owners greeted these customers by name. There was a group of men who came in and grabbed some beers after handshakes and chit-chat with Darrell, and sat in the facing leather couches under a flat-screen television showing, from what I could tell from a few glances at the screen, the Cycling Network. Is there such a thing? There were a couple of guys who came in on their own, one of whom was visibly taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi in the cafe.

If you’d like to check out the menu to see if you’d like to make a visit to “B3,” you can visit their website: www.B3Cafe.com.

Casey’s Concoction and Other Fun with Beer

My friend Casey in North Carolina would like me to share this with you all:

Here is one beer tip I like to share with fellow aficionados: put a shot of espresso in a glass of stout. It should be a pretty sweet and chocolaty stout to balance out the bitterness of the espresso. I really like Lost Coast Brewery’s 8-Ball stout. Oh, and of course the espresso should be very good and relatively fresh. I dash from the best coffee shop in town (which is fortunately only a block away) back to my work just to enjoy this delicacy.

Do you have any other beer concoctions you’d like to mention? Most of us are familiar with the Irish Car Bomb, the Black & Tan and the Snake Bite. I’m rather fond of making shandies, though sometimes I wind up with half a bottle of beer that I don’t feel like downing–terrible, I know. The lemonade I buy is rather tart, so really I use the beer to cut the lemonade with. My favourite beer to use in a shandy are Czech pilsners or German/Belgian-type whites, and I’ve also used Sprite or ginger ale instead of lemonade.

The Wikipedia article on the shandy led me to this article from The Prague Post: Magical blends. I’m including the list of mixes in its side bar below: The “bee sting” looks like something I might like:

• Beer bloody mary: beer with tomato juice, Tabasco and Worcestershire (optional: vodka, raw egg)
• Bee sting: dark beer and orange juice
• Black velvet: stout, such as Guinness, cut 50-50 with Champagne
• Boilermaker (or depth charge): a shot glass of whiskey dropped into a glass of beer
• Broadway (or diesel): beer and cola
• Liverpool kiss: dark beer with cassis
• Magické oko: a shot of zelená liqueur dropped into a glass of beer
• Radler (or panaché): beer with lemonade or lemon soda, usually around 2:1
• Red eye: a shot of tomato juice added to beer (also known as a red rooster)
• Shandygaff (or shandy): beer with ginger beer, ginger ale or lemonade
• Skip and go naked: beer with lemon juice, gin and often whatever else is on hand
• Snakebite: beer cut with cider, 50-50
• Terminator: Long Island iced tea, beer and Kahlua

The “bee sting” looks like something I might like, but beer and cola just seems unholy, and I don’t know if I’d try mixing tomato juice with any perfectly good beer. If you do, though, maybe you’ll let me grab a sip out of your glass to see how I like it.

Cheers.

Beer and cupcakes

Last night I went to Redlight Redlight’s Pinklight Bazaar, which was packed with people in “classy & sassy attire” flipping through vendor goods and gnoshing on cupcakes. The vendor area was too packed for me to elbow my way through, and since I was low on the cash anyway, Hao and I eventually planted ourselves at the cupcake corner of the bar.

So, what beer does one drink when eating a lovely coconut-vanilla cupcake? I opted to go light, with one of my most favourite beers, the Hitachino Nest White Ale. The hint of spice and orange peel in this clean, crisp beer was lovely in washing down the cupcake, and I was finished with my glass too soon. Instead of continuing along the line of witbiers, I made the mistake of getting a frambois-type concoction that was too sweet–I ended up not finishing it. A shame.

Judging by the attendance, the event seemed like it was quite a success–there were worries among my crowd of falling through to the bakery downstairs–but like I said earlier, due to the crowd, I didn’t really get to paw through the goods that were featured by the craftswomen for sale. In any case, the cupcakes were lovely.