Tall, Dark, and Belgian

No, it's not the tagline for a personal ad. It's my latest homebrew: a dark Belgian strong ale, recently unveiled. While I still prefer the pumpkin ale for overall drinkability, this one is pretty good. It's mellowed a little since bottling.

Since having my first official beer dinner last weekend -- it's like a wine dinner, with each course paired with a particular vintage, in this case 4 different beers -- I can't stop thinking about other ways to accent and infuse things with beer. The main course was a venison stroganoff, featuring dried porcini mushrooms soaked overnight in TD&B. "Yum" is an understatement. (To be fair, the handmade egg noodles were as much the stars as the the Italian mushrooms or the fancy venison loin from Gary.)

And yet, my favorite course might have been the beer floats. My friend Kevin introduced me to the idea of mixing beer and ice cream during his decadent beer dinner dessert course: Brooklyn Brewery's deep chocolate stout with a scoop of Moorenko's mocha chip ice cream, drizzled with melted chocolate and topped with crushed malted peanut butter milk balls.

Seeing as I have some good ice cream in the freezer, for a change I would not be surprised if some of it ended up in a frosty mug of TD&B sometime soon....