March Madness!

It’s been a great March so far – some great weather in amidst the bad, some awesome Cinderalla stories in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, and also some great opportunities to taste some new beer and scotch.

Macallan Tasting
A couple of weeks ago, Macallan held their marketing roadshow here in Atlanta. I get pretty excited for these even though they are marketing focused, because I’ve had a tough time finding non-marketing Scotch whisky tastings since I moved here. It was a well done event – not as intimate, warm & fuzzy as the last time they came around, but still pretty good and represented “The Macallan” well.

The event was held in one of the beautifully restored Biltmore ballrooms. They jazzed it up a bit with pop music (like black eyed peas), lots of monitors showing media presentations with maps and factoids, tricks with ice cubes, and a rep/speaker with a headset and jazzy presentation reminiscent of a motivational seminar. Seems that they are targeting a ‘broader market’ and by that I mean younger and more urban. I can’t wait to see how that pans out for them – I’d love Scotch to appeal to a broader market. What I didn’t love was the guy telling me all about his golf game at St. Andrews and the subsequent touring around Scotland in his rental Bentley. Who cares- we’re here for free scotch buddy! Thankfully, the whole event was only about an hour and a half long.

Anyway, despite the hype, the Scotch offerings were great. Here’s what they had:
10 year Fine Oak
12 year (sherry oak)
15 year Fine Oak
17 year Fine Oak
18 year (sherry oak)

They were all quite good, and I had never realized they were marketing a 17 year, but I did discover that I by far like the traditional sherry oaked variety better than the Fine Oak or American Oak or whatever they’re calling it these days. It seems much more complex to me and sort of warmer with less “bite”. This is a bit of a generalization (since I can’t find my notes from the event), but that’s my summary. For my money, I’m going to stick with the 12 year. It is well worth the money and this free event has helped me prove that it’s my favorite (besides the 18, but at ~$150 that’s a bit out of my budget for regular purchasing.) The 12 year remains about $40 and may not have the 95 rating by wine enthusiast, but it’s in the low 90s and I happen to love it.

In case you don’t understand the “Oak” distinction, The Macallan is traditionally matured in sherry casks made of European Oak which are pretty expensive to make. They are hand selected and only come from Jerez, Spain. The rep threw out the $ amount of the cost of one of these casks but I can’t remember what it was, but it seemed like a lot. Conversely the fine oak line is matured in a combination of European & America Oak casks which previously held sherry and American Oak casks which previously held bourbon and are purported to be lighter and fruitier with more citrus and vanilla tones. These are evidently cheaper to procure, but they give the scotch it’s own distinct flavor which is very different from the traditionally produced variety.

Other bottles Macallan was marketing but not offering in the free tasting:
Fine Oak - 21 & 30 year
“Traditional” Sherry Oak – 25 & 30 year

Prices are all over the place for these 30 years – if you can find them. Looks like there is not much hope of procuring a 30 year Fine Oak for much under $400 or a 30 year Sherry Oak for under $900. If you’re in the market, good luck, and send me a dram!

Sweetwater “Brew your cask off” Charity event
The Sweetwater brewery continued heir “good guy” role by facilitating and hosting a really cool charity event on March 20th. Here is what they did:

1)Sweetwater came up with a set of base beers

2) They invited all their distributors (bars, restaurants, liquor stores), charitable organizations they were raising money for (4, but only one would “win” via an attendee vote ) along with a few local celebs and various other volunteerees to participate – these were the entrants

3) They held a pre-event event in which each entrant was tasked with to each brew a cask conditioned beer of their choice

4) Then they held a big party and charged a fee for entry where there would be voting on the best cask by a panel of judges and by the attendees

Pretty cool. What was really cool was that each entrant got to add creative flavoring of their choice and come up with a creative name for their brew. I can’t remember how many there were and am too lazy to get up and find my guide (maybe I’ll edit this later) but I would say that there were about 150 different selections including the base beers.

There were beers made with chocolate, there were beers made with hot peppers, there were beers made with chocolate and hot peppers. It was true March madness. Some other ingredients which come to mind were dates, figs, vanilla, mint, tequila – you name it and someone tried to put it in their beer. I tasted beer that was like thai iced tea, beer that was like a peppermint patty, beer that was like a tootsie roll; and also a beer that I actually had to pour out it was so undrinkable. My personal fave was a saison style beer that I had early on. Can’t remember who made it, but who cares?

The vibe was pretty good. We got there early and left early, so mostly all I saw was people having a good time and things not getting ugly. Probably some drunkards hanging around after we left, but I’m glad we missed them and honestly I don’t know how you would have gotten drunk unless you were power chugging your 1oz servings. Then again, Sweetwater was supplementing with one of their own brews (try their new Dank Tank BSP Quad – quadruple style done well.) What a fun day.

You can find the winners here: http://www.brewyourcaskoff.com/
None of these were ones I tasted, except the loser (hey, there were so many, and they actually ran out of some of them!)

They donated a good portion of the profits from the entry fees to the charitable orgs, and the most to the winning one which turned out to be the Atlanta Humane Society).

Miss Know it all time:

Cask conditioned ales are generally unfiltered, unpasturized beers which are “conditioned” in their own casks only and served directly from them. This means all fermentations take place in the cask – they’re not moved to different vessels. They don’t have any pressure added to dispense them as with regular draft beers, but instead are hand pumped. You can see these at some of the good beer bars here in the ATL like the Brick Store or the Porter where they generally have at least one cask ale offering that needs to be pumped by hand. This is how it was done back in the day.

In the midst of all this we’ve been spending quite a bit of time at Taco Mac watching the real March Madness – and this year it is indeed madness - so I’m gonna get back to it and update on the Brick Store Single Hop Mikeller event later. Stay tuned….

Had to re-post this for the other cooks out there

I had been thinking about what to make for dinner and stumbled across this link on the delicious hotlist. It's 5 meals in one chicken, or how to creatively (and deliciously) make 5 meals for 2 people on 25$. Pretty cool.

http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/2009/02/1-chicken-17-healthy-meals-26-bucks-no.html