Home-brewing with Ben

After many citizen requests, the White House recently released their Honey Ale and Honey Porter recipes. We went over to our friend Ben's house last weekend to help/watch him make a batch of the Honey Porter. We followed the recipe closely, except we used Australian honey, instead of honey from the White House bee hive. I forgot my camera, so please excuse the mobile phone pics...

Pouring in the grains

The beer is fermenting at Ben's house, and won't be ready until around Christmas. At first I thought to myself, "Christmas, great time for porter!" because, even after two years, my brain still initally thinks of Christmas as wintertime, instead of summer! Anyway, we're looking forward to tasting it -- I'm sure it will be great regardless of the season.

Here's the album with all the pics.

Brewing Beer with Ben

Trip to Melbourne

Last week we went to Melbourne for my birthday and for Matthew to give a talk at the AusNOG conference. We had a great time! We went to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne Zoo, had cocktails at Eau de Vie Melbourne, and dinner at Birdman Eating and Movida Aqui. While M was at the conference, I went to the Melbourne Aquarium and to the National Gallery of Victoria, where I saw the "Napoleon: Revolution to Empire" exhibition.

For my birthday dinner, we went to Cutler & Co, where we had the eight course degustation with matching wines. Everything was fantastic, and it was nicely paced. They were very good on portion and pour size, so we weren't overstuffed. Here's what we enjoyed:
Selection of appetisers, including oysters, marinated octopus, foie gras cigar
Oyster broth with scallop
Mud crab with buttermilk potato
Baked carrots with goats curd and toasted grains
Smoked and fried duck with morcilla
Roasted suckling pig with kohlrabi
Apple sorbet with dill
Earl Grey ice cream, chocolate and Pedro Ximenez prunes.

I didn't take any photos, so here's a couple of the restaurant itself.

Restaurant exterior - photo from Cutler & Co's website.

 

It was another great visit to Melbourne! Here's a link to the album with more pics:

Trip to Melbourne

Spring Walk at the Royal Botanic Garden

Spring is almost here. We went to the Royal Botanic Garden recently, and some flowers are already in bloom.

There were just a few wisteria in bloom; I bet they'll be be beautiful in several weeks.

Winter Beer Dinner at The Union

About a week and a half ago, we went to a winter beer dinner at the Union Hotel. The Union is third generation family-owned, and has decided to get into craft beers on tap, to the extent that I think they no longer have VB (Victoria Bitter, sort of the Aussie Budweiser) on tap. Here was the menu:

1. Stone & Wood Jasper Ale (NSW)

2. Mountain Goat Coffee IPA (VIC) with braised ox tail and pigs trotter fritter

3. Holgate Gruit Expectations (VIC) with South Australia ocean mullet

4. Murray's Dark Knight Porter (NSW) with braised beef cheeks and spaetzle

5. Little Creatures (WA) Day of the Long Shadow with spiced apple and pear strudel
6. Young Henry's (NSW) Black en More with coffee chocolate short bread

The food in general was good but not great - the beers were the best overall thing about the evening. My memory might be a little hazy (ahem), but I think my two favourites were Stone & Wood Jasper Ale and the Murray's Dark Knight Porter (on its own, without food).

alm + beer + mtw's glasses

Towards the end

I hesitate to ever complain about being served too generously, but in the end, it was too much beer, and we pushed half-full glasses away! Anyway, it was a fun night.