Unless you have been traveling, you probably haven’t yet had the chance to sip on BrewDog’s Tactical Nuclear Penguin, which for a few proud months claimed the mantle of being the world’s strongest beer. (See our November post inaugurating its brief reign here, as well this addendum by the Beerspotter). At 32% ABV, Tactical Nuclear Penguin is nothing to sneeze at. And yet,  already the ABV arms race has yielded a new champion.

Behold! German brewery Schorschbräu has produced Schorschbock 40%. This Eisbock clocks in at 39.44% ABV and, for the moment, is the strongest beer money can buy. And, come to think of it, you’ll need a lot of that. The beer sells for about $136 per bottle. But even if you have the cash, don’t get your hopes up. The brewery made just 15 bottles. Smells to us like a cheap stunt to claim the strongest beer title (as the label proudly declares) without actually supplying it to anyone. Does it count? Maybe, but at least BrewDog made enough Tactical Nuclear Penguin to allow people a taste. Unfortunately the behemoth of a “beer” is getting pretty mixed reviews.

Photo courtesy of Schorschbräu

Given the dearth of decent chili options in the area, save for Urban Bar-B-Que’s smokehouse version and the thick, meaty one at Bobby’s Crabcakes, I opted to do something I rarely do: shop the frozen food section at Harris Teeter. I had heard the chain sells Cincinnati’s famous Skyline Chili.

I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that, until I pulled the frozen block from its packaging and popped it into the microwave, I had never before sampled Skyline Chili. I was certain this was not the ideal way to taste one of the country’s signature stews. I was, in fact, prepared for it to suck hard. I had a block of Parmesan cheese and a bottle of Mexican hot sauce at the ready, to cover whatever disgusting flavors I found inside this factory-made hunk of rock-solid meat and pasta.

Read More “Frozen Skyline Chili at Harris Teeter: Better Than You Think” »

You’ll be able to make your own homemade snow cones in a few hours, using only syrup and mother nature’s finest. But poor Boomer kids in the ’70s had to make do with this freaky looking abomination from Hasbro, which turned ice cubes into little rice-like chunks of “snow” for their summer treat.

Urban Bar-B-Que’s David Calkins calls his smokehouse version the Two Step Chili because the ingredients come in pairs, sort of like the Noah’s Ark of stews. Two different kinds of meat (ground chuck, chopped brisket), two styles of beans (pintos, black), and two sources of heat (chipotle, jalapeno).

What Urban’s chili lacks in presentation — my most recent “bowl” was served in a Styrofoam cup with a plastic spoon — it more than makes up in flavor. By Calkins’ own estimation the chili is prepared with about 25 different ingredients, but the most important one, arguably, is the chopped brisket.

Read More “Urban Bar-B-Que Does Chili, Too” »

Last Friday, your humble Y&H servant spent some time compiling a working  list of restaurants planning to brave the winter storm that, at the time, was already dropping a serious load on us. I then promptly went home and didn’t see the inside of a restaurant until….well, last night, when Carrie and I went to our local steakhouse and tied one on at the bar.

We blamed it on cabin fever… that, and Elliott the bartender.

Massive snowfalls might bring out your inner cocooner (or inner drunk), but it brings out my repressed desire to cook, cook, and cook some more. This past weekend, I practiced what I preached (or, more precisely, practiced what I bitched about). I avoided the grocery store and cooked from only the ingredients we had on hand.

I produced this little beauty, made from those Portabellas that I’ve been wringing my hands over for a few weeks now. Carrie then one-upped me the following day by producing this sweet-and-savory omelet made with date-and-hot-pepper-infused duxelles.

Read More “Y&H’s Sno’Overit, Here-We-Go-Again Survival Guide for the Next Storm: Cook at Home!” »

Dry off those snowboots and get ready to head back out there. Although the Brickskeller has postponed their second night of strong ales, there is still plenty to do beerwise in DC this week.

Tonight 21st Amendment founder Nico Freccia will be taking a winter holiday from his San Francisco can brewery to hang out at ChurchKey. Available on draft will be Brew Free or Die IPA, Hell or High Watermelon Wheat, Back in Black Black IPA, Monk’s Blood Belgian Strong Dark Ale, and Golden Doom Belgian-Style Golden Ale, a limited release keg-only beer in 21st Amendment’s “Big Can” Specialty Draft Series.

The Skinny Tuesday Mardi Gras celebration at 1905 has been postponed, but you and your SUV can head out to Hyattsville for Franklin’s “Meet the New Brewer” night. Wednesday you can go back to ChurchKey to taste three Stone beers on cask and meet Stone Brewing Company VP Arlen Arnsten (assuming he can get to DC) or head downtown to Elephant and Castle with your honey for a romantic British beer and chocolate event. More details in our DC Beer Events Calendar below.

Super Bowl is prime beer time, and I was excited for the spread at my gracious friend’s viewing party: chicken-and-steak nacho bar, homemade cookies, and a sixtel of Dale’s Pale Ale. I hadn’t had a beer in five days because of some flu nonsense, and I was ready to get in some, uh, professional research.

But the first thing I drank was cider. Not just any cider, but a cider by Woodchuck, that no-good hawker of apple-scented alcopop that ranks on the list of booze I respect just above Smirnoff Ice and 99 Bananas. They outright lie right there on the label — it’s not a draft if it comes in a bottle! (PS: Its parent company also makes Cider Jack, which tastes like Fruitopia, so don’t think that’s some better alternate brand.) So what possibly could have convinced me to drink this high-school swill?

Read More “My Super Bowl Beer: Cider?” »

Not too long ago, Amber McDonald says she was the kind of aggressive steak eater who would have been an eager participant in Meat Week. But the antitrust lawyer switched to hardcore veganism a “little over a year ago when I read that a study had proven that cows were as intelligent and emotional as dogs. It woke me up. Why love one and eat the other?”

 Then she read last week about Meat Week and had another thought: “I knew that there needed to be an alternative point of view, and the community responded so quickly and with so much enthusiasm that it’s clear they agreed.”

The community, in this case, is the vegetarian/vegan crowd, including D.C. Vegan and Compassion Over Killing, and together they agreed to quickly organize a counter-programming event to Meat Week. It’s called, of course, Meat Free Week. Don’t fear it. McDonald says it’s not designed to brainwash you into vegetarianism.

Read More “Rescheduled Meat Free Week Running Through Feb. 13″ »

Dear Readers,

If your office remains closed, or if you’ve a few free hours in which to help your fellow man, please donate some time in the first half of tomorrow to make deliveries for Food & Friends. The organization serves upwards of 1,400 of the city’s hungry and debilitated individuals and has done yeoman’s work in this year’s snow—at least according to Communications Director Lisa Bandera, who notes in an email that “not one of Food & Friends’ clients struggling with debilitating illness has missed his/her meals, so far, due to the winter storm.”

So, let’s make sure the streak continues. F&F is looking for 11 volunteers at 10 a.m. tomorrow and 33 volunteers for the noon shift. Learn more, and sign up for a shift, at Food & Friends’ Web site.

If you’ve got a four-wheel-drive vehicle, this is your chance to make it count.

Food & Friends is located at 219 Riggs Road NE.  For more information, call 202.841.5347.

After writing about chili, and tasting various versions of it, this past week, I was itchin’ to make my own. And when better to tend to a large pot of chili then with 20 inches of mother nature’s finest outside the door?

The only problem with making chili is that you can’t totally improvise the dish. You must have certain ingredients, you know, like chili peppers and meat. Perhaps tomatoes (don’t start with the tomato-hating, all right?) and onions and cheddar cheese, too.

So I walked the streets like The Omega Man to our local Co-op, where I ran straight into the politically correct buzzsaw. There was no 80-20 ground beef or even a lean chuck cut to be found. (Hell, I couldn’t even get my hands on fresh peppers, so went with the jarred version and powdered cayenne instead.) I settled for a grass-fed organic strip streak and andouille sausage for the proteins, which perhaps is not settling at all. The issue for me was cost. I was not going to shell out a ton of cash for chili meat. So I stocked up on dried kidney beans and veggies instead.

You can see most of the chili ingredients in the photo above, including a couple of peppers from Morou Ouattara’s new spice line. (The alligator peppers, perhaps, weren’t the best fit for the stew, since they had a cooling, pine-needle, Szechwan peppercorn-like quality about them. I used them sparingly.) 

 Once I had the ingredients, it was a pretty simple process:

Read More “Surviving Snowmageddon with Homemade Chili” »