Worldwide Washington Wine Tasting

This Thursday, you will have the opportunity to take part in a worldwide virtual wine tasting celebrating Washington wine. The event is WAWine; it is being organized by Sean Sullivan of the WA Wine Report and Josh Wade of drinknectar.com,and is being sponsored by Washington Tasting Room Magazine.

This will be the world's largest tasting of Washington wine. Participation is easier than you can possibly imagine. Pick up any bottle of Washington wine and you can join the conversation on Twitter, using the hashtag #WAWine, or at Facebook; and if you live nearby, you can taste at one of the participating wineries.

Washington makes some great wines, and what better way to celebrate that fact than by chatting about them with fellow wine lovers from the comfort of your couch and your PJs? Wine and PJs is pretty much my ideal evening. The event will run from 5:00-8:00 pm PT on Thursday, June 3rd. I will be participating under @ankerhauspub. Look forward to meeting you there!

America's Next Top Beer

Asylum.com is asking for your help to determine the winner in their America's Next Top Beer contest. Over the past month, they have sampled and selected 12 craft brews to be included in the final judging, and are asking readers to vote for the winner.

The finalists are:
AleSmith Anvil ESB Ale
Alpha King
B.O.R.I.S. the Crusher Oatmeal-Imperial Stout
Bell's Two-Hearted Ale
Brooklyn Lager
Cigar City Brewing Jai Alai IPA
Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
Lagunitas Brewing's IPA
New Belgium Brewing's Fat Tire Amber
Ommegang Abbey Ale
Stone Pale Ale
Surly Brewing Co.'s Furious

You can vote for your favorite here.

Additionally, you can register to win a 12-month membership to the Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club. To enter, you just have to leave a comment on any of Asylum's America's Next Top Beer Posts through May 27th. These posts include a series of articles highlighting each finalist and how Asylum's panel of judges rated it. The winner will be selected at random on June 1st.

Three Floyds Dark Lord - A Guest Post

Here's a guest post from one of our trusted brethren in Illinois - read and salivate. READ AND SALIVATE!

---

Ankerhaus Roving Reporter – Dark Lord

This past weekend a friend from out of town requested a night’s quarter in our guest bedroom. We love having friends stay over to share a few beers and a few laughs, but this visit turned out to be extra special. As a “thank you”, our guest brought with him a bottle of Three Floyds Dark Lord.

For the uninitiated, let me explain. Once a year, at the Three Floyds brewery in Munster, IN they host Dark Lord Day. It’s a public event with many great beers on tap, but the real draw is Dark Lord itself. “A demonic Russian Style Imperial Stout, brewed with Intelligensia coffee, Mexican vanilla, and Indian sugar this beer defies description.” At 13% ABV (15% this year), it’s what I like to call a sip’n beer and let me tell you, it’s amazing.

Of course, showing up to Dark Lord Day isn’t nearly enough. In order to buy just four (4!) bottles, you have to be one of the lucky few that managed to get a golden ticket. This year, with the popularity of Dark Lord increasing, golden ticket sales were a real nightmare. Hopefully Three Floyds will figure out a way to resolve that issue with the obviously preferred solution being: brew more!

Great beer and good friends come from all over the world. Hopefully you’ll be at the Ankerhaus when I bring a bottle or two of Dark Lord for a tasting.

-Dop

---

Peaks Brewpub in Port Angeles

I want to bring your attention today to a place worth visiting: the Peaks Brewpub in Port Angeles. We stopped in the other day while making an Olympic Peninsula pilgrimage, and were so struck that we feel the need to spread the good word.

And that good word is Porter.

Ed and Wanda Smith have been operating the Peaks since 1999 (brewing original drafts since 2005), serving up bottles and chilled glasses alongside a food menu featuring Ed's "killer chili". The quotation marks are meant to assure you that's what Ed likes it to be called, not to question the authenticity of its murderous intent. It's a true killer, really the Patrick Bateman of chilis: it's cold-blooded and without mercy, but has impeccable taste. Now that I've given you that liquid gold metaphor, I challenge you to make the journey and eat a bowl without hearing Sussudio in your head, or attempting to feed kittens to the ATM found near the door.

No, seriously. I dare you.

But we were talking about porter, right?

I'm a fan of dark beers, especially stouts and porters. If there's one drawback to these black brews, it's what I very Rowlingly call Portermouth: the sour, bitter aftertaste that sticks around long after you've set the pint glass down. Beer enthusiasts might imply that portermouth is some bittersweet facet of the charm of a good dark beer - a feature and not a flaw. They've never had Ed's Mt. Pleasant Porter.

PORTERMOUTH!!!

Using a secret recipe (some elements of which he shared with me, and which I won't repeat here out of respect for a master craftsman and accomplished chili murderer), Ed has managed to produce a rich, roasty, malty porter with none - read that again, none of the winceworthy portermouth aftertaste that would normally follow a brew this hearty. It starts delicious, and ends just as tasty. It's decadence without consequence, and that affront to conventional wisdom alone makes it worth the drive out along the 101.

If you're reading this blog from the Pacific Northwest, get in your car and go. The scenery is beautiful this time of year, and you can bring home some growlers to prolong the magic. If you're reading from parts further away, your options seem to be hopping on a plane or cradling your head in your hands and lamenting. I know which one I'd select for you.

Beer Camp!

Remember Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Remember watching it when you were a kid and wishing that you could find a Golden Ticket and be magically whisked a way for a day to that crazy man's candy kingdom? Well, Sierra Nevada is offering you the opportunity to experience your childhood dreams - only with way less chocolate and way more beer (because now that you're an adult, you realize that drinking a river of chocolate like Augustus Gloop only makes you puke).

Sierra Nevada is holding a contest to determine who will be visiting their Beer Camp in September. The lucky winners will get to spend 2 days at the Sierra Nevada Brewery touring the facility, meeting the staff, playing with the brewery's 12-seater bicycle, AND (the best part) serving as honorary Brewmasters. Not only will the winners get a first-hand look at the brewing process, they will also get to plan and brew their own beer in the style of their choosing - anything goes.

To enter, they are asking for creative submissions demonstrating why you want to come to Beer Camp. It can be an essay, a short film, an interpretive dance - whatever. The entries will be judged on creativity and dedication, so the more out there you make it, the better your chances will probably be. Check out the Beer Camp website for additional details and entry information.

What We're Drinking

Before we get started: This is the first in a series of periodic posts in which we will review and discuss the various wines and beers that we have been drinking. We hope that it will be a way for you to get to know a little more about our tastes and styles, and possibly discover some new bottles that you never knew were out there, or just hadn't bothered to try. If you have thoughts about a particular selection, please share them; we would welcome a discussion. If you are trying to become more knowledgeable about beer or wine, we will hopefully be able to give you some recommendations and give you a good jumping off point for your explorations.

So let's get down to business - The Charles Smith 2009 Kung Fu Girl Riesling.

Sean Sullivan of the WA Wine Report recently held a Virtual Tasting that focused on this bottle. I was feeding my inner Browncoat with a screening of Serenity at the Metro that evening, so I was unfortunately unable to participate (though I am looking forward to the upcoming tasting). Here's my 2 cents now though, for what it's worth.

Charles Smith is a rock star Washington winemaker, who has become known for his K Vinters and Magnificent Wine Company labels as well as his laid-back, straight-forward approach to winemaking (quoth his website: "It's just booze - drink it!"). He has garnered a great deal of attention in the past year by winning multiple awards from various publications, including Food & Wine Magazine's Winemaker of the Year.

Kung Fu Girl is part of the Charles Smith Wines "Modernist Project." This label was founded on the current consumer trend of buying wines for immediate consumption. Therefore, Smith's goal is to produce affordable yet elegant wines that are full of flavor and immediately drinkable.

Kung Fu Girl sports a pale straw color and aromas of citrus and apples. The citrus continues upon tasting, giving the wine a very crisp, sharp flavor that incorporates hints of lime. It has a bit of a bite-y, acidic finish, but this is tempered by pairing it with food (I was gorging on our exquisite steamed chicken dumplings with spicy Thai peanut sauce; it was an excellent combination). I like Rieslings that lean toward the lighter side, favoring crispness over an overly-sweet approach, and this wine did that fairly well. It's not my fave, but it is decent, and a great value for the price (retailing at about $12).

American Craft Beer Week

May 17th-23rd is American Craft Beer Week. This celebration of everything craft-beer-related has been growing over the years, with various cities (including Seattle) opting to schedule their own regional beer celebrations to coincide with it. A list of city-by-city events can be found on the American Craft Beer Week Events page.

Seattle-ites should check out the schedule for Seattle Beer Week, which is already in progress.

We would also like to congratulate our friends in Chicago for being able to take part in the first annual Chicago Craft Beer Week. It's great to see this celebration growing, with more and more people giving the love up to craft brews and the hard-working people behind them. Enjoy it!