May Zombies

After taking about a month off since our last blog, we are back with new food and new beers. This week's date night began at El Bait Shop (as many of our date nights have over the course of the last 22 months). The lady ordered one of her summertime favorites, a Shiner Ruby Redbird and I decided to try something new, a Rogue Good Chit Pilsner. While she enjoyed hers, I tried to figure out what the brewer dropped into mine. A dirty sock perhaps? Rogue makes some great beers but this one wasn't one of them. Next the lady ordered a Bell's Two Hearted Ale, another great choice. I moved onto a Breckenridge SummerBright Ale and took strike two. Beer Advocate gives it a C and I agree. Not a good beer. It was time to give up the disappointing new beers and move on to an old and trusted favorite so we both went with a Bell's Oberon and headed out to eat. Our plan was to hit Capital Pub and Hot Dog in East Village to use our Groupon but we somehow ended up at Zombie Burger + Drink Lab instead. This was our second visit to Zombie Burger. The first time the food was wonderful but the crowd was young and loud and we felt like we were WAY old. This time the crowd was sparse and we were able to sit at the bar. Zombie Burger has a great beer selection of both bottle and tap beer. We both went with a Goose Island Fleur draft. Delicious beer! We ended up ordering a Trailer Trash Chickenburger and a Walking Ched double tap zombie burger with fried mac and cheese as the buns. If that didn't clog our arteries enough, we got a side of garlic bacon + blue cheese fries. Now it's time to hit the treadmill and run 28 miles to burn it all off.

Thanking our Forefathers for our Freedom and their Beer Recipes

75th Street Brewery-KC

Brat and Cheese Pretzel-Flying Saucer-KC

Now that we are back from our adventures, we thought we would do a second blog this week to mention some of the great food and beer we tried but didn't mention the last round. To save a little money on airline tickets, we flew out of Kansas City.  KC also is home to a great little brewpub we had heard about and were eager to try. We programmed our GPS (codename Sally) and found 75th Street Brewery without any problem (hunh, it was on 75th Street...). We ordered a pound of Belgian style mussels and some garlic pub fries and washed it all down with a Possum Trot brown ale and a Good Hope IPA, and we split a Royal Raspberry wheat for dessert. We left with a new growler for the collection filled with the Good Hope IPA.  We learn so much from bartenders and the guy at 75th Street recommended we try out McCoy's Public House (aka brewery) near the KC Plaza and Westport areas.  It took a little work (i.e. we had to ask directions...twice.), but we finally found it.  Clearly, it is a favorite spot for the locals because the patio was packed at 3:00 ish in the afternoon and they had some good beer on tap.  Finally, we headed north to the Power and Light district to a place called the Flying Saucer. With 75 beers on tap, it still paled in comparison to our beloved El Bait Shop with 105 tappers but still respectable. We each ordered a brew then a sampler of ciders (even we get tired of beer), and brat and cheese pretzel (also recommended by the bartender at 75th Street Brewery) and enjoyed a warm spring evening on their patio with some tasty libations.

Honey's.  Notice the Pella Windows going in next door

Yum!

On the last day of our Philly vacation (well, Steph was working), we hit the subway and headed north to visit an eclectic little restaurant called Honey's Sit 'n Eat. It bills itself as "some of the best Southern Jewish food you will ever taste". Once we saw bacon and sausage mentioned on a menu of a "Jewish" restuarant, we this became a 'must' stop for us. The restaurant is located in a little artistic community on the edge of a pretty dicey Philly neighborhood (although we were comforted by the fact the condo next door was installing Pella windows), but it was worth the stop. We devoured banana and pecan french toast and enfrigolatas (egg, choizo sausage, sour cream cheese, doused in black bean puree), all washed down with some strong black coffee.


We next walked six blocks to the taproom of Yard's Brewing Company located near the banks of the Delaware River. Yard's is a fairly large brewery and their beers are available all over Philly, but we really wanted to visit their taproom. It did not disappoint. We ended up spending almost three hours sampling all of their beers and chatting with the bartender. By far the most interesting beer brewed by Yard's is their Poor Richard Tavern Spruce which was originally  brewed with spruce needles during the 1770's because hops and barley were not available in New England. It had a distinctive pine flavor but was surprisingly refreshing. Yard's also offers several other beers brewed with recipes from revolutionary times. We downed a bowl of their bison chili (made bison fed expended grains from the brewery), grabbed another growler filled with the Brawler Ale for the collection and hopped the subway back to our hotel.

On our way back home from KC, we made a surprise stop at the Madison County Winery located 4 miles west of Interstate 35 in Madison County, Iowa. Madison County Winery is also the home to Twisted Vine Brewery (you knew there had to be a beer angle here, didn't you). We met the owner of the winery Doug Bakker. He was friendly and helpful even as our interests drifted from wine to beer. The Twisted Vine Brewery is a very small brewery run by three gentlemen who love homebrewing but didn't want the hassle and expense of opening a brewpub. The winery offered a spot because Mr. Bakker found while many women love wine, their husbands love beer. By offering both, he could get both women and men to the winery and all were happy.  Twisted Vine has six beers on tap and we sampled each of them. All were good but the Scottish ale was our favorite. So true to form, we purchased a growler of it, hence adding a third new growler to the growing collection, and in this case, a mini-growler which made someone VERY happy.  It should be noted the male half of this duo collects beer growlers and is happy to report he is up to 27 growlers and now........ one mini-growler.

Growler collection score!

Philadelphia Freedom

One of the joys of a vacation in another part of the country is the ability to try beers not available in the Midwest. Philadelphia is a first time stop for both of us and neither of us really knew what to expect. What is obvious is that Philly is a seriously large city on par with Chicago and much larger than other cities we have visited like Seattle or St Louis. It's also an old historic city which has forced us to each reach back to history class from our elementary school days and remind ourselves that Philly was once the original capitol of the early United States before it was moved to Washington DC. It's the city of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin. It's so different than growing up the Midwest where our history started about 1840 and basically involved homesteading farmland (yawn).

Phenomenal Philly Cheese Steak

But enough of history. This is a food and beer blog so on to the food and beer we go. One of the most important foods we wanted to try was an authentic Philly cheese steak sandwich. We have traveled enough to know the secret to finding the best foods is befriending a cool bartender and asking them. True to form, we found a cool Irish bar just a few blocks from our hotel called Moriarty's Pub. While quaffing $3 Yuengling lagers, we found what we were looking for in bartender Josephine. She said the best spot for cheese steaks in Philly was at Jim's Steaks. Wearrived at Jim's at 1:30 on Sunday afternoon and saw the line out the door and around the corner and while some would scowl at seeing such a line, we took this as indication we had found the best cheese steaks in town. Who knew a sandwich with basic canned cheese whiz and beef could be so incredibly good.  Two thumbs up for sure!

Bradley Yoder headed to the Amish Market

Another pleasant Philly surprise is the Reading Terminal Market which is located literally across the street from our hotel. Vendors serve up authentic Amish food from Lancaster County, fresh fish and seafood, fresh meat and sausages, baked goodies, flowers, vegetables and fruits.... it has it all. It reminded us of the Pike Street Market we fell in love with in Seattle last year. And of course, there is a little bar called Molly Malloy's who serves mostly regional craft beers from 22 tappers. We have tasted beers from Yuengling (which is ubiquitous here in PA but unavailable in the Midwest), Victory, Yard's, Copper Creek, Philadelphia Brewing.....just to name a few. Last evening we visited a highly acclaimed Belgian beer bar called Monk's Cafe and tried some tasty but rather expensive beers. We both had a Pliney the Elder double IPA from Russian River Brewing. This brew wins awards everywhere it goes, and while we agreed it was good, we both prefer Hopslam from our old friends at Bell's Brewing in Kalamazoo. We also finally hit our first actual brewery since arriving in PA. Nodding Head Brewery is a small brew pub located about 8 blocks from our hotel. The beer was average and the service was below average so we left a $1 tip for two beers and strolled onward just a couple blocks, and stumbled upon the Boilermaker Restaurant which had 40 beers on tap and no lights...just candles everywhere.  Very cool.  Now the beer quest continues.......

Who Doesn't Love Free Beer?

If there is one thing we love, it's free stuff. So this week we scored big. Our first stop this week was at Old Chicago where we held a little piece of paper giving us a free appetizer for simply answering a survey. It was also the night where you buy two beers and get one free. To make that deal even better, our waitress messed up and brought both of us another beer after our first one, since our plan was to share the free beer because #1) we are responsible drinkers and #2) because we are cheap.  Truth be known, though, #2 is actually #1 and #1 isn't always true. She apologized for messing up (yeah, shame on her--insert shaming finger wag here) and said we could have both for free. Our bill for an appetizer and four good craft beers: $9.75.  Win!  Of course we tipped her well and headed out for Costco, our new favorite date night stop, where we found that with our membership we can get a brand spanking new black convertible Camero for a discount.  'Nuff said.  Probably a separate blog topic in itself.

Our Rock Bottom grub and free beer.

We ended the evening at Rock Bottom for one last chance at the Fire Chief Ale before it leaves April 4. We each ordered a Fire Chief and decided to split a chicken sandwich. Then low and behold, the waitress set before us another Fire Chief ale. She explained she had made a mistake and had poured one too many. Rather than pouring it out, she said she thought we would enjoy it. Fantastic, since the bar was actually kind of full and she picked us!  We smiled and made a toast to the date gods and savored our last beer of the night. And left another nice tip, of course.

Our new beer of the week was a Lucky Bucket Lager from Lucky Bucket Brewing in La Vista, Nebraska. We honestly both thought Lucky Bucket was located in Iowa but were wrong [editor's note--for the record the "she" in this relationship suggested Nebraska during said discussion.  Just sayin']. Nevertheless, it was a nice hearty lager that went down smooth and easy.

Going to Court!

With temperatures in the upper 70's, we knew some patios would be open at our favorite spots in Des Moines, so we headed downtown this week. Even though we arrived pretty early, Court Avenue was already buzzing with lots of folks that had the same idea as us (and here we thought we would be the only ones...DOH!). The patio was overflowing with people at El Bait Shop but they have a large sliding garage-style door that they open up on nice days, so we were able to procur a spot at the bar right next to the open door with the warm sun on our backs. Ahhhh...

We started off with a Scrimshaw Pilsner from North Coast Brewing in Ft. Bragg, CA. and a Dig Pale Ale from New Belgium Brewing in Ft. Collins, CO.  We never used to be huge New Belgium fans since we like to stay with smaller breweries, but NB is making some really good beers these days and their Lips of Faith series is pretty impressive.  Anyway, both are lighter spring/summer beers that tasted wonderful, and if you are a newbie craft beer drinker, the Scrimshaw is a great choice; if you are a veteran craft beer drinker, Scrimshaw is a great choice too!  When it came time to choose beer #2, we asked for a recommendation from our favorite bartender at El Bait,  who informed us there was still a wee bit of Hopslam left . Hopslam Ale is a double IPA from Bell's Brewing in Kalamazoo, MI that earns very high marks and has become one of our seasonal favorites. It is served in a 10 oz glass, but packs a wonderfully big wheeee!

With the sun setting and a two-beer buzz, we decided it was time to eat so we found a great table in the patio area at Court Avenue Restaurant & Brewing Company. It was so enjoyable to sit outside in mid-March and watch the hustle and bustle of downtown DM while eating a couple delicious sandwiches and washing them down with a couple of their craft beers.  An Infatuation for Steph (Belgium style dubbel brown ale infused with raspberries) and Brad had a Belgian IPA the name of which is elusive right now.  



In keeping with the St. Patty's Day theme, our new beers of the week were Irish red ales. The first one was an O'Hara's Irish Red made by Carlow Brewing in Carlow, Ireland. The second was a Saranac Irish Red brewed by Saranac Brewing in Utica, NY.   Both were delicious.

Hitting Rock Bottom

Two mugs of Fire Chief Ale, please!

Since Team Vanstra was established almost 2 years ago, Rock Bottom in WDM has become one of our favorite watering holes on the west side of the metro (actually, it's our only watering hole west of the metro).  It is one of a chain of Rock Bottom brewpubs that are scattered across the country that are all owned by a large corporation that also owns Old Chicago (love their beer tours) and Gordon Biersch Brewery and Restaurants which we visited in Seattle in 2010. Normally we shy away from the corporate chains and try to support local businesses but Rock Bottom gives their brewmasters a lot of latittude in what beers to brew so you can hit one in Colorado or Illinois and they will all have different beers on tap. We appreciate this diversity. We also love the Rock Bottom Mug Club of which we are both members.

2 a.m. Burger.  Beef, hashbrowns, bacon, egg and cheese.

Other breweries have mug clubs but they charge an annual fee and don't give out free stuff like Rock Bottom. The Rock Bottom Mug Club is free to join and if you know us, you know we LOVE getting FREE stuff like hats and pint glasses. March is also the annual release of one of our favorite seasonals at Rock Bottom, the Fire Chief Ale. The Fire Chief Ale is an auburn-colored ale that is not too malty and not too hoppy.   A perfect beer for this time of year when our tastes start turning from the darker and heavier beers of winter. A portion of the profits from the Fire Chief Ale are given to local fire departments so that makes it even more cool. It will be on tap until April 4. Give it a try with a 2 a.m. Burger. which is half-price on Wednesdays!

Our new beer of the week is not really a beer at all. We recently tried a bottle of Oliver Bean Blossom Hard Cider. It is made by Oliver Cider Works which is located in Indiana and is owned by Oliver Winery which makes some very tasty wines as well. We have tried other hard ciders from places like Sutliff Cider Company out of Lisbon, IA and Vander Mill Cider from Grand Haven, MI and this one ranked right up there with the best we have ever had. And at 8% ABV, it also packed a punch. And because even Team Vanstra occasionally needs to take a break from beer.

Leap Year, Donuts and Lips of Faith

Team Vanstra decided to celebrate Leap Day and survival of another dreaded February on Wednesday by embarking on one of our occasional but extremely enjoyable all day adventures. We began the day by caffeinating ourselves at Saints Rest Coffee House in Grinnell with giant lattes. Then it was off to the Bass Pro Shop in Ankeny where a certain male member of the team was going to buy a new fly rod but became embroiled in indecision and ended up buying two shirts instead.  We also spent an unreasonable amount of time looking at the impressive hot sauce selection at Bass Pro.  If you love hot sauce, then you might want to stop in and check it out, but frankly any sauce named 'Fire in the Hole!' or 'Camo Ammo'or 'Flaming Bass' ... well, they just don't sound that appetizing.

Donuts and beer-Breakfast of Champions

But, we did manage to work up a thirst and a bit of hunger, so we made an inaugural visit to Uncle Buck's, the restaurant/bowling alley at Bass Pro where we enjoyed a Sam Adams Boston Lager and an order of steaming hot donut holes with raspberry jam.  We fondly referred to this meal as the breakfast of champions.

Then with a deep breath, mutual nod and a fist bump we headed toward...the West West Des Moines Jordan Creek area so we could check out Costco.  Bargains are bargains when you are Dutch, even if it means venturing into the abyss of the Jordan Creek area. Since neither of us were members (and the membership costs money), we decided to check out the store first. It's mindboggling how much stuff you can get at Costco that I've never seen anywhere else. Since we both suffer from situational ADHD, we walked around the store for an incredibly long time like two little kids in a huge toy and candy store saying things like "holy cow, look at this" and "OMG, I need one of those" until reason and sanity returned. We bought a membership and managed to get out without inflicting too much damage to our bank accounts, and look forward to heading back again in the spring.

Royal Mile

We then made a quick stop at Trader Joe's for some cheese and Two Buck Chuck wine and then headed downtown to our beloved El Bait Shop (which just won the City View prize for Best Bar and Best Beer Selection in DM) and found our favorite spot at the bar. We tried a new IPA from Hinterland Brewing in Green Bay, WI as well as several of our old favorites, such as the Bell's Two Hearted Ale. We finished off our day by walking to The Royal Mile (recently voted best downtown bar) and sharing an order of Shepard's Pie and Fish & Chips and admiring their impressive scotch collection (115 single malt scotches to be exact!).  We don't drink scotch but is was still impressive.  Planning now begins on our next all day adventure which will most likely be toward the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area.

Our new beer of the week that we recently tried is from the Lips of Faith series of beers brewed by New Belgium Brewing in Ft. Collins, CO. This particular beer was called Super Cru and was brewed with Asian pear juice giving it a different but pleasant flavor. And at 10% ABV, we wisely choose to just share one bottle...actually a bomber, and only got kicked out of one state park doing it.