Thanksgiving is only a couple days away whether you believe it or not...a day to eat until the top button of your pants is struggling for its life. And with good food comes good drink, so the question is: what should you drink on this year's turkey day?
I don't have anything against wine, but I also don't have much to tell you about it either...so I won't.
Personally (and I'm happy to say that more and more people agree), I think pairing beer with food is more fun, especially with fall cuisine. Plus, if you
really want to be traditional, you should know that the pilgrims had beer with their Thanskgiving meal. Your choice of pumpkin beers and Oktoberfests can certainly work well on Thursday, but here are a few other options...
For something drinkable, a good brown ale can work well. A couple of the better known brown ales include Newcastle, Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams. If you want something a bit more unique, however, you can try Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale, Abita Turbo Dog, Brooklyn Brown, Duck-Rabbit Brown or Bell's Best Brown Ale. One of my personal favorites, like Newcastle, comes from across the pond: Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale.
For something a bit more on the light side, lambics can give you a refreshing fruity taste with your meal. Fruit lambics come in flavors such as apple and raspberry, krieks have a sour cherry taste and if you're big on sour beers, you should pick up a gueuze if you can find it.
More specifically, however, I recently had a couple beers that I think would work well. The first is from Allagash, a brewery from Maine that makes some solid, unique Belgian-style beers. Called
"Fluxus," a Latin word that roughly translates to continuous flow, Allagash makes this beer different every year. The '09 batch is a saison style, but the unique kicker is that it's made with sweet potatoes and black pepper. Plus, not only is it a great tasting beer but Allagash has agreed to donate $1 per bottle sold to the Allagash Pediatric Nurses Scholarship at the Maine Medical Center. So technically...you could save the life of a child by drinking this beer.
Another beer I recently had that's a bit more on the sweeter side comes from the mean streets of Orange County, CA from another great brewery aptly called
"The Bruery." The Bruery brews similar types of beer as Allagash and one of their fall seasonals called "Autumn Maple" is a great rival to the popular pumpkin beers. It's brewed with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla, molasses, maple syrup and a boatload of yams. In fact, they use 17 lbs of yams per barrel.
So what will I be drinking on Thursday? For the most part, I decided on some hard cider! An underrated beverage in this country, hard cider is great for the fall. I haven't tried many different kinds, but I picked up some from Harpoon and Boston Beer Co. and look forward to enjoying them this Thursday on the best holiday of the year.
Feel free to let me know what
you'll be drinking for the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
There's a new show on the Fine Living Network (FLN), the new home network of Zane Lamprey's Three Sheets: Bartender Wars. It's a short and sweet half-hour show on Friday nights (I've been DVRing it) that pits 3 bartenders against each other in various types of challenges. There is always a theme liquor of the night such as cognac, tequila and most recently, even beer!
