At the back of my perennial garden is a special garden space that really belongs to Tom. This is where his hops grow -- with the bines growing up twine that reaches to the roof of our garage where they can then expand out sideways. Hops grow fast. Really fast. The shoots come out of the ground pretty early in the spring, too. You're only supposed to let a few of the shoots grow on each plant in order for them to be the most productive. We learned last year that the young hop shoots are edible and are sometimes called "poor man's asparagus".  That said, I also read recently that hop shoots are the most expensive vegetable in the world to buy. Perhaps because you only have a few days a year to harvest them before they get too large. Anyways, I never did anything with ours last year, but I wanted to try cooking them this year. Many people recommend sauteing them like you would asparagus. Then I found a couple of recipes for pickled hop shoots. Now, pickling isn't normally my thing, but for some reason, I wanted to try this. I found this recipe that I adapted mine off of.

When we first moved into our house 5 years ago, I noticed that we had a crabapple tree in our side yard. Some years it has bloomed beautifully and produced a good amount of apples; other years, it hasn't done much. The deer frequently come up to munch on the dropped apples or eat them right off the tree (like last winter when there were somehow still apples on the tree in February??) We trimmed back a bunch of the branches last year and the apples came in full force this year. Tom and I had discussed doing something with them rather than letting them go to waste, but crabapples are quite sour. Tom had though about making a hard sour cider out of them; looking up crabapple recipes was still on my to-do list. A friend was over recently and asked about the tree. She said she had a recipe for a crabapple cobbler -- so I decided, why not try it?  We picked a few of the better looking apples and started chopping them up. After taste testing a few, I came to a shocking conclusion: these were not crabapples after all -- they were real, regular, sweet apples! Although, I still don't know what variety they are...

It just so happened that the same weekend we planned a baby shower for my sister-in-law, there was a Belgian Beer Festival going on at Ashley's -- a favorite hangout of my brother's. He was able to participate in the festivities all week, but Tom and I were at least able to join in for part of the weekend. They had numerous events and special menus -- beyond the seemingly never ending list of Belgian Beers on tap. It was really quite an impressive production.

Last year, we discovered the BrewSki festival at Boyne Highlands -- which happens to be right around the corner from our family cabin in Harbor Springs, Michigan.  We went up north this past weekend so that we could attend BrewSki and had a good time with my brother and his wife, along with a couple friends.  I must say that I was beer-ed out by the end of the weekend.  I think these things are more fun when you actually like beer.  I know, I know...it's blasphemous to attend a beer festival and write a beer blog when you don't like beer.  All I can say is: I'm sorry, and I AM learning to at least appreciate beer, even if it's not something I want to be drinking...

Okay, so this isn't actually a stop on our brew tour, but it's something I have to share.  Last year, Tom attempted to brew his own beer for the first time.  He enjoyed the process and actually ended up making three different batches.  I think the first batch may be all gone now, but he still has some left from batch #2 and batch #3.  He recently gave a name to batch #2, stemming from the fact that it sat around in our basement for over a year -- after getting one bad bottle from that batch, Tom wasn't sure he really wanted to drink the rest of it.  And, thus it earned the name "Basement Creeper."  He now claims that only some of the bottles were affected and the beer is good for drinking!

I liked the name so much that I decided it needed it's own label design.  So, I made one:

Be careful going down those stairs!

The Basement Creeper is a Belgian Strong Ale, which I should probably add to the label, but I was just having fun with the design!

I couldn't stop there, of course.  Tom had said a while back that his beers were "Thom Bomb" brews, so I decided he also needed a logo for his home "brewery":

And, yes, that's a hop turned into a bomb

Finally, I made a design for his batch #3 beer -- a wheat beer, which he named "Barley Popp"

click here to read the back-story on our Brew Tour!

Tom and I made our second stop on our Brew Tour this past Sunday, on our way up to Montague where we were meeting some friends at a cabin for New Year's.  We were going to make a pit stop in Spring Lake at the Old Boys' Brew House, but we missed our turn.  Instead of turning around, we opted to keep going into Grand Haven to check out Odd Side Ales -- we figured we might as well save the other place for a time when we wanted some food to go with the beer, since Odd Side Ales didn't seem to have a food menu, and we were not yet hungry for dinner.  Little did I know, however, that our side trip to the brewery was really just a ruse.  That's right.  The only reason Tom suggested stopping by one of the breweries was to keep us away from the cabin a little longer while, unbeknownst to me, our friends were getting ENGAGED!  A proposal's not the sort of thing you want to rush, so Tom was in on the deal and just trying to buy some extra time for his friend.

Needless to say, it was a fun New Year's "weekend", and Odd Side Ales turned out to be a great place to start.  The atmosphere very much reminded me of a coffee shop, with multiple styles of tables, chairs and couches; eclectic light fixtures; a cabinet full of old games (including Guess Who? -- unfortunately, somebody else was playing it!); and, yes, ceramic mugs hung on the wall.  While not a "coffee person" per se, I do drink a lot more coffee than I do beer and have spent significantly more time in coffee shops than breweries, so the feel of this place was very familiar to me, and right up my alley.  I told Tom that if I owned a brewery, it would be much like this place.  I might skip the dart boards, though...somehow beer and darts don't seem like a good combination...

Tom ordered a sampler flight of six different beers.  They had lots to choose from here, and some very unique sounding options.  The ones he ended up choosing were as follows, with Tom's tasting notes included:

1. Albino Stout (he tried to get the Herbie Peppertop, but they were out) -- hoppy, light stout
2. Citra Pale Ale -- hoppy; citrus up front
3. Java Mint Stout -- smells like mint; mint taste throughout
4. Fat Bottom IPA -- bitter up front; smooth out back
5. Jackalope Amber -- hoppy amber
6. American Brown -- balanced notes of porter flavors

I'm not sure that Tom had a favorite among these.  The Java Mint Stout was certainly the most unique, and seemed apropos for the theme of the place.  It really did taste as much like a coffee drink as it did a beer.  The Jackalope Amber was hoppier than expected -- though we decided that the "Jackalope" should have been indicative of that!  I think the Fat Bottom IPA was the smoothest IPA I've tasted to date -- not that that tells you much.  But usually an IPA leaves me with bitter notes on the end.  As Tom put in his notes, this one really smoothed out.  

All in all, I give this place two thumbs up.  I'd like to come back in the summertime after a day at the beach or something.  And next time, I want to play Guess Who?!

click here to read the back-story on our Brew Tour!

Today, we made our first stop in our West Michigan Brew Tour.  It was already getting late on a Friday evening, so we decided to go someplace close to home.  The Mitten Brewing Co. is a small place off of Leonard St. in Grand Rapids, with a baseball (mitt) theme.  It was pretty crowded, but I suppose that should be expected on a Friday night.  There were no seats when we first arrived, but I stalked some people as they left the bar and we swooped right in.  Tom ordered a sampler flight of the four beers they had available today:






Eighty-Four (Double IPA) - 8.%
Pale Wheat - 4.5%
Peanuts & Cracker Jack Porter - 6.4%
Hefeweizen - 5.1%





Of those four, Tom's favorite (and probably mine, too) was the Peanuts & Cracker Jack Porter.  With a taste redolent of the ballpark, this porter really did have a good peanut flavor to it.  It was different, unique, and apropos for the establishment.  The least favorite for both of us was the Hefeweizen.  At first we couldn't identify the strange taste this had to it. We finally realized that we were picking up notes of banana.  Weird.  It was unfiltered and cloudy with a taste neither bitter nor sweet.  Apparently Tom doesn't care for the high-yeast beers in general, though.

We also ordered a Sweet & Spicy pizza, made with a habanero sauce.  It was very good, but definitely had some kick to it!  Total bill came to under $20 -- that beer flight was only 4 bucks!  Good deal, indeed.