Beverages
Quick Takes III - Five Points Pizza and More
We made an overnight trip to Nashville recently to attend my nephew’s birthday party, so we were able to enjoy an afternoon and evening to ourselves while The Boy got to have fun with his cousin and grandparents. First, we saw Jurassic World, which both my wife and I agreed was far better than we expected to to be based on the more recent installments in the Jurassic series. After walking around the seemingly endless Opry Mills mall, we reviewed the pizza recommendations from my friends on Facebook and decided to try Five Points Pizza, and I’m glad we did.
Several of the reviews mentioned this place is regularly packed, and since this was a Saturday night, we headed over at what we felt was an early time, about 4:30 PM, and still had to wait about 15 minutes for a table to open up. We were seated at a high 2-top near the bar. Normally I offer to wait for the next table since I find perching on a tall chair hurts my knees, but this table was off to the side by itself, whereas all of the other tables were far too close to their neighbors for my comfort, so I made the best of it.
Our server, a young man, was great. He took our drink orders and got us a full order of Garlic Knots. The garlic knots were very good, with or without the marina sauce. Next time I might ask them to skip the marinara and give us just a bit more olive oil.
Five Points has a very large selection of beer on draft, in bottles, and cans, and they also had several varieties of hard cider. I had two bottles - a Crispin Pear and Original Sin Elderberry. Both were very good, and I found the Crispin Pear to be a perfect cooldown drink on this extremely hot day.
For our pizza, we ordered an 18" half and half. Rachael created her how half with pepperoni, meatball, red onions, and green peppers. Our server thought about that for a second and heartily approved. I decided to go with one of the standard pizzas on the printed menu, although I don’t see it on the website, so I’m not sure if it was a limited time special or a new addition. My half had a habanero cream sauce, sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, and bacon. This was NY style pizza and while my wife commented that it may have done better to be taken out of the oven a minute sooner so the crust was less crisp, we both really liked it. Her DIY half was excellent, as I used a slice from it to take a break from the intense heat of the habanero cream sauce on mine. My half was amazing, and while I had to admit it was perhaps not the best choice for a super hot day, I’d order it again in a heartbeat.
I was thrilled with the recommendation for Five Points Pizza, and after we hit a couple of the other pizza spots on our list, I will gladly return.
The Pied Piper Creamery
We asked our server at Five Points Pizza if there was somewhere nearby where we could get some good ice cream and he directed us to The Pied Piper Creamery around the corner and up the street a bit. We walked over and enjoyed some good, if not awesome, ice cream. It’s the best ice cream I’ve had in Nashville, but I wouldn’t pick it over our Knoxville favorite, It’s All So Yummy Cafe. We each got the 4 scoop sampler at Pied Piper. My favorite was the Peanut Butter? I Hardly Knew Her, and my least favorite was the Some Like it Hot, mainly since it was too heavy on the cinnamon and not enough on the cayenne pepper.
I Dream of Weenie
We were stuffed after pizza and ice cream, so I just admired this place from afar. But the thought of a hot dog-selling food truck run out of a VW microbus is too hard to resist, so I’ll be visiting it on a trip to Nashville soon.
Cider Roundup III: New Flavors
I picked up two new varieties of cider last week. One wasn’t completely new so much as it was wrapped in a new label - Woodchuck Fall Harvest. I found it at Kroger. The other was Ace Perry Hard Cider, and I picked up a six pack of it at the Casual Pint. I’ll share my thoughts about both of them in this post.
Woodchuck Fall Harvest
I generally think of Woodchuck as the Budweiser of hard ciders. It’s ubiquitous, and at least in the case of some of its flavors, pretty tasteless. Until Angry Orchard took over the “token cider on tap” market at restaurants and bars, Woodchuck held that spot with Woodchuck Amber. Woodchuck’s seasonal varieties are a bit different, however. I’ve had them all - Summer, Fall, and Winter. Winter is my favorite, but it’s not quite time for that, so I’m having Fall Harvest for now.
The tag line for Fall Harvest reads, “Just Like Apple Pie.” That’s a bit of a stretch, although it does remind me of another alcoholic beverage that really is just like apple pie. Calhoun’s makes a drink called Apple Pie Moonshine, and it tastes exactly like you’d imagine liquid apple pie would. Fall Harvest is reminiscent of apple pie, and that’s good enough for me. It’s sweet with a hint of both cinnamon and nutmeg. It’s fairly weak at just 5% ABV, but I like it all the same.
Ace Perry Hard Cider
I’ve had mixed luck with Ace ciders. As I mentioned in my Alternate Fruits Cider Roundup, I was not impressed with the pineapple cider. I never wrote about it, but I tried and didn’t like Ace Joker cider at all. I had higher hopes for the Ace Perry, but those hopes were mostly dashed when I read that, like the pineapple cider, the “pear” cider is really just apple cider with some pear flavoring. Crispin makes a pear cider that is 100% fermented pear juice, and you can tell the difference. Still, even though Ace Perry may be more like the pomegranate juices that are 99% apple and grape juice, I do like it. It’s sweet, with a light (what else?) pear taste. I wouldn’t want to drink it all the time, especially since the Crispin pear cider is so much better, but Ace is what I found, so Ace is what I’m drinking.
Buying Cider is Disappointingly Unpredictable
Writing this drives home just how frustrating it can be to love good hard cider but hate beer. My friends who drink beer can find a crazy variety of beers wherever they go, especially at local craft beer stores or breweries. I’m lucky to find even one cider on tap, and nine times out of ten that cider will be Angry Orchard. Thanks to Tennessee’s crazy liquor laws, in grocery stores I can still only find ciders below 6% ABV, and I have to go to a liquor store for anything stronger. Even what passes for a well-stocked liquor store only has a handful of ciders. The only store where I can consistently find an awesome selection of ciders is Frugal MacDoogal’s in Nashville, but that’s not exactly a convenient shopping location for me. I’d like to think we will eventually have better and more consistent choices here in Knoxville.
This is post 14 in the #NaBloWriMo #vDM30in30 30 Day Blog Challenge
Cider Roundup II: Alternate Fruits
Most of the hard cider I’ve drunk has been made with just apples. My favorite ciders, or perhaps more accurately, my favorite commercially available ciders, are all just plain apple cider. This roundup is about ciders made from, in whole or in part, fruits other than apple.
RocketScience Brewing BerryCide
The best cider I’ve ever had is one I’ve written about before on this blog. BerryCide is a home-brewed cider produced by my buddy Les and his wife Ann. If you brew your own beer or cider, you can find the recipe for BerryCide on RocketScience Brewing’s blog. While BerryCide’s base is apple, the considerable amount of mixed berries, blueberry pomegranate juice, and brown sugar deliver the real taste bonanza. I bought all of the equipment necessary to build my own kegerator a couple years back just so I could keep a 5 gallon keg of BerryCide or anything else the Ault’s produced on tap in my home. I sincerely wish you were lucky enough to be able to sample this.
Fox Barrel (Now Crispin) Pear Cider
The first store-bought non-apple cider I tried was Fox Barrel, and it remained one of my favorites for a long time. Pear cider, or Perry as it is sometimes called, is pretty sweet, but very good. Fox Barrel isn’t very easy to come by in Knoxville, and I believe I only ever found it at Earth Fare grocery stores. If you’ve never tried pear cider, you should give it a try under its new label, Crispin.
Ace Pineapple Cider
I found this cider at The Casual Pint downtown just a week or so ago after a local LOPSA meeting. A big group of system administrators get together each month for a technical talk and discussion for a couple hours, then adjourn for beers, or in my case ciders, at The Casual Pint. If you’re looking for some nerd fun on the first Tuesday of each month, you should come.
I can’t say I was super impressed with this cider. It was OK, and I’m certainly glad I tried it, but I wouldn’t buy it again. It tasted very faintly of pineapple, as it was composed primarily of apple cider. I would have preferred a stronger pineapple flavor. I would recommend buying this as a single if possible, or as part of a mixed 6 pack to see if you really like it.
Cider Roundup I
I like hard cider. I like it a lot, and I try every new brand and variant I comes across, always hoping to find one that’s better than my favorites. This is a roundup of my favorite ciders.
First, though, I figured I’d address a question I get sometimes - why cider and not beer, or do I also like beer? No, I really don’t like beer, and it isn’t because I haven’t tried the beer you like, I promise. When I was stationed at DLI in Monterey, California, I had numerous fellow soldiers make it their mission to introduce me to the beer they just new I’d like. Of all the various American and especially international beers they made me try, I only ever found one I could tolerate, and only just - Guinness, and really only with pizza. I just never acquired a taste for beer, whereas I liked hard cider from the start. I also like whiskey, particularly Irish Whiskey, so there’s that.
When I think of my favorite ciders, I have to qualify them as favorite from a tap or favorite from a bottle. I’ve never tried to look into the science side of why cider from a tap tastes different from the same cider from a bottle, but I can tell you it does. I don’t mind Woodchuck Amber on draft, but I don’t care for it from a bottle.
Favorite Draft Cider
My favorite cider from a tap is Magners, an Irish cider, although it’s sold as Bulmers in Ireland.
I’m not a cider, beer, or wine critic, so I don’t know all the specialized vocabulary one would use to describe Magners. I know I like it. I would say it is semi-sweet but not cloyingly sweet. It’s not high gravity, being listed at only 4.5% ABV on RateBeer. I’m not sure I’d like it paired with every food I like to eat, but since I can only find it locally at Irish restaurants, I like it just fine with bangers and mash. I do pick it up in bottles from time to time in Nashville, but while I like it in bottles, I like it much more on draft.
Favorite Bottled Cider
My favorite cider from a bottle right now is Angry Orchard Iceman.
Angry Orchard is, at least among my friends, the cider we love to make fun of. It crashed into the grocery stores and local pubs and restaurants a year or so ago and in many places became the only cider offered. Angry Orchard has a few different flavors sold in six or twelve packs of 12 oz bottles. Iceman is different - it’s part of their Cider House collection and it, along with two other variants called Strawman (terrible) and Muse (quite good) are sold in 750ml bottles. They’re also high gravity, with Iceman measuring 10% ABV.
I like Iceman a lot. In fact, if it weren’t so relatively expensive and unwieldy in its huge bottle, I’d probably buy it as my staple and sample new labels as I found them. For all I know Tennessee’s backwards alcohol laws prohibit the sale of something that strong in six or twelve packs. Iceman is sweeter than Magners but not too sweet. It is also very crisp and just smells good, slightly of honey maybe.
One final note on cider. I’d always heard that the Irish drink Bulmers over ice and thought that sounded so strange. Recently I tried Magners over ice and was quite pleased with the results. Again, no idea if there’s any science-based explnation for it, but I prefer all my cider over ice now, and the next time I order Magners at an Irish pub or restaurant, I’m going to request a glass of ice on the side.
The Duke of Crisp - A New Cider from Les Ault
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My buddy Les Ault handed me a bottle of his latest creation yesterday, The Duke of Crisp. As a new dad, I don't have much time these days to just relax and enjoy an adult beverage, but I made time for it tonight, and I'm glad I did.
The Duke of Crisp is amazing. Before tonight I would have said Les' Berry Cider was the best cider I've ever had, hands down. This new cider has bumped the Berry Cider down to the #2 spot. As the name suggests, this new cider is crisp. It's also clear, and not too sweet. If I had to pick a commercial cider most similar to it in taste, I'd say Magners, which is high praise on both counts, as Magners is my favorite commercial cider.
Les tells me he let this batch ferment for six months, which is far longer than the three to four weeks I believe his Berry Cider takes. I'm also told The Duke of Crisp measures 7% alcohol by volume, making it stronger than anything else available on store shelves. Strong as it is, it goes down smoothly. It is fortunate for me that this cider wasn't the first I ever tried, because I doubt I could have tolerated most of the other mediocre-in-comparison commercial ciders I've tried over the last few years.
I've had a single keg of cider on tap at the house at any one time over the last year. Now I need to order a second keg, a 2-way CO2 distributor, and another tap, so I can have The Duke of Crisp and the Berry Cider on tap. My wish for Les is that he could hire a team of elves to help him mass produce this stuff and get it into local taprooms, because it makes most of the ciders they serve taste like Kool-Aid.
Dining at Home - Two Great Tastes
We decided to eat in tonight, and I'm very glad we did. My wife prepared a couple of ribeye steaks that were as good as any steakhouse steak I've had in a very long time. All she added to the steaks was a good bit of kosher salt, and she then seared them in a cast iron skillet. All I had to bring to the meal was my appetite. I wish I'd thought to snap a picture of the steaks before I devoured most of my serving, but I was distracted by the aroma of freshly-cooked beef. The picture you'll see below is of the half of the steak she couldn't finish. Sorry for the mess, but I was interested in eating this steak, and taking a picture of it was definitely an afterthought.
After dinner, I went downstairs to my "keezer" and checked to see if my new keg of hard cider was fully carbonated. It was, so I dispensed the first gritty glassful and then poured myself a frosty mug full of my buddy Les Ault's new mulled cider. You can find the recipe for the cider at RocketScience Brewing. Les is calling this flavor "Suicider" and while I think I would still go for his berry cider on a hot day, I have to say this mulled cider did more than hit the spot on this cold night.
So tonight I had an outstanding steak and an awesome mug of cider. I'll have to start eating at home more often.
Here's a picture of my first mug of Suicider.
My Favorite Adult Beverage - Hard Cider
I've never developed a taste for beer. Sure, I can drink it, but I've yet to find a beer I actually like, especially not from the first sip. Given that some of my best friends are serious home-brewers, I know the failing is in me, not some of the good beers they've had me try. Still, left with the choice of beer or Diet Coke, I'll go for soda, every time. Beer or good Irish whiskey, I'll sip whiskey.
But this post isn't about beer, soda, or whiskey. It's about my favorite adult beverage - hard cider. I remember the first time I tried hard cider; a gaming buddy of mine mentioned drinking a bottle of Hornsby's during a raid. I was curious, so I bought a six pack the next time I went to the grocery store, and from the first bottle I knew I'd found something I could like the way most of my friends liked beer. For a couple of years my selection of ciders was limited to those made by Hornsby's and Woodchuck; the only brands sold in the grocery store near my house. During a brief stop at a liquor store to purchase a bottle of wine to take to a party, I would discover other ciders, and even become vaguely aware of the strange laws in Tennessee that require beer and fairly weak cider to be sold in one kind of store, and wine, liquor, and stronger cider to be sold in another.
It was around this time that I learned that some pals from work had formed a home-brewing club, and I was invited over to my buddy AJ's house for an all-day brewing event. I figured this would be like other parties I'd attended in the past - well-meaning beer-loving friends would have me try one beer after another, convinced that this would be the one I'd love. Much to my surprise, when I was handed a mug and directed to the four tap keezer, one of the taps dispensed hard cider. What had previously seemed a silly hobby, this home-brewing thing, suddenly made so much sense.
Over the past year I've drunk cider in six states and had cider from at least four countries. I've had cider made from apples, pears, and even a mixture of various berries, and I like it all.
What I like best, though, is the cider my pal Les Ault makes. He and his wife Ann make several kinds of cider, but my favorite is their berry cider. You can even get the recipe for it on the blog Les, AJ, and another pal Chris maintain, RocketScience Brewing. How good is this berry cider? It's so good that I wasn't content to simply drink it whenever I could finagle an invite to the Ault residence, or beg a growler. I bought a chest freezer, a temperature regulator to keep the freezer at 40 degrees, a CO2 tank, a keg, and a whole mess of hoses, just so I could have five gallons of Mr. Ault's cider on tap at my house. The berry cider Les makes is, hands down, the best adult beverage I've ever consumed.