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Cerveza Adventure, Part Two

Read Part I

When we last spoke, I was telling the tales of my trip to Playa Del Carmen with the winners of the Dos Equis Cargo Hunt.

At the end of the first big day, we had dinner on the beach outside the hotel with a drum show and fresh hand-rolled rolled cigars.

Fun fact: apparently one doesn't inhale cigars, unlike cigarettes, which is why other people don't get horribly barfy when they smoke them. The more you know.

 

In the morning, we were off to a second epic day of adventure. We began at Rio Secreto, a series of caves with an underground river running though them. We walked, crouched, and swam through a series of caves for an hour and a half. Beautiful.

 
(I'm up in your cave, swimming with your catfish.)

Then it was off to another spot in the jungle with a tour operator called Alltournative for a series of challenges. The first was walking through another cave and undergoing a Mayan ceremony asking nature for permission to enter and protecting us from evil spirits. It must have worked because I didn't die the rest of the day on the adventure sports. 

Then we rode mountain bikes through the jungle and swung on ziplines above it. 

(From this angle you can't hear me shrieking.)

Then we finished the day by repelling down into a cenote (sinkhole) like the beginning of The Descent and splashing around in the water. But with less cave monsters. 

An action-packed day, which was then followed by a night in Playa Del Carmen that I'll post about next. 

 Read Part III

Cerveza Adventure in Mexico

Hello from Mexico! Yes I was just in Kentucky yesterday morning but now I'm in mostly-sunny Playa Del Carmen, near Cancun. I'm hear on a trip with winners of the Dos Equis Cargo Hunt. They competed in an online treasure hunt to help The Most Interesting Man in the World (for the media shy of you, that's a very successful ad campaign) recover his lost items. 

I, on the other hand, am just a hanger-on traveling in the entourage. We're not visiting the Dos Equis distillery on this trip, so it's all about jungle adventure for these two days. 

Our hotel is on Playa Del Carmen. I've never been here before so I had no idea that every property down the beach is like a giant ultra-lounge/spa/beach club. 

We woke up early and took small planes (four people plus the pilot) to Chichen Itza, a famous and lovely set of Mayan ruins. This year I've been on 4 helicopter rides so I'm finally getting less screamy/panicky when riding on small aircraft.  

After Chichen Itza, we headed to one of the many cenotes, or sinkholes, that dot the area. You can see some large ones in the picture from the plane above. We went to a small one we had reserved for the Dos Equis group. 

It's hard to photograph, but it's a crystal blue pond about 100 feet below the surface level, and the pond is about 50 feet deep. Peaceful, lovely, amazing. I could float there all day if only there were umbrella drinks.

Then we took the planes home and we're waiting for dinner. They're not telling us what we're doing on this trip (unlike most press trips where they hand us an agenda down to the quarter-hour), so who knows what adventure awaits tonight and tomorrow!

Read Part II
Read Part III 

Beer in the Penthouse

Finally, I'm appearing in the pages of Penthouse magazine. Oddly, they didn't ask me to model. That's not me on the cover. 

In the December issue of Penthouse magazine,  I have a two-page spread on "Advanced Level Beer Gear," including some gift items like a homebrew kit, kegerator, and a dog collar that holds a bottle opener. 

So now you bartenders have an excuse to buy Penthouse and write it off as a work expense.

You're welcome.

Opening a Beer Bottle with an Ice Scoop

In this 4-second video, Ervin Trykowski of The Ivy in Glasgow, Scotland opens a beer bottle with an ice scoop at Bar Convent Berlin. 

New Bar in San Francisco: The Sycamore

I wouldn't make a fuss over a new beer and wine-only bar opening in San Francisco, but some friends of mine own it so I thought I would share the good news. The Sycamore opens Monday July 19th at 11AM.

The Sycamore is open on the site of the former Cafe Prague, located at 2140 Misison Street at Sycamore Alley between 17th and 18th Streets. The Facebook page is here.

The place has a small cafe-like room with benches, tables, and chairs in the front room. 

Plus there is a small patio on the back. The bar/restaurant will be open from 11AM - midnight so you can get some tanning done while you snack. We'll convince them to give out the wifi password so those of use who can work from anywhere can do so from here. 

They only have a license to server beer and wine (plus sangria). Currently they have 7 beers on tap, 18 by the bottle, and 7 wines. 

Bar food includes olives and peanuts as snacks, mushrooms and fried provolone appetizers, mix-and-match sliders, and three sandwiches. The specialty sandwich is a Massachusetts-style roast beef like you'd get at Kelly's Roast Beef in Revere. 

Food and drink menus are after the jump below.

SF Brew News: Barrels, Vintage Bottles, and Porter with a Punch

There is so much happening with beer right now I'm not able to keep up (I have my hands full with cocktails) but here are some awesome items of interest:

- The Alembic has launched a barrel aged beer list, with "some very rare and unusual offerings, and new stuff coming in all the time."

- The Monk's Kettle is launching a vintage beer list starting June 18th.

There are several styles of beer that are well-suited for aging, and they are generally higher in alcohol, and often bottle-conditioned (with yeast in the bottle for an additional fermentation).  Styles that generally lend well for cellaring include Belgian strong ale (and Belgian-style strong ale), barleywine, imperial stout, old ale, lambic and gueuze (as well as their American counterpart, American wild ale).  As with the rest of the list, the Monk’s Kettle will seek to strike a balance of style, bottle size, and vintage/year in its reserve list.

- It's not just spirits that are getting into bed with coffee roasters: Speakeasy brewery collaborated with Ritual Coffee Roasters to create a beer named Ritual Coffee Payback Porter.  I asked how it was made. Kushal Hall, Lead Brewer at Speakeasy, said:

"We cold decoct the coffee (one pound per barrel) in the finished, uncarbonated porter. We spent a lot of time and effort working with Ritual roasters to find the right coffee.  It was a light roasted Brazilian natural unwashed coffee (called) Chapadao de Ferro."

The beer is so far only available on tap. It was recently at City Beer Store (call to make sure it's still there), and after they make more in a couple weeks it will be back on tap at the Speakeasy brewery (open on Fridays at 4PM), and other "specialty accounts."

Sneak Peek of the Burritt Room in the Crescent Hotel in San Francisco

Scheduled to open on May 27th in the Crescent Hotel in San Francisco is the new bar Burritt Room. I had a peek at the very-much-still-under-construction space. 

The hotel is located a couple doors down from the Stockton Tunnel, but was built before the tunnel in 1910. It was recently renovated into a boutique hotel with rooms going for as little as $89/night- quite a bargain for something so close to Union Square.

The bar is on the second floor but was originally the hotel lobby. In the process of preparing the room they had to pull off four layers of linoleum (each requiring a different method of removing the glue, depending on the era in which it was installed) to reveal the original small tile floor. They left (or added, not sure) distressed wood framing on some of the brick walls. It has a very unfinished and roughly-used look about the construction that I quite like. 

The space is one room in the shape of an "L" with the bar in the corner. On the short end of the L is a small parlour-like area with modern but vintage-inspired couches for seating. There's another alcove with similar seating along the long part of the room. 

At the far end, through a door, is the space that will become the hotel's restaurant. It is months away from opening and in the meantime is being used to host bands and special events. 

The cocktail program is in the care of beverage director (and bartender) Kevin Diedrich who worked at Bourbon & Branch and Clock Bar but in the last 16 months has been working in bars in DC and New York including PDT and the Clover Club. 

Diedrich says his goal is to keep the bar program in line with the hotel's pricing and clientele; an accessible program at reasonable prices and with cocktails between $8 - $10.

The menu will have 18 cocktails that will be a combination of classic, contemporary, and seasonal drinks. He'll try to hit at least one with each base spirit- pisco, rum, gin, etc.- plus one made with each of beer, wine, and champagne.

Speaking of beer, just three will be on tap, probably all local, and one seasonal. The Burritt Room will also have a canned beer program.

In the same spirit of cost-effectiveness, even most of the top-shelf spirits on the back bar will be capped at a reasonable price. Diedrich says you won't find 30 types of scotch at the Burritt Room- maybe ten, and easy-to-navigate. The goal is not to overwhelm people with 100 cocktails and 200 whiskies. 

There will be a few soft-opening parties before opening date, so there may be more reports on the progress of the build-out to come. 

The Comingling of Laphroaig and Budweiser

In the April edition of Esquire magazine, dastardly David Wondrich lists a few beer cocktails. Some of them are old familars: Black Velvet and Shandy. Some are unfamiliar (The Porteree with porter and sugar over ice and nutmeg on top; the Berliner Weisse mit Schuss from Germany), and one sounds like OH MY GOD I HAVE TO TRY THAT.

Groundskeeper

When we were putting this article together, a question came up: What do you do with, say, Budweiser? What about a superpeaty Scotch, the kind that's almost too smoky to drink? Bingo. The Scotch calms down; the Bud mans up.

Pour 1 oz ultrasmoky single-malt Scotch, such as Ardbeg or Laphroaig, into a pint glass. Add 12 oz chilled Bud or other American pilsner.

Get all the recipes here.