I had been researching and recreating antique vermouth recipes for some time before I was Invited to Northern Spain by Los Cerverceros Caseros, the Spanish homebrewers’ association. I was excited to see vermouth everywhere in Bilbao, Barcelona and Madrid, and fascinated to see how the locals enjoyed it.
I recently completed a months-long project to create labels for a new series of beers featuring a variety of tropical fruits. Within the larger range of Cervejaria Colorado labels I began several years ago, we wanted these to hang together and make a little sub-line all their own.
We were fortunate to have a man named Edoarda Branca walk into our pub one day last spring and sample some beers. He’s a fan of good craft beer in addition to being a enthusiast and North American representative of the family’s famous products, and was impressed enough by what we’re doing at Forbidden Root to start talking about a possible collaboration with us.
I was delighted to receive an invitation to present at a workshop by the Mexican Slow Beer delegation at the recent Slow Food Salone del Gusto in Torino, Italy.
This is the Italian dish, most famous in Emilglia-Romana, featuring a whole pig, boned out and stuffed with its own meat and herbs, roasted and typically sliced into slivers and served as rustic sandwiches. Having done a variety of “fake” porchetta creations in the past, I thought it would be fun to try to the real deal for the recent Chicago Beer Society picnic’s “Other Meat” category.
I presented at the recent AHA conference in Baltimore along with Cicerone’s Pat Fahey, on behalf of the Brewers Association’s Beer & Food Working Group, a small committee that is working on trying to put a scientific basis behind beer and food and how pairings work–or don’t.
5 Rabbit Cervecería was asked to participate in a 2016 Craft Beer Week collaboration with the Lakeview brewpub, DryHop Brewers. This would also include an art show, which I eventually understood to mean I had to come up with some actual art. While I’ve been doing beer labels and other commercial design work for decades, fine art is a little alien to me.
My friend Marcelo from Brazil was in town yesterday and brought me a couple of surprises: A small cask made from umburana wood, meant for aging cachaça, and a slab of a highly aromatic wood referred to in Brazil as “balsam” (Myroxolon balsamum). I couldn’t be more excited.
Sometimes you find the most wonderful treasures in the most unlikely places, but after some contemplation, they not only seem to make sense, but may even seem inevitable. I often search on eBay for art items with beery subject matter, like magazine illustrations or old genre prints of people drinking beer. Guess what I found this time.