Global Kitchen: Beer with Garrett Oliver

Last night I got to attend one of the educational series at the American Museum of Natural History …about beer! It was a lecture by Brooklyn Brewery’s brewmaster, Garrett Oliver. Very informative, but started off pretty boring …maybe because I kept staring at the beer on the table next to him. It wasn’t until he started talking about opening your eyes to the Matrix of life in the supermarket that things started to get interested. He comments on how food and beer at some point years ago started to become less real. Like how cheese slices have become not real cheese and supermarket bread is not real bread and how American beer (once great in pre-prohibition) turned into stuff that was less like beer. For me, I always thought Buds and PBRs were more beer and the expensive stuff was too much flavor for me. Maybe that’s why I’m liking seltzer water a lot lately. I get those Canada Drys free at work. I feel like I’m cracking one open in the office. Well Garrett gets rolling and I’m well entertained, especially during the tastings of four special Brooklyn Brewery beers, one which is really rare (something like only 20 cases made). It doesn’t even have a label. They were at 9% alcohol content and pretty tasty. I feel like I’m learning to appreciate the good life lately. Thanks Antonia for hooking me up here.

Garrett Oliver has a new book out, The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food.
And the next in the Natural History series of food/drinks, Global Kitchen: The Magic of Pickling is Tuesday October 13, 2009.