Tag Archives: review

A.B.’s Beer Bread

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We had a party to go to this weekend where we were to bring an appetizer and a dessert. My wife made some cranberry and white chocolate chip cookies from a recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray package of dried cranberries. I wanted to do something a little more sophisticated and fun and so I turned to a recipe for beer bread that I saw Alton Brown make the other night on his "Fermentation Nation" episode of Good Eats.

The main flavors for this bread come from some dill, cheddar cheese and, of course, beer. AB recommended a good pale ale as opposed to a stout, or lager, that I see called for in many recipes. I decided to go with Ithaca’s Cascazilla, a monstrously hoppy brew. Here’s a picture of it…

Unfortunately, this bread was close to awful. I found it way too salty to begin with, but even beyond that it just didn’t have a good taste to it. I followed the recipe exactly including weighing my ingredients. The texture of the bread was perfect, so I am pretty sure I didn’t make any mistakes. I’m not going to even give you the recipe (though the link is above). The unofficial Hop Talk rating for this is a 1. So sad.

But the cookies were awesome!

Barrington Brewery

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Located in Great Barrington MA, the Barrington Brewery brews up barrels of bubbly beer in the beautiful Berkshires. (try and beat that alliteration)

We started with the sampler made up of their: Blonde, Pale Ale, Brown Ale, Stout, & Oktoberfest. All of them were lacking body and seemed to be afraid of making a statement in flavor. Their conservative taste might appeal more to the masses but I was hoping for something a little more. They were, however, all clean and quality made.

A little investigation revealed a couple beers not on the menu. One was a dark amber and the other was an IPA. Both of these were the best beers there. (They also had a raspberry and something else we didn’t try) Still, these beers were only OK and nothing to write about. (unless you’re blogging about beer on Hop-Talk.com) 

The restaurant touts all of their home made food and overall it was pretty good. My home made split pea and sausage soup was great and the brisket wasn’t bad considering how far we are from Texas.

The dessert tries speaks for itself and the restaurant touts that it has been featured in magazines but as I walk out, I wonder why…