Married and Dating-November's Beer Edition

What can I say?  My adventures as a married mom dating her life partner continue.  In this months installment, you will find a sick woman, a group of revelers and Paul Masson. 

San Diego celebrated it's first annual San Diego Beer Week.  My husband, who is a home brewer with big dreams, was so stinking excited.  He planned to attend as many events as possible during the week.  The San Diego Brewers Guild had over 250 events planned during the week.  Dave picked four to go to.  I think he would have picked more, but he didn't have the time or the money.

Of course I couldn't go with him to four outings in the same week.  I mean really, who would watch the children?  Plus, I'm a wine drinker, so beer, although great with pizza and chili, is not my cup of tea.  Really, I will drink a beer with a meal once in awhile, but I can take it or leave it. 

However, I didn't want my hubby attending all those events alone, so I agreed to be his DD (designated driver) and go to a vintage beer tasting on Thursday evening.  He was so cute, like a  puppy with a new bone.  It was adorable seeing him so excited about something. 

What is a vintage beer tasting, you ask?  The word vintage means old.  Now old beer may sound bad to most of you.  But depending on the style of beer and how it was aged, it may actually taste better the older it is.  In fact some brewers are now manufacturing beers with the intent to age them, much like a fine wine. 

Joey, the owner of South Bay Drugs in Imperial Beach, was hosting this event at La Bella Pizza in Chula Vista.  South Bay Drugs is actually very famous for it's unique and unusual beer offerings.  Joey is quite the expert when it comes to micro-brews.  His event was limited to 50 participants and it sold out completely.  The DD's got in free and got to eat free pizza. 

We hired a sitter (Thanks LaMicha!) We were really looking forward to spending some time together.  Our event was on Thursday evening, by Tuesday evening I have a sore throat.  Now two of my kids and my mom have all been sick.  I was hoping I was not coming down with anything.  By Wednesday night, I felt like crap.  I told my husband, "The only thing worse than feeling like crap is looking like crap!"  I was not going to cancel on him.  He'd already bought his ticket.  I was going even if it killed me.

Thursday dawns and I have no voice.  My normal Minnie Mouse voice sounds like a smoker of 60 years and I have a horrible cough.  But I'm determined to muscle through the day.  I try to nap.  I take Day Quil and I hope and pray for the best.  I clean up, dress up and hope to fake my way through date night.  I pick up the sitter and we're off.

We get to the tasting event and Dave is like a kid in a candy store.  At first there are no seats so we just stand in a corner while he sips his first beer sample.  The restaurant had double booked the area and the first event hadn't cleared out yet.  Finally, they left after entertaining all of us with their fight song (local football team.)  Then the grown ups took over and spread out.  It was a really nice group.  Everyone was friendly and laid back.  Many were table hopping and spreading the beer cheer.  People had brought unusual beers from around the world to share with the group.  Joey and his band of merry men and women shared tidbits about the various beers and gave additional samples out to finish up any leftover bottles. 

The pizza was great but salty.  Eventually I asked Dave to get me a drink from the bar downstairs.  I figured one glass of wine early in the evening would not cause a driving issue later.  So being a beer guy, Dave asks the bartender for a white wine.  One sip in and I ask, "what is this?"  He answers "I don't know."  I didn't see the bottle she poured it from.  It could even be from a box." I shudder.  Box wine, yuck!  I say in my best wine snob voice "This is the Coor's Light of wines."  I knew if I made a beer reference he'd understand how truly awful it was.  But it's not like the restaurant had a wine list.  The choices were white, red or pink. 

So suffering from a severe cold, drinking nasty wine and eating greasy pizza...while my honey is having a marvelous time drinking great old vintage beers with other beer dudes and dudettes.  As far as date nights go, it wasn't my best.  But like I told my hubby, the important thing for me is spending time with him. 

Eventually though, my cold got the best of me and I insisted we take our leave.  Dave was fine.  I'd soldiered up and done my spousal duty and won a few wifely bonus points.  He even promised as we left that on our next date night, he'd do something just for me.  As we wandered out of the restaurant, we walked through the bar.  The bartender was pouring someone a glass of Paul Masson wine.  The Coor's light of wines....my wine, was a Paul Masson.  Nope, that sealed it as officially my worst date night ever.

P.S. Joey and his group did a fine job in hosting this event.  We would attend again next year.  I think if I had not been sick, things would have been better.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some.  Until next month...happy dating the one you love!     

Welch's Wine

Wine, vino, mommy's juice, Chardonnay, Muscat, or Boone's, whatever you call it, it's the nectar of the gods.  Archeological evidence shows wine is one of mankinds earliest food arts.  Additionally winemaking in Europe dates back over 6,500 years ago.  In Sedalia, Missouri, winemaking, in our family, dates back to the early 1980's.

At that time my parents had accumulated a large amount of canned Welch's Grape Juice.  Made from the finest concord grapes grown in the heart of the east coast.  "The story of Welch's began in 1869 in Vineland, New Jersey – when physician and dentist Thomas Bramwell Welch and his son Charles processed the first bottles of "unfermented wine" to use during their church's communion service."  (Information courtesy of the Welch's Grape Juice Website. http://www.welchs.com/) Well, my dad got fed up with the "unfermented" juice and decided brilliantly to make Welch's Wine.

To this day, I'm not sure why my mom agreed to this project.  You see the hardest part of winemaking is growing the grapes, and Welch's had done that part for him already.  In my Dad's enthusiasm, he convinced my mom that he'd be able to make the finest wine from the cans we had stored in the basement.  I'm sure he promised her it would be as good as Boone's Farm, her favorite wine for company dinner.

So after reading several how-to books on the winemaking subject, my dad set up his homemade still.  It was a couple of wine bottles with plastic tubing running from them.  I think the tubes were to help with pressure released during fermentation.  He set it up on a shelf in our sunny yellow dining room, out of the reach of the four sets of little hands in our family.  He proudly showed his winemaking display off to our friends who stopped by.  They would sit around talking about how good the wine was going to be.  I think he even mentioned entering it in the fair if it turned out ok.

Then as with so many early attempts at winemaking, tragedy struck.  It was late one night, a couple of weeks into the project.  Our family was sound asleep, tucked into our beds and dreaming happy dreams.  Suddenly, we were jolted from our sleep by the sounds of exploding glass.  Had someone shot out a window?  Was there a car accident on the street outside of our house?  Sadly, no.  My dad's dreams of becoming the first Welch's Wine maker ended in a shower of glass and a spray of fermenting grape juice all over the yellow walls and white ceiling of our dining room.  It looked like a grape massacre had taken place in our dining room and it smelled pretty nasty too.

My dad learned a valuable lesson: there is a reason wine producers ferment wine in wooden barrels or steel drums.  That way there is no chance of an explosion during the fermentation process.  My mom quickly vetoed any additonal attempts at winemaking in our house.

My dad was deeply disappointed, but for my mom it was a blessing.  She'd been nagging my dad to paint the kitchen and dining room for months.  After the fatal wine explosion, my dad picked up some new paint and re-painted them on his next day off.  Maybe my mom really did know what she was doing when she agreed to let my dad make Welch's wine in the kitchen.