Left Hand Brewing Beer Dinner

April 5, 2007

Dunaway's Palazzo Ossigeno hosted a beer dinner on behalf of Left Hand Brewing Company. Left Hand is upfront about their dedication to craft beer and in particular beer as a complement to meals. "We love craft beer" is one of the first things they tell you on their website. "People are having epiphanies with craft beer every day." Today they put their left foot forward to show us they mean business.

Eric Wallace founded Left Hand in 1993 along with Dick Doore and has nurtured it through the years to become what it is today. In 1998 they merged with Tabernash Brewing and adopted many of it's beers as well as the bottling line equipped to produce six-packs. From then on Left Hand's beers have continually been gaining acceptance outside of Colorado. Heck, you can even walk into a liquor store in Philadelphia and pick up some of their unique Milk Stout. But the Reds don't play in Philadelphia, which is why Eric is here in Indianapolis. Reds game one day, beer dinner the next...

We started off with some homemade pretzels, mustard, and Haystack Wheat...

While many attempts at producing a Weiss fall short, Haystack Wheat nails the German/Bavarian style. It's full of the banana-clove aroma we love and is made with several malts. Eric, in fact, used to live in Germany- traveling around drinking and drinking wheat beers, which is why this is one of his favorites. It's also one of the first five beers Left Hand produced. It went down well with the salty pretzels. He added that it's especially good with weisswurst.

Before we finished our wheat beer the Milk Stout was before us accompanied with cheese soup...

Eric explained that Milk Stout (the style) has it's origins in 19th century England when unfermentable lactose was added to make beer more nutritious for nursing mothers. It adds calories, sweetness, and body to the finished beer. The classic example is Mackeson's XXX. Although it's a somewhat recent offering from Left Hand (2002), we think they may have something good going with this beer, but after winning a gold medal at the 2006 World Beer Cup we bet they already know it! It's creamy and delicious. Surprisingly, it paired very well with the cheddar/guerre cheese soup (which was made with a little Haystack Wheat mixed in). Looks tasty, doesn't it?

Our mixed-greens salad came with Sawtooth Ale, a typical Americanized ESB at 4.8%...

It was a bit more bitter than the ~27 published IBU's suggest. It has an effervescent, almost explosive mouth feel and hoppiness. It did well to cut the spicy heat from the pan-seared scallop which was marinated in Sawtooth and blackened with Cajun spices. The shrimp was not as hot.

Our gourmet mini-burgers arrived with Black Jack Porter, which itself was not as remarkable as the barbeque sauce made with it. The two small burgers were much bigger than expected and admittedly we struggled. The Black Jack barbeque sauce was the highlight of this dish...

Then we were presented with something we loved... St. Vrain Tripel Ale. I instantly smelled pear. It was sweet and malty... so fruity. The Belgian yeast and bottle conditioning really works with this beer. It was perfectly paired with pineapple upsidedown cake.

Thanks for a great dinner!

Beer Geeks

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