Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009
from bakery to bar
Ellie's Brown Ale
If you've lived on the Grand Strand for any length of time, you know exactly how to follow a cup of coffee and a cannoli.
You follow them with a beer.
Last Saturday afternoon, I took Sadie, age 4, to Croissants Bistro & Bakery in the Beach First building at the corner of Grissom Parkway and 38th Avenue North in Myrtle Beach.
Sadie had soy milk with her big Jack-o-Lantern cookie, which had black icing that temporarily colored her teeth a fitting Halloween shade.
Last time I had been inside Croissants, it was located next to the departed Myrtle Square Mall. Back then, I appreciated the work-week lunch menu. Of course, the desserts were, and remain, famous. My only complaint in those days was the coffee. It was terrible.
Before I walked through the door last Saturday, I noticed the sign for Seattle's Best Coffee. That was reassuring. Seattle's Best is a good line, and you need a decent cup of coffee to accompany famous desserts.
And good beers.
Croissants recently added a small bar, and the displayed beer bottles suggested that someone had put real thought into the selection. There was Fort Collins' Retro Red, Bells Amber Ale, Bahia, Ellie's Brown Ale, Victory Weizen Bock, Guinness, Maisels Weisse, Spaten Oktoberfest, and Newcastle Brown Ale.
Crumbs and icing enveloped Sadie's face, and I finished my cannoli and half of my coffee. We had several errands to run, so I only had time to choose one beer. The choice was Ellie's Brown Ale, priced at $4.50 per bottle. I had never tried it before. It's produced by Avery Brewing Co. in Boulder, Colo.
I've always been an easy mark for brown ales, and Ellie's certainly won my heart. It's a new favorite. This brown ale has a medium body, a sweet malt character, and a nutty flavor that leans mild, with only a touch of the roasted presence that some folks might find too harsh. It's definitely worth trying, and I'm hoping to get back to Croissants again soon to try some of the other beers.
And I'm sure Sadie wouldn't mind another Jack-o-Lantern cookie.
long live long hammer
Here's one for the file of second chances.
It's also one for the BeerAdvocate.com-got-it-wrong file.
I was in Herndon, Va., inside a Giant chain grocery store to pick up some beer for a family gathering. Failing to find a 12-bottle Flying Dog variety pack, I picked up a similar Redhook mix.
Redhook ESB has long been a favorite of mine, and Long Hammer IPA, as I recalled, was fairly decent. I hadn't tried it in a while.
When I joined the family gathering, I realized I was wrong about the "fairly decent" description for Long Hammer.
Instead, I decided, Long Hammer was awesome.
It's one of the best IPAs, or India Pale Ales, available on the mass market. As microbrew and specialty IPAs go, Long Hammer is not over-hopped. Non-beer-snobs can purchase Long Hammer with the assurance that it's a real beer instead of a microbrew experiment. It also happens to be slightly higher in gravity, about 6.5 percent. Add that to a medium body with some reasonable hop character, and it's almost like love.
BeerAdvocate.com, a site I usually trust, gave it a C-minus, while independent reviewers on the site gave it a C-plus.
Even the experts sometimes get it wrong.
Contact Colin Burch - the Beerman - at beerpour@yahoo.com or visit his beer blog at http://maltyhops.blogspot.com.