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Last night's beer dinner at Brasserie Beck was so cool! It really was a ton of fun. Everyone was really having a ton of fun and all the staff kept it loose and enjoyable (though serious and focused on the serving styles and such).\ the night started with a glass of Floris Pomme (Apple). Everything was just great. We were really full at the end, though! This made the end of the night almost feel a little laborious (maybe like other tasting menus in the area) We had skate wing, which single item-wise, was the winner of the night. It was cooked just perfectly. It had some sweetness to it but was very mild and tasted excellent. Flaky and moist with a thin coating of Paired with the skate we had Brigand. Then we had Delirium Nocturnum and Gouden Carolus Grand Cru of the Emperor. The Grand Cru is an INCREDIBLE beer! It has a sweet start but then it acts like it is going to bite and never does. Those beers were paired with Duck sausage. As a dish, this was the star of the night (the skate had some weird wilted spinach that made it bizarre) because it had this really great sauce of pistachios and pureed white beans. They had also made shoestrings with crushed pistachios (think shoestring potatoes but with pistachios). Fortunately, my continued protein conquest was satiated with Wild Mushroom stuffed pheasant roulade. This dish also had a little potato cake that was made with some mustard and dill and thyme maybe. With that, we had the Gouden Carolus Tripel and Hopsinjoor. The brewer explained that he didn't want to make a hoppy beer but his marketing people convinced him that making a hoppy beer would bring Americans around to the entire brand. It was just ok for me. No better than any of the DFH IPAs. The Tripel was nice though. By this time, we had enough to drink that when the waiters set bottles down on the staging table, we would just grab the half full bottles to continue filling our glasses. The waiters LOVED that! By this time, I didn't think I could do dessert. Fortunately, they went ahead and gave us an intermezzo. you would have loved this... It was a semi firm cheese (I would call it Gruyere-ish) with rind washed in Delirium Tremens. you can't get this cheese in america right now. It didn't do too much for me but it could be a nice mild choice for a cheese plate. That came with a glass of Delirium Tremens. To finish the eats, we had a trio of chocolate mousse. I am not a big chocolate fan so it didn't do much for me. They paired St Louis Framboise and Kasteel Rouge with the dessert. After having so many heavy beers, it was a real struggle to enjoy something so sweet. The Framboise felt like we had melted jolly ranchers. I enjoy Rouge but even that one felt too sweet last night. To finish the night, they gave us some final drinks (because we needed them!). We had the Het Anker Quad which had been aged in the keg for 2 years. That one is going to be available on draft. They said they would do a vertical tasting of that one sometime in the future because they have a 10 year old keg. I liked it a lot! THEN, they gave us some whiskey that isn't even available in the US (the owner didn't know if he really liked it yet). It was made from their Quad (rather than using water, they use beer for the whiskey) and was only about 4 years. It went down really smooth but the smell almost knocked me on my butt. Towards the end, Chef Robert and Chef David spoke for the food and thanked everyone for coming. I wholeheartedly recommend any of these future beer dinners at Beck.
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