Thursday, December 22, 2011

Sausage, Sediment, and Santa Claus

After a day we changed from our Hanukkah theme back to the classic theme of cleaning out the fridge and moving through leftovers. With Christmas fast approaching the time for grocery shopping is over and we need to work through some inventory before celebrating the Yuletide.

Sausage and Butternut Calzone with Mozzarella


I started off by taking the remaining sausage, butternut, and kale stew and wrapping it up in dough to make this calzone with a little fresh mozzarella.

Sausage and Butternut Calzone with Mozzarella


This sausage and butternut stew lent itself extremely well to calzone filling. I think it would have made a fine pizza as well. Even a pasta sauce. Next time I'll have to make five times as much so I can use the leftovers for all those applications. It will be like a sausage-themed Thanksgiving!

Delirium Noel


For beer I'd really been looking forward to having this Noel from Delirium. It was everything I could want in a beer: an opaque bottle, from Belgium, an elephant wearing a Santa Claus hat. There was only one problem . . .

Delirium Noel Chunky Sediment


There was a huge amount of chunky white sediment floating around in the beer, suspended like the snot-like globules in a bottle of the now extinct beverage Orbitz. Now, I'm not squeamish about sediment in my beer. In fact, I am usually very happy to find it there. Yet, somehow, this amount of sediment floating there in a state of neutral buoyancy just struck me as being too much. I Googled it quickly and didn't find too many people complaining about it so I was unsure if I was just some sort of lone weirdo.

Being an experienced home brewer myself I am familiar with the end of the bottling being a bit heavier on sediment than the beginning, however, this seemed like just too much and, sadly, I abandoned the bottle in favor of other beers.

The beer smelled like delicious dark fruit and molasses as I passed by it.

St. Bernardus Tripel


To replace it I stayed in the same country with this Tripel from St. Bernardus. It was fantastic, one of the best tripels I've ever had. Those folks at St. Bernardus know how to make a fine, fine beer.

That damn monk on the label has every right to look so cocky.

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