#126 - nacho party.

...so it's been some fifteen months since i first launched eat!drink!snack!, my first serious venture into the big, bad, highly trendy world of food blogging. during that time, i've also become a huge google reader junkie. it began harmlessly enough with a few news blogs & those of a few friends, but after a while, i added a bunch of random blogs & eventually, i became enthralled with the number of food blogs out there. when i first started eat!drink!snack!, i hadn't even considered that there were a ton of folks out there who were just as obsessed with food as i am. there were the newspaper & magazine based food blogs (the village voice's "fork in the road." ny magazine's "grub street," the l.a. times' "daily dish"). there were a handful of blogs from random peeps like myself (taquitos.net, the ethicurean, not eating out in ny), each featuring a uniquely different take on why food is totally friggin awesome.

nachos ny quickly became one of my favorites among the food blogs. it's based out of brooklyn & stands as a testimony to their undying love of nachos. in the main columns, they take you to different spots in nyc as part of a quest for the perfect nachos. they do it so you don't have to. i mean, who has time to eat that many nachos? they do! that's who. that's not all they do though. they take nachos & apply it to all aspects of life. there's the chos & shows series, where they grab some chos & see a show. they ran a contest back in may where they gave away a sweet handmade nacho ring. there are occasionally inspiring nacho quotes. they even have nacho t-shirts. why do i tell you all this? because it's a site that embraces the (somewhat attempted) eat!drink!snack! philosophy: "food is part of everything." that's right. i have a philosophy. i'm like marx or something.

back in june, they made a guest appearance here on eat!drink!snack! as part of my "snack away" column, with a column about brooklyn summer rooftop fun with nachos. i promised to return the favor at some point with a guest piece for them & even came up with what i consider the most hilarious idea ever, but as of right now, due to a combination of my slacking & my desire for perfection, that piece is still in a holding pattern over the nachos ny airport. i'm hoping i can land the plane before the guvment passes this health care bill i keep hearing about. in fact, i promise i will. i know, you're all "you lie!" but you're just wrong & should probably apologize to me. the race is on!

get this though: the nachos ny people aren't just pasty-skinned schlubs hiding behind their computer monitors punching away at their keyboards. they actually get out & have nacho parties, events where lovers of nachos congregate & drink beers & eat nachos & probably make out or something. i say "probably" because i've missed the last two nacho parties, once because i was in chicago & once because i was lame. next wednesday's where i redeem myself though, as they're holding their el grito de delores fiesta party at bell house, a few blocks away from my apartment. there's the requisite beer & food, but if you hate those things, you can't hate the other thing--a grito contest. what, you're so uncultured that you don't know what a grito is? well, johnny/sally backwoods, a grito is a mexican mating call...& it's friggin crazy! i tell you what. ladies, if you see me there & say the code word ("swine flu"), i promise to make out with you. don't say "swine flu" to me if you don't mean it! see you wednesday!

#126 - nacho party.
snack: eat!drink!snack! experimental nachos
drink: modelo especial



recently, i haven't exactly been doing my part to further the nacho cause here at eat!drink!snack! in fact, the only nacho-related post in the history of the site is that guest blog from nachos ny. it's not like i dislike nachos or something. it's actually quite the opposite. it's just that making them takes a lot of effort if you don't want them to suck & most of the time, i hate effort. last night though, i had a change of heart & decided to whip up a plate of eat!drink!snack! experimental nachos. i didn't want to make any run of the mill nachos though. i wanted something weird but tasty. that's just how i roll.

let me break down the experimental nachos for you...instead of using your basic corn chips, i went with a bag of those fritoesque wise bar-b-que flavored corn chips. for my toppings, i started by taking some chicken & baking it in some bbq sauce for a spell. i heated up some black beans & corn, chopped up a mix of red onions, tomatoes & jalapeno & sprinkled what i later learned was an insufficient amount of jalapeno monterey jack cheese on top. oops. total price of ingredients = $7.67. BAM! overall, except for the fact that the corn chips got a bit soggy in areas, i think the experiment was a success. in the interest of full disclosure, i must admit that after finishing about a quarter of them, i switched to using a fork. i'm pretty sure that's some form of nacho blasphemy, but it just helped get them in my mouth that much faster, so i hope the nacho gods will forgive me.

since i was filling up on nachos, i obviously had to pair it with a mexican beer, so i went with the modelo especial. you can get one of these 24 oz cervezas at the third string corner store near my apartment for a buck seventy-five. that's just over eight cents an ounce, which is a total bargain. the modelo especial firmly says "poo poo" to those snooty american microbreweries, with their "exceptional flavors" & fifty cents per ounce prices & whatnot. they don't need to use terms like "mouthfeel" & "fine lacing" to describe their beer. poo poo indeed.

...so the modelo especial comes from grupo modelo, the same enormously large mexican company (63% of the total mexican market share) that makes negra modelo, which i actually sort of enjoy, especially as far as mexican beers go. as for the especial, i think they may have misnamed it, because it's nothing special by a long shot. let me provide you with the names of a few comparable beers. bud light. coors light. miller lite. it's better than the beast or natty light. i'll at least give it that, but only that. it's no corona though. it's more like water than that. i guess it's more designed to get you drunk to the point where you bellow mexican mating calls at the top of your lungs. maybe i should think about drinking a few before heading to wednesday's nacho party. it'd probably help my make out skills too. remember, ladies..."swine flu!"

#125 - saturday night's alright for snacking.

...so last saturday, my bro & his girlfriend amy hosted a little housewarming shindig at their new apartment up in greenpoint. about a week earlier, i'd received an email from amy informing me that on the following saturday, she & the bro would be "making lots of snack food and desserts" & that i "should come over." snack party! as an experienced snacker (& brother of one of the hosts), i immediately marked that shizz down on my calendar. by the time saturday rolled around & amy sent out a follow up email that read "i just made 10 desserts and 3 different kinds of pasta salad in about 14 hours yesterday," i knew it was on.

when i arrived around 9pm, the gathering was already in full swing, with an apartment full of people hanging out, chatting, snacking & drinking. when i first arrived, since i didn't know anyone outside of the hosts, i gave my full attention to the bountiful snack spread which consisted of at least fifty different choices & ranged from hor d'oeuvres such as bacon wrapped scallops & a variety of pasta salads to desserts like black bean walnut brownies & chocolate cream cheese filled cupcakes. each dish featured a printed card next to it displaying the name of the dish & applicable symbols (a broccoli for veggie dishes, a piece of wheat in a circle with a line through it for gluten-free). SO obsessive compulsively/professionally done.

eventually, i decided to interact with actual humans & it turned out that amy & the bro have some interesting/cute friends. there was this one couple who were huge fans of daddy yankee & shakira. the dude did his best to convince me that if i ever make it to europe, since i consistently stay up til all hours of the night/morn, i need to go to barcelona. to be honest, as long as there are bottles of wine and cafes to waste my hours in all hemingway like, i don't care what city i visit. another couple i chatted with had been taken aback by all the crazy woodworking items my brother created that filled the apartment (a skateboard rack, his bed frame, his desk, etc) & since the dude works with my bro doing woodworking, the girl was all "you should get motivated & make a bunch of stuff for our apartment." sorry bout that, dude...better get crackin'.

here's what i learned from the gathering...when hispanic people are out riding the train at one in the morn with their kids in tow, it's just "part of the culture." the daddy yankee/shakira lovin' dude filled me in on that & he was hispanic, so i guess it's true. i also learned that if you have a moped & try to park it on the streets of greenwood, the neighbors will totally freak out & call the fire department because they smell gas. that apparently happened to two of my bro's friends earlier in the day. beyond that, i discovered that people seem to find what i do for work interesting on some level...& that level actually has nothing to do with my job. the first question i often get is "do you get free concert tickets?" that's usually followed up with "have you met so & so musician?" doesn't anybody want to know about content management? so yeah, the snack party was both tasty & educational...food for thought.

#125 - saturday night's alright for snacking.
snack: mint brownies & marshmallow rice krispie treats
drink: goose island lamar street organic pale ale



i brought home a veritable bounty of treats from the gathering, including a bag of cookies with homemade mint brownies & marshmallow rice krispie treats in it. with all the snacks available, i hadn't got around to trying either of them whilst at the snack party, so when i finally got around to eating them, it was like the party was still going...like on & on til the break of dawn & whatnot, but with me as the only one in attendance at the party. there was music & all, but nobody to talk to about my job.

according to my bro, the mint brownies were "an experiment," but to me, they tasted like a perfected recipe, with their tasty minty bits sprinkled throughout. i'm kind of disappointed in myself for bringing home so few of them, but have decided to soldier on anyhow. as for the marshmallow rice krispie treats, they were all moist & chewy & full of krispieness. i'm pretty sure there was no HFCS in them, which means they were better for me than the packaged treats put out by kellogg's themselves. definitely solid, tasty baking in both cases. well played, amy and/or bro.

since the bro doesn't drink & amy hardly does, i also left with a full six pack of assorted good beers. there were two goose island lamar street organic pale ales in there, so i broke open the first one within fifteen minutes of returning home but saved the other one to have along with the bag of cookies. i may be constructing a fictional memory, but if i remember correctly, the organic pale ale was goose island's other offering at july's pitchfork festival, but i was so wrapped up in their 312 urban wheat that i never even got around to trying it. i haven't found any evidence of a lamar st in chicago & goose island doesn't care enough to put the organic pale ale on their website, so i'm not sure where the name comes from. it's probably a tribute to the senior senator & one time long shot presidential hopeful from tennessee or something.

since i'm partial to beers with an assload abundance of flavor, i'm not the biggest fan of pale ales, but the goose island organic one is one of the better ones i've tried. i mean, it wasn't amazing or anything, but since so many pale ales are as boring as the last three wilco albums, i consider it good. still, it wasn't anything special, especially compared to goose island's other brews. it has a somewhat sweet, somewhat hoppy taste to it, but not really. regardless, if you take stock in my blog ramblings, it's definitely worth checking out, but if you notice that there's a sierra pale ale or dale's pale ale sitting on the shelf next to it, you should probably get one of those instead. compared to them, the goose island's just too loosey-goosey.

#122 - speakin' easy of the old-timey.

a great man once said that you could do anything back in the olden days. that great man was wrong. back in the olden days, beginning almost ninety years ago this year, you totally couldn't drink...legally, at least. prohibited! prohibited via the 18th amendment! thanks, fanatical old-timey religion. only two states voted against the amendment (CT, this is the only thing you've been good for thus far). actually, it wasn't all that bad, i suppose. the american government & ladies in long skirts, a decade removed from WWI, were in no position to actually enforce the 18th amendment, so you could get booze. underground! still, the amendment remained an actual part of our constitution for over thirteen years. sorry only amendment to be no more. repealed! they had to create a whole new amendment to get rid of you. lame, #18.

...but they tried for a while to keep the country dry & yay! we got gangsters! we got dudes with classy hats & tommy guns & whatnot. have any of y'all seen brian depalma's the untouchables? if so, you remember that one scene where al capone bashes that dude's head in with a baseball bat? that scene ruled & definitely freaked my thirteen-year old ass out (in both a good & a bad way). i guess that's one positive thing that came out of the 18th amendment. without it, brian depalma never would have made the untouchables. it's basically the last good movie he's made & i wouldn't want to take that away from him. there was word that he was working on a prequel to the film starring nicolas cage as capone, but that project's been stalled. too bad. that could really lift depalma's spirits.

i can't even fathom those times. people rolling around town bop bop bopping people with tommy guns, having crazy car chases, posing as cops to assassinate members of a rival gang...you could do that stuff back then & often get away with it. old-timey murder! less than a hundred years later, the mob just ain't what it used to be. i mean, maybe it's so far underground than i don't even notice, but these days, you only really get to hear about one, maybe two sweet mob killings a year. it's got to the point where there are more reports of arrests than there are of gangland murder. the most famous mob family--the sopranos--even they met their end. fuggetaboutit.

these days, here in nyc, there are faux speakeasy style establishments popping up all over. when i first moved the city near the beginning of the decade, there were a couple speakeasy type bars (i.e.--milk & honey), but now it's become such a trend that the ny times did a piece on speakeasies back in june. there's PDT (please don't tell), a speakeasy hidden through a phone booth in the back of crif dogs. brooklyn has the hideout (in ft greene) & rye, a restaurant in williamsburg that looks like a speakeasy. just the other day, the museum of the city of new york finished up their speakeasy series of events, ones that celebrated the fact that manhattan used to be home to around 30,000 speakeasies. there's senor swanky's mexican cafe & speakeasy in the upper west side, but that's only a speakeasy in name. i turn my apartment into a speakeasy a couple nights a week, but it's so far underground that i'm the only one who's found it so far. bootleg!

#122 - speakin' easy of the old-timey.
snack: tyrrell's sweet chilli & red pepper chips
drink: speakeasy white lightning



holy crap! will you look at the old-timey hats on those dudes on the front of the bag of tyrrell's sweet chilli & red pepper chips? i can't tell...are they prussian or bobbies or something? probably bobbies, since tyrrell's is a u.k. company. the u.k. thing also explains the crazy spelling of "chili." crazy brits with their double l's. the car the bobbies are in is totally old-timey. it's the sort of car you'd expect to tip over taking a corner or whose radiator would explode for no good reason. i wish i had one of those cars & was on the front of a bag of chips. lucky probably dead now dudes. i tried out tyrell's beef & horseradish potato chips around the beginning of the year. they have a cow on the front of the bag. sir walter tyrrell's his name. i'm hoping that he's still alive, but he's a tasty cow, so it's tough to be certain.

i've tried a couple of the tyrrell's flavors & they've all had a nice, full flavor. the sweet chilli chips are no exception. they've got a no-too-greasy kettle feel & a burnt orange look with a bunch of lil sweet flavor specks scattered throughout. the sweet specks dominate over the chilli & pepper, so if you're one of those fancypants who can't handle spicy chips, it's ok. they won't hurt you...you candy ass. jk, candy ass! jk! seriously, they're good chips...a tad pricey, but good nonetheless. according to the bag, they're even "suitable for" you candy ass vegans. jk, candy ass vegans! jk! quick question, vegans. is candy ass one word or two? jk!

the speakeasy white lightning is totally bootleg! well, not really. the name implies that, but it's actually made by an totally legit brewery out of san fran. no canadian border runs from the g-men here! their website is goodbeer.com, which is a tad cocky. the white lightning's not on the website though, so i'm not sure if the beer's named after the george jones big bopper-penned song about g-men & t-men & pappy's brew or the 1973 burt reynolds movie in which reynolds plays a guy named "gator mcklusky," a former moonshiner who goes undercover in the moonshine circles to expose the sheriff who killed his brother. i haven't seen it, but it was shown as part of quentin tarantino's first ever semi-annual film festival, back in 1997...so i guess it's that kind of movie. hopefully it's named after that.

to be honest, it's a pretty boring beer. it's a wheat beer flavored with coriander seed & curacao orange peel, but it's really light for a wheat beer. there's not really that much flavor there, especially when competing for my flavor love with the deliciousness of the sweet chilli & red pepper. i expected more from it. i guess that's why it's such a self-conscious beer, with its pair of eyes staring at me from the neck of the bottle the entire time i drank it. it was all looking askance & mumbling "you're not impressed are you? you've had better, huh? i'm sorry to hear that. did i mention that speakeasies are old-timey? you like old-timey, right? ok, i'll be quiet now. enjoy your beer."

#120 - mad? these men are CAH-RAY-ZEE!

yeah, i know. everybody & their mother has already written about last sunday's third season premiere of amc's mad men, but i want to write about it too, damnit. after all, it's one of my favorite tv shows & it's been almost ten months since season two came to a close, so i've been jonesing. overall, almost three million people tuned in to the premiere, a 33% increase over the season two premiere, so i wasn't alone. the buzz has totally built. luckily, i've waited almost a week since it aired to get around to writing it, so i'm assuming that i'll be the "final word" on it.

when we last visited the mad men at the end of last season, things had fallen into a serious state of unrest. on a global scale, the cuban missle crisis & the possibility of a nuclear holocaust loomed over american society. the fate of sterling cooper was in question, as they were on the brink of a merger with a british firm (putnam, powell & lowe), leaving things all topsy-turvy for many of the main characters. don draper had been kicked out of his own house and his marriage was in shambles because of his constant cheating & overall attitude towards betty, but in the final scene of the season, she'd revealed to him that she's pregnant.

...& it's under those circumstances that we begin season three. the episode opens with don dreaming about the circumstances surrounding his birth (to a prostitute who dies after giving birth to him) as he warms milk on the stove. he brings the milk upstairs to betty & other than seeing that she's still pregnant, we're not entirely sure where we are on the timeline. we know that he's back living at home & that the sterling/putnam merger's gone through, but not much more. this vagueness is one of the keys to how mad men creator matthew weiner weaves his storytelling magic. much of the time, the characters feel & act like they're in control, but the truth is that they never seem to know the whole story & as such, there's always something waiting to derail them. as the season starts, we get this same feeling.

the premiere seemed to set up a lot of the storylines for season three. don & betty will soon have their third child, but don is still cheating on betty, doing so with a stewardess while on a business trip in baltimore. on that same trip, sal (who we've always assumed was gay but it's never been confirmed) starts getting hot & heavy with a hotel bellboy until they're interrupted by a fire alarm that clears out the hotel. while climbing down the fire escape in the evacuation, unbeknownst to sal, don spies the bellboy in his undershirt in sal's room. at the agency, they fire burt peterson (the head of accounts) & pete thinks that he's been named the new head but soon learns that they've actually replaced burt with a two-man team made up of him & ken cosgrove. there's also tension between joan & john hooker, the new male british secretary who's the "right-hand man" to lane pryce (the new CFO).

overall, it was a slow start to the season, but i'm not worried, as weiner's laid the foundations & in previous seasons, things didn't really take off until a few episodes in anyhow. we're someplace around the beginning of 1963 & since actual historical events have always had some effect on the storyline, there's a lot looming on the horizon. the feminine mystique & the beatles' first album (please please me) are coming out soon. the civil rights movement continues to boil over in the south & martin luther king will soon deliver his "i have a dream" speech. most importantly, JFK will soon be assassinated, an event that changed things for a lot of people. i can't wait to see what effect those things have on the folks at sterling-cooper.

#120 - mad? these men are CAH-RAY-ZEE!
snack: mr krispers barbecue baked rice krisps
drink: lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale



you know who's a mad man? mr krisper. by looking at him, you might think that he's quite the charmer, given his bowler & bow tie & coy smile, but make no mistake about it--that dude's CAH-RAY-ZEE. i was watching TMZ the other day & saw him coming out of the club with his posse & a girl on both arms & within the span of sixty seconds, he had mooned the paparazzi, kicked a stray puppy, jumped up on the hood of a car & puked onto the pavement below before speeding away in his escalade. it was some serious andy dick type shizz, but not as naked & effeminate & pathetic.

despite his craziness, there's one thing that mr krisper can do & that's make a tasty crisp. since he's as mad as a march hare, he spells "crisps" with a "k." he's just that wacky. like the front of the bag says, his mr krispers barbecue baked rice krisps have a "great whole multigrain taste." great? sure, why not? i definitely consumed them at a fairly rapid pace. they're the size of poker chips & made of brown rice, giving them a nice firmness somewhere between a chip & a cracker. in general, my feelings toward barbecue chips are mixed. if they're overwhelmingly flavorful (i'm thinking mesquite here), they need to stay as far away from my mouth as possible, but if they've got a simple barbecue taste that's not too overpowering, i'll invite them in like an old friend. fortunately, mr krisper's krisps fall into the latter category.

if you don't believe that, then you'd better believe that i'm going to give you the hairy eyeball. it won't be my lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale though, because i've already drank it. plus, if i was giving away an eyeball, i'd probably have to give it to mr krisper, because even though he's nuts & possibly dangerous, it looks like he's having some trouble with his left eye & could use the help. this particular hairy eyeball is lagunitas' 2009 new years release, a brown ale with a copper color & a caramel/brown sugar taste. from what i could tell, there wasn't a lick (lock?) of hair or a wink of eyeball in it, but that's just fine with me. that stuff probably would've interfered with the flavor.

the slogan on the front of the bottle--"here's lookin' atcha'!"--sounds like something don draper would come up with. i can see the tv spot now. there's a man. he's out having drinks with a few of his buddies. from across the room, he catches a glimpse of a sultry, red-haired woman alone smoking a cigarette at the end of the bar. she notices him. they exchange a few knowing glances. he calls the bartender over & whispers something to him. the bartender nods back at him, grabs something from the cooler behind the bar, makes his way down to the woman & places a beer in front of her. it's a lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale. she looks across at the man. he winks at her. she smiles & looks at the label, which reads "here's lookin' atcha'!" then they make whoopie. end scene...& we go back to watching an engrossing episode of the beverly hillbillies or the jetsons or something.

#118 - bacon bacon bacon!

back at the beginning of june, upon the exciting announcement of an amazing new bacon jerky, i opined about how the popularity of bacon was seriously spiralling out of control. there were bacon tattoos & bacon donuts & bacon dresses & bacon salt & bacon bacon bacon! since then, peeps' bacon obsession has continued to get more & more insane. bakon (the bacon flavored beer) has hit the market. andy richter did not approve. brooklyn brewery is working on a bacon beer. they even have a bacon exhibit at the met (for three more days). it's everywhere! don't take my word for it though. take baconbaconbacon's word for it...or maybe bacon unwrapped's. they've both sort of got a thing for bacon.

seriously, what's the obsession with bacon? how did it get elevated to such a status, something that's gone way beyond an ironic hipster fad? i have three possible theories as to why:

theory #1 - after years of the national pork board's attempts to woo the average joe pork-eating crowd with their "the other white meat" ads, the national pork producers' council (whose website appears to be porked at the moment...oh, back up! unporked!) decided to go after the hip crowd by going all viral. bob in marketing decided it was time to think big & think big he did. he & his team slowly inserted bits of bacon into the culture & folks started to be all "oh yeah, bacon. let's grab hold of that bus for a while." economic downturn & all, they've since laid bob off & he's been laid off for some ten months now, but that ad campaign that was his bacon baby has already been born. in fact, that bacon baby is now all grown up & driving that bus himself, speeding around town & doing blow off the chests of hookers as he does. the law's helpless to do anything. some drunk guy on the corner in the village once told me that cops love bacon, so i guess that could have something to do with it too.

theory #2 - hipsters were desperate. the yeah yeah yeahs & strokes had become lame & heroin was so passe & moustaches itch! & bushwick was becoming "too yuppie" & hipsters tried to fill the void with skinny jeans & big sunglasses & keffiyehs & trips to IKEA, but it just wasn't enough. we were living in a post-9/11 world & they needed to turn their irony toward america in order to heal. american food felt like a funny target. hamburgers were too boring. tv dinners were too cold. apple pie was too cumbersome. coca-cola was too evil...so they went with bacon. now they're just keeping it up to slight the cupcake people.

theory #3 - it's a combination of the two.

win rosenfeld (who worked with nova sciencenow for a while) seems to think that the bacon craze is finally over...



...i respectfully disagree.

#118 - bacon bacon bacon!
snack: vosges mo's dark bacon bar
drink: black sheep riggwelter yorkshire ale



last month in chicago, ms allison introduced me to the wonder of vosges, a line of gourmet chocolates with retail locales in chicago (we visited lincoln park), nyc & vegas. while there, it was revealed to the extremely friendly girl working there that i dabble in snack blogging, so she offered me some badass, probably expensive truffle. it ruled my face. super chicago friendly customer service! since we were en route to the pitchfork festival & they had a no entry with drink/food policy (although allison managed to smuggle in an avocado like a ninja), i had to forgo getting one of their crazy-ass chocolate bars for the time being. luckily, much to my surprise, during her travels the next day, allison picked up one of their black pearl bars for me. yay good host! it ruled my face.

since returning to nyc, i hadn't found the time and/or energy to travel to a vosges, but the other night, at a random park slope fancy bodega, they had a rack of gourmet chocolates. among them was the vosges mo's dark bacon bar. i'd sampled it in chicago & was completely intrigued that bacon & chocolate could taste so good together. i suppose reese's peanut butter cups got started in a similar "should we?" sort of way. i couldn't resist, especially after that sample. it's so good. since the bar ran me six & change, i've been taking my time with it, treating myself to a square or two at a time. tonight, the bacon bar comes to an end...a chocolatey, salty, occasionally crispy end. don't hate, people. this is one of the few good things to come out of the bacon craze.

one night this weekend i took in a pint of black sheep riggwelter yorkshire ale with a few squares of the bacon bar. the black sheep comes to us from the u.k., an area where folks have historically been huge fans of sheep...meadows & whatnot. it sort of explains why they also brew a monty python's holy grail ale. those blokes loved sheep. according to the back of the bottle, riggwelter is "from the old norse; rygg - back and velte - to overturn. when a sheep is on its back and can not get up without help, local dales dialect says it's rigged or riggwelted." silly helpless sheep...just like the ones i see while i fall asleep...but with less blood.

the flavor apparently contains "hints of coffee, bananas and liquorice." i tasted the coffee. not so sure about the other two. since the beer's a brown ale, it had a fairly typical english brown ale flavor, sort of like a newcastle but not really. it made for a rich & filling pint of ale, a nice complement to the bacon & the chocolate...which makes me wonder about the combo possibilities. can you make bacon out of sheep? yep. apparently you can...& when you're done, you can coat it in chocolate. done & done. bacon...is there anything you can't do?