Cherry Beer Cookies

A little back story for you here - We honeymooned in Boston in early September of course.  By then literally all of the east coast fall beer was already on tap in the city bars.  One of our big to-dos was visit the Samuel Adams brewery, which led us to the first pub that ever served Sam Adams beer.  If you make it there, show your brewery tour ticket, and buy a Sam Adams draft, you get to keep the glass.  And that's how I tried the cherry wheat ale.  It's amazing on tap.

With that said, I bought a 6 pack the other day and unfortunately am not liking it as much out of the bottle.  I thought "Oh I can definitely bake with this then."  But cupcakes are so hard to share if you aren't planning or attending an event.. like oh hey just had these extra cupcakes laying around that I wanted to share.  So I decided to take a shot at creating my own cherry beer cookies!

Cherry Beer Cookies

1 1/2 sticks butter - room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup Splenda brown sugar blend
1 tsp almond extract
1 12oz bottle of Sam Adams Cherry Wheat Ale
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup dried cherries
2 cups chocolate chips (I split mine, 1 cup white chocolate chips & 1 cup chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whip together the butter and both sugars.  Add in almond extract and begin adding beer in small increments.  Mix in flour, baking soda, and salt until ingredients are well incorporated.  Fold in cherries and chocolate chips.  Chill dough for about 20 minutes.  Drop dough onto baking sheets in tablespoon sized dollops.  Bake for 13-15 minutes or until bottoms are slightly golden.  Let cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes and transfer to cooling rack.

Cheers!

Brew Review: Hunter's Brewing

Always on a search to try new breweries and wineries, we checked another off our list.  Hunter's Brewing is a relatively new nanobrewery in Chesterton, open Thursdays through Saturdays (and occasionally now on Sundays too!)  There are high top tables, a couple couches, and the bar to sit and enjoy beer.  They have prepackaged snacks and lately The Rolling Stonebaker wood-fired pizza food truck has been there on Thursdays.

Of course you know I tried a flight, which was 8 beers, just over $11.  It seems that Hunter's doesn't offer any light summer beers yet, so they were all relatively heavy.  The Khao Hom Mali, a jasmine rice cream ale, was probably the one I liked most.  It's definitely creamy and the jasmine gives it quite an interesting taste.  Mild Child, the English brown ale, was also good.  Even though I do love a good flavored stout, the others were a bit too heavy for me.  Of course that doesn't mean we won't be back to try more.  The owners were extremely nice and they participate in all of the local brew fests so we will see them soon at Beers Across the Wabash!

Crown Brewing Company

As you know, Carl and I are steadily working our way all around the local breweries.  Fortunately, I don't think we will ever run out of places to try since there are so many in the Chicago, Northwest Indiana, and Southwestern Michigan areas. 

Crown Brewing Company hosted the beer festival I blogged about here, so I'd known for awhile that I wanted to head out to Crown Point and try a whole flight full of their beers.  My gut feeling did not lie.  Crown Brewing is definitely one of my favorites around! 

My flight consisted of Crown Blue, Crown Brown, Weizenhammer Weiss, Industrial Porter, Raspberry Creme Java Porter, and Plead the 5th Anniversary Imperial Red Ale.  Crown Blue was a very light blueberry that is definitely a summer beer.  I also really enjoyed the Crown Brown because unlike other brews that boast a nutty, caramel flavor, I could actually taste both flavors impeccably well.  The industrial porter was very smooth, much smoother in fact than my normal stout picks.  And my absolute favorite was the wonderfully delicious Raspberry Creme Java Porter.  It is so good.  You can smell the hint of raspberry the second your glass is raised and it has an incredibly smooth finish for a porter.  I added to our growing growler collection (SunKing, Figure 8, etc.) and landed one of these to go.  I can't like 'em all, so naturally I was not a fan of the red ale; it really came off as more of an IPA taste to me.  With that said, I can't believe I thoroughly enjoyed five out of the six beers I sampled, so we will definitely be returning to Crown Brewing.

As a side note, they are in the same building as Carriage Court Pizza, so you can enjoy some carbs to soak up the good beer.  I recommend the margherita pizza, but skip the beer cheese appetizer (not the best we've had.)

Overall, I definitely recommend trying this place; I'm ranking it right up there with my Three Floyds review.  Enjoy & let me know which beer is your fav!

Beer Fest Bonanza

If you follow me on Instagram, it was probably pretty clear Carl & I went to a beer festival last weekend .. what with the "Crown Beer Fest" pint glass, pretzel necklace, and all.  And it was fabulous.  So much fun - I definitely recommend going to one!  It's almost always a sure thing that I'll love any local wine or brew fest. 

My Top Tastes:
- Back Road Brewery's Blueberry Stout - sounds odd, but it works..it really, really works. (For being so close in La Porte, Indiana we'll definitely be making a trip out to the brewery in the near future to sample a flight.)
- Brickstone Brewery's Cherry Ale  - absolutely delicous!
- Flat 12 Bierwork's Cucumber Kolsch - talk about a refreshing summer beer! 
- Crown Brewing's Apple Ale & their Green Tea Dee-railer - both SO good!

There was such an amazing abundance of great beer that these are only a few of my favorites!

And finally, another great discovery last weekend was that the company BrewFest Partners does a whole slew of local beer festivals!  Check out the line up for the great lakes region here.  I've been looking at all the details; sign me up for the Great Lakes Brew Fest in Racine, Wisconsin.  That one sounds amazing, definitely worth a trip a bit North.  Bottoms up!