Is it just me, or does Winter really suck the big one? I hate being cold. I hate being deprived of my precious daylight. I hate jackets. Dead leaves? Yeah, real uplifting. I’ve found that there are only a couple of lines of defense from the Winter Blues. Booze and heavy food. With that I bring you, barley wine and chili.
Going in the glass, this stuff is the color of fallen leaves. It looks complex, or is that just the wine glass? The pour is very viscous. It’s like syrup, and doesn’t make a splash as it quickly fills the glass. There’s a bit of a creamy white head that takes a couple of seconds to work it’s way through the thickness. Looks very inviting next to a bowl of flesh-free chili and burning embers. Not to mention the fire in the fireplace.
Raisins, dates and black cherries appear in the nose, alongside bread and booze. Is someone baking a fruitcake? I think I’m getting a buzz, just from the smell. Better drink up.
It feels like I’m pouring wet cement in my mouth. This must be the heaviest liquid known to man. If the thought of pouring uncured concrete down your gullet isn’t appealing, you better shake that shit off because this is very comforting. It’s not unlike taking a dose of Nyquil. Thick, oily warmth covers my mouth.
Right off the bat, I taste toffee, brown sugar and those dried fruits I picked up in the smell. Caramelized malts balanced with a fairly subtle hop profile. They’re mostly of the “piney” variety, with a little bit of the floral kind on the finish. It’s very sweet, but with a touch of hops and a blast of alcohol, I find myself going back for more. The warmth of the alcohol seems to bring out more of the sweetness. This is a sipper for sure.
Turns out the chili was the perfect meal to enjoy with this brew. The heat of the peppers cleaned the sticky sweetness right off of my palate. The density of the beans and potatoes gave something for the alcohol to latch on to. The earthiness of the spices jived perfectly with the evergreen profile of the hops. A match made in heaven.
The potatoes that I mentioned were the only real departure from the norm as far as my chili goes. It’s never exactly the same, but I pretty much start with the same base every time and go from there. For example, there’s always beer in it, but never the same kind. This time around, a cup of my coffee porter that I made a few months ago. As far as the base goes, it looks a little something like this:
- 1 lb black beans
- 1 lb red kidney beans
- 1 lb of fake ground beef (I use Morningstar Farms)
- two medium yellow onions
- 1 green, 1 red bell pepper
- 2 diced jalapenos
- 3 large diced tomatoes
- 1 can diced, roasted green chiles (or the real thing if I’ve visited New Mexico recently)
- 1 can of corn
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1 cup of good beer (if you wouldn’t drink it, why would you want to eat it?)
- 3 cups of vegetable stock
- chili powder, cumin, black and white pepper, coriander seed and cayenne pepper to taste
- just a little bit of something sweet (anything from Dr Pepper to chocolate chips)
The beauty of chili is that it’s fairly forgiving. You can experiment quite a bit, which I do every time. What fun is following directions and making the same dish every… single… time? I say go crazy. If you start with a good base, you can afford to branch out a little and see what a little bit of this or that does to it. But most of all, make sure that you’ve got a tasty beverage to wash that hotness down with. Sisyphus from Real Ale will do the trick.
Now, bring on Spring. Cheers!
