Upcoming December 2014 Brewery Dinners

I wanted to share a few upcoming brewery dinners that are being held this month in case you are interested.

Raven & Rose + Goose Island Bourbon County Stout Brewery Dinner

Tomorrow, you can get access to some incredible beers from Goose Island Brewery which you cannot always find here in Portland at the latest Brewery Dinner at Raven and Rose. This one is titled the Goose Island – Bourbon County Release dinner, and offers Goose Island cult favorite beers (with four of them being barrel aged beers aged in wine casks or bourbon barrels) with Raven and Rose’s English Style roast dinner.

The menu includes, for $75 a person, a welcome appetizer and beer pairing, followed by a Sunday Roast family style dinner along with a beer flight, and then a dessert with beer. This brings the total to 6 beers! The details of the menu include

Course 1: Welcome Snacks & Beer

Beer 1.IPA, a fruity aroma, set off by a dry malt middle, and long hop finish

Course 2: Salad

Field Greens, radishes, spiced pumpkin seeds, red wine vinaigrette

Course 3: Family style Mains and Sides for a English-style Roast Supper

Mains

Beef Tri-Tip

Oregon King Salmon

Portland Farmers’ Market Sides Like (depending on what is fresh at the Portland Farmers Market on Saturday – I have seen the staff there on more than one occassion loading up their carts!):

Oven-roasted Peppers & potatoes, olive oil, lemon, sea salt

Roasted Farm carrots & Beets, celery root puree

Fried Cauliflower, anchovy salt, sunflower seeds, manchego

Course 4: Dessert Beer Pairing

Beer 6. Bourbon County Barley Wine, aged in Kentucky bourbon barrels this traditional English-style barleywine possesses the subtlety of flavor that only comes from a barrel that’s gone through many seasons of  ritual care

The beer dinner is tomorrow, December 7, from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm in the Main Dining Room. If you are interested, please contact please email Natalia Toral at natalia@ravenandrosepdx.com. There are often Brewery Dinners at Raven & Rose (I think once a month) or beer specials.

Also, the Sunday Roast dinner is a weekly event at Raven & Rose that replaces the regular a la carte menu, priced at $35 per person for a table (all family style as would be the tradition so the price includes the whole dinner: roast, sauce, potatoes, and a choice of two sides for the table) and served only on Sunday. The dinner features roasts that change weekly like whole lamb on the rotisserie and slow-roasted local pork, each carved to-order for the table, and the sides based on whatever is fresh on the market.

For a peek at what the dinner might be like, check out the pictures and recap from.  A preview of the event attended by fellow blogger ladies Beer Musings from Portland and Salt. Water. Coffee.

Cocotte and Upright Brewing Dinner

Thursday December 11th at 6 PM Upright Brewing, which specializes in farmhouse style ales, has a very tasty beer pairing dinner planned at French restaurant Cocotte by chef Kat LeSueur herself. Farmhouse and French food? Sounds incredible! This will be an intimate dinner limited to only 18 tickets. Reserve a seat by emailing the brewery at uprightbrewing@gmail.com. $65.

Menu

1. First – Cauliflower and Mushroom Raviolo with Aleppo Chili, Anchovy, Picholine Olives, Pecorino, Fir Tips
   Paired with the Copper and Theory Fifth Anniversary Saison
2. Second – Apricot Puree, Bay Shrimp & Scallop Salad, Roasted Beets, Shaved Fennel, Grilled Pugliese, Fennel Pollen
   Paired with Jeux d’eau, barrel fermented with Oregon muscat
3. Third – Charcuterie
   Paired with the Six, dark rye saison
4. Fourth – Roasted Chicken Breast, Chicken Confit, Chicken Liver Mousse, Apple, Butternut Purée, Yolk
   Paired with Fantasia Reserve, single cask from 2010 peach harvest
5. Fifth – Cheese Course
   Paired with Spollen Angel, Belgian-style tripel
6. Sixth – Dark Chocolate Bread Pudding, Cinnamon Coconut Ice Cream, Coconut Coffee Caramel
   Paired with Coffee Stout, wine barrel aged with Extracto cold press

Whole Foods Pearl + Rev. Nat’s Hard Cider Brewery Dinner

I’ve attended brewery dinners at the Whole Foods Market in the Pearl in the past, such as this one with Hopworks that I recapped and this one with Burnside that I also recapped. For December 18, a Thursday, from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm they are at it again, this time partnering with Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider. This is a huge bargain / value of a brewery dinner I think, the best that I know of in Portland at the moment. You get four courses with four pairings for a mere $40. The dinner also offers you an opportunity to hear from Reverend Nat himself to hear about how he is a cider rebel / revolutionary and evangelist.

The brewery dinner is set upstairs in the room they call the Mezz, which is near where the cafe is. They have done incredible jobs setting up beautiful dinners there before in the past: you will forget you are in a store! If you look carefully, you will see me in the photo in the back right!

Course 1

Gorgonzola cheesecake, tomato sauce, flat bread, basil oil 

Paired with Reverend Nat’s Hazelnut Abbey, a cider utilizing Starvation Valley cranberries, Albina City hazelnuts, organic Minneola tangelos and a touch of winter spices

Course 2

Cider brined trout, apples, greens, pickled fennel, creme fraiche and spiced almond 

Paired with Reverend Nat’s Revival, I think he is probably bringing Hard Apple which is a secret blend of Washington-grown apples and then they add piloncillo, dark brown evaporated cane juice, purchased direct from Michoacan, Mexico. Or, maybe he’ll bring the limited release Revival Dry, which is made with 2/3rds English and French bittersweet-bittersharp apples and 1/3rd American heirloom dessert apples and represents the first cider Reverend Nat ever made.

Course 3

Spiced crusted pork tenderloin with pickled onions, creamy shrimp hominy and yam Yukon whip

Paired with Reverend Nat’s Envy (one in the series of his 7 Deadly Sins ciders), this cider is big, as it is intensely hopped with 11 varieties of hops (boiled, bursted, whirlpooled, dry), a half-ton of dark muscovado and the finest northwest fresh-pressed apple juice

Course 4

Apple crumble with vanilla bean ice cream

Paired with Reverend Nat’s Providence, I’m not sure if he is bringing the Ginger Tonic (to which he adds to the cider pure squeezed ginger juice, hundreds of hand-cut fresh lemongrass stalks, the fresh-squeezed juice and zest of thousands of limes (zested by hand!) and top it off with hand-extracted quinine from the bark of the Peruvian cinchona tree) or the Traditional New England version, a traditional cider that follows a very old recipe dating from early 1600’s colonial America but additionally made with prime California raisins, dark Maldivian muscovado, whole Indonesian cinnamon and nutmeg and fermented to complete dryness on toasted American oak.

To get tickets to this brewery dinner, you can sign up in the store or go to Eventbrite.com at this link. You can also try to win reservations for 2 people by going to the Whole Foods Facebook page here and leaving a comment!

Even if you can’t make either of these two brewery dinners, you definitely want to keep an eye out for future events, either for yourself or perhaps to give as a gift, as both Raven and Rose and Whole Foods offer brewery dinners often as part of a series.

Let me note even if you don’t drink beer often, one of the great things about pairing the beer with food is that it opens up a new way to appreciate the flavors in beer that you might not have realized when drinking beer by itself.

Furthermore, even if you are a beer drinker regularly, these events also give you access to the brewers in a very intimate atmosphere, which is a really unique opportunity.

Which of these brewery dinners interests you? Have you attended a brewery dinner before, and what did you think of it, what brewery was it with?

Cheers!