Bitter and Esters (formerly The City Brewshop)

No this isn't about a Folies Bergère star performer but rather this is about my brother John's new store for all things alcoholic. Or rather for all things about making alcoholic beverages. It used to be called The City Brewshop but they changed it to Bitter and Esters.

700 Washington Ave, in Brooklyn NY.
Phone: 917.596.7261

It's an amazing space. Beautiful! And they crammed it will all the things you will need to make, bottle and enjoy your beer, wine or mead. And take it from me, it's worth making your own bear or mead or even wine. They also have a great space for teaching classes. So, if you aren't a beer, wine or mead maker, you can become one.



John is on the left and Douglas, the other owner, and the mead, cider and wine expert, is on the right. John is the beer expert. Carla, John's main squeeze, is in the middle.

Founders.

They even have a cool basement. I was not allowed to take pictures. Hush, hush, big secret plans for the basement. They have a patio too, which is amazing for Brooklyn.



But I did sneak a picture of their grain storage bin. They're putting in some organic dark chocolate that I brought into the bin for safe keeping.



One reason I went was to visit my brother and Carla as well as to see their new shop. They had a soft opening. The other reason that I went to Brooklyn was to pick up bottling material for bottling my mead.



I listened to Doug and I bought the white champagne caps to go with the champagne bottles I had gotten and I also bought some corks to bottle the still mead and a corker to put the corks in. I also bought baskets for the champagne bottling.



What fun. I tried the mead, this is the high alcoholic, not sweat mead, mine is somewhere around 10% Though it may be as high as 11.5%. I'm hoping that 10% is enough alcohol to keep the mead from turning. We'll see. I may have put in too much water on start up. But even so, the mead tastes pretty good. The Sack Mead, which I'll be bottling soon, is much better.



I was going to try and use my 29mm caps but the capper I have is strictly for beer bottles. If I'm going to make Champagne or sparkling wine, methode Champenoise, or very sparkling mead, I'm going to have to get another capper.

Beer, wine and sangria... What have we been doing?

The Guilded Otter

For my blog followers and my twitter followers who do not follow me on Facebook, here is a make-up post with all the pictures that are currently on my FB account and the Life By Chocolate FB account. There is even more on the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn and Hudson River Valley Art Workshops and of course our Wee Forest Folk store. So that should be most of what we have on Facebook.

Now, what have we been doing besides making chocolate and brewing beer and of course knitting and quilting? We've been dining and having great wines and beers.

Let me start from most recent. We went to The Guilded Otter in New Paltz.



We tried their sampler and then decided that the Winter Wassail was the one that we wanted to drink. The Crimson Lager was also good as was their Altbier and their Imperial Stout and the porter. Mostly all their beers are good. I bought a growler of the Winter Wassail.

They make a great sandwich. Here is my love, looking at the menu.



We've also been drinking some stellar wines. Here is a montage or rather a pictorial of the wine we've had over the last few months. These will be in reverse order of drinking them, from latest to lastest, if that's a word. Which I know it is not.

Very super yummy.

When I first opened this rosé I thought it was gone. It wasn't. It did take a few minutes, about 30 of them, to open and be delightful. I highly recommend this nice rosé.

One of the wonderful meals Kim made for us. I'm definitely going to steal the slaw. Great. Tasty and yummified.

The Hosmer was good and the Heron Hill was great though I think the Heron Hill needs a lot more time.

Ooooh La La, as my French friends would say, this wine was superb. It had honey and other complex flavors on the finish. Here's what I said about it when I was drinking it. "another stunner from the collection. Sauzet and a 1er cru. A wonderful wine that went well with the gigli we had with cheese sauce. Basically a goat cheese, mascarpone sauce."

These are the glasses we had the wine in.

I couldn't detect the honey and honeysuckle flavors I was expecting on the finish with a trace of caramel. When the wine opened, it was beautiful and delicious with all the flavors you'd expect from a 1er cru Meursault of this caliber.

We've also been making a great drink with the St. Germain and Apple Cider, local good stuff, cinnamon heated. I use almost a 1/2 and 1/2 mixture of St. Germain and Apple Cider. Very nice. Sorry, no sangria so this will have to do. It makes a very good winter cocktail of about wine strength.

A most lovely Chardonnay. This was a great drink. I've been taking out wines that I thought might be over the hill because when I opened this Chablis I thought it was already over the hill.

This was the bottle of wine that started all the problems. I thought it was bad. But I was wrong. It just took a long time to open. At least 1 hour. This wine was very gravely and very austere and had no fruit at all but after it had opened, it was a very typical Chablis with plenty of fruit though not as much as other Burgundies.

I'll leave you with two more. This is a great dessert wine and one of Kim's favorites. We had this with Roquefort and other blue cheeses.



I bought this next Sauterne back in the 80's and back when people were more concerned with Terroir than the skill in making the wine. This bottle of wine was sold to me as "contiguë à Yquem" that is the vineyard for this wine was contiguous with Yquem, the greatest Sauterne.

All of Burgundy is an example of this belief that Terroir isn't everything but the only thing and how wrong that can be. Clos de Tart is a particularly great example of how a change in the technique produces a much better wine. My last bottle of Clos de Tart was a 1990, which was superb.

And another great dessert wine. We drank this one with Roquefort and other great cheeses, mostly blue. All of these dessert wines had that characteristic honey and bottle sunlight greatness to them. No Yquem but still worth the drink. I am leaving out the great Champagnes we had over New Years, DVX, Krug etc. But you can see them on my Facebook site.

I hope this post satisfies not only the beer people following me but also the wine people and the cocktail or mixed drink crowd. And I hope it also makes for interesting reading for all you chocoholics out there. Enjoy.

Are there Protector Wines, Randy?

Yes, Randy, @TheWineWhore, there are protector wines and they are good. They exist as certainly as love of and generosity towards and devotion to wine exist and you know they abound and give longevity to your collection. Alas! How dry we would be if there were no protector wines in the world. Have faith! Protector wines are not to cheat your friends or yourself out of your sacred collection but to protect it from folly and whim.

Everyone has some protector wines and as a matter of fact, some people have protector cigars. What's a protector wine? A protector wine is the wine that does the heavy lifting. It's your day-to-day wine that can be drunk with your pizza or with your Uncle Harry who isn't going to notice if you pull out a 1989 La Tâche or a decent Chianti. Proctor wines allow you to reserve your 1990 d'Yquem or Climens or great Ice Wine for those special anniversaries or occasions but still gives you the pleasure of drinking good wine.

When we were moving from California to New York, I told my good friend Gregg to pick any bottle from my collection and we'd drink it together before Kim and I left. He chose a 1989 La Tâche. I blanched but, because these wines are for drinking, we did drink it together on our last night in Los Altos. Gregg, who is a Burgundy lover, said it was the best wine he had ever drunk. Personally, I think La Tâche trumps even Romani Conti. The four of us drank heaven in a bottle. We shared it with our wives, even joyously. What did we have for dinner? Hint, potatoes were involved.

I have a whole slew of protector wines for my private collection but that doesn't stop me from drinking my most cherished wines. As a matter of fact, sometimes my protector wines are as good as the wines from the sanctum sanctorum and in rare cases, better and most of the time just as expensive. My private collection is private and in many cases old and rare. But that's easy for me to do because I have a restaurant with an extensive collection of great wines.

In terms of your average wine drinker, protector wines are vin de table protecting that special gift from Uncle Joe who bought you a 1994 Taylor port to put away for another 10 years.

No Protector Wines! Thank Bacchus they live and live forever. Ten years from now, Randy, nay, two times ten years from now, that 1994 Fonseca, perfectly aged, will make glad your heart and please your palate.