Stoutapalooza 2017
The Setup
So there we are standing around my kitchen, shooting the shit. It’s myself, Brandon and our good friends Dave and Liz. On occasion we meet up and have mini bottle shares. Which normally we interject into some other event we are doing, movie night, game night, etc. Brandon has brought with him a few bottles, and one just so happens to be a bottle of 2015 Punishment from Stone Brewing. Which is part of the Crime and Punishment series.If you have never had this line of beers before, they are spicy to say the least. Stone makes a pretzels at it’s World Bistro that if you order a side of milk with them its free, after its $5 a glass. Needless to say Brandon had been sitting on this bottle for a while, over a year in fact. He brought it to other bottle shares, always having to cart it back home. This night he would have to do that. With that year under it’s belt we all figured it would have mellowed. We were wrong.
The Plan
At some point during us choking down the spicy lava ale, it was mentioned that this might be good in some chili. Ah ha! Now there is an idea. We all thought we should meet up soon and have a large bottle share, mostly stouts. Since we all have been hoarding some big ones for over a year now. Dave with his Black Tuesday and me with the last four years of Plead the Fifth, and Brandon with three years of W00t from Stone. After finishing the bottle and figuring out some more details it was all set for Veterans Day weekend. We’d meet up at Dave’s cabin in northern Arizona and have a stout bottle share and chili cook off. A Stoutapalooza if you will.
The Chili
Normally, I make a mean chili that is spicy and meaty. However, with the recent addition to family and at my wife’s pleas I have brought it down to a mortal level. But, this cook off was my time to bring back the fiery inferno. I wanted to use beer in my chili, of course, but I had two bottle to choose from. A newer bottle of Punishment, or a bottle of Sriracha Stout from Rouge. That my lovely wife bought for me for xmas the previous year. Stout, chili, chili stout? Yeah that’s the one. But, since this is a cook off and I just can not throw some ground beef in with some spices and call it a day, I must get creative. Sirloin would be good to do. Not too crazy out there but different enough to work! After getting all the ingredients, and cooking up the beefs it was time to add the stout. I opened the bottle and boom, Bottle Bomb! A geyser of dark brown liquid was erupting from the bottle in my hand. So what does one do, when this happens? You place your mouth over the opening of course. So then I have spicy stout shoot me in the back of the throat. Not off to a good start. After the bottle episode everything else went fairly well. The house smelled amazing and all was right in the world again.