Blind Tasting at Aviary

Do your taste buds ever get tired? Has your favorite drink stopped registering with your brain? A/B tests are one way to get your brain cranking and your taste buds excited again. Comparing two similar wines really exposes the subtle flavors in each in a way that drinking either wine alone can't.

Aviary Lounge and Home Decor was nice enough to have me over for a blind A/B test pitting American against French wines. In this case, the extra challenge was that the wine was paired with fresh oysters. Delicious!

See the rest of my Aviary photos.

Hank's Garage

Even though they cry for food pairings, most Austin restaurants don't have taps like Chimay or Maredsous. Dry your tears, St. Bernardus: Hank's Garage is ready and aiming to pair.

Beer, meet food. Food, meet beer. Oh yeah, that's how I like to eat.

Thanks to Hank's Garage for inviting me to their media event. More photos to come.

Paula's Texas Spirits Tour

I was lucky enough to tour Paula's Texas Spirits with the Texas Temperance Society a few weeks ago. Paula produces two different liqueurs at her facility in Austin: Texas Orange, and Texas Lemon.

The steps to produce each drink are fairly simple, but involve lots of hard labor and attention to detail. The first step is running a barrel of neutral spirits through a carbon filter to remove any impurities or off-flavors from the 195 proof alcohol. 

Explaining the filtration step prompted one of the touring industry insiders telling us how many expensive vodkas start life in the same way: carbon filtering a neutral spirit that somebody else distilled. Apparently the rules are such that a vodka can claim to have distilled their spirit themselves even if only a very small percentage of the volume was actually theirs.

In the case of Paula's, this doesn't really matter -- she wants the base spirit to have no flavor so she can add her own. For vodka though, one might ask why you would pay a premium price for what might amount to carbon-filtered commodity ethanol with added water.

After Paula (or often, master liqueur maker Chris Roberts) filters the base spirits, the orange or lemon peel is added. each orange or lemon is hand peeled by Paula or Chris, and the actual meat of the fruit is donated.

Once the peel has soaked overnight (195 proof alcohol works fast), the peels are removed, and the mixture is diluted down to 80 proof with water. The resulting mixture is filtered to remove bits of peel, and bottled on site.

Visiting Paula's in person was a nice reminder that hand-crafted beverages, although they often look like a huge commercial success from the outside, can still be a relatively small operation involving lots of manual labor. I sometimes forget how lucky I am to live in Austin with so many different quality hand crafted beverages (and food) available. Paula's isn't available outside of Texas. I wonder how they make good margaritas in other states.

See more photos from the Paula's tour.

*Thanks to Paula's for their hospitality!

El Arbol

You might think that I've tried every great restaurant and every craft beer in Austin. Thankfully I have not. El Arbol proves I can still be pleasantly surprised.

I have not heard a great deal about El Arbol in Austin. They must be the strong and silent type. This place has a unique atmosphere, and offers some unique dishes.

The octopus (pictured to the left) and the scallops really made me happy. Just look at that octo'! It looks crazy -- in the best way possible.

If I handed you a pair of harpoon-shaped chopsticks and replaced the inscription "El Arbol" on the plate with "Nautilus", you'd be dining just like Captain Nemo.

I'm not getting carried away, am I?

Take a look at the rest of my El Arbol photos here.

Somms Under Fire

My first photos from the Somms Under Fire event. Congratulations to June Rodil of Congress Austin for winning the cocktail recreation contest, the people's choice, and the judged event.

Thanks to Somms Under Fire and the Keeper Collection for the Media Pass!

*updated: I finally fixed that spelling error....