Brewery Arts Centre beer dinner Kendal

A beer dinner, in a place that used to be a brewery? In the place I've been many times and enjoyed various musical delights, for possibly as many as 30 years? A chance to stand in front of about 50 people and talk about my beers matched with some really truly stunning food?

No brainer really.

And so it was, a couple of months ago, Ann and I sat with Ged, the Brewery Arts Centre chef, and choose the beers to go with his superb food. I'm really looking forward to this.

It will be happening this coming Thursday, 13th November.

You can book tickets on-line here. But hurry, I believe it is nearly sold out.

I'm just off to make the Eisalloy Ice Cream.

Here's the menu;

Course 1

Bury Black Pudding, Kirkham’s Lancashire Cheese Hash Brown & Caramelised Red Onion

Served with Azimuth 5.8%, Hardknott’s stunning IPA, flavours of peach and nectarines with spring gorse nose and a good lasting bitterness.

Course 2

Warm Pulled Gressingham Duck, Smoked Bacon, Rocket Leek Salad

Served with Colonial Mayhem, a cheeky 8.1% “Colonial Mild” toffee, and caramel flavours, fruity figs and gentle finish.

Course 3

A Cup of Celeriac Soup                                       

Served with Lux Borealis 3.8%, crisp and refreshing colsch stlye beer.

Course 4

Venison Steak

Raspberries, Apricots in a Rich Red Wine Sauce with Fondant Potato

Served with Gordian Knott 6.2%, resinous and citrus with a balance of malt

Course 5

Herdwick Roulade of Lamb                                          

Minced Lamb with Rosemary, Rolled in Pastry, White Wine Shallot Sauce on Buttered Cabbage

Served with Infra Red 6.2%, roast root vegitables in the full on body with a balance of orange note and strong lasting bitterness.

Course 6

Eisalloy Icebock Ice Cream with Chilli Shortbread Biscuit

Served with Rhet III 12.4% – Sichuan peppercorn and green tea infused pale

Course 7

Kendal Creamy & Westmorland Smoked Cheddar Cheese with Fruit Chutney

Served with Granite 2013 13.2% - Our vintage barley wine made every year. Bitter toffee, bananas, boozy and just a hint of spice in the finish

Hardknott Brewer's Kitchen

If you've been following this blog for a while you may know that I've complained about Saturday Kitchen failing to give beer reasonable airtime. Generally, it is an irritation to me that TV food programs really fail to give quality beer any credence. This just isn't right.

Well, we've decided the only real way to combat the problem is to come up with our own alternative program that covers a little bit more beer.

We've done a couple of episodes and posted them on Vimeo. They may not be quite up to the production quality of the BBC, but we're only doing this as a little bit of a laugh, even if the message and subject has a more serious underlying principle.

We know these videos are a little on the long side. We filmed kind of ad-libbed and mostly unscripted. We can put a lot more effort into proper scripting, directing, editing and generally better planning if there is enough interest in the idea.

These two episodes took me three days to produce in total, so if you don't like them, let me know I'm wasting my time.

Please, feel free to comment and let us know what you think. We hope you like the general idea.

I've one more episode "In the can" - slow cooked belly pork in Cool Fusion. I've not started editing the footage yet until I hear what you all have to say about our work so far.



Hardknott Brewer's Kitchen Episode 1 from Hardknott Brewery on Vimeo.



Hardknott Brewer's Kitchen Episode 2 from Hardknott Brewery on Vimeo.