I'm having a beer tasting / birthday party and am looking for party ideas. What was fun? What wasn't? I'd say half of the attendees are beer advocates. Anything happen that was memorable and how? Prize giveaways, trivia, tasting procedures, annoying 'extra' that stood out? Custom pint glasses, takeaway items, etc. I know I sound like a chick but many of the attendees dig this kind of thing. Cheers.
my birthday cake! BCBS chocolate cake w/ founders backwoods bastard icing. (I basically took the beer chow bcbs cupcake recipe and poured it into 2 layer cake pans and baked at 350 for roughly 35-45 min.
The first thought that entered my head after making BCBS cupcakes was, would this work in a full size cake. The batter is basically mousse and I thought all the escaping gas during baking would cause the cake to collapse somewhat in the middle. I see that this is not the case. The second thought was that all frosting should contain bourbon. I didn't have any thoughts after that. But nice job. Definitely baking one for my brother's 21st... naturally with a BCBS to wash it down.
YES. The batter works perfectly for 2 cake pans. Technical difficulties came in with the icing that was between the 2 layers. It needs a bit more integrity. I did 2 different icings. One w/ bourbon (the middle layer + nutella) and the outer was backwoods bastard. The icing comes out too fluffy/delicate to support the weight of the cakes at room temp. I think if you chill the icing for 30 min in the refrigerator and let the cakes come down completely to room temp, and shave the dome-ish top off of the layer so it is perfectly flat, you will not encounter these problems. The cake does need to be refrigerated due to the creamcheese icing.... so free a shelf in your fridge!
Maybe you could a vertical tasting of some kind if possible? For my birthday in a few days I'm doing a Stone Old Guardian 5 year vertical (2009-2013) with a few friends!
My 30th was a few weeks ago and my wife set up a tasting that included about 15 people, only about 3 others were beer geeks. We bought a case of inexpensive wine glasses (my wife painted the stems black and wrote the date, they looked pretty badass). Everyone was instructed to bring a six pack (or couple bombers); we didn't have anything too exotic (even a couple bmc beers) but still had a big variety (25 different beers) and it turned out great.
Had a bomber only beer tasting last weekend. Guests brought finger foods. Bought a dozen small brandy snifter glasses at World Market. They made ideal beer snifters; allowed us to evenly distribute beer using identical glasses. Just a thought for keeping things running smoothly. Good luck. Cheers!
I've done a bunch of things the past few years: -beer and food crawling throughout philly, followed by visits to local breweries -trip up to boston for the weekend for BBF -trip up to NYC for bar crawling all of these were fun, but the weekend up in Boston for the fest was insane...it probably depends on how many people you can get together and how nuts they want to get about it.
My brother made Young's Chocolate Stout cupcakes with Bailey's cream filling, topped with bourbon glaze and bacon a couple birthdays back. They were awesome! For the tasting idea, if you do a BYO, it's going to depend on your guests. It'll be great if most of your friends are beer people, not quite as good if they don't normally drink better beer.
well, honestly, the recipe calls for nutella in both the cake batter and the icing... wish it wad my idea... alas, I can't take credit. I like organic products when available, so I swapped out the nutella for an organic facsimile, and honestly, my stuff tastes much better... not as sweet. Swapping out the bcbs in the icing for bourbon was my idea. Came out great, but the alcohol obviously loosens up the icing a bit. oh, one more note that I forgot to mention earlier... the 2 cake pans I used had their bottoms lined w/ parchment paper. I did that because the cupcake recipe called for lined tins, and it's easier to pop the cake layers out that way. And I checked the center of the cake for doneness w/ a wooden toothpick. After 25 min, it was totally not ready... I took it out after roughly 40 min? can't recall.
that works?! I love homemade icecream, but all my trials w/ alcohol went bust because it never firmed-up enough
holy cow that sounds amazing. The bacon really puts it over the top..... oh, on the note of bacon... a fab beer accompanyment is a tapas I love to make. Dates wrapped with bacon. Very simple, but need very good dates, and very good bacon. (the dates should be pitted and kinda sticky, not dry... and my fav brand of bacon is maplewood farms. very smokey, sweet, with the perfect amount of salt.) Just cut the bacon strip in half (so it's roughly 4"), wrap it around the date, secure with wood toothpick, and fry on all sides. So @#$@# good.
Actually a very small portion is "enough" and I probably save calories eating it instead of something less intense. I keep saying that to myself anyway.
