Pig & Pickle and Maui Brewing Company Beer Dinner (held July 15, 2013)

The Pitch

Another fantastic evening at Pig & Pickle, hosts to a monthly beer dinner that is consistently sold out. The food here is fantastic and thoughtfully paired with the beer of the month...making this a must-do beer dinner.

I was pretty excited to attend this dinner...so much so that I made my reservation from my cell in the USVI, at $2 a minute. Let's just say I did NOT enjoy the hold time on that one!

Our friends Tom & Sarah B. joined us again. They also participated in a side-promo for Uber, a ride-finding app, which provided $44.44 in credits to those who wanted a ride to and from the dinner. Genius!

SPAM roll

Given the "Hawaiian" brewery, the menu was geared to Hawaii and all the fantastic foods that can be found there. Our starter course was Spam Musubi (Spam Roll!) with a Shoyu dipping sauce. Amazingly, Sarah B has never had Spam, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be her first and only time! Since I'm not a big seaweed fan (hello Rice/Soy Paper!) I tried on roll with seaweed and one without. The Spam is so salty that there wasn't a discernible difference-go figure!

The beer chosen was a Bikini Blonde Ale. This was a super nice, light beer that let the Spam do the talking and didn't try to overwhelm the flavor of the appetizer. It would take a mighty LARGE beer to overcome the taste of spam, so selecting a beer that is a light complement was a great choice.

A quick word about the Maui Brewing rep...uh-thanks for nothing? He briefly introduced himself and got up (at 3 of the 4 courses) and told us the name of the beer. Yep, that's it. Gee, I can read, so there was no value add for us with this dude. I kind of expect a little knowledge transfer at a beer dinner, maybe a bit of history, interesting fact? We got nothing from this guy. Go to the website and get info on the beer and the company

Spicy Poke Fish

For the next course, a beer swap happened and I think it was a fantastic idea. The Spicy fish poke was served with Lemon-Grass Saison instead of the originally billed Big Swell IPA. All the hopheads at the table thought it was a good swap. So, since I'm not a HUGE beer expert, I could only agree with them. Mostly I just sat and drank the Saison...it was Ah-mah-zing! Slightly crisp and not a traditional heavy Saison, I really enjoyed it. Of course, you may not know that I skipped the poke-just can't do that fish thing, but the comments around the table were good and I didn't see any full plates of poke get carried off after it was served.

Lau Lau pork, potato/mac salad and sweet bun

This left the Big Swill IPA to be served with the main course. For me, IPA stands for (I Pass Ale) and it goes straight to hubby's side of the table after the obligatory "I still hate IPA" sip. I was happy to pass this one along as I looked at my beautiful plate of Lau Lau (prepared Pig & Pickle Style). Lau Lau is traditionally pork wrapped in taro leaf. This lau lau was served unwrapped, but tender and delicious regardless. The sweet bun and potato/macaroni salad made it even more Hawaiian. All that was missing was a tender tropical breeze (and heaven knows, we're FAR from that in a Phoenix July)! You can see what a huge portion of pork was served. It was truly yummylicious, but more food than I could eat in one sitting, especially knowing what was coming next!

 With a box of lau lau and sweet bun packed up for tomorrow's lunch, we moved on to the dessert pairing. The real reason I wanted to attend this dinner-even after an all day flying home ordeal the day before, this pairing matched up almost every dessert flavor I enjoy-and in a very approachable way!

Coconut cupcake with coffee filling,
dark chocolate frosting & macadamias

Coconut porter done right is one of the best brews on the planet (IMHO). Kelsey, the P&P baker, set it up right with a Coffee filled coconut cupcake, topped with dark chocolate and macadamia nuts. There was a healthy dose of salt on top to counterbalance the super sweet chocolate and it just totally worked for me. The sweet/salt duo is one of my dessert favorites and this one was perfection.

And thanks to Pig & Pickle Staff for again putting together a fantastic experience. It was nice to see the kitchen crew out for a round of applause...that pork doesn't roast itself and the kitchen crew is always the one doing the grunt (haha) work when it comes to roasting a pig!

And Maui Brewing Company beer? I liked three of the four, which for me, is pretty good odds!!! What will August hold??? Check here for details. See you there?

 The SWAG.