What: A beer dinner featuring a small plates tasting menu based around the recipes in The Canadian Craft Beer Cookbook.
Where: Nick and Nat’s Uptown 21, at 21 King St. N., Waterloo
When: 21 January 6:30 p.m.
Other Details: A signed copy of my book is included in the ticket price.
Tickets: $60, available by calling the restaurant at 519-883-1100.
I seem to find myself in Waterloo more often than any other town outside of Toronto. That has a lot to do with southwestern Ontario’s excellent (and growing) beer scene, the gracious invitations from the owners of Relish Cooking Studio to put on events in their space, but my most recent journey to KW had an added purpose. I have been invited to help host a beer dinner at Nick & Nat’s Uptown 21 restaurant in January, which will be part of their Words Worth Eating series.
As a special bonus to guests we will have a one-off beer made just for that night by the guys from Block Three Brewing in St. Jacob’s. Not only did they offer up their expertise and pilot system for the project, but Graham and Bryan also open their doors and had Nick and I in for the brew day.
Note the photographic evidence that I did more — just barely — than stand around with my hands in my pockets. Together we made a cranberry take on Block Three’s rightfully popular King Street Saison. Dried cranberries were added to the mash, frozen and blitzed ones at flame-out along with a few pods of cardamom. Given that our special version beer starts with such a tasty base recipe, I’m confident that guests will enjoy what they find in their glasses. If you happen to be in the St. Jacob’s area (maybe for the farmers’ market) I highly recommend stopping by Block Three because their taproom is really the best place to taste the full range of their lineup.
From chatting with Nick Benninger I’m also really looking forward myself to trying what he has up his sleeve food-wise. As well, it’s a great honour for me to be included in this series whose past events have featured authors like Jennifer McLagan and Pat Crocker.
