Featuring Collin Flatt, Editor of Philly Eater

Photo by Danya Henninger

This month’s Sommelier Smackdown  features a rising star in Philly. A wanton glutton, he has the stink of bravado, and more than a  whiff of semi-sweet depravity; Collin Flatt is a force to reckon with in Philadelphia’s food & booze scene.

Collin made his first mark in Philly as the editor at Phoodie, where he managed to attract a large audience with his razor sharp wit and his preternatural ability to get the scoop.  From there, Collin jumped to  NBC Universal to head up a new  venture. Working for our  entertainment overlords, his writing skills were honed to a professional gleam, yet his edge –thank god– remained. Sadly his project, TheFeast Philadelphia, did not last long after Comcast bought up NBC.

Not long after, he was tapped to start up the Eater franchise in Philadelphia. Known for it’s take-no-prisoner attitude toward the food scene, Eater was a perfect fit for Mr. Flatt. The venture quickly gained the love of hardcore foodies. In a scant few months, he won over a significant readership from Philadelphia Magazine’s Foobooz.

This is not Collin’s first time competing in the Sommelier Smackdown. His previous oppenents included author Jason Wilson and sommelier Michael McCaulley. In the round, Collin is taking on the Wine School’s Frank Cipparone.  The menu was created by Keith Wallace, the author of the bestselling Corked & Forked Cookbook.

“The menu is designed to be a sommelier’s nightmare” says Keith. “However, the right pairing will guarantee an killer food experience.  The menu plays around with asian themes, but is firmly based in classic French styles.”

The Sommelier  Smackdown

Chilled Shrimp
Accented with cucumber, fenugreek and lemongrass. 

Grilled Vegetables
With a red lemon and ginger oil.

Beef Carpaccio
Over Korean slaw and Dashi Soy

Blue Cheese
with Smoked Fig & Sriracha

Sommelier Smackdown

Restaurant reviews will be coming to Epikur Magazine very soon! Check back, or sign up for the newsletter version of the magazine for details.

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Restaurant Reviews Coming to Epikur!

Loving the world of cheap beer is like being strapped to a lump of trash circling a comet orbiting a distant moon: your passion isn’t going to matter much to anyone. Only when you break free of gravity will anyone notice.

Crazy as that is, Shane Welch of Sixpoint Brewery did that very thing: he just managed to make cream ale interesting. Cream ale is the kissing cousin to the American adjunct lager (think Budweisser), just with a different type of yeast. It’s cheap, it’s carbonated, it’ll get you drunk… eventually.

That makes this brew all the more fantastic. Sixpoint’s Sweet Action is a subtle brew. A balance between tight carbonation and rich malty creaminess. White pepper and peaches on the palate with a toasty edge and a pretty floral element. Finish with grapefruit and a yeasty note.

This beer shows a level of skill and passion that amazing to behold. Highly recommended, with a single caveat: there has been a certain amount of variation between cans. This is due to their contract brewery, and we are told this will be rectified in the near future.

Sixpoint Sweet Action

All Hail the Dark Lord. Now Available on EBay.

Would you wait in line for hours for the chance to buy four bottles of beer? Would you pay hundreds of dollars for a single bottle of beer?

If you want a bottle of Dark Lord, those are your two options.

The beer is brewed by the 3 Floyds Brewery, located about a half hour outside of Chicago.  Released to great fanfare every year in April, the Dark Lord is an Imperial  Stout brewed with coffee, molasses, and honey. Lush and round and delicious, it’s one of the top beers brewed in the USA every year. At 13% abv, it earns it name for being both enticing and dangerous.

True to its namesake, the beer has more acolytes than most religions. To get your hands on a bottle, one has to pre-purchase a $15 ticket, travel to Illinois on the last Saturday in April (aka Dark Lord Day),  wait in line with 6,000 other like-minded worshipers in the brewery’s parking lot. Only then will you have a chance to buy a few bottles, for $50 apiece.

If that seems like a bit too much work, you also have the option to purchase a single 750ml bottle bottle on Ebay for $200.  Here is a screen capture  taken in May 2012.

Ebay Biding on the Dark Lord

Let’s back up here. $50 for a bottle of beer? $200? Has beer geekery gone too far?  Are we willing to spend more on a great bottle of beer than a great bottle of wine? Or is  this the point when we realize that we are falling for one of the oldest tricks in the book?

“False Scarcity” is a well known tactic used by marketers the world over.  If you can create the impression that a particular product is not available to everyone,  then the consumer will covet  it  much more. It’s very effective if you can pull it off, since economics teach us that only things that are rare have value.  It’s a tactic used by a number of high-profile beer brands, including  Russian River’s Pliny the Younger.

Could 3Floyds make more Dark Lord and sell it yearlong? Of course they could.  The barrier to higher production if very low: there is no shortage of equipment, ingredients, or skills required for the beer’s production. It would only take an investment of money, time, and additional space. However, that would defeat the purpose of the Dark Lord. It’s real benefit to production is to increase the stature of the brewery itself, not the beer.

The marketing ploy surrounding the Dark Lord means that 3Floyds get a great deal of media coverage. In turn, that  promotes sales of its other beers, most of which have higher profit margins than the Dark Lord. Brewing is a business, and false scarcity is a proven way to increase revenue.  At the end of the day, everyone has to pay their bills. Even the Dark One himself.

This year may pop the bubble, finally. There are reports that the Dark One is tasting strangely of green apples this year, probably do to a touch of  acetaldehyde.

Beer Geeks Love the Devil

After penning a treatise on the merits of local beer, I found myself torn over buying a Kona Brewing Company product. Though they are US-based, of course, Kona, HI, is further from Philadelphia than Brussels, Dublin or even Prague, so all the same downsides to drinking imported beer would seem to apply.

Still, the idea of a Brown Ale brewed with real coconut was too intriguing to ignore, thus I found myself reading the label while browsing the Wegmans beer aisle. In tiny print, turned sideways, just barely noticable, was my clincher: “Brewed in Portsmouth, NH”.

Turns out that Kona contracts with both Widmer Brewery in Oregon and Redhook in New Hampshire, in order to provide fresher beer and limit the environmental impact of distribution to the mainland. Contract brewing is a somewhat controversial topic in the beer world these days, but Kona appears to take every precaution towards quality, even adjusting the water mineral levels at each brewery to better approximate the Hawaii h2o.

The Koko Brown itself is an interesting juxtaposition. From a brown ale standpoint, it’s robust and roasty, more like a fall or winter-style brown, but the intense coconut note that rounds out every gulp gives it a fresh finish reminiscent of the beach. This beer is certainly not for everyone; while some might judge the flavor combinations as unique and refreshing, others might assume they accidentally spilled some Banana Boat in their mug.

Kona Koko Brown

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Elk Cove 2009 “Five Mountain Vineyard” Pinot Noir

David Cross is one of the smartest guys in comedy right now. We have loved him since he played  Tobias Fünke  on cult favorite tv show Arrested Development. This piece on Coors Light is both hilarious and NSFW.

The Coors Light Enigma

The winemaker, Paul Hobbs, is one of the great masters of Cabernet Sauvignon, and his eponymously named wine is consistently one of the finest, vintage in and vintage out. It’s also one of the most sought-after Napa Valley wines, with a price tag to match. Its little brother, the CrossBarn, is one of the best kept secrets in California.

Fermented using indigenous yeasts, the Paul Hobbs Cabernet  is aged 20 months in French and American oak barrels and bottled unfined and unfiltered. He selects the best barrels to go the “Paul Hobbs” bottling. What most folks don’t know is that  Paul then makes another barrel selection, and  that goes into the “CrossBarn”.  The rest gets sold off to other wineries.

The “CrossBarn” is remarkably similar to the “Paul Hobbs,” but at half the price. It is lush and dense with richly soft tannins, it stains the glass with a deep crimson. Full bodied, it offers up rich flavors of blackberry and burnt oak that are deeply embedded into a savory impression of fresh bay laurel and roses.

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CrossBarn 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon

Crimson and dense, this Carmenere is one of the best examples of the varietal on the market. It offers up plenty of oak-influenced flavors, including chocolate, coffee, and liquorice.  Toasted spices and cracked black pepper add great interest to the wine’s  luxuriant richness. The fruit character goes directly into blackberry territory, and stays there.

Marques de Concha 2009 “Peumo Vineyard” Carmenere

Those effing 15th century farmers in Germany. They effed up the rye harvest a few years in a row, and forever changed the face of beer brewing. Since then, barley malt has been the dominant malt in beer.

Fortunately, that seems to be ending in the 21st Century, thanks to such bottles as Bear Republic’s Hop Rod Rye. American craft beers rarely embrace a single style, and this is no different. Hop Rod Rye is a rye beer brewed as if it was an  imperial IPA.

The spicy/sour of  the rye mash  marries perfectly with the floral/citrus of the cascade hops. In the mid-palate,  a rich cream and  caramel takes control, but the beer never becomes sweet or cloying:  the bitterness of rosemary and citrus oil reigns it in. In the finish, the hops take control, with notes of  flowers, resin, and grapefruit. Kudos, a trailblazing brew.

Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye