Fresh Hops + Local Crops

The Windmill Market, Sweet Olive and the Fairhope Brewery hosted a great event a few weeks back bringing together good food, great beer, local and seasonal stuff with fun folks in a new event called Fresh Hops and Local Crops. We hope this will be the first of many!

Sweet Olive Chef Brenden Lynch crafted a sensational seasonal menu that paired with several of the Brewery's beers that were brewed especially for that night. Some beers were poured right out of the tank, never to touch a keg. Others were poured with only natural carbonation, nothing added. The event got down to the pure essence of the brewing process and the food just complemented everything perfectly. Some of the pork was even braised in beer! My kind of meal.

Below is the menu that you missed (shame on you!) and the beers that were poured. Stay tuned for the next Fresh Hops Local Crops TBA!

PAIRING 1

Little House Farms pork sausage patty (house seasoned) over a cornbread crostini topped with savory apple gravy

Paired with the I Drink Therefore I Amber from the brite tank (this is the last tank the beer goes into before being kegged)

PAIRING 2

Salad- Fresh Baby green Salad with Candied Local Pecans and a Satsuma Vinaigrette served in a warm pastry crust

Paired with Firkin of Fairhope 51 with local satsumas and Mosaic hops 

PAIRING 3

Painted Black-braised chicken slider topped with caramelized onions and pickles on a sweet Challah roll

Paired with the Painted Black IPA with added whole leaf hops – the whole leaf hops are in their most natural form, as opposed to the pelletized hops we more commonly use

PAIRING 4

Chocolate citrus cream tartlets- gingersnap crust topped with chocolate ganache infused with local grapefruit and topped with a white chocolate cream cheese

Paired with the Section Street Wheat infused with local ruby red grapefruit – we will utilize our Randall device to infuse our wheat beer with local grapefruit

A little info about a Firkin...

“It is the fact that the firkin is typically dedicated to housing Real Ale (i.e., cask-conditioned ale), or beer that has not been cold-filtered, pasteurized and carbonated by outside equipment. The ale beer that is housed inside the firkin is naturally carbonated by its resident yeast and its ingredients have not been processed in any way outside of simple fermentation by the yeast. In essence, firkin-contained Real Ale is comparable to the ale beers that were produced hundreds of years ago, before industrialization subjected them to processes that removed and/or killed the yeast, stripping the beer of many of its inherent vitamins (especially the B vitamins), minerals, and perhaps most importantly, taste.”