HB&B Blog — Germany
Wine & Food Killers: Merguez Sausage and Pumpkin Tagine with Couscous and Bergkloster Super Lecka 2021
Claire Bullen Germany Natural wine Natural Wine Killers Red wine
This time of year in England can be hard to love. It’s one of the biggest things I miss about living in the States, where autumn (fall) is treated like a three-month-long festival. An American fall means trick-or-treating as competitive sport, scouring farmers’ markets for apple cider donuts as an essential weekend pastime; sporting a plaid flannel jacket to go leaf-peeping or apple-picking. And it certainly isn’t fall until every single thing you eat and drink has been pumpkined. In comparison, autumn here is more damp squib than long-awaited event, and pumpkin feels both under- and over-exposed. It might be ubiquitous...
The Beer Lover's Table: Italian Sausage Hoagies and Weihenstephaner Festbier
Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Germany Lager Oktoberfest Weihenstephaner
Oktoberfest is back. For the first time since the pandemic began, the annual festival is returning to the Theresienwiese in Munich. The event is a larger-than-life spectacle of supersized beer “tents” and roller coasters and litre upon litre upon litre of golden festbier. Given all that drinking, there needs to be plenty of food to sop it all up; to no one’s surprise, Oktoberfest staples (think roast chicken and spaetzle, ham hocks and bratwurst) lean hearty and gut-busting. Rather than do an exacting recreation of the traditional fare, this year I decided to channel Oktoberfest via Philadelphia. Meet the Italian...
Fundamentals #96 - Humbser Biere Lager Hell Naturtrüb
Fundamentals Germany Humbser Lager Matthew Curtis
By and large I don’t consider myself much of a seasonal drinker. When the mood takes me, I’m as happy smashing stout in the blazing sunshine as I am sipping pilsner in the depths of winter. In saying that, however, there’s something about the extending evening daylight that has me reaching into my fridge for something cold, something crispy, something that has been lagered for weeks on end. There’s a deeply satisfying aspect to finishing work while there’s still plenty of daylight left that goes so well with drinking lager, and I am eager with anticipation when I think about...
Wine & Food Killers: Persian Fried Rice and Weingut Brand Wilder Satz 2019
Claire Bullen Germany Natural wine Natural Wine Killers
I've been making a lot of fried rice during lockdown(s). I'm sure I'm not alone. It’s not just that fried rice is cheap, fast, flexible and made using basic pantry ingredients, it's also entirely comforting, can be eaten for any meal and does an admirable job of sopping up the prior night's beer. No fried rice I make is the same, but generally I'll add soy sauce and sesame oil, hot sauce and ginger, garlic and fish sauce; I might eat it with salmon or tofu or vegetables, or just on its own, satisfyingly spiced and glistening with oil. Despite...
Fundamentals #83 — Winkler Bräu Kupfer Spezial
Fundamentals Germany Lager Matthew Curtis Winkler
I hate surprises. More succinctly, I hate being surprised. The nanoseconds of horror as your brain veers towards full panic while it quickly attempts to work out if these sudden, unexpected changes are to your benefit or detriment. I am a control freak, I like order and meticulously organised fun. This beer review is a short, rather dull story of how I accidentally played myself. When Jen from HB&B presented me with a list of interesting Franconian and Bavarian beers I’d never heard of, in a moment of haste I picked one with an odd name. Greif sounded tempting, I...