Our Picks for Baltimore Beer Week 2012

Posted on October 19, 2012 by The Chop

On Tuesday in this space we publicly proclaimed our love of Fall. But there’s a whole lot more to love about Autumn than just stylish scarves- namely Baltimore Beer Week.

Yes Choppers, the fourth annual Baltimore Beer Week begins today with the ceremonial tapping of the first firkin using the fabled Star Spangled Banger. The honors this year will be done by the winner of Beer Week’s Baltimore’s Best BEERtender poll, announced at today’s opening ceremony at Power Plant Live. We say congrats to them for finally giving some recognition where it’s highly overdue. “Hail to the beertender, beertender, beertender. Hail to the beertender, Beertender Man!”

Even though October is the time of year we double down on boxed wine here at the Chophouse, we’re sure to be tempted to sample a few brews throughout the week. There are literally hundreds of beer related events going on this week, and we couldn’t begin to list them all. What we can do though is pick favorites. Here are your best bets for beer week day by day…

The Ladies of Zion Church will be cooking up sour beef and dumplings for Wednesday’s Beer Hall and dinner.

Friday, October 19 (Tonight)
Opening Tap Ceremony Afterparty
Of course, you don’t want to miss the opening ceremonies, but if you can’t make it by six o’clock or you’re unsure about laying out $30 for a ticket, fear not- the party goes all night. While the ceremonies officially end at 9 pm, Leinenkugel’s Beer Garden will be hosting an afterparty for the rest of the night. While the tasters go away, the drinkers are there to stay.

Saturday, October 20
Union Craft Brewing Brewery Tours
Union Craft Brewing is new. They make very good beer. No, like very good. Their altbier just brought home a gold medal from the GABF, and today they’re opening the brewery for three free tours and tastings from 1-4 pm.

Sunday, October 21
Pancakes and Pumpkin Ale
You like Sunday brunch, right? Of course you do. You like it when everything tastes like pumpkins right? Yep. The Point in Fell’s is offering pumpkin pancakes paired with Schlafly Pumpkin Ale for only $14, and just in case you’re as lazy as we are they’ll be serving cakes till 4 pm. You’ll also be well positioned to hit up other more football-centric Beer Week events in Fell’s/Canton.

Monday, October 22
Craft Beer Bottle Day
Many bars have specials, but few specials are actually special. Alonso’s wins the day today with one of the best specials we’ve seen in a while- $2.50 craft beer bottles all day. That’s almost 300 beers to choose from, and when they say all day they really mean it- 11:30 am until last call. Great for daydrinking or a long happy hour and an absolute must if you’re out to watch Monday Night Football. Come out and try everything you’ve been meaning to try but haven’t yet.

Tuesday, October 23
Guess Your Beer- Get Your Beer
Canton’s Americana is featuring 4 mystery kegs on Tuesday, pouring from 4 unmarked taps. If you guess your beer, you get it for free. (Hey maybe keep a sharp ear out for the eavesdropping advantage too. It’s a bar, after all, and not Ben Stein’s isolation chamber.) Plus they’re also featuring ‘Warrior Wednesday’ (which actually runs from Tuesday-Thursday). Anyone who’s served in the military gets their first beer on the house. Both promotions run from 3 pm- Close.

Wednesday, October 24
Sauerbraten Dinner in Zion’s Aldersaal
Zion Church is one of the city’s oldest churches, located on Lexington Street adjacent to City Hall. Tonight they’re opening up their large church basement for a traditional sour beef dinner featuring dumplings, beets, green beans, and of course, beer. This is as old school as it gets and is always a unique and enjoyable experience. Dinner is $15 and beer is pay-as-you-go. There is also a dinner/ beer hall on Thursday.

Thursday October 25
Chicks Dig Beer (and dudes too)
This is a shitty name for an event. Especially since it’s not like a Ladies’ Night or anything. It makes no sense. Once you get past the name though, The Greene Turtle in Fell’s Point is offering all their beers at 2 for 1 from 7 pm- Close. Pretty tough to turn down. There’s also a wing special if you’re into that sort of thing.

Friday, October 26
Charitably Charming Chilibrew VI
You should probably go ahead and secure tickets to this now because it will definitely be crowded and probably sell out. The 2640 Space’s Chilibrew happens twice a year and benefits the Indypendent Reader, Whitelock Community Farm, and now the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. Not only is the chili homemade, but the beer is as well featuring some of the city’s best homebrews. Us vegetarians aren’t left out either, as there is a whole category and prize for veggie chili recipes.

Saturday, October 27
Beer Taps and Homebrew- Made in Baltimore
If you go east out Baltimore street about as far as you can go, you’ll run right into Mark Supik’s modest woodworking shop in the light industrial part of Highlandtown. It’s pretty unassuming from the outside. You might even drive right by it without noticing at all. Inside though they specialize in one very important product: tap handles. Tonight they’re opening the shop and displaying hundreds of handles in their tap museum. You can see taps being turned and even order a customized tap for your man cave keg. There will also be various homebrews available. Sip and spin.

Sunday, October 28
A Bar on Every Corner II Historical Walking Pub Tour
Alas, the final day is Sunday. But fear not! It is only the end of beer week and not the end of beer. Close out beer week with a bang by joining Beer Week’s second annual historical pub tour. A $40 ticket gets you samples and a buffet at Of Love and Regret, as well as beer at Elliot’s Pour House where the tour starts at 3 pm. It also includes a chance to drink beer on the roof of the Natty Boh Building which alone is worth the price of admission.

photo via zion church’s website

Ignite Baltimore 11 @ MICA Tonight

Posted on October 18, 2012 by The Chop

Die Besten Niedrigsten Preise Für Alle Medikamente. Kanadische Apotheke. 24-Stunden-Online-Support. Hier Kann Jeder Günstig In Der Apotheke Zu Hause explanation Zuverlässig Einkaufen! Sie Müssen Nicht Zum Arzt Gehen Und Sich Ein Rezept Ausstellen Lassen. Diese Kanadische Apotheke Mit Einem Team Erfahrener Und Lizenzierter Apotheker.
If there’s any silver lining at all to our beloved Baltimore Orioles being knocked out of the playoffs, it’s that we now have the evening free to go to the 11th installment of Ignite Baltimore tonight at MICA’s Brown Center. Small consolation, to be sure. While Ignite may not have the frenetic energy of October baseball, at least they’ll have the heat on in there.

It would have been hard to predict a potential scheduling conflict because we bought our Ignite tickets months ago. As always, the 700 seat Brown Center sold out very quickly, but you can still join the waiting list to try to slide in at the last minute or get on the mailing list and be the first to know about Ignite Baltimore #12.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ignite events it is essentially a speakers’ series. At each event 16 presenters give five minute talks on subjects that are important to them, ranging from new ideas in technology and urban development to lessons learned from fucking up relationships. There are slides too. And beer and snacks in the lobby. and lots of live-tweeting.

We like to think of them as live-action blog posts. If you were to act out a really good blog post on stage, this is more or less the form it would take, and seeing 16 speakers together is very much like surfing around the internet clicking on different sites and learning new things you never expected to see or hear.

It can be hard to know exactly what you’re getting going in, but tonight’s program has some promising titles listed in the talks, like Greater Baltimore …pathologically modest, why?! Using Twitter to Better Understand Communities, How to Write a Great Online Dating Profile and (Maybe) Meet the Love of Your Life, Thinking Big: Beyond Convention Centers, Hotels and Tourism, and The Summer of Punk.

If any of that catches your fancy but you can’t make it tonight, you can even follow along with the Livestream, or check back with Ignite’s YouTube Channel later, as they usually post video of the talks after the fact.

The Places We’ve Never Been

Posted on October 17, 2012 by The Chop

An unusual turn in our daily schedule had us heading uptown in the early afternoon yesterday, and it finally afforded us a chance to grab lunch at Land of Kush.

It was pretty good, by the way. Good vegan food and big portions of it for reasonable prices. It was very much like the Yabba Pot used to be before they got all lazy and complacent and expensive and eventually closed down. When it first opened, the Yabba Pot was a great place to grab a casual bite, and Land of Kush fills the hole it left more than adequately.

Now, the place has been there two years already. You would think we would have been in there before. Hell, we’ve been vegetarian for almost 20 years now, and there are like 3 veg restaurants in the city- so you’d think we’d be a regular. But alas, yesterday was our first visit.

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You can come up with any number of excuses about why we haven’t made it in. Because we live near One World Cafe or because Kush closes sort of early for dinner or because it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere even though it’s right next to Mount Vernon. But the real reason we never went in there before is because we get stuck in our crummy little rut and we’re happy going to the same 6 places all the time. That’s got to change.

You would think that in a city this size we could make it to every conceivable bar or restaurant or merchant at least once. At least to pop in for a drink or have a look around. And that is very possible. It’s just hard.

It’s hard to be tempted into the unknown when you’ve got something you like as much as One World or The Food Market right close by. That’s what it’s like in Baltimore- your local bar, your favorite restaurant, your barber or your bookstore or whatever. It can be hard for new businesses to break through because everyone has their favorites and keeps going back to them; and most people’s favorite places have been around for a long time.

There’s plenty of interest in new places, internet buzz and Groupons and grand openings and all of that. But the shine wears off pretty quickly. Word of mouth is still a powerful force, and once the buzz wears off it’s and the word is on the street, it can be tough to build on your new reputation, and nearly impossible to match a reputation that might have 20 or 30 years’ standing or more. This is why when Best of Baltimore polls come out every year they’re dominated by ‘perennial favorites.’

This was all running through our head while we were sitting there chewing on our vegan barbecue and collard greens, and we decided we needed to do something about it. We’re not going to wait for the New Year. We’re going to make a resolution right now, today. We are resolved to go to more places we’ve never been to before.

We’re just sick and tired of seeing so many places shut their doors and saying “You know, we always meant to go there.”

Protect Your Neck: A Primer on Scarves

Posted on October 16, 2012 by The Chop

Everybody loves the Fall. Being mid-October, we’re thick in the middle of pumpkin-flavored this and apple-spice that. Personally we can’t get enough of it. A million girls in Uggs and North Face could never trample our enthusiasm for Autumn, and we’re savoring every day of it.

A large part of the reason we enjoy it so much is that we get to wear scarves again. A good scarf is easily and absolutely our favorite fashion accessory. The only thing we don’t like about scarves is that it’s really difficult to resist buying more of them.

Henry Miller

Paul Auster.

Italo Calvino.

Now, you may not have need of an entire drawer devoted to scarves, but with an infinite number of patterns and colors and lengths and materials available, we’d encourage you not to stop at just one. All of the scarves we own fall into one of three categories, each of which has its own purpose and price range.

Under $25

$25-$50 If you do end up with a scarf collection, most of them should be of this category. You can get some pretty nice scarves for around fifty bucks, especially if you wait until Spring or are buying at a Marshall’s/TJ Maxx type store. Scarves also make great gifts to give and receive with no sizing and universal appeal. If you’re spending $40-$50, go for something classic that will grab some attention but still go with most things; houndstooth or checks and the like.

Over $50 There’s so much quality and variety in the mid-market, you’re not going to want to splurge too much, but if you should happen to find yourself in a shop in the Scottish Highlands, browsing over a handmade cashmere 6 foot scarf with a fuck-off Tartan pattern that’ll stand out in a snowstorm 3 miles away, go ahead and buy it. You won’t regret it.

So go forth in warmth Baltimore, and take a cue from some of the century’s greatest writers. A good book, a hot cup of coffee and an overdose of wool can take a man pretty far in life.

Bikemore Homebrew Tour and Fundraiser Tonight

Posted on October 12, 2012 by The Chop

Update: Tonight’s bike ride is officially sold out. There’s only so much beer to go around. If you snoozed you lose-d. There will be another one soon.

When you want a great glass of beer in Baltimore you usually think to head to one of the go-to spots. Max’s, Mahaffey’s, The Brewer’s Art; they have some of the best brews around. But hey- anyone can order a case of fancy monk-brewed Belgian dubbel and turn it over for $7 a bottle. When you want to know who’s got the best beer in Baltimore, what you really want to know is who’s brewing the best. Tonight’s your chance to find out.

Local advocacy organization Bikemore is hosting a fundraiser tonight, which is a truly one of a kind event. They’ve convinced four local citizen-brewers to open their homes, and their taps, to cyclists for their first bicycling homebrew tour.

Bikemore's Homebrew Tour kicks off from Statiion North tonight. 7 pm.

You want in? Of course you do. Here’s what you do: click over to the Eventbrite page and score yourself a ticket. A mere twenty bucks gets you five home brewed beers along with paired hors d’oeuvres. That’s cheaper than any bar crawl you’ll join, and of course additional donations are welcome as well.

Then just pump up your tires, grease up your chain, and meet the group at the North Avenue Market at 7 pm (hint- they’re the ones with the bikes standing outside Liam Flynn’s).

The leisurely ride begins in Station North and will make its way throughout North Baltimore with stops in and around Charles Village, Remington, Woodberry, and finishing with a reception near Lake Montebello. The ride and stops are expected to take about four hours, with the end reception going until 1 am. Secure bike parking is available overnight as well if you’d rather catch a cab home.

Not only is tonight’s ride a unique chance to combine two of our favorite things- beer and bikes, it’s also a great chance to lend some support to a worthy cause and make a few new friends into the bargain. Don’t miss out on it.