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Part 2 of Your Next Beer’s beer and food podcast is online. They get more detailed in this one as the last podcast was more of an overview.

This week we’re looking at specific beer styles and food so you can get some mouth watering ideas of beer meals to make.

This month’s session is about Organic Beer, and this month is hosted by the wonderful blog Beer Activist. Already there are some wonderful blog entries from a wide variety of beer bloggers about many different organic beers. It’s my goal here to help educate you guys a little bit about cooking with organic food.

What is organic food? Wikipedia has a good (but lengthy) section about what organic food is. Here’s a good overview, taken from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia link:

Organic foods are produced according to a certain production standard. For crops, it means they were grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, human waste, or sewage sludge, and that they were processed without ionizing radiation or food additives.[1] For animals, it means they were reared without the routine use of antibiotics and without the use of growth hormones. In most countries, organic produce must not be genetically modified. however by definition GMO’s do not use pesticides or fertilizers to prevent disease, therefore are organic just not socially accepted as natural or ‘organic’.

Organic Kitchen, although maybe not the nicest-looking site, has a good set of links about Organic Gardening. Seeing that this is the time when people plant their home gardens (at least in Colorado), these links will help you get started down the path of organic gardening.

One of my favorite sites, Treehugger had a great article on organic food from about 6 months ago. It’s a very detailed blog entry, and pretty technical. But if you’re really interested in this, it’s a great resource for those looking to learn a great deal about organic food.

The organic beer trend is hardly a new one, as referenced by this Co-op America entry about organic beer. Their lists of organic beer aren’t up-to-date, but this link will give you a good idea of where the organic beer revolution began.

Looking for organic beer, but too lazy to actually go to a store to seek it out? Never fear, because Diamond Organics has mail order organic beer. Their beers are single beers, so you can get an assortment of organic beer to complement the food from your organic garden without leaving the house!

This month’s session is about Barley Wines with The Brew Site being the host. Flying Dog Brewery had a sales and marketing soirée up in Steamboat last weekend, and we decided to prepare our own beer dinner. Among our courses, we decided to include our Barrel-Aged Horn Dog Barley Wine paired with smelly Stilton cheese. Barley Wine pairs extremely well with the Sharpness of the blue cheese. If blue cheese isn’t your thing, barley wine also pairs wonderfully with chocolate.

We decided to shoot some HD video of the event, and you can click the image below to be taken to the HD video.

Course 1: Stilton Cheese on toasted bread paired with Flying Dog Barrel-Aged Horn Dog Barley Wine (an über-limited release based off our standard production Barley Wine). Blue Cheeses pair well with Barley Wines.

Course 2: Maryland crab puffs paired with Flying Dog Tire Bite Golden Ale. Our Jim Lutz brought a $30 can of Maryland crab out to Colorado and showed us how to make crab puffs. Basically it’s crab, old bay seasoning, salt and pepper, scallions and Flying Dog Road Dog Porter. Next the crab gets placed into some crescent rolls (crescent, croissant…) and baked for about 18 minutes (whatever it says on your croissant recipe).

Course 3: Salmon pie paired with Flying Dog Double Dog Double Pale Ale. Recipe available here.

We wanted to pass along an upcoming beer dinner on September 18th at Food 101 Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. All dishes will be paired with Terrapin Beer Company products.

Beer Dinner: “A Taste of Terrapin”

September 18, 2007
7:00 PM
Food 101 Restaurant
1397 North Highland Ave
Atlanta, GA 30306
Phone: (404) 347-9747

Cost:$42.00 per person + Tax & Gratuity
Please Call 404.347.9747 For Reservations

Yukon Gold Potato Soup
Red Curry Glazed Lobster & Sage Oil
Terrapin Golden Ale

“Ham & Cheese”
Benton’s Country Ham, Oregonzola Cheese, Georgia Apples & French Bread
Terrapin Rye Pale Ale

Sweet Potato Gnocchi
Georgia Shrimp, Fennel & Caraway Seed
Terrapin Rye Squared

Braised Harris Ranch Beef Brisket
Riverview Farm Grits, Braised Local Greens & Natural Jus
Terrapin Big Hoppy Monster

Ice Cream Sandwich
Oatmeal Cookie & Sage Caramel
Terrapin Indian Style Brown Ale

Executive Chef/Partner Ron Eyester