….or noodles, for that matter.

We talk about proper glassware and such, but when my rolling pin bit the dust, I was glad I had tons of lame shaker pints lying around. They are useful for more than just holding beer, it turns out.

“A gourmet who counts calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.”

–James Beard

Around the holidays, I usually fire up a batch or two of peanut brittle. I very carefully follow my great-aunt Betty’s recipe, but tonight, I diverged. I had bacon on my mind.

Rather than tossing in raw Spanish peanuts at 234F, I waited until about 295F, and tossed in a crisp and crumbled pound of bacon, which I had fried previously. Really good, and simple. Give it a shot:

Bacon Brittle

2 c sugar

1 c white corn syrup

1/2 c water

1 pound bacon, fried crisply, and crumbled

1 tsp. vanilla

1/8 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 T butter

Combine the first three ingredients in a heavy pot over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Cover and cook for three minutes. Remove lid and cook until 295F. Add bacon and raise to 300F. Off heat, add remaining ingredients and stir well. Spread on a well-buttered cookie sheet. Cool until hard, then crack into small pieces of your preferred size. Eat and smile.

Where beers are concerned, I happened to be drinking wit tonight, but I kept thinking that a tripel would be great. Or Scotch ale or doppelbock. I can see bacon brittle crumbled up and sprinkled on good vanilla ice cream, with a big chunk topping it–definitely the Scotch ale on that one.

We knew it was a nutty idea. But we had the balls to give it a shot.

Ever since Kyle and I took our assortment of beers to the Testicle Festival last January to a) try Rocky Mountain Oysters for the first time and b) sort out the best beer pairing for this misunderstood cuisine, I’ve wanted to put together an event of my own. This weekend, we held The Opera House Ball as a fund raiser for our local opera house, which has fallen into disrepair since the 1930s.

For my part, I successfully learned to cook something not everyone has the cajones to delve into, and I encouraged attendees to not only dress up at a dress down event (we called it creative black tie) but also drink the right beer for the occasion: my research identified Vienna lager as a suitable beer, our local example being Millstream Brewing Company’s Schild Brau Amber Lager.

Since I know my readers are into beer and bacon and many of the finer things, I feel it’s my responsibility as a concerned citizen to help you learn how to make your own testicle delight, in the event the need should arise.

This is what they look like when you first get them. You get over the "this is gross" part pretty quickly. It's simply something most Americans don't know about. Testicles don't bite and milk comes from somewhere well beyond a jug.

Step 1: Get testicles: I’ve seen them for $16/pound online, and I believe that to be a frozen and completely prepared for the fryer product. But you should really just go to your local veterinarian and find out what you can acquire–they’ll save them for you–and give them to you for nothing if you talk sweetly.

Step 2: Clean them: Basically, when they cut calves, they slit the scrotum and pull the testicle out and cut it off. Believe it or not, you don’t just throw this in the fryer. There are actually not one, but two thick, strong layers of protective skin you need to cut through with a sharp knife. When I think about my own darned self, I see that I thankfully have some protection I didn’t know I had. It works best when the testicles are just shy of being thawed out. Slice the first layer and it pops right out. Slice the second layer and you get to the meat. Sometimes this pops out easily. Other times you need to work it out with your thumb, or by using a knife as you would when filleting a fish.

That's my friend and fundraising comrade Patty. She was very efficient. And kept up well with all the ball jokes floating around the kitchen (and the whole planning process).

Step 3: Brine your testicles. I’ve seen marinades around, but if you’re cooking up 100 pounds or more, I think it needs to be fairly straight forward. I had two five gallon buckets filled halfway up with water. I added 1.5 cups of salt, 1 cup of sugar and about a cup of white vinegar. Each bucket was topped off about right when filled with about 60 pounds of Rocky Mountain Oysters. Brine about 24 hours.

The biggest balls of all. There's your quarter for perspective. Don't put money in your mouth. You don't know where it's been.

Step 4: Rinse your testicles. One thing I found interesting when we got down to the meat was that they smell (and sorta resemble) scallops. Even moreso after the brine. I rinsed them well and drained them as well as possible. You’ll then want to cut them into bite size pieces–most of our balls were cut in half or in thirds, though we had one big-ass pair that would have made even Bon Scott blush like a school girl by providing us a good dozen bites each.

My hands were a mess during the cooking stage, so you'll just have to imagine that part. Burton is showing us the final product, but what I really like about this picture is his tie--he's one of the local bankers.

Step 5: Heat your oil and prep your breading. I’ve seen recipes that talk about flour, paprika, salt and black pepper, but had a guy with a good ball-frying reputation tell me that he passes them through an egg wash, and then whizzed up saltine crackers for his breading, which made sense to me, as that’s how I do weiner schnitzel. To the saltines, I added just the right amount of black pepper and cayenne.

Step six: Dip in eggs, coat in the cracker mixture. Fry until your breading is nice and brown. You’ll simply need to cut one open to get a feel for what’s right. If it’s still pinkish, you’ll know to cook them longer.

Step seven: Enjoy. They’re good with both cocktail sauce and horseradish, I can attest. I’ve heard that these are fairly typical condiments. As I said, pair them with a Vienna lager, or something up that alley.

All too often, these nut fries appear to be stag parties where hog-shitted boot wearing farmers hang out and drink cheap beer together. We made effort to put together an atmosphere that welcomed women and children. I wore my Valentine pants and a red boa while Michelle wore a tiara with her tie and overalls. Few looked cooler than Tom with his tuxedo t-shirt and black, rose-embroidered 70s cowboy shirt, though they tried. I think the balls tasted better in a little atmosphere and with Dizzy Gillespie pumping through the speakers.

People are weirded out by this misunderstood cuisine, but I say this: What if you never tried chocolate? Or: What if you never discovered good beer? Give it a try, the next time the opportunity comes along. You’ll be glad you did. Better yet, learn to prepare the part of an animal you never thought about, brew a harder beer, build yourself a smoker.

Use the whole freaking buffalo and enrich your life in a ballsy new way!

A friend of mine requested a few months back that we do a temperature study as one of our beer tastings. So, this month we did a temperature study as one of our tastings.

From my perspective, I knew what the answers would be and looked forward to tasting the confirmations, but I tell you, the true joy of conducting this little experiment was watching all the light bulbs flickering over the heads of those in attendance. It was a great deal of fun, and I recommend that if you’re strapped for ideas for a “next step” tasting for some of your new converts, you consider giving this one a shot.

The Plan

I put together a range of four beers, which included two lagers and two ales, running the gamut from light to dark. I served them at three different temperatures: 30F, 42F and 58F. Instead of putting together a laundry list of notes to tell participants what to expect, I put together a form for them to fill out as we worked our way through each beer, taking note of mouthfeel, aroma and flavors at each temperature.

The beers involved: Corona Extra, Negra Modelo, Two Brothers Domaine DuPage and Bell’s Kalamazoo stout.

To note, it seems that these hands-on activities have been very popular with my “students.” I think I’m going to lay off all my informative-ness a little more often as I move forward. Like this one, our blind tasting was extremely well-received.

The Results

Of course, Corona was much easier to navigate in its ice-cold version. And the Kalamazoo Stout was pukka at 58F.

But what were the nuances of learning to be teased out of the evening? Generally, everyone enjoyed the more inviting mouthfeel of the warmer versions of the beers; they were a little creamier and enjoyable. Negra Modelo was more popular at mid-range, though I thought 48F would have been best.

The Kalamazoo at (what was truly 22F and starting to slush, since it had been in the freezer up until it emerged as the last beer of the evening) its coldest was a clone of iced coffee in every regard. At  43F, the aroma dipped, but at 58F, bounced back with all its stouty, roasta-choco-tastic love.

What was interesting was Domaine Dupage, a Chicago-brewed French Country Ale. I knew that this would be quite good at the warmest spot and have looked forward to comparing the 40-range and the 50-range. As it turned out, this beer had two groups of fans: some liked it cold and some liked it warm.

It had two groups of fans because it presented as two different beers (actually, three). The fruitiness was very bright and enjoyable when this beer was served in the mid-20s. And when we got to the 50s, the fruit turned darker and more dredged in brown sugar. Darker, brooding and a fuller hug of a beer. Some people really enjoyed the cold version. Call me surprised. And call me interested to stick the two versions of this beer into a blind tasting down the road.

Fun, fun, lotsa fun. Am I surprised about that? No.

“Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;

Nought may endure but Mutability.”

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

On a related note, Bell’s Oberon morphs into a lager when served with tomato sauce. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.

We’ve befriended the local pastor. They’re not all neo-prohibitionists, after all.

For some time now, we’ve been plotting a cider making day, as this good fellow has an apple orchard. Today was the day. He was the apple guy. I was the yeast guy. Jake and Tom supplied the muscle.

Using a cider press that’s over 70 years old on a beautiful fall day, the four of us put out about seven gallons of our own special blend of cider (50% Jonathan, 30% Wainwright Gold, 15% red delicious and 5% Granny Smith). Lemme tell you, fresh stuff right out of the press is heavenly.

Five gallons went toward a batch of hard cider (fortified with 4# of sugar brought the OG to 1.083), about a half a gallon went toward a gallon batch of cyser (added it to 2.5 # of honey, then topped up with water–OG was 1.092), and the rest was made for drinking. Best hot cider I ever had was this evening.

And now we wait for the yeast to do its magic…

With a thirst for a beer and a band, Wonderful Beer Wife and I trekked to Des Moines last night to catch one of our favorite bands, Old Crow Medicine Show, at the beautiful Hoyt Sherman Place.

There were errands involved, because sometimes a guy needs yeast and potassium metabisulfite. But we mostly headed straight for  Court Avenue Brewing Company, a brewpub I feel like we’ve neglected. We tried their Memoriale (saison), Black Hawk Stout, Bon Pere (their Brewer’s Reserve biere de garde) and Sophie’s Mild on cask.

They were all good, though the saison was a bit pithy. The Bon Pere was a treat, but to be honest, I was really grooving on the mild. I could have weathered gallons of that stuff. If I could clone that, it would be my new summer beer (also good in autumn). Good is good anytime, but that was a quaffer.

And then, Old Crow. They kicked ass. Willie Watson is a scrawny, pickin’ monster, and as I watched him vibrate and erupt and manhandle and blaze, I wondered why it is that Mick Jagger’s so reserved and boring to watch.

A couple of years ago I mentioned missing my good friends Heather and Paul around Halloween, as we’d always get together, take the kids trick-or-treating and have a good beer or three.

Somewhere in that post or the following comments, Clarence popped up, and I later received an email from a curious reader asking for a picture. There wasn’t a digi-fied one to be found at the time, so we made a point of taking a photo of him last night when he emerged from hibernation to join us at some friends’ house. He started out sporting Virginia Shine, but settled into the beers he was handed with aplomb: a little Duck-Rabbit Schwarzbier and Piraat.

The boys are officially old enough to be embarrassed by their old man in public. They join Michelle, who hates it when Clarence the Redneck Mechanic comes around. To his credit, he didn’t rassle any children, enter strangers’ homes or attempt to milk anyone. I heard conspiracies on getting dad a new costume, but while I understand their views, there’s really very little I can do. Clarence takes over for the whole night. He doesn’t shut off, and I can’t really shut him off. When the teeth go in, it’s like this shapeshifting thing happens. It’s all good fun and a great stress reliever, and as far as I’m concerned, I should call him up more often. Because non-family members really seem to enjoy him.

In the interest of shutting me the hell up, Michelle challenged me a while back to describe beers with only three words. I had to say stuff like “citrus, pine and bitter,” or “balanced, toasty, smoke-hints.” Smoke-hints was my way of adding a word. Hyphens are cool cheater tools, I’ve found.

With that, I’ll try to describe Redhook’s Treblehook Barley Wine Ale in three words:

1. pine-drops-of-fuzz-love-and-10.1-hidey

2. leggy-body-and-Coke-ified-caramel-dried-apricot

3. copper-hued-sugary-reverse-olfaction-and-good-by-the-fire

Run your mouth all you want, I think it’s a pretty tasty beer, and I can see why it’s taken some hardware (GABF gold and silver).

As a matter of full disclosure, I’m exercising my semi-pro beer drinker-ness tonight. Doug MacNair, from Redhook, was kind enough to send this beer my way.

You may remember my joyful excursion to Slim’s Testicle Festival last winter. It was my first time delving into a misunderstood cuisine affectionately known as Rocky Mountain Oysters. Since that time, I’ve been plotting a way to put together an event of my own.

That event has taken shape in the form of The Opera House Ball. I’ve organized a fundraiser for the restoration of our local historic opera house. Rocky Mountain Oysters and Good Beer. What could be better?

In keeping with the elegant-sounding name of the event, we’re encouraging “creative black tie,” though you’ll be admitted if you come in your coveralls. We’re not pretentious. We encourage you to dress up, but not too “up.”

Yes, yes, it’s a nutty route to historic preservation, and a part of my brewvana. I invite you to attend. We’ll likely be able to do tours throughout the afternoon, but details on that are emerging.

And if you’re local, catch up with me the next day, as we’ll do sack lunches if we have leftovers (wink, wink).

What: The Opera House Ball

When: Saturday, November 21, 2009

Where: 626 Davis Avenue, Corning, IA

You can find the event details and RSVP here.