Two Roads Transatlantic Grisette & White Chocolate and Craisin Cookie
Wow! This farmhouse is ale is good! Wonderful foamy head, aromatic, hazy, and well balanced.
On a cold Saturday night between Christmas and New Years in 2017 my wife and I shared a special beer and cookie pairing that made our night.
The Beer: This was a specialty brew from two roads brewery. Check out our visit there a while back. This was a collaboration between Phil Markowski and Yvan De Baets. They are known for Belgian style beers, so says their website anyway, and this one is spot on. It is a double Grisette, which is a wild yeast farmhouse ale. They blended wild yeasts, one is a Belgian style saison yeast, and the other is a wild yeast from 2 roads hop farm. I love wild yeast beers. It brings back an old school one off nature to brewing that is long forgotten in favor of the exactness and precise nature of the big box breweries of our domestic lite beer tradition.
The beer was wonderful, it is bottle conditioned and had a wire basket and cork top. There is something extra special about popping a cork off of a bottle. The sound, the excitement, and the uncertainty of whether or not it will overflow. I love this.
The beer has a very nice aroma and the first sip found a nice balance of wheat, bitter, and malt. Smooth finishing, very little bitterness at the end but a lot of hop aroma in the foam and bouquet.
The Cookie: This was my wife’s contribution to this year’s holiday cookie swap. It is a white chocolate and craisin cookie. It has some oats in the base, but it is otherwise a basic drop cookie. I like the white chocolate chip and craisin combination, it gives a nice crunch as well as soft sweetness.
The Pairing: This cookie pairing was great. The beer was so good that I think any cookie would have held up to it. However the crasin sweetness cut through the hop aroma a bit and it led to a superior taste then just sipping alone. I think this kind of pairing would go best with the ‘bite and sip’ technique. Although the foam on this beer makes it a fun dunk too.
The head on this beer is something magical.
