Half Price Wings & Pitchers during Super Bowl at the E Village Life Cafe

East Village Life Cafe

Join us February 7
Super Bowl Sunday
6 pm till 12 am
featuring
1/2 PRICE WINGS
&
1/2 PRICE PITCHERS OF BEER

Menu Picture Riddle Answer Life Cafe 983

As for Life Cafe in Bushwick, we got another picture riddle by John Sunderland to reveal. It is Rasputin Imperial Stout. Yeh, you got it!

By the way, John Sunderland's weird and wonderful art work is for sale. If you're interested, contact him direct at j.g.sunderland1@mac.com. You can see more of his works at www.redbubble.com too.

BEER SPEAK @ Life Cafe 983

Ultimate beer tasting…
by Andy, Bar Manager in Brooklyn


It took about 35 minutes of picking and choosing at Bierkraft + $154 and we had 35 of the world’s best beers ranging from Scheinder’s Aventius Wiezen Eisbock – Dogfish Head’s Raison de Extra (alcohol levels ranging between 6.7% and 28%!!! – average out at about 12%). This was definitely one of the best varieties of beer I have consumed in a sitting. Luckily, I happen to share it with my brother and step-father. We sat in my living room, each one of us had a chalice that we would rinse in between the next sample (at first anyway). We would take turns picking the next beer. It seemed a trend that I would go for Belgians, typically quads, and my family was going toward IPAs with west coast hop profiles. This got me thinking about my next pick.




The best match I could come up with was Houblon Chouffe, a Belgian triple abbey/double IPA blend. When I say this, it is actually NOT two different beers brewed separately and blended together. It is a meld of styles generally so far apart from each other that few would dare such a thing, but not La Chouffe. Being experts at brewing triple abbeys, they wanted to do something a little more challenging. Their take on this unique endeavor, was pure brilliance. In the United States and England, brewers tend to add hops early in the boil if not before the malt is even added, adding a stronger “bittering” effect to the beer. La Chouffe on the other hand, wanted all of the beautiful floral and pine essences that hops has to offer without making the beer overly bitter and acidic. Weighing in at 9% ABV, Houblon Chouffe hit the nail right on the head. Perfectly smooth body of a Belgian triple with a nice balance of hop, not turning the triple into the typical American double IPA. Highly recommended because hey, we were all happy!


Now available @ Life Cafe 983

Life Cafe E Vill. WEEKLY DEALS

Five good ways to beat the recession. (Hey, we try to do what we can!)

Mondays
Half price bottle of wine when you buy 2 Big Plates or 2 Entree Specials

Tuesdays
Buy any sandwich and we'll throw in a pint of draft beer

Wednesdays
Buy any Life burger (and they're real good) and we'll throw in a pint of draft beer

Thursdays
Get a free dessert (from a choice of 3) when you buy any Big Plate or an Entree Special

Fridays
Buy Life's Wings and get half price off pitchers of Margaritas (dare you to order the suicidal!)

BEER SPEAK @ Life Cafe 983

By Andy, Beverage Manager in Bushwick, Brooklyn

LOVE FOR THE BEER

In the early days of beer brewing, things were very different. Beer was an accidental product born out of the necessity of our ancestors to boil water for drinking. These same people used grains and other malted starches for flavor, very similar to the way people have used tea leaves for thousands of years.

Except there was one really big difference…

Whoa . . . sugar from malted grains + airborne yeast = ALCOHOL!!! (and bubbles)

Then things changed . . . .

Beer became the world’s third most popular beverage behind tea and water, mostly for recreational purposes. Today, in Belgium alone, there are estimated to be about 8,700 different beers distributed. Sadly for us in the States, in the 1970s European traditional methods of brewing almost entirely disappeared from bars and stores throughout the land, and imports were not yet a significant player in the market. Only pale lagers remained, leaving the American beer drinking public with little options.

The craft beer proliferation is very recent in the history of American beer. In the 1980s a trend started when home brewers, sick of having no options, started larger scale productions. One by one, breweries started popping up all across the United States and the industry continues to explode. This movement was spotted by European brewers that wanted a piece of the action and some of the world’s best beers came gushing in.

Happily enough for me, I personally get to watch what I like to call the Quality Beer Movement (craft beer AND amazing imports). I see it everyday when someone comes into the bar and has their first Maredsous Triple or St. Bernardus Quad and get’s their socks blown off and shows the look of regret for never trying this before. This is my inspiration. The education and smile of anyone willing to try something new and learn drives me to search the world for new, creative or just awe-inspiring beers.

Luckily, I have a couple thousand from just one country that I have yet to try.

BEER SPEAK @ Life Cafe 983

By Andy, Beverage Manager in Bushwick, Brooklyn

LOVE FOR THE BEER

I love beer. Have for a long time. And I love sharing what I love with our customers, many of whom love beer as much as I do.

Welcome to my first experience with beer.

I was 9 years old in a small rural town in central Pennsylvania. My brother had a friend over for the night and my parents had evening plans. You can imagine what that meant. We were bad, bad boys; we found an 18-pack of Coors Light that my father shouldn’t have left in the fridge in the garage and got really drunk, so drunk that my brother’s friend swung his pants around his ankles and jumped around pretending to be a frog. Hey, we were young; what can you expect! It was a marvelous feeling, of laughing and not knowing why. My first high . . . .

It doesn’t end badly either. I obviously liked it; whether it was the cheap 12 pack of Bud I had when I was broke to that magnificent angels-f**king-in-your-mouth experience of the Belgian quad that I paid $35 dollars for, it’s all good. Good enough for me to base a career on. That good.

CURRENT PREMIUM DRAFT

Here’s one I found true love for.

It’s St Bernardus Abt 12, A Belgium Abbot - Quad Ale (10.5% ABV).

This style of beer is traditionally saved for the most senior monk of the monastery, the Abbot. "Quad" simply means that sugar was pitched into the fermenting beer four times, making it quadruple fermented. Like most beers of this style, the color is dark brown. The flavor is amazing. Big malt base with a little bit of dark fruit flavor from the Belgian high gravity yeast. This beer was fermented openly. Having no cover on a shallow fermenter allows natural air-borne yeast to cultivate in the beer, instead of being added. Really cool process.

Another fact about this: I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE THIS ONE, BUT A COOL FACT INVOLVING ST BERNARDUS --
Westveletren Abt 12 - Consider by most beer snobs to be the best beer in the world.
Westveletren is an monastery five miles away from St. Bernardus. The monks at the abbey control the beer they make so strictly that Belgian citizens have to call months in advance in order to procure the beer, at which time, their names and purchases are recorded in a database. Belgian citizens are only allowed to purchase six cases of 12 11.2oz bottles a year. Non-Belgian citizens are allowed only one case. The story goes that 50 years or so ago, this ultra secret, illegal to resell recipe escaped down the road to a little brewery called St. Bernardus. :)

Could St. Bernardus Abt 12 be the best beer in the world?

More on hoppy happenings next week.

*(ABV = Alcohol By Volume)