We love local food almost as much as we love local beer. When we found out that Sweet Tomatoes in Osterville, MA had started featuring local beer at their restaurant we needed to find out more. Sweet Tomatoes serves gourmet pizza featuring fresh ingredients. Their flavors range from the staples like pepperoni to house specials like the "Pizza Sarah" which includes goat cheese, bacon, caramelized onions and mozzarella. Darren Bagley-Heath, proprietor of Sweet Tomatoes Osterville, MA, grew up in the UK and found himself missing his local "free house." For those not familiar with the term, a free house is simply a local pub, not tied to a specific brewery as many are in the UK, featuring local beer. Don't dismiss this effort as a simple recreation of a British Pub across the pond, Sweet Tomatoes has made a conscientious effort to take the essence of the British tradition and add American craft beer flavor. We decided to talk to Bagley-Heath and get some more details on how this new focus came to be.
DCB: Well we can certainly agree with that, what beers have you decided to focus on?
It appears we might be on a little bit of an Anniversary Beer kick, between this and the recent review of Port Brewing Company's 3rd Anniversary Double IPA. The combination does make sense, though, seeing as Port Brewing is now creating beer in Stone Brewing Company's former brewery. Stone actually sold it to Port/Lost Abbey when they built their new, much larger facility. OK, but that's enough about the land owned by brewers... let's move on the the beer.
Every year Port Brewing Company brews up an anniversary beer... weird, right? This year's, was a Double India Pale Ale, same as the first two... So Port Brewing isn't that into surprises, but at least they cop to that fact on the label.
Otter Creek has never been known for their "big" or "extreme" beers. That all changed with the recent hiring of their new brewer, Mike Gerhart, formerly of Dogfish Head Brewing Company in Delaware. Mike came on and Otter Creek released a delicious and much-raved-about Russian Imperial Stout. But Mike had to prove that the RIS was not just a fluke... following it up with the Otter Creek Imperial India Pale Ale surely proves that he has earned the praise that his brewery has recently garnered! It pours a clear copper with some major head that isn't going anywhere... great for catching the delicious smells this ale puts off! 
We like beer and we like ice cream, so we thought why not combine the two? So many beers have flavors that lend themselves to dessert we thought we'd just make it official and come up with our own recipe. If you want to impress at a BBQ this summer show up a with a couple pints of this Southern Tier Mokah ice cream. Your friends will thank you. We hope you enjoy the recipe below as much as we do! The recipe below also works well with Southern Tier Java. We changed this recipe 3 times before it was good enough to share with you and we think its great now, but let us know if you make any changes for the better! - 3 cups half-and-half
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 8 large egg yolks
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 12 oz Southern Tier Mocha
- 1/2 Mexican Vanilla Bean
Split Vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out the inside, keep pod. Add vanilla seeds and pod to the half-and-half and the heavy cream into a medium saucepan, over medium heat. Bring the mixture just to a simmer, stirring occasionally, and remove from the heat. Cover and let sit for 30 mins to infuse.
Place beer in small saucepan, cook until reduced to 1/2 cup. Set aside.
Whisk the egg yolks until they lighten in color. Gradually add sugar while whisking rapidly. Keep whisking until mixture falls from whisk in ribbon like form.
Temper the cream mixture gradually adding small amounts of cream into the eggs while stirring, until about a third of the cream mixture has been added. Pour remainder of cream in and transfer back to saucepan. Cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens slightly and coats the back of a spoon and reaches 170 to 175 degrees F.
Pour the mixture into a container and allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Stir in the vanilla extract. Place the mixture into the refrigerator and once it is cool enough not to form condensation on the lid, cover and store for 8-12 hours.
Place beer reduction in separate container and cool in refrigerator.
After 8-12 hours stir in beer reduction to ice cream base.
Pour into an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's directions. This should take approximately 25 to 35 minutes. Serve as is for soft serve or freeze for another 3 to 4 hours to allow the ice cream to harden.
Cousin Oliver with Victory Prima Pils
