Thursday afternoon, I made a beer run during my lunch hour. This may seen not so special to those of you who have the good luck to live someplace where you have easy and ready access to a wide variety of good beers, but it was a big deal to me.
I heard through a friend about a small brewery in Stuttgart called Cast. The name comes from the founders, who were supposed to be a Californian and a Stuttgarter (CA-ST). The logo, actually, includes two shields, one with the Californian bear, the other with the Stuttgarter stallion. Anyway, they do small batches, bottle them all in the same brown bottles and slap on a wet-stick label when you go pick them up. There is no tasting room, no bar, not even a shop or a window. You can find the small brewery easily enough off of Schlosserstrasse, and you ring the bell.
The guy who answers the door, likely wearing an apron and galoshes, will then tell you what they have on stock as you look past him into the working brewery. This trip, I just picked up two six packs ('sixers'), one of them for the co-worker who had recommended the place. It was more expensive beer than the typical beer from the big brewers in town, who charge less than a euro a beer (not including the bottle deposit), but it was a lot cheaper than the imported or craft beers I have been finding at the British shop or the small 'sophisticated' beer section at the das Gerber grocery store. So I am excited. Apparently this place regularly brews IPAs and other ales, which are really my preferred brew.
Anyway, the beer I bought was a Roggenweißebier, a rye-wheat beer, unfiltered. Really good, although more like a weiße (wheat) beer with a hint of rye. I'm going to come back after Easter, when they will have some ales for sale.
Friday, Saori and I were going to hit a design fair in the Liederhalle but decided to take a pass since neither one of us really felt like paying $15 for the privilege to buy overpriced felted purses and 3d printed jewelry. Instead, we popped open one of the beers I had been carrying and drank as we walked over to Lumen, a hipstery place in Stuttgart west for some more beer and sweet potato fries.
We wrapped up the evening watching Big Hero 6 which is really quite a phenomenal movie from the technical graphics point of view. The movie story overall was not so good, but the graphics, wow.
This morning I made us hash browns, fried eggs, and ham, which was delicious. When I say, I made hash browns, I mean, I made them from scratch, which turns out to be easier than one might think. You grate 1 potato per person, squeeze out as much water as possible in a cheesecloth or thin and clean kitchen washtowel, and nuke it for two minutes before frying it all up. Turns out really nice. Crispy outside, chewy inside.
After cleaning up a bit, we walked across town towards Olgastrasse. First, we popped into a tiny cafe which we first mistook for an antiques shop of which it is also a part. The bearded eccentric owner had decorated the cafe with victorian-era decor including a wall of tiny deer skull trophies surrounding a silver-gelatin print of his grandmother. And there was a plastic bat hanging from one of the skull antlers. Over to a plant shop where we bought some new pots for our latest plants. It's an expensive shop, but they sell used and old pots in the loading zone behind the store, so we picked up a few cheap ones there.
After that plant shop, Rafa got back to us and asked us if we were still going to Uhlig Kakteen today. He has a car, and so we said 'YES'. We had another cup of coffee at a nearby cafe popular with the Argentines, and then Rafa drove us all over. We bought a few more plants, and a few more pots. It was fun to show Rafa the place too. It's really quite surreal. Massive white tarp covered greenhouses, eeriely quiet except for mysterious droning mechanical noises outside somewhere, endless rows of tables covered with bizarre plants. They sold us clay pots for fifty cents, too.
On the drive home, we passed a large group of people marching, protected or watched by a huge group riot police. They were marching, I believe, against homosexuality.
Anyway, we invited Rafa up for a quick bite after he dropped us off back at our apartment before he headed back out to go serve and cook at Mezcal hoch Zwei. I headed out again too, to do some last minute grocery shopping before coming back home for the night.
I heard through a friend about a small brewery in Stuttgart called Cast. The name comes from the founders, who were supposed to be a Californian and a Stuttgarter (CA-ST). The logo, actually, includes two shields, one with the Californian bear, the other with the Stuttgarter stallion. Anyway, they do small batches, bottle them all in the same brown bottles and slap on a wet-stick label when you go pick them up. There is no tasting room, no bar, not even a shop or a window. You can find the small brewery easily enough off of Schlosserstrasse, and you ring the bell.
The guy who answers the door, likely wearing an apron and galoshes, will then tell you what they have on stock as you look past him into the working brewery. This trip, I just picked up two six packs ('sixers'), one of them for the co-worker who had recommended the place. It was more expensive beer than the typical beer from the big brewers in town, who charge less than a euro a beer (not including the bottle deposit), but it was a lot cheaper than the imported or craft beers I have been finding at the British shop or the small 'sophisticated' beer section at the das Gerber grocery store. So I am excited. Apparently this place regularly brews IPAs and other ales, which are really my preferred brew.
Anyway, the beer I bought was a Roggenweißebier, a rye-wheat beer, unfiltered. Really good, although more like a weiße (wheat) beer with a hint of rye. I'm going to come back after Easter, when they will have some ales for sale.
Friday, Saori and I were going to hit a design fair in the Liederhalle but decided to take a pass since neither one of us really felt like paying $15 for the privilege to buy overpriced felted purses and 3d printed jewelry. Instead, we popped open one of the beers I had been carrying and drank as we walked over to Lumen, a hipstery place in Stuttgart west for some more beer and sweet potato fries.
We wrapped up the evening watching Big Hero 6 which is really quite a phenomenal movie from the technical graphics point of view. The movie story overall was not so good, but the graphics, wow.
This morning I made us hash browns, fried eggs, and ham, which was delicious. When I say, I made hash browns, I mean, I made them from scratch, which turns out to be easier than one might think. You grate 1 potato per person, squeeze out as much water as possible in a cheesecloth or thin and clean kitchen washtowel, and nuke it for two minutes before frying it all up. Turns out really nice. Crispy outside, chewy inside.
After cleaning up a bit, we walked across town towards Olgastrasse. First, we popped into a tiny cafe which we first mistook for an antiques shop of which it is also a part. The bearded eccentric owner had decorated the cafe with victorian-era decor including a wall of tiny deer skull trophies surrounding a silver-gelatin print of his grandmother. And there was a plastic bat hanging from one of the skull antlers. Over to a plant shop where we bought some new pots for our latest plants. It's an expensive shop, but they sell used and old pots in the loading zone behind the store, so we picked up a few cheap ones there.
After that plant shop, Rafa got back to us and asked us if we were still going to Uhlig Kakteen today. He has a car, and so we said 'YES'. We had another cup of coffee at a nearby cafe popular with the Argentines, and then Rafa drove us all over. We bought a few more plants, and a few more pots. It was fun to show Rafa the place too. It's really quite surreal. Massive white tarp covered greenhouses, eeriely quiet except for mysterious droning mechanical noises outside somewhere, endless rows of tables covered with bizarre plants. They sold us clay pots for fifty cents, too.
On the drive home, we passed a large group of people marching, protected or watched by a huge group riot police. They were marching, I believe, against homosexuality.
Anyway, we invited Rafa up for a quick bite after he dropped us off back at our apartment before he headed back out to go serve and cook at Mezcal hoch Zwei. I headed out again too, to do some last minute grocery shopping before coming back home for the night.
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