On Thursday evening I attended a cigar event at The Port Oysteria and Brewery in downtown Fredericksburg. I had not yet visited the combination brewery, seafood restaurant, and raw bar, so I was interested in finally checking it out in addition to enjo…

Harry’s Alehouse held a Wing & Craft Beer Pairing event this week, featuring beers from Flying Dog Brewery. Having attended several previous beer dinners at Harry’s, we were excited for the next adventure. We were not disappointed.Harry’s Chef Jame…

To go along with the copious food and drink, the afternoon featured interesting, and often raucous conversation. The beers where new to the majority of the participants. I also think we’ve created a few new craft beer fans. All of the pairings worked well and served to illustrate the versatility of beer.

While preparing for the event, Colleen and I often thought “Why are we doing this?” But in the end, it was a lot of fun. And “it’s for the children.“

The ending reward for a hardworking chef.

We capped off last weekend with an enjoyable event at Harry’s Alehouse. The “Bourbon Barrel Beer Dinner” promised interesting beers and good food. As we were seated our server let us know that the first course would start in about 20 minutes, and he th…

Earlier this week, Capital Ale House in Fredericksburg hosted a Strangeways Brewing “Steal the Glass” event. As reported recently, Strangeways recently entered into an agreement to begin local distribution of their beers. Tuesday’s event marked the first Fredericksburg appearance of the beers outside of the brewery. Colleen and I decided to stop in and enjoy a few good beers and some tasty food.

Four Strangeways beers were being poured this evening; Überlin Berliner Weisse, Helles Frozen Over, Tirami’Zu Brew Rum Barrel Aged Porter and Home for the Holidays Spiced Cranberry Sour.

I’ve been enjoying some sour beer styles of late, so I chose the Home for the Holidays Spiced Cranberry Sour. The attractive red beer has a refreshing tart fruit flavor with a hint of spice. The low 4.2% ABV was welcome as I emptied my glass quite quickly.

Colleen started with Tirami’Zu Brew Barrel Aged Porter. I stole only a brief sip, not wanting to disturb my soured tastebuds, but I think I’ll check that one out at the brewery soon. It was full of creamy dark chocolate aroma and flavor.

We’ve enjoyed several visits to the nearby Strangeways Fredericksburg location, where they keep around 40 unique beers on tap, so having just four options from which to choose made for an easier than usual decision process. For our next round, to accompany our meal, we simply ordered “the other two.”

This time I sipped the Helles Frozen Lager and Colleen claimed the Überlin Berliner Weisse. The Helles had a nice crisp, grassy bitterness. A lighter bodied beer than I typically drink, it went well with my French Dip Steak and Havarti sandwich.

While we were enjoying our dinner I noticed that Capital Ale House owner Chris Holder and Neil Burton, the Strangeways Brewery owner, were also in attendance to help celebrate the new distribution status. I hadn’t seen either of them for some time so took the chance say hello and enjoy a quick chat about beer in Fredericksburg.

Besides two more glasses to add to our glassware collection, we obtained a bunch of Strangeways swag as well. We enjoyed a pleasant event talking, eating, and drinking. I’m can now look forward to seeing even more Strangeways beer variety at my favorite local establishments.

Local bloggers are coming to the rescue of local politics again this year in the form of the Bloggers Forum 09. Yours truly is one of several panel members participating in this event to showcase those running for Stafford and Spotsylvania VA superrvisor positions. For more info, click the banner to the right of the […]

Today marks a milestone of sorts. Actually it’s more of a surprise. I was checking some stats and FBurgNews.com has logged more than 4000 posts from local Fredericksburg, VA area bloggers. Way to go team! As we grow together, I’m working on changes to the website to group blogs.  You’ll all still end up in […]

For those of you that vote in Fredericksburg VA, here’s who you can thank for higher real estate taxes. Councilwoman Greenlaw made the final motion to raise the rate to $0.705 of every $100. That’s almost 26% percent. It was seconded by Vice-Mayor Devine. Councilman Kelly put forward an alternative $.68 of every $100. It […]

First, a new addition.  http://roadsdivergedwood.blogspot.com/ is a photographic view of Fredericksburg, with a bit of history about those places appearing in the shots. Death of a blog, that’s what happens when things start getting out of hand when ‘friends’ take posts in a direction not intended.  Of course I’m talking about the Fred Vegas Chronicles.  Fredericksburg’s very […]

Now get the area’s hottest news delivered direct to your Amazon Kindle!   FburgNews.com tries to bring together a diverse set of blogging content, and it is now available in more formats than ever. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0029U2X8Q Hopefully they will drop the price to make getting the local inside story more affordable.