Midweek Swig: Steven Sour

This week: Steven Sour, a "sour IPA" collaboration of Magic Hat Brewing Co. and Vermont Pub & Brewery.

Cost: Sample provided by Magic Hat, but 22-ounce bottles are for sale for $4.99 throughout Vermont (the beer is also on tap throughout the state).

Strength: 5.6 percent abv.

The pour: A murky, burnt orange with a faint head that quickly dissipates. The beer has little to no aroma, but if you try hard you might smell apricots.

The taste: There's zestier carbonation than its appearance suggests, and each sip bristles and roughs up the tip of your tongue before rolling across the middle with the slightest hint of sourness. It's quenching, with dry, lingering wisps of grapefruit — but it's also ever so chalky.

Drink it with: This made me want to start whipping up a chicken curry with almonds and apricots — or maybe just a plate of Comté, sliced baguette and quince paste.

Backstory: Two Vermont brewing heavyweights got together to brew this beer in celebration of VPB's 25th anniversary, and it's only for sale (in bottles and on tap) in Vermont.

Alice Eats: Family-Style Sunday at nika

83 Church Street, Burlington, 660-9533

I was first introduced to family-style dining when I visited Pennsylvania Dutch country as a kid. Sharing a table with overweight Southern tourists tearing into my dumplings and shoofly pie wasn't my idea of acceptable dining, even at age 8.

Recently, I've had to get over my heebie-jeebies for the term. Luckily, in Vermont, it means only that you have to share with your own party, and from Misery Loves Co.'s meat-and-three suppers to roasted chicken Sundays at Guild & Company, I'm loving the trend.

Earlier this fall, nika introduced its own version of the concept with three courses of well-thought-out Mediterranean fare for $20 a person. And it's not just snack-size portions, either.

It's all part of a new set of deals available at the Church Street restaurant: On Mondays, restaurant and bar employees get 20 percent off their meals, along with $5 wine and $4 draught beer. Tuesday, every pizza on the menu is $10, including upscale specialties such as a pie topped with lemon-dill swordfish, fried capers and olives. On Wednesday, Flights & Bites night means $10 for a flight of three wines and $15 for six small plates — $20 for both.

Maglianero Closed — But Not for Long

Caffeine seekers who have shown up at Maglianero Café in Burlington the past few days may have been disappointed to find a locked door. They should fear not: The coffee mecca is not gone, just in the process of being moved to the street-facing gallery space upstairs at 47 Maple.

Manager Corey Goldsmith is knee-deep in the renovations — as in, doing much of it himself — putting together "a more integrated, clean, modern look" that he designed. That includes solid ash wood counters built by Vermont Farm Table, but it also means less seating. At least for now, there will be three seats at the new brew bar, plus three tables with four seats each.

And while Maglianero will still have Wi-Fi, the laptop army won't find outlets near those tables — an adjustment for the legions who love to camp out at Maglianero for hours.

Alice Eats: Hostel Tevere

203 Powderhound Road, Warren, 496-9222

It's no secret that I'm a Jewish American Princess. I normally wouldn't be caught dead in a youth hostel. But Hostel Tevere is different. Even the bathrooms are clean, bright and decorated with hipster art that is more funny (if misspelled) than obnoxious.

The hostel's restaurant has become a major destination in the Mad River Valley, and for good reason. The small dining area, filled with communal tables, feels like a cool update on a 19th-century tavern, complete with a craft beer list that's heavy on Brooklyn's Sixpoint Brewery, as well as local names such as Lawson's and Lost Nation.

But the real attraction is the food. Local and handmade, yes, but more importantly, the menu is highly eclectic and the dishes are prepared with great care.

We started with a pair of kielbasa corn dog pops, as did, apparently, everyone else dining on Saturday night. How could you not, when each is only $1?

The kielbasa lent a stronger, tangier taste to the pop, but in the end, they were still just very good (tiny) corn dogs. But the Dijon aioli that came on the side ended up playing a key role with our other starter, the house salt-and-vinegar chips.

Though the warm chips were suitably salty, they could have used more of a pucker. But dipping them in the tangy sauce hit the spot. We nearly demolished the large bowl before our entrées arrived.

Grazing: Open-Faced Grilled Cheese Sandwich With Robie Farm Toma & Cider Jelly

The raw milk cheeses of Robie Farm are intense. In fact, the entire place is kind of intense, in its own bucolic way: a 140-year-old dairy farm on a windswept plain in Piermont, N.H. (just across from Bradford, Vt.).

The family ages and hand-turns their cheeses on white-ash-tree planks, and then sells them inside a rustic, generally unmanned farm store that's also stocked with raw milk, eggs and frozen cuts of pork and veal (including swoonworthy bacon). The dairy case holds tangy, powerful cheeses with names such as Piermont, Swaledale and Echo Hill Gervais, an herbed, spreadable, pungent and scumptious cheese made in collaboration with neighboring Bunten Farm.

Sometimes you'll run into chatty cheesemaker Mark Robie inside the shop; otherwise, you leave your cash or check on the honor system, which is still pretty common across the Upper Valley.

Should Vermont Lift the Ban on Happy Hours? Watchdog.org Thinks So

A website called Watchdog.org has published an article suggesting that the Vermont ban on happy hours — selling drinks at lower prices during certain times — is economically illogical.

Writer Jon Street quoted the owner of Burlington's Ake's Place, Ronnie Ryan, who suggested that the state should allow bars to lure in customers with occasional happy hours.

“Burlington is so rich in young professionals and college students, I’m confident it would help business, and if it helps our business it also helps the state as it will generate more money in taxes,” he said.

Bill Goggins, director of education, licensing and enforcement for the Vermont Department of Liquor Control, broadly explained the role of the state government in keeping people safe, while a fellow at the Cato Institute lamented, “Why should Vermont insert itself between deals that please restaurants and customers alike?”

Flooded Intervale Farm Finds a New Home

Vermont farmers will be in our thoughts tomorrow as we tuck into our Thanksgiving meals. And just in time for the holiday, Amanda Andrews and Mike Betit of Burlington's Tamarack Hollow Farm have something to be thankful for — they're moving to higher ground.

In a story last summer about the pitfalls of farming on the Burlington floodplain, Andrews articulately outlined the “urban farm adventure" on which she and her husband embarked after moving their farm from Wheelock in 2010. As of August, Tamarack Hollow had lost more than $100,000 this year alone to the flooding that crippled the growth of both plants and animals from the start.

Andrews was at her limit, even considering a career change. “What does seven years’ farming experience get you in the real world?” she wondered at the time. “You look through the job postings, and what you’d be qualified for is pretty slim.”

Midweek Swig: Lincoln Peak Marquette 2012

This week: Lincoln Peak Vineyard Marquette 2012

Cost: $14.99 at Norwich Wine & Spirits

Strength: 13.9 percent a.b.v.

The pour: A dark, inky violet with an almost opaque core. It ain't leggy — instead, it clings to the sides of the glass in sheets. Warming aromatics of blackberries and currants tangle with hints of mint and cinnamon.

The taste: Juicy! The wine has pronounced, quenching acidity that tempers the stewed cherry and cranberry flavors. It's tart, sprightly and lighter-bodied than the color (and even the bottle) suggests, with quiet tannins and a simmering finish.

Drink it with: I picked this up to see if it might work on the Thanksgiving table. Though it would slightly overwhelm turkey, the wine would stand up well to the richer dishes on the table — a potato gratin, creamed spinach, harder cheeses served at the end of the meal. It might even work with the bird if the latter were slathered in a dark pomegranate gravy. Yet this Marquette's true moment will come later in the season — when we're gorging on mac-and-cheese, sausage and braised meats.

Grazing: Why Hatin' on Beaujolais Nouveau Is So Wrong

Last night, I dropped in on what was probably one of Vermont's only Beaujolais Nouveau release parties. And though I planned to write about some raw-milk cheeses today, a bee has landed in my bonnet: The snark that many wine industry people (writers, retailers, distributors, etc.) reserve for this wine.

If you're unfamiliar with BN, it's a very young, Gamay-based wine that ferments only for only a few weeks before it's bottled. Released each year on the third Thursday of November, it's the first taste of the year's harvest; bars and wine shops in Paris and elsewhere will pop open bottles at midnight to jumpstart a wine-centric party. Yesterday, I received a late invite to a release party that the New England Culinary Institute was throwing at Chef's Table In Montpelier. 

Balloons marked the entrance and, on the inside, NECI students (some clad in berets) roamed the cozy red rooms pouring Joseph Drouhin's Beaujolais Nouveau and serving up French morsels such as coq au vin. About two dozen people sipped and discussed the wine —  some had never tried Beaujolais of any stripe before. They chatted about everything from its flavors (lots of red fruit, of course, but grippier than in past years), to the year's weather in France, to beer (this being Vermont). It was a mellow, low-key celebration of wine and food and fall and all things French.

Midweek Swig: Woodchuck Cellar Series Smoked Apple Cider

With a constant flow of newly released beers, ciders, wines, spirits and even kombuchas from the state's artisans, we thought we'd review one each Wednesday. Welcome to the Midweek Swig.

Our inaugural drink: Woodchuck Cellar Series Smoked Apple Cider, released at the end of October.

Cost: $4.39 for a 22-ounce bottle at Beverage King, West Lebanon, N.H.

Strength: 6.9 percent a.b.v.

The pour: A gorgeous coppery color with no head to speak of. It smells like a blend of bacon, apple jelly and lemons, with the barest hints of ... asphalt?

The taste: At first, the unusual meaty flavor wallops your palate, but soon treads a middle road between smoke and citrus, tinged with vanilla. The carbonation is faint but rough, and the texture is rich and round. It tastes like November, somehow.

Drink it with: Kielbasa, a smoked-cheddar grilled-cheese sandwich, chili or just on its own.

Backstory: This limited-release cider was made with pomace that was smoked with maple and applewood chips inside Vermont Smoke & Cure's smokehouse. It's the second release of Woodchuck's Cellar Series line.

Verdict: "Cider with a twist" is a growing category, and it's heartening that this grew out of a collaboration of two Vermont companies. However, its novelty may not appeal much beyond adventurous drinkers and lovers of rauchbier.