Tastes from Oct 14th - 20th

We had a fun week of tastes throughout the week.  While we didn't get a huge number of tastes, those we did get were really good.  First off, we bought a piece of fruit we'd never had before from The Fresh Market.

850. Red plumicot - A cross between a plum and apricot, this was not uniformly ripe.  One side was slightly tart with a lot of sweetness and juicy.  The other side was not quite as sweet and a bit more pulpy.  They also had black and yellow plumicots, but we didn't buy one of those.  Those would be interesting to try.

We also had a few new beers at the house as well.

851. New Belgium Brewing - La Folie - A wonderful Belgian-style sour brown ale, typical examples come from the Flanders region.  This of course comes from Ft. Collins, Colorado.  
852. Weyerbacher Brewing - Imperial Pumpkin Ale - In this case, imperial means a bit too much spicing in our opinion.    

We tried a number of beers and wines at Vintage Cellar this week on Friday.

853. Foothills Brewing - Barrel Aged People's Porter
854. The Bruery - Autumn Maple
855. 2007 - Nuschese Wines - Irpinia Cassius
856. 2011 - Nuschese Wines - Pinot Grigio delle Venezie
857. 2009 - Nuschese Wines - La Pietra
858. 2008 - Il Paggio - Chianti Classico Riserva

On Saturday, we went to GoFest in Roanoke.  Last year, we camped and stayed the whole day, but this year we decided to just go down on Saturday.  There were a lot of fun things to do again and some wonderful food and beer available as well.

859. Starr Hill Brewing - Boxcarr Pumpkin Porter - This was an underwhelming pumpkin porter - the porter part was good, but the pumpkin sweetness and spice was so subtle, it was hard to notice it was there.
860. Starr Hill Brewing - The Love - This was a pretty good local hefeweizen.  Brett liked this a lot.
861. Parkway Brewing - Get Bent Mountain IPA - A fairly typical west coast-style IPA.
862. Bruno's GastroTruck - The Royale with Cheese - This is a Kobe beef burger with braised pork belly, farm egg, bacon jam, cheddar, arugula, tomato, sriracha mayo, challah bun, and chips.  Oh my lord that was good.   It was possibly the best burger Brett has ever had.  Seriously - bacon jam AND braised pork belly?!?!  The perfectly fried egg on top really adds something.
     
863.  Noke Food truck - taco plate - There were three kinds of tacos, chicken, beef, pork.  Unfortunately the meat was only slightly spiced and most of the additional flavor was from the salsa which was filled with cilantro.  Megan hates cilantro so this made her lunch not so good.
864. Toasted by Casey - Trippple Threat - This is a grilled cheese sandwich, but not like any other grilled cheese you've ever seen.  It includes cheddar slice, swiss slice, cheese sticks (yes, you read that right), and marinara sauce.  This was delicious, but we both thought it would be better if the marinara was a dipping sauce instead of on the sandwich.