Saying goodbye to summer in style

As a way to say goodbye to the summer, myself and a friend of mine recently indulged our palate and our appetite. We coupled steamed mussels in a tomato-based sauce with crusty bread with a 2008 Drie Fonteinen Oude Gueze.

Traditional gueze is a blend of one, two and three-year old lambics and then aged in oak barrels that makes for a beautifully amber tinted beer that is basically stripped of any bittering hop flavor. There are very bright and lively notes of fresh peaches and champagne in the smell. The taste is highly tart, oily almost and I'll be the first to admit that it's not for everybody, and I would be hard pressed to share more than one bottle myself. But this beer, especially paired with the mussels, was just awesome and certainly lived up to the hype of Belgium's hallowed Drie Fonteinen or "Three Fountains."

For anybody who watches Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel, he has sort of coined the term "Food Porn," and there is actually one episode titled Food Porn where he eats some monstrously delicious stuff that made my arteries clog from just watching it.

And despite the blatantly juvenile jokes such a term might lead to, participating in food porn can be serious business (hee-hee, snicker). What it means is to basically indulge and then over-indulging in delicious and more often than not very fatty and simply decadent foods. It's pornographic!

Well, our meal in question didn't stop with the mussels and I believe that day has been the closest to a "Food Porn" day as I have ever reached.

Next up for us was lamb shoulder chops which are fatty but still good, with a balsamic vinegar reduction and fresh rosemary. Gotta have rosemary with lamb, it just doesn't work without it. But, going with our succulent chops was one of my favorite all-time beers and at that point in the summer, extremely hard to find - Jolly Pumpkin's Biere De Mars.

Biere De Mars is Jolly Pumpkin's version of the Franco-Belgian Biere De Garde, but I actually believe there is another style that is called just Biere De Mars. Mars is French for March, indicating the traditional seasonal aspect of the brew like the German's Oktoberfest "Marzen." This wonderful concoction was more roasty than the Oude Gueze but still reached back to that sour, oakey tartness that makes Belgian inspired sour beers so savory. There is a reason why Ron Jeffries' Biere De Mars, like other JP seasonals, are highly sought after - they are very good and this bottle carried some robust flavors of Granny Smith apple, sour candy, oak and some mossiness.

That day was certainly a marathon of delicious food and even more delicious beers. Here's to summer...nice knowin ya!