Dinner With Friends

A small piece of advice: If Tyler Barber invites you over for dinner, go. Tyler and Connie Barber are members of a group called "Dinner With Friends" that take turns hosting fancy meals. Tyler is also one of the most talented homebrewers in Michigan, as well as a barbecue maniac. A better reporter would have pictures of his twin homemade 55 gallon drum smokers. This is what we were treated with last weekend:

Appetizers
Smoked Salmon Spread with Toasted Flatbread
Smoked Queso with Tortilla Chips
Smoked, Stuffed, and Wrapped Jalapenos Two Ways
-Crab and Cream Cheese
-Hot Pepper Cheese and Cream Cheese

"Dead Animal Course"
Pulled Pork
Beef Brisket
Baby Back Ribs
(plus about eight different sauces for folks to try, including a vinegar-based Eastern Carolina style sauce for certain Cicerone barbecue purists...)

Side Dishes
Apple Pie Baked Beans
Sweet Potato Casserole
Corn On the Cob
Turnip Greens
Fire and Ice Pickles
Deviled Egg Potato Salad

Dessert
Texas Sheet cake
Banana Pudding
Watermelon

Beer
Vienna
Pils
American Pale Ale
Cream Ale
Irish Stout
Doppelbock
Wit
...plus a few guest growlers.

Try as we might, we didn't even sample each dish. We did sample all of the barbecue, though, and despite my personal preferences, the brisket was the hands-down winner at this dinner. Succulent and smokey, mmm. The beans were loaded with bacon, brown sugar, and spices including cinnamon, and tasted great with both my crisp ginger wheat and Brewmaster Doug's Bootlegger's Bourbon Aged Porter. (For different reasons, of course; ginger is good with all those other apple pie spices, and the spritziness of the beer cut the sugar nicely; on the other side, the brown sugar and spice go awfully nice with the vanilla, coconut, fruity, and chocolaty flavors in the porter.)

Dessert for me was a double dose of Doppelbock, because there's always room for beer....