So I marinated some belly pork in the €13 bottle of beer that I had bought because - why not. We couldn't drink it and I don't know the neighbours, so I couldn't offer it to them... I was a bit gutted because I really wanted to like it. But I was also excited to see how the pork would turn out. The beer was fairly acidic and reminiscent of Apple cider vinegar, so I mixed in a bit of brown sugar and left the pork to marinate for 24h. Afterwards I put the pieces in the oven to slow cook on 100 degrees for an hour, then cranked it up to 180 and kept brushing on my home made apple glaze every 5ish minutes until I felt it was good enough to come out.
Courtesy of my partner - potato and herb mash, and some yellow and purple carrot salad on the side. Yummers, seriously! If the bloody beer wasn't so bloody expensive, I'd do it again.
Since this is a beer community and not a cookery school, I need to add some more beer to this post! What will I have with my food? Well, beer of course.
Last time I wrote about the French Biere De Garde, and so I bought two specimens from the local supermarket to go with my pork. Not so expensive this time - around €2.60 each bottle. Both from the same brewery (that was an accident on my part) from up North, just how it should be. And both top fermented blonds. Will be interesting to see the difference between them, if there is one.
CH'TI (apparently it means "little or a little something" in folk talk) is the first one opened. 6.4% ABV.
SMELL: sweetish, a bit of yeast, malt, slight citrus.
HEAD: a bit thin, flattened quickly.
CARBONATION: just right - gentle/moderate.
TASTE: thin, no hop bitterness whatsoever; slight subtle malt sweetness, can't taste the 6.4% alcohol. Extremely easy drinking, bordering on generic and boring.
REFLETS DE FRANCE, BIERE DE GARDE ARTISANALE 6% ABV
SMELL: happy and fresh.
HEAD: decent, didn't flatten quite as quickly as the previous one's.
CARBONATION: moderate.
TASTE: light bodied, very subtle hop bitterness, bright and nicely balanced.
CONCLUSION - both beers could be drunk at any time of the day, really easy. It's the kind of beer I would buy for someone if I knew they liked beer but didn't know what kind they preferred, and I would get away with it.
So that's that. Cheers you guys! Have a great weekend everyone!
Afternote: This story will be entering the weekly #beersaturday competition, set up and run buy the lovely 
