Food And Drink Blogger Meetup, Chef Mitch Prensky on Cooking with Beer, and a Call to Help Beernews.org

This weekend I had the good fortune to attend a food and drink bloggers meetup organized by Wendy (aka La Phemme Phoodie) at the renowned restaurant Supper on South Street in Philly. It was very cool to meet some of my colleagues in bloggerdom, including In Search of Beer's Ryan and his lovely fiance LeeAnne (they took much better pictures than my Droid could dream of, so scoot over for a look).

As you might imagine, Ryan and I were a bit focused on the beer used in chef Mitch Prensky's Dock Street Pancakes, which feature Dock Street Brewing's Porter as a key ingredient. I also got a chance to pair it with a Cigar City Maduro, as you can see:

The use of porter really added a nice roastiness to the pancakes, augmented by the Maduro.

One of the coolest things about it was that we all got a very good chance to hang out with Mitch and talk with him about everything from being trained by Bobby Flay to the use of beer in fine cuisine. Apparently they use beer for braising and other moistening even more than they use wine now. his cooks often have squirt bottles of Yuengling (he admitted to once trying to cook with Pabst, but the novelty wore off quickly) they use for cooking.

Mitch also had some good insights on Philly Beer Week. As someone who runs a great restaurant and loves beer (currently they have a small but well-thought-out bottle selection), Mitch said that it's one week a year where it is tough to do beer events and be noticed. With participation costs starting at $500 and a bazillion beer events around the city, it actually can make more sense for a place like Supper to plan a beer dinner or similar event at a different time of year. Makes sense, just interesting.

Some news and links:

•  In his contribution to the Session, Jay Brooks writes about Reading Premium, a beer once made in the town I now live that was there when Jay was a kid and was brought back by Legacy Brewing - now Ruckus Brewing.
• Saint William Brewery would like you to help pick a slogan.
• Iron City is now owned by a private equity firm.
• Brady Walen gives a long and in-depth rundown on the best uses of social media by craft breweries.

Lastly and, to me, probably most importantly: Readers here know how much I love and use Adam Nason's beernews.org site, soon to be relaunched as Beerpulse. Adam runs a service that is absolutely invaluable to the craft beer world, so if you're a craft beer fan, swing by his site and consider making a donation to help him finish the product. In the meantime, I'll be trying to archive many of the hotlinked images from his site here.