CORNWALL, Ontario – Saturday saw the latest edition of the Aleienated Beer Dinner series take place at the Nav Centre.
Each Aleienated Beer Dinner features a different brewery and it is up to the host chef to take the selected beers and create a delicious feast to pair with them, this dinner’s selected brewery was Wellington’s.
Chef Luc McCabe and his team, including Sous-Chef Marc Murray created a five-course meal that included poutine soup, candy bacon, beer cold smoke salmon, beer tenderloin with a juniper garlic sauce, beer bread and for dessert, a smoke chocolate cheesecake.
“They sent us the beer and you have a couple of drinks and you speak to it,” said Chef McCabe of his process behind pairing the meals with the beers. “I want to give a big thanks to Marc Murray and the rest of my team.”
Event organizer Jay Killoran said that trying new beers and letting the chef’s get creative with the meals is what Aleienated Beer Dinners are all about.
“We want a good cross section of different styles,” he said. “Usually we choose 3-5 beers for each dinner. Then we hand it over to the chef and then it is up to the chef to show what they really are and that’s what these dinners are really all about.”
Nostalgia was an influence on Killoran when he selected Wellington as the brewery for this event.
“Wellington was the very first craft brewery I started drinking in the mid-90s,” he said. “For me it was a little bit of nostalgia. For me, as a craft beer lover it was when I started to get introduced to craft beers.”
Killoran explained that the craft scene has always had a strong attraction for him.
“I fell in love with the scene,” he said. “Fell in love with not just the beer themselves, but the people behind them.”
He said that he moved back to Cornwall around six years ago and that the craft scene was not the same as it is today. Killoran explained after doing some searching online, he came across the term Aleienated, which for him perfectly described how he felt in Cornwall.
“It means to be without good beer and people to drink it with and that’s exactly what I felt like when I moved back to Cornwall,” he said.
This is what inspired him to start the Aleienated series, and now there are many in Cornwall who share his passion for craft brews. For more information check out www.aleienated.ca
