Beyond the Pale Brewing Company turned two last weekend! (Come celebrate our beerthday with us!)
There was a post from the brewery at the top of my Facebook newsfeed one morning in July; they were looking to hire. I didn’t know much about BTP except that I loved their beer and their ‘help wanted’ ad made me chuckle, and so I sent off my application (which included some brewtal beer puns). A couple pints and two interviews later, I found myself working at this great little brewery in Hintonburg.
After spending the first part of my summer travelling and being funemployed, starting at BTP certainly felt like a change of pace, but a mighty fun one. (My mum, who hated me going around saying that I was “funemployed”, likes to joke that I became “funnERemployed”.) Compared to my past few summers at a student government job it was a huge change of pace. …I sell beer. I don’t brew (yet?!), although I do occasionally zest the grapefruit that goes in to Pink Fuzz, so I like to think I have some part in the beer creation. Sometimes muscles are sore at the end of a long day (beer is heavy!), and some of the initial novelty of working at a brewery might have worn off a little bit, but overall it’s just been a ton of fun. The friendly bunch at BTP was super welcoming and has been a hoot to work with. I’m learning more than I thought I’d ever know about beer, I get to talk to people all day who are as excited about the craft brewing scene as we are, put my social media addiction skills (#employability?) to good use (you can follow along with the brewery here, here, and here), and it’s been great to meet all these wonderful people in an industry that I’m happy to be a tiny part of.If you’re in Ottawa and you haven’t been to Beyond the Pale yet, I hope we see you soon! You have some delicious beer sampling to catch up on.Of course, being surrounded by so much beer I can’t resist throwing some of it in to my cooking. This recipe for mushroom and stout pot pies with a sweet potato crust from Laura over at The First Mess is one of my favourite things that I’ve made this year…you should make that pronto. You can follow that up with some dark, fudgy, chocolate beer brownies. Cheers!

Darkness Beer Brownies (adapted from The Kitchy Kitchen)

1 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
3 ½ ounces (100 grams) semi sweet chocolate, chopped
8 tablespoons of butter, browned
½ cup stout (or any dark beer – I’ve used and would highly recommend Beyond the Pale’s The Darkness, The DarkERness, and Belle Hop Porter)
4 eggs, at room temp
¾ cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
½ cup cacao nibs (optional, but adds a nice little crunch!)
Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease with butter and flour a 9 x 13 pan.

Combine the flour and cocoa powder.

Melt the chopped chocolate in a bowl over boiling water. In a small pan over medium heat, melt the butter until it ‘browns’ (it should be a golden brown and might smell a little nutty). Pour the brown butter into the melt chocolate and mix well. Add the beer and the vanilla to the melted chocolate and butter, stir to combine.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugars until smooth. Add the flour mixture and the wet ingredients in to the bowl with the eggs and sugar. Stir to make sure the texture is consistent, but do not over mix. Fold in the chocolate chips and cacao nibs. Pour the batter in to the prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes.