Two Curves

Gnarled branch curves around
Dark bridge arcs over water
River unimpressed

2012 Austin Food & Wine Festival

Thanks to KitchenAid, I was able to attend this year's Austin Food & Wine Festival. I had a lot of fun. Take a look at a few of my photos from the event. You can click on any image to get a better view. Cheers!

Blind Tasting at Aviary

Do your taste buds ever get tired? Has your favorite drink stopped registering with your brain? A/B tests are one way to get your brain cranking and your taste buds excited again. Comparing two similar wines really exposes the subtle flavors in each in a way that drinking either wine alone can't.

Aviary Lounge and Home Decor was nice enough to have me over for a blind A/B test pitting American against French wines. In this case, the extra challenge was that the wine was paired with fresh oysters. Delicious!

See the rest of my Aviary photos.

Rare Beer Tasting Party

You've seen beer commercials on TV. You probably imagine that only beautiful models and handsome jet setters attend beer tasting parties. In this case you're correct.

Check out some fun photos from a recent party which might have featured a hand labeled test batch bottle which had been carefully cellared since the 90's. It also might have featured a pair of not-sold-in-Texas bottles of Bull & Bush which flew in from Denver the same day.

In addition to rare beers, you might just spot a few Austin beer and cocktail celebrities. Enjoy!

Local Book: The Dark Side of Austin

Austin holds an abundance of great artists: brewers, photographers, authors, chefs, designers, and other crafty people. I love it.

My buddy Matt Ewan, a cohort of the Austin flickr group, recently published his own work of art, The Dark Side of Austin: Haunted Sites of Austin and Texas. I got to flip through a copy at the last flickr meeting, and it looks beautiful.

The book tickles me in the right places by revealing secrets that float just under the surface of reality. The book discusses the strange happenings and gruesome deeds from Austin's past, and then reveals the sinister nature of the places in striking black and white photos.

Matt made all the photos himself using a camera that he personally modified to take infrared photos. Because the photos are infrared, the resulting images literally reveal scenes not visible to the naked eye. Matt's distinctive framing plus the otherworldly infrared look gives me the curious impression that I've never been to many of these familiar Austin landmarks.

If you're into haunting photos, stories of hauntings, or simply enjoy re-discovering Austin, I think you'll like the book. If you visit the book's page, you can take a peek with an online preview.

Oh, and if you are into local beer or craft beer, don't forget to take a peek at my photo book: Crafting Beer with (512) Brewing Company. But only after you look at Matt's book -- the photos give me the chills.