If you’re anything like me, you probably look forward to an ice cold glass of suds after a long hard day.  Nothing says “the day is over” like a good meal, a bit of reading or TV and a great beer.  It’s the perfect end to the day or the week.

The only problem with loving beer is that there are literally thousands to choose from.  Each is distinct and wonderful in its own particular way. Every brewer puts his or her own mark on a beer, adding subtle overtones and flavorings that can be found nowhere else. At the end of the day, how do you decide which brand or style of beer to choose?

If you’d like to try a different beer every month, try joining a beer of the month club through 1-800-beer.com.  They’ll send a different selection every month, leaving you to enjoy your beer, rather than having to decide which beer to try. Their imported beer selections are hand picked by Michael Jackson, the foremost authority on beer (not the pop legend), so you’re sure to find one or more that make your palate sing.

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I had originally meant to title this post “Ale Bread Part Deux”, but I really didn’t want to make it into any kind of a tribute to Charlie Sheen. (Not that I have anything against Charlie, mind you!)

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog over the last year, you’ll know that baking is one of my biggest fears and is something I usually leave to my wife, who excels at it. I have however, been prodded repeatedly by several people to “bite the bullet and bake us up something fab to drool over”

My last attempt at this resulted in something less than what I expected, even after several goes at it. It was enough to send me away from the baking cupboard in shame for quite some time, with every intention never to slink back to realms in which I obviously do not belong.

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When Lis from La Mia Cucina interviewed me, one of her questions was when I was going to stop waffling on the subject of baking and actually “…bite the bullet and bake us up something fab to drool over…”?

The answer to the question is “I did it on Monday.”

This bread is a lot more tricky to make than it looked in the directions. My wife attempted it the night before I made this, and the recipe failed her. It could be humidity levels or it could be a curse placed on my family by gypsies, but that dough was never gonna work.

The next morning I vowed that no recipe which includes a full can of beer was ever gonna whoop my beer hunting tush (my manliness was at stake here, not to mention the senseless loss of a perfectly good pale!) , so I bought a 24 oz bottle of Corona and went after a double batch. It didn’t take long to discover I was going to have to wrestle with it though.

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