The Annual Chizziz and Beer Fest!

Saying goodbye to people at Post is always hard, but is a way of life in the Foreign Services.  Everyone has something different that they want to do as a part of their going away party, but one of the Marines planned what is now going to be an annual event.  For his going away party, he planned a chili and beer fest.  Anyone who came could bring chili, and he enlisted the homebrewers to make a batch of whatever we wanted to be judged.  All of the brewers were more than happy to provide a drink, and we all worked together to make sure that each brewer had what they needed and were ready to represent.

While I was the Dustman representation for the homebrew competition, both Katie and I were representing for the chili portion.  Katie made a beef chili and I made a lamb chili with bourbon and beer named Hammered Lamb.  For a little while, I was in a kick of cooking with bourbon and this seemed like a fun recipe to try.  Katie’s chili was delicious and mine was tasty, though a bit sweet which is somewhat the opposite of what you expect from chili.

We definitely had a competition to win the best chili, as a ton of people brought their own concoctions.  Spicy or not, beans or no beans, vegetarian, cornbread, rice, or pasta accompanied, any type of chili you could want you could get.  To wash it down, there were seven brewers handing out their homebrewed beer.  I made a Maple Bacon Stout, called Sticky Pig, made with real bacon and also maple bacon vodka.  You could really taste the maple and it finished with a bacon flavor.  The maple taste took over as the beer got older, but I was pretty happy with that brew.  It could have gone really bad and been too sweet, but instead tasted good and I got a lot of compliments.

Being a competition, there had to be winners for both the beer and chili.  For the beer, an IPA and a Pale Ale took the top two spots.  The chili is where the real surprise came.  2^nd place chili was a beef chili with quinoa and cilantro which tasted really good.  The overall winner though was a vegan chili!  I have no idea how a vegan chili won the competition, but after a few laughs, the two winners were given their trophies.  The awards were hand carved from a local woodcarver and were definitely works of art.  Mostly because of how chili was spelled on them.  The carver spelled chili as chizziz!  The Marine that ordered the carvings still has no idea how the woodcarver got that spelling, but the misspelling made the awards that much better.

From now on the competition is going to be renamed to the Chizziz and Beer Fest, and while I don’t know what I am going to brew yet, I can’t wait for the next one!