Swan and Dolphin Food and Wine Classic – Beer, Please! seminar

During the Swan and Dolphin Food and Wine Classic there are a variety of seminars that guests can attend prior to the big event that takes place on the causeway between the two hotels. Guests can learn about wine, tequila and pasta making, to name a few. We attended the Beer, Please! seminar that took place on Friday at 4:30 pm for $45 per person.

Each place setting included seven sample beers, water and foods to see how they paired with each of the beers being offered.

Each person had hops and grains used to make beer.

What beers did we try? In order… Rogue Brewery Morimoto, Anchor Steam, Ayinger Brau-Weis Hefeweizen, Goose Island Matilda Belgian Style Pale Ale, My Antonia American Double-Imperial Pilsner, Cigar City White Oak Jai Alai IPA and Two Henry’s Roasted Jalapeño Blueberry Porter.

The Anchor Steam was very easy to drink. The Ayinger Hefeweizen has a hint of banana and clove. It was one of my favorites and possibly the best hefeweizen we’ve ever had.  Matilda was what you’d expect from a pale ale, but with a bit more flavor. My Antonia was another favorite. It’s made three different ways – American/Italian, Italian and American. It’s designed to be a lager for ale drinkers. The Cigar City IPA was our least favorite, but none of us like IPAs. For people who like IPAs and other very hoppy beers, this one you’ll love. The most interest beer of the night had to be Two Henry’s porter. It’s a very sweet porter! You can really taste the Florida blueberries and it finished with a kick from the jalepeños. Half of us liked it, the other half… not so much. One of the coolest things about this beer is that it’s not available to buy. Brian and DJ were able to get this beer for us to sample and it was a really nice treat.

Along with our beers we were served a bottle of water, bread made with beer (instead of water) and cheese, cheese made with beer, wasabi peas, pretzels, applewood smoked bacon and chorizo chips. It was nice to have a variety of items to taste along with the beers. It gave attendees a chance to see how food and beer pair together. By the way, the applewood smoked bacon went with everything!

They taught us about everything beer. The explained what makes beer, the difference between lagers and ales (do you know which one stout falls under?) and all about each of the beers we had the opportunity to sample.

The instructors for the class were Brian Exner, B.A.R certified, certified sommelier and general manager of Il Mulino, and DJ Robertson, B.A.R certified, certified sommelier and assistant banquet manager. As you can tell from their credentials, these guys knew exactly what they were talking about! Not only did they teach us a lot about the beers, but we they made the class really exciting and fun.

We had a sweet ending to the seminar, a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped off with Green Flash Double Stout. Green Flash Brewery is located in San Diego, CA and the beer is 8.8% ABV and IBUs of 45. It has a dark cocoa and coffee flavor. It was amazing and wish that we could have had seconds.

Cigar City Brewing, located in Tampa, FL, supplied these nice beer glasses for everyone to take home. We’ve already used ours!

Last year, we attended the Modern Mixology seminar and this year, Beer, Please! We really enjoyed this seminar, maybe even a bit more than the Modern Mixology. The seminars offered during the Swan and Dolphin Food and Wine Classic are fantastic! We’d recommend them to anyone who wants to experience something different than what is going on at Epcot. The instructors for all of their classes are extremely knowledgeable and full of so much information.

If you enjoy food and wine as much as we do, make sure to book one or two of these seminars next year!

Make sure to check out or review of the fifth annual Swan and Dolphin Food and Wince Classic. It’s full of photos!

Disclaimer: We received two complimentary tickets for Beer, Please! courtesy of Swan and Dolphin. This is no way impacts our review of the event.