Beer and Bacon

We are occasional frequenters of a nearby pub called Tanglewood.  I'm fairly sure I've blogged about it before, as it's one of the only brew pub type places in Fayetteville.  It's walking distance from us (about a mile) and they often have live music of the folk/jazz variety.  That means either folk or jazz, not a rotating folk-jazz combo (though...that'd be cool!).

I became Facebook friends with this place after it opened, as they used to have a policy that you got a free beer if you could prove that you walked or biked there, and I also just wanted to support a local place.  I quickly had to hide them from my newsfeed, though, because they are among the Annoying in Facebookland.  Namely they post multiple times a day about stupid stuff that I don't care about, and simply seeing their posts started to annoy me.

Because I hid them, I forgot about one of the weekly specials: Monday night Beer and Bacon.  It's exactly like it sounds.  You go there on a Monday night, order beer, and there is a fishbowl full of bacon you can take handfuls from.  Now, the policy is that you can only take the free bacon if you're drinking beer; soda or water drinkers are not allowed the dip into the bacon pot.  

We recently had our first beer and bacon experience, and I can tell you it was as magical as it sounds.  First of all, the bacon itself was excellent.  It was on the crispy side, as I like it, in both small and medium-sized strips, all curly and salty and delicious.  I mean, it's kind of hard to screw up bacon (because it's BACON) but clearly these people have done the beer and bacon nights enough that they've got the art of bacon down.

Also new news to me, though unsurprising: beer goes well with bacon.  I shouldn't be surprised because bacon is salty, and the salty-plus-beer combo is a time-honored classic (think lederhosen, steins of beer and big salty German pretzels).  I had a "classic," the Rogue Dead Guy Ale, and Doug had a Stout of some variety.  We sipped our beer, munched on bacon, and listened to the jazz trio, all on a leisurely Labor Day Monday early evening.  Doug also tried Tanglewood's own craft brew, their porter (on the left below), and it was delicious, particularly alongside bacon.  But really, what doesn't go with bacon?