Peter's Blog

  We’d been building up to this moment for so long it seemed surreal when it actually all came together. It all started when a flash went off in Brad’s head a year ago while we were filming a segment with Kelly Whitaker in Boulder, at his Pizzeria Basta, and Alan Henkin, Kelly’s business partner and the beverage director at Basta, turned us on to some amazing beer from a…Read More…

As I prepare to head out to Denver for what I referred to last week as “The Big Reveal,” I want to share this week’s Peter’s Blog with our correspondent, Nick Birkby, a baker and beer maker in South Africa. The timing is perfect, as Nick has been doing a lot of experimentation lately with beer malts in pizza dough, which is one of the keys to our Challenge Pizza…Read More…

The following is an article I wrote, with Brad’s help, to be sent to various beer blogs to alert them to the big event next week in Denver. We’ve been writing about here for a number of weeks, and on Thursday I’ll post the Challenge Pizza dough recipe, but I thought I’d share the article with all you as a way of recapping the past few posts and to give…Read More…

Thanks to our intrepid producer, Brad English, we’re about to get a sneak peek at the Challenge Beer created by our friends at The Bruery. Brad only got to taste the unfermented wort, as the finished beer won’t be ready till it’s unveiled at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) on Sept. 30th. We’ll all be there, making the Challenge Pizza created by Kelly Whitaker and Alan Henin of Pizzeria…Read More…

Hi Everyone, It was a long, wet, windy Labor Day Weekend down here in Charlotte, so I’m a little behind with my posts (we’re still technically under a tornado watch). Didn’t even get to post a Coming Attractions box so I’ll do that here at the end of this post. I’m going to take a little breather from the recent pizza/beer reflections and just write a short blog this week….Read More…

I’ll be writing a few words, below, about beer and dough but first, let’s return to Brad English’s ongoing story about the evolution of the collaboration between Pizzeria Basta, The Bruery, and Pizza Quest. When we left him last week, Brad was telling us all about his tour of The Bruery and what happened when he issued the “challenge.”  Let’s pick it up from there…. A Pizza Pairing – Part…Read More…

Last week we gave you some back ground on the upcoming series we are still filming that pairs pizza and beer in a whole new way. I also wrote a bit about the parallels between beer and pizza, especially in terms of fermentation, so I don’t want to repeat all that here (you can read it all in last week’s Peter’s Blog). So, let’s jump back into Brad’s story, the…Read More…

A few weeks ago I wrote about our visit to The Bruery in Placentia, Southern California. It was the middle stage of a three phase adventure that will culminate at the end of September in Denver at The Great American Beer Festival (aka GABF). Over the next few weeks, as we prepare to head out to Denver to film this final stage, I’m going to share some thoughts about the…Read More…

Slowly I Turned… There are some things that make even a Pizza Quest, that is, the search for the perfect pizza, shrink into nothingness and I experienced such a thing this past week when I was in Buffalo, NY. I’m not referring to having, for the first time, Buffalo Wings in Buffalo (that was pretty cool), and also my first official Beef on Weck sandwich (that was actually amazing and…Read More…

Susan and I spent the weekend in Philadelphia for a Reinhart family reunion and to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday, and I had chance to revisit some of my childhood haunts and spend time with old friends prior to the big event. I had planned to stop at Mama’s to pick up a cheese steak (the best!) on our way in from the airport, but our flight got delayed and…Read More…