Try not to drool on your keyboard while perusing through our holiday gift guide! To view gift descriptions, simply click on the picture to reveal more information. Happy Holidays!

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Would you drink a whisky called “Sheep Dip?” How about one called “Pig’s Nose?”

They may sound like the sort of prank gifts you’d stuff into stocking for Christmas or Father’s Day, but in fact they are serious brands currently receiving a new lease of life in the hands of Alex Nicol’s Spencerfield Spirit Company.

Sheep Dip has a good tasting rating – the name comes from the traditional nickname Scottish farmers give to homemade whisky. Pig’s Nose comes from the farming expression “soft as a pig’s nose” and has a mellow quality that comes together in a “muddy way.” These revived product names are being very proactive in using digital and social media to get the word out, appearing on various blogs and even Flickr. They also have a Facebook group called Sheep Dip Fold.

Sheep Dip used to be a best selling whiskey at Harrod’s and its relegation to obscurity probably has more to do with the vagaries of global whisky marketing than anything else. Datz may not be Harrod’s just yet, but you can certainly sample the iconic Animal Farm seven days a week at the bar, or grab a bottle or two to share with fellow friends sharing a trough. The point here is that when it comes to reviving a brand name there is more than one way to skin a cat, or dip a sheep.

About Sheep Dip
This golden-colored, vatted malt is a blend of 16 single malt whiskys aged between 8 and 21 years, its name arising from British farmers’ slang for whisky: sheep dip (so called to avoid paying taxes on home-distilled spirits). The nose is heavy on the malt, a rich and starchy tone that promises a really meaty spirit. The palate, however, is quite a bit more subdued. Citrus hinted at in the nose is stronger here, overpowering the malt a bit. It’s very pleasant and easy to drink, but not overly complex. Certainly something to break out at the end of a long day in the fields rather than to cap off a gourmet feast. 80 proof.

About Pig’s Nose
An even better name, drawn from a farming expression “soft as a pig’s nose.” No idea what that originally referred to, but Pig’s Nose the whisky is not nearly as soft as Sheep Dip. More bronze in color, this is a traditional blended Scotch mixing single malt and grain whisky together, then aged five years. It’s young and rough around the edges, not at all like Sheep Dip, with big peat fire, a nutty lace running through the body, and heavy with alcohol despite being, like its brother, just 80 proof. Unlike Sheep Dip, Pig’s Nose is complicated, but it comes together in a muddy way. Again, I could drink it all night, but better options abound.

The year is 7,000 B.C.  Humans are settling down, raising crops — and apparently getting a little tipsy in the Neolithic Era. That wouldn’t be strange seeing as though barley beer and grape wine were first beginning to be made in the Middle East. But this isn’t the Middle East. This is Neolithic China, and they were brewing something different:

“We don’t have just a wine or a beer or a mead, but we have like a combination of all three,” says Molecular Archeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – the man who went digging for pottery in Henan Province, Northern China and found this instead.

The preserved pottery jars that McGovern unearthed revealed a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit. Using some fancy science that you can read about here and here, he was able to extract the recipe from that pottery and Dogfish Head Brewery, in keeping with their extreme posture on beer, actually brewed it!

True to the historic evidence, Dogfish brewers used brown rice syrup, Orange Blossom honey, Muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn berries, and Chrysanthemum flowers to recreate this true to life taste of history. And now you can travel back in time nine millennia to join Datz for the tapping of this rare and limited beer, Tuesday, August 23 at 7pm. While Chateau Jiahu may not be cheap, it’s a lot easier to find than that time machine to Neolithic China, so trust us when we say: it will go quick.

Bust out your elastic-waist pants and bring your and appetite to Datz for  Tampa Bay’s Restaurant Week 2011.

This two-week promotion, which runs from Friday, August 19 to Friday, September 2, provides those of us foodies with an opportunity to savor an array of specially priced three-course meals (we’re offering 5!) from some of the Bay area’s finest eateries. Prices vary by restaurant ($25, $35 or $45) and exclude beverages, tax and gratuity.

Although the menu you at Datz is so diverse you could eat here for at least a week, you may want to check out some other local favorites.

Read more about Restaurant Week, here and here.

Stone. Just that one word alone lets you know you are in for some of the best beer on the planet. From a company that doesn’t really care what you think, and only wants to make amazing beer, Stone Brewing Company will be taking over the Datz tap list this Thursday evening with five of the most aggressive, most assertive, high quality beers that have ever crossed your palate. In Stone’s own words “You’re not worthy…” but Datz thinks you are.

Which is why we’ll be pouring Stone’s Ruination, Sublimely Self Righteous, Oaked Arrogant Bastard, and Lukcy 13 Basartd. A truly impressive lineup. But there’s more… for the first time, Datz will be offering what is arguably the best session beer on the planet – Stone’s very own Levitation Ale. This deep amber ale has a rich malt backbone, robust hop character, and a sensational citrus aroma, courtesy of prodigious dry-hopping. The result is an enormously flavorful and complex beer that weighs in at only 4.4% ABV. Yes… Stone has developed a beer that still confounds the beer world. Utilizing Columbus, Simcoe, and Crystal hops in the kettle, and an aggressive Amarillo dry-hop, Levitation has a Double IPA hops character with a Pale Ale session-ability.

Datz is so impressed with Levitation, and thinks you will be too, we want you to keep the pint glass when you order one. Stone’s gargoyle-adorned pint glasses are one of the favorites in the beer community, so you’re limited to only one; however you are certainly not limited to only one of these remarkable beers. We don’t even want to get started on the sheer AWESOMENESS of Sublimely Self Righteous, Oaked Arrogant Bastard, Ruination and Lukcy 13.

On second thought…  we may not be worthy. - Danny Reid, Craft Beer Manager

Don’t miss Stone Night at Datz.  Thursday, July 21st at 6:30pm.

There are few foods as compelling as a piece of meat or fish charred over open flames. The skin contracts and crisps, turning crackling and brown, the juices drip and run; the flesh becomes sweet and intense. Strong, robust, heavy, flavors that, along with the heat and smoke from the grill, give food an unmistakeable sense of high summer. In the latest edition of the duPont Registry, Heather Stalker sat down with three local chefs—Tom Pritchard of Salt Rock Grill, Gary Moran of Datz Tampa and Mark Heimann of Marchand’s Bar & Grill at The Vinoy—share their savvy summer secrets. You can find that story here.

As an added bonus, however, Chef Gary shares this recipe for Datz’s Smoked Bacon Burger.

Smoked Bacon Burger with smoked tomato mayonnaise and jalapeno relish
(makes 10 burgers)
4 lbs ground lean chuck
1 lb  nueske’s applewood smoked slab bacon, pulsed in food processor to coarse grind
2 T garlic powder
2 T onion powder
2 TWorcestershire
White Cheddar Cheese
Smoked Tomato Mayo, recipe follows
Jalapeno Relish, recipe follows

Mix together garlic powder, onion powder and worcestershire and fold into the combined ground chuck and ground bacon. Form into 8-ounce patties and place into the freezer for one hour, to set.

While the patties rest, prepare your favorite smoker and bring to 130-140 degrees. You will want to smoke the burger low and slow under the 140 degrees mark until the internal temperature is 110 degrees. This will give you a smoked rare burger which you can either pan fry or grill to desired temperature. Serve with smoked tomato mayonnaise, jalapeno relish and white cheddar cheese.

Smoked tomato mayonnaise
This smoked tomato mayo is good on virtually any sandwich, although we’re partial to grilled summer vegetables on toasted country bread with fresh mozzarella, basil and smoked tomato mayo. It also makes a great dipping sauce for grilled artichokes.
1 lb summer tomatoes, peeled and deseeded
1/2 C mayonnaise
1 T sherry vinegar
Sea Salt and Black Pepper to taste

While the smoker is going, add the peeled tomatoes and smoke for 30 minutes. Remove from the smoker and combine the tomato with the remaining ingredients in a food processor. Puree until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary. Be sure to while you have the smoker going throw in a few peeled tomatoes. combine with a good quality mayo. Throw into food processor and season with salt, pepper and sherry vinegar. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired.

Jalapeno Relish
10 jalapeños

Toss the jalapeños in olive oil and place on a hot grill (or under the broiler)  and char till black on all sides. Put in a paper bag until cool, then peel the skins under running water*. Remove stems and chop, seeds and all.

*Note: Peeling the skins under running water does dilute the flavor a little bit, but with so much heat in the jalapeno, we’ve found that it works best in this application.

For the first time in American Craft Beer Week’s six-year history, events took place in every state! And no one understands the rise of craft beer better than Garrett Oliver. The Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster and award-winning author of The Brewmaster’s Table (2005) is finishing up his latest feat as editor-in-chief of The Oxford Companion to Beer. Oliver embarked on the work over a year ago with a preliminary list of 500 topics; 1,120 references and 160 additional writers later, the tome will drop in October.

In a recent online post by Food & Wine magazine, Oliver revealed some of the groundbreaking subjects that will be covered and what he thinks you should be drinking (and eating) now.

What convinced you to sign on? There are a lot of subjects that we in the craft-brewing community might use every day that are literally not written down. So if you want to know about, say, dry-hopping—adding hops after fermentation for extra flavor and aroma, which is done by 80 to 95 percent of all the breweries in the United States—there is precisely nothing to read.

What other categories are you breaking ground in? Sour beers. Barrel aging:There’s a huge movement all over the world now interested in deriving flavors from wooden barrels. You will read about Amarillo, a hop variety: where it comes from, how it developed, what its genetic parents are, how it grows in a field, and how people tend to use it. But then, right before that, you’d read [an entry called] Ale House, about the history of the ale house from Roman times to its development into the modern pub. So it really covers not only things scientific and technical, but also cultural and historic things.

What’s the most surprising country making beer? Of course when we think of Italy, we think of wine. But Italy has 350 breweries, and Italian brewers are really excited, creative and using a lot of their background in food to inform what they do on the beer side. Scandinavia is also a big story. We might think of one or two beers, like Carlsberg, but there are many dozens of breweries in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc.

Do you cover foods to eat with beer? What’s your favorite pairing? There are sections on food-and-beer pairing. I’ve done about 700 beer dinners in 12 countries, and I wrote a 360-page book on beer-and-food pairings. But this time of year, for example, I love saison, which is a Belgian-style wheat beer. [At Brooklyn Brewery] we have a new one coming out called Sorachi Ace, based on a particular hop variety of that name, and I think it’s really great with grilled salmon and shrimp dishes—lighter dishes you might grill in summertime.

How much has beer culture evolved in the last decade? It’s really pretty incredible. When I first started traveling, I would go overseas and say, “Oh, I’m an American brewer,” and people would just be dripping with disdain: “Oh, yes, we have heard of your American beer.” Because they were thinking about just the mass-market beer. We now have over 1,700 breweries in the United States, and we have the most vibrant beer culture in the world, bar none. What’s amazing is that now, we go to Germany and Belgium and Italy and, to a large extent, brewers all over the world look up to the United States. Twenty years ago it was exactly the opposite.”

Read more about Garrett Oliver here and here

Everyone has a favorite sandwich, whether it’s mom’s homemade grilled cheese, a leftover Dagwood pulled together from kitchen scraps or a mile-high hoagie. Inspired by Saveur magazine’s April sandwich issue, Datz has decided that we want to know what you think is the best thing since sliced bread.

So, here’s the deal: Create a recipe for your own ideal sandwich, take the best photo you can (this is as much a photo contest as a recipe contest!) and then email the photo and recipe to heather@datztampa.com. Up to six semi-finalists will be picked by the Datz culinary team in the next issue of Datz4Foodies (coming in June), after which you will have the opportunity to vote on your favorite. The winner – who will be announced via facebook on June 30 – will have his or her sandwich recipe featured on the summer lunch menu, and the photo featured on the website and newspaper!

I don’t know about you, but around here we’re craving HOT. Hot soup, hot food, hot sauce. And no one knows what’s hot better than Dave Hirschkop, creator of Dave’s Insanity.

You’re known as the hot sauce guru who created the hottest sauce in the universe. Have you always loved the searing pain of hot sauce? What’s the allure for you?
I actually didn’t approach this business as a heat-seeking addict. My restaurant had too many drunk college kids in it and I made super hot sauces to get them under control. I thought it was funny and went on a mission to create the world’s hottest sauce. Using a couple of innovative approaches, we created not only the world’s hottest sauce, but the whole super-hot sauce niche. I like spicy foods, but the business was more of a joke gone out of control than anything else.

How did you go from a targeted hot sauce line to carrying more than 70 specialty items, including organic and heirloom pasta sauces?
The initial hot sauces grew incredibly fast, but we never thought of ourselves as a hot sauce company. We always thought of ourselves as a food company whose job it was to push boundaries and to innovate. We have won awards for all sorts of items over time (salad dressing, salsa, Asian sauce, mustard, flavored mayonnaise, Bloody Mary, hot sauce, pasta sauce, snack mixes and more). Despite this success, people really thought of us as a hot sauce company because the Insanity Sauce was so different and had such a big impact on the market. It took the success of our organic pasta sauces to put us where we are now. There are hot food lovers who know us as Dave’s Insanity and specialty food lovers who know us for innovative pasta sauces, and a few who know us for both.

What is the most satisfying or challenging part of your job?
I love to come up with ideas about how to create better offerings (products, services, etc.) and then make the ideas into reality. It is great to hear positive feedback from consumers and to win awards (we won a sofi Gold for Outstanding Pasta Sauce in 2009 and 2010). It is satisfying to have a fantastic retailer bring your product in and tell you it is doing well. While I think that I am competent with details, slogging through the zillions of details of business is definitely challenging.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I liked the idea of many great careers as a kid. They included being an astronaut (don’t love heights), inventing a handheld laser gun, being a professional football player (too small and slow), a rock star (should have taken guitar lessons), President of the U.S., a comedian and a spy. In college I was a Soviet studies major in preparation for my time as the future James Bond. At this point, I either am a sauce company owner or covert operative using my sauce company as a cover. You guess which.

Aside from your products, what three food items can you always find in your kitchen?
Olive oil, tasty fruit, delicious dressings and prosciutto. Oops, that’s four, but I just love food. — Interview of Dave Hirschkop via davesgourmet.com and foodspring.com