A beer festival of all beer festivals

Right on the lake at a gorgeous little park in Madison Wisconsin, thousands gathered for the love of craft beer. A mighty showing it was for both crowd and breweries, every type of beer you could think of and every type of person you could think of, existed in harmony. 

               The temperature was a bit high but not death valley and late in the day the sun came out in full spectrum. The tap lists from the breweries were enough to make any beer geek tremble and most surprising in my opinion, was the vast amount of wild and sour beers.

               Just a quick run through on those:

Flossmoor Station – Rosie Pom

Bells – Wild One

Kuenhenn – Gueuze

Kuenhenn – Oud Bruin

New Glarus - Gueuze

Central Waters – Exodus

Jolly Pumpkin – Calabaza Blanka

Tyranena – sorta Lambic

Brugge Brasserie - Pooka

Brugge Brasserie – Spider Kitty? (not sure of the name on that)

The stand outs in my mind were the Rosie Pom from Flossmoor Station, the Central Waters Exodus, and the Brugge Brasserie Pooka. All the Jolly Pumpkin were at least honorable mention as well as the Kuehnenn. The stinkers were spider kitty, sorta lambic, and Kuenhenn Gueuze. I did not get a chance to try the Wild One or the New Glarus Gueuze.

I didn’t do any tasting of IPA’s or dIPA’s so I can’t comment on the many different ones that were present but I did have the Short’s 10^th Anniversary Ale, It was a Blood Orange Wheat Whine. All I have to say is, Fantastic! It reminded me of a dIPA with the malty sweetness mixed with the citrus blast from the blood orange. My quest begins to find a bottle of it.

What I did taste a lot of at this event was Stouts and there were tons of them.  It was beyond believable how many stouts/American strong ales there were at this festival. I was in RIS/American Double Stout heaven. Here is a little sample:

Kuenhenn rocket fuel

Central Waters Peruvian Morning

Bells 9000

Bells 7000

Founders CBS

Founders KBS

GI BCBVS

Darkness ‘09

Surly 2

Surly 4

Dark Lord 07

Dark Lord 08

The standouts here were Surly 2, Dark Lord 07, GI BCB…. Who am I kidding, they were all standouts.

All that withstanding, to top it all off… Sam Adams had to go and do something crazy. They served Utopias. Definitely a highlight to the day, I couldn’t believe it. The nose on that beer is the most incredible thing to behold, drinks like a cognac, and fights against nature with its 27% ABV from yeast, no icing!

Beyond all the wonderful craft beers we got to drink at the festival, the entire weekend was a blast. Hanging out with great friends, Mothman (Ben), KButler01, Capra12 (aka suitcase jon) and his lovely lady friend. That made the whole trip awesome, the only thing better than great beer, is enjoying it with great company. I ran into Tom from Pennsylvania (aka WarriorSoul), Brady (aka ThomasHardy), and Adam(aka Alcstradumus) with his crew.

As far as entertainment goes, we had the fortunate opportunity, after a good rainfall all day Friday and the sun coming out late afternoon of witnessing:

Double Rainbow oh my god.

What does this mean.

It’s a double rainbow all the way to the ground

It is almost a triple rainbow

After seeing this wonderful site, the youtube videos kept us well entertained. Along with this was some wonderful food at Maharaja’s in which Ben was afraid to eat. Best Indian food in Wisconsin, visit either of their locations in Milwaukee or Madison, highly recommended. Had some awesome pizza from Glass Nickel Pizza, also highly recommended.

Other beers we drank that weekend:

● Mikkeller Rauch beer geek breakfast – smoked coffee stout. Excellent if you like smoke, it had quite a bit.

● Cisco Cherry Wood – great cherry sour beer from Cisco, paint peeled off the walls and curled up after opening the bottle. YUM! Thanks to kbutler1 for this.

● Churchills Finest Hour – Bourbon Barrel Aged RIS from Port Brewing. Flavor was great on this, mouthfeel a bit thin but definitely something I’d get again. Thanks to Mothman for this

● Cascade Kreik – Cherry American Wild Ale. I love the cascade stuff, this wasn’t as cherry forward as the Cisco, a little less face puckeringly sour. Nice balance. This was my treat

● Flat Earth Extra Medium – American Wild Ale from Flat Earth. This actually surprised me a bit. I’m not the biggest Flat Earth fan but this was easily drinkable. Not extremely sour, but it quenched the sour thirst on my tongue. I’d recommend this to someone looking to get into sours. A nice intro. Thanks to Kbutler1 for this

● We went to Alchemy bar for some Upland but they weren’t going to be pouring for another 4 hours so we just got something off their regular tap list. It was a cherry wild ale I think but I don’t remember the name of it. It was ok, guess that’s why I don’t remember the name.

● Mothman opened a growler of a bourbon barrel aged stout that I also can’t remember the name of. I’ll message him and find out and update this. It was pretty tasty, I liked the Churchills Fines hour better though

Now that the Belgian beer tasting is over, I thought I would do a little review of how it went.

The only hiccup was that one person brought 2 different bottles instead of 2 bottles of the same thing, so we had to pour smaller samples of that.

The lineup ended up being the following:

Delirium Tremens

Ommegang Rare Vos

Goose Island Matilda

Captain Lawrence Birra DeCicco

Victory V12

Pauwel Kwak

Chimay Grand Reserve (Blue)

There were 9 dedicated tasters, and about 5 or 6 other people that tasted here and there.

We drank them in that order, if I could have adjusted it I would move the matilda in front of the rare vos, move the Kwak after the Vos, and move the V12 to last.

Delirium Tremens was considered the odd ball as it was crisper, had more apple and pear flavors, and was a Belgian Tripel style ale. It was still a crowd favorite.

Ommegang Rare Vos was liked by all tasters but was not considered the best of the group. A nice middle of the Road Belgian Style Ale

Goose Island Matilda was one of my favorites as it offers something unique to this tasting: wild yeast. In general it was hit or miss with the rest of the tasters. Some liked the hint of funk, some did not. Some liked how it was a lighter style and not as heavy/robust as the Rare vos, Birra DeCicco, Pauwel Kwak, and Chimay Grand Reserve.

The Birra DeCicco was the most talked about and most interesting beer of the tasting. Two or Three tasters want me to get more of it. They loved the maltiness and the nice sour notes that accompany its robust flavors. The yeast flavors that make Belgian style ales what they are was not that apparent in this brew, that was my biggest issue with it. One or two tasters did not like it because it had sour notes in it. The sourness was not from lacto/pedio or wild yeast but from the fruit jam additions. This ended up being a great conversation piece within the tasting.

Victory V12 was the bomb of the group. Almost no one liked it. One taster had it as their favorite, everyone else had it as their worst. Once again Victory put a bunch of un-needed hops in this brew. A perfectly good Belgian strong base here, but the hops killed all the wonderful flavors that Belgian style ales offer. They did the same thing with their “Wild Devil”. My opinion of Victory in the Belgian arena is sinking and my just avoid any other Belgian beers they produce. If your going to add hops to your Belgian ale, classify it as a Belgian IPA so I know that I should avoid it.

Pauwel Kwak kind of got lost in the mix. Tasting it right after having a beer with sour notes and a beer with lots of hops, made the Kwak seem almost flavorless. Some of us that didn’t down our entire sample immediately revisited this after some palet cleansing and its flavor became more forward and alive; still not an amazing brew, but a good example of its style.

Last, but not least, was the Chimay Blue. This beer was something everyone at the tasting had tried before and were all comparing to. I think this beer still reigns champion as the best beer on the table. It went without a lot of talk though and was slightly ignored due to everyone already having sampled its greatness in the past.

My order:

Chimay Blue

Matilda

Ommegang Rare Vos

Delirium Tremens

Birra DeCicco

Kwak

V12

Consensus order

Chimay Blue

Delirium Tremens

Birra DeCicco

Rare vos

Matilda

Kwak

V12

It was a fun night and our guts busted with laughter as the night went on. More beer poured late into the evening as we got more rowdy. We had some perre Jacques, new Belgium blue paddle, bells batch 9000, deschuttes black butte porter, and schells schmaltz alt.  A success I would say for sure.

Up next: Sour beer tasting in August?

Brown ale tasting in September?

Until next time….

With summer fully upon us now and 90 degree days becoming consistent, I have really been out searching for a way to cool down and quench my thirst. The best answer to that, Hefeweizen. Yes, that wonderful wheat beer from Bavaria. There is such delicate balance between the bready/biscuit wheat malt character and the yeast flavors of banana, clove, soft pepper, and soft citrus spice; my mouth waters just thinking about it. Sometimes, they even have a little smoky character which is perfect when that blazing sun has dropped below the tree lines, the campfire has been lit, and the mosquitos are getting fat. Tip one back, awwwwww, delicious.

Us white foreheads of the North just aren’t used to this 90 degree stuff since its -30 and 3 feet of snow 10 months out of the year. Ok, ok, I’m exaggerating a little bit. Key phrase, a little bit. But really, I have been going out and grabbing a lot of American Wheat Beers and Hefeweizens brewed by American Breweries and trying them out.

I have come to the conclusion that the American Pale Wheat beer is just not a very good style of beer. (this is my blog and my opinion obviously) I find that some breweries add too much hops and it covers up the subtle citrus notes, the banana, and pepper/clove notes from the yeast. Sometimes you even get Pine… PINE! Why on earth would I want pine in the summer, I get enough of that in the winter. Some of the other breweries filter out all the delicious yeast and turn it into this crystal clear seltzer water… sure it quenches the thirst but it just has no dimension, no flavor, could just as well have a BMC. Let’s take a look at a few examples of these.

(This will really get people riled up)

Oberon, Gumbalhead, Lagunitas A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’, Southern Tier Hopsun, Sweetwater Sch’wheat(watery), Terrapin SunRay(nothing to see here), Sweaty Betty, Boulevard Unfiltered wheat, Goose Island312 Urban Wheat, Flying Dog In-Heat Wheat, and I’m sure there are others.

I find a few of those examples to be decent brews, but they just don’t compare to a wheat beer done right. Now that you all hate me for bashing Gumbalhead, let’s move on to the wheat beers brewed in America that are done Right! No massive hop doses to cover up the delicate balance of malt and yeast. The living creature of yeast(in a few examples some bacteria) does all the beauty in these brews here.

Schell’s Hefeweizen, New Glarus Crack’d Wheat and Dancing Man Wheat, DFH Festina Peche, The Bruery Hottenroth, Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, Brooklyner Weisse, Sprecher Hefeweizen (this one has a definate smoky character, thats why i mention it here).

So far I have found those beers to just be top notch wheat beers and each one brings a nice profile of wheat malt and yeast to the table without killing it with hops or filtering out all the deliciousness. There are a couple wheat beers I would still like to try. Those would be these:

Southern Tier Ubersun, Flying Fish exit 11, Live Oak Hefeweizen, Three Floyds Drunk Monk, and East End Monkey Boy.

Working out the details on a Belgian Beer Tasting on July 24th.

Been a while since i've really been reviewing beers and taking beer porn pictures and whatnot. I have been very pre-occupied with car shopping and doing some homebrew projects.

Scenario for the Belgian Beer tasting is that its for my brothers birthday.

His birth into the craft beer scene was very much related to his purchase of Chimay Blue. The disease spread from him to his friends so I decided that Belgian Dark Ales and Belgian strong Ales would be a good choice for wrapping this tasting around. Most of his friends take a lot of work in order to get them to try new things and expand their horizons. I decided to keep the style close to something most of them are already familiar with and enjoy. The only downfall is they already had probably the greatest Belgian beer on the market in the Chimay Grand Reserve (Blue).

I am creating my lists and distributing them to the people that will be attending. I will be bringing two bottles of Captain Lawrence Birro DeCicco as no one can get that here in Minnesota. I always like to bring something special. The reviews on it are decent, nothing in the same tier as Chimay Grand Reserve, but it should be a fun experience to taste it amongst the crowd of brews I have prepared.

For that list, I picked a lot of the standards that you can find around here in Minnesota to put on each persons list. Duvel, Kwak, Rochefort, St. Bernardus, Goudon Carolous/Kuvee Van De Keizer, Gulden Draak, Chimay, Unibroue, Delirium, Avery, Corsendonk, Nostradamus, d'Achouffe, Leffe, and Ommegang. (if you aren't familiar with the way I do my tastings, a short explanation: each person gets to choose 1 or 2 beers out of a list of 6 or 7 choices to bring, that way no one brings doubles, and no one really knows what anyone else is bringing. This works great for blind tastings, maybe a little unneccasary for this tasting, but I did it this way to make it easier for each attendee to find a beer they have been assigned. some of the attendees are rural and i'm not sure what kind of access they have)

I also grabbed some things that slide in and out of the belgian dark/strong style. Goose Island Matilda/Pere Jaques, Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Especial, and some different Fantomes. I'm hoping at least one will show up from this fringe area to give people an idea of some other directions Belgian beer can go. (I might bring some of my own to toss in in case none show up)

This tasting will not be blind as the attendees are more new to beer tastings and different types of craft beer. the experience ranges but I find no need to do blind. I would rather each person know exactly what they are tasting.

I am hoping to acheive some enlightenment in each taster as to some taste variation within a specific style and to also have a little branching out to other styles to guide each taster to realize the beauty in some other styles. hopefully this will make it so they are less afraid to grab something new off the shelf and try it.

If this all goes over well, I hope to have another chance to do a tasting with this group of people. I would definately choose a style for each attendee to bring a sample of and really branch out to include 6-8 completely different styles of beer within the tasting in order to give an idea of the variation that exists out in the craft brew world.

My Dark Lord Day Tour

Happy Birthday To Me

Here is a little (ok fine, it is really long) recap from my trip out to dark lord day:

Day 1 - Wednesday, April 21st 2010 

Departure - MSP Apt.

April 21st - 7 A.M.

Arrival - Madison

April 21st - 11:30 AM

Ale Asylum

We arrived at a pretty empty looking brew pub slightly early around 11:15. Grabbed a flight of beer and ordered some soup with beer bread and ordered a black bean burger. The black bean burger was awesome. Menu here was small but what they had was very tasty and other people from the area started rolling in around noon ordering pizza’s like mad. A few standout brews at this place, especially their seasonal/specialty release brews. Grabbed some shirts and a 6 pack of Bedlam to go. We then picked up my wife’s cousin at her place and headed to New Glarus

Departure - Madison -April 21st - 2:30 PM

Arrival - New Glarus Brewery -April 21st - 3:30 PM

First we showed up at the old facility and realized they had moved. A small sign on the door gave horrible directions to their new facility(down a road until you get to the bottom of the hill and its right there) ummm… yeah, had no idea what that meant. We drove through New Glarus, took about 25 seconds and got back to the brewery where someone had just pulled in, we asked them where to go and they showed us the way. There on the hilltop in all its magesticness stood the new gigantic monumental new Glarus Castle Brewery. Kind of reminded me of a large French Winery on a hilltop in france. Beautiful place. Their hard hat tours are on Friday so we did a self-guided tour. The entire facility is designed so that you can walk through all the different areas of the brewery and look through plexiglass to see the brewing process without getting in the way. I didn’t realize New Glarus made so much beer but I guess the locals love the stuff. Every bar in Wisconsin has spotted cow. We finished our self guided tour and went to the tasting room. 3$ for 3 tastings and you get to keep the glass. I grabbed a golden ale, a new glarus red, and the moon man pale ale.  Then we hit the bottle shop and I grabbed the NG red and NG raspberry tart in the bonus pack with the glasses, grabbed a mixed six of various stuff, 2 golden ales, and a bottle of 2 women. Decent beer haul. We headed back to Madison.

Departure - New Glarus -April 21st - 4:30 PM

Arrival: Great Dane Madison 5:30 P.M.

               We picked up my cousin-in-laws man friend and headed to great dane for dinner. We got a flight of all 16 of their beers to share between us. The highlights were the german and Czech pilsners, the scotch ale, the porter, and the barleywine. The food here was pretty decent, but nothing I would rave home about. We stuck with the lower priced items to keep our trip costs down.  We kept trying to go to another Bar down by the Capital that boasts some 30 or 40 taps but it was so packed you couldn’t get a spot so we gave up on it and went to some local joints. Had a black n Tan and a Dog Fish head India Brown Ale. I was disappointed we couldn’t go to that bar, but it was utterly ridiculous with an hour and forty-five minute wait. Maybe another time.

Stayed at my Cousin-in-law’s place that night

Day 2 - Thursday, April 22nd 2010

Departure – from Madison

               This almost turned into a disaster but just became a slight inconvenience. We got up in the morning and took some of our stuff to our car and while we walked to the car to load that stuff up and then bring the car back over to the apartment, one of the roommates locked the door and left for class. Half our stuff was locked in the apartment and everyone was gone to class. My wife’s cousin had clinicals all day. NOOOOO!!!!! Lucky enough after about 45 minutes one of her roommates came back from class and let us in. we got a little late start heading to Milwaukee. Not too bad though.

Arrival April 22nd - 11am -Lunch at Beans and Barley

I love this restaurant, it also has like a whole foods/co-op type grocery shop connected to it. There are lots of great beers in the coolers, great chocolate, and some great vegetarian products on the shelves. We finished up shopping a bit there and then headed to the Milwaukee art museum.

Art Museum: 1pm

We perused the art museum for about two and a half hours. What a beautiful place. I love it every time I go. Afterwards we headed to Discount Liquors on 53rd and Oklahoma. Best Liquor store in Wisconsin. This was the best worst idea ever; best idea because I got some amazing beers here, worst idea because it damaged the pocket book to the tune of about $250. Cantillon Saint Lamnivus and Vignerette, Dark Horizon No 2, BCBCS, Central Waters BBBW, Central Waters BBS, Sprecher Barleywine 3 yr and 2 yr, stone VE 08, VE 09, Double Bastard, Stone IPA, Stone Belgian IPA, Victory Hop Devil, and more, I just can’t remember it all right now. We then checked into the hotel, unloaded a few things so it wouldn’t sit in the car, and relaxed for a minute ;)  I have to say this right now; don’t ever stay in the HoJo hotel by the airport in Milwaukee. It is the biggest shithole dump of a hotel I have ever stayed at in my entire existence on this earth. We decided to not stay long and we headed to get dinner. The hotel was going to be for sleeping and that’s it, thank god we were barely even in that dump.

Dinner: Wicked Hop

What an over glorified pile of shit. Their food was subpar, service was awful, beer selection wasn’t nearly as good as what it appeared on the website. DISSAPOINTMENT! I would not go here again.

So I called up my old roommate from 2k and told him to meet me at the Bomb Shelter. Dive bar with the appearance of what could be the biggest pile of crap bar you ever went to. Until you see the “beer menu” it’s a booklet with pages of beer. It is hard for them to keep track of what they have or don’t have so you still might have to ask. I started off with a Central Waters Bourbon Barrel Stout. DELICIOUS!!!! Yum. Being a beer advocate, I decided to bring in a can of Abrasive and give it to the bar tenders to share since they run such a fine establishment of beerdom (http://www.bombshelterbar.com/beers.htm the link to their beer list is broken, but this will work: http://blogs.myspace.com/bombshelterbarmilwaukee). To be honest I don’t remember off the top of my head what the next beer was that I ordered, I just know it was really tasty and high ABV. J We decided to go next to the Sugar Maple but when we got there it had crappy seating and it was kind of packed, they were having some event. We decided to go to Café Centraal instead; a great Belgian Beer bar. They had a huge selection of Belgians (really not much of anything else) ordered some Maudite from Unibroue and got to talking with the bartender about sour beers. Talking about Cantillon for a while, they didn’t have any in at the time but he said they get some in from time to time from bottle. I decided to bring in my vigneron from Cantillon and split it amongst the four of us. Amazing stuff, the guy then tipped us off to another bar called “the Palm Tavern” that had some good sours on tap. So we headed there. Had a sour beer, had SN 30th anniversary stout, my memory gets spotty here. The bartender was super cool at this place. BS’d with him all night. Pretty sure he didn’t charge us for a beer or two and he tossed me a pen, lol.

               Went back to the hotel to crash, one of the doors to enter the hotel didn’t even work, the card key access was busted to hell, I went to buy a bag of chips and the machine stole my dollar. This place was such a shithole, I can’t believe it.

Day 3 - Friday, April 23rd 2010 – MY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Departure-from HoJo @ around 9:00 – Thank God we finally left that place.

Ate breakfast at perkins after having a night of heavy drinking, that hit the spot. Goodbye again Milwaukee L

Arrival in Chicago April 23 – 11:30am

Goose Island Brewpub – we ate lunch here. Food sucked. They had some decent beers on tap though. I got a Belgian dark ale with some raisin and spices and got a barrel aged doppelbock along with a pilsner and a cherry wheat. The pilsner was not that great, cherry wheat was ok, Belgian dark was pretty good, and the barrel aged doppelbock was very nice but the Barrel Aged Baltic at Flossmoor was better, I’ll get to that a little later. The operations manager or something like that of Goose Island was at the brewpub, chatted with him for a few minutes. He was alright, he didn’t seem like he wanted to even talk to us regular people…. I felt like we were “beneath” him.. oh well. Amidst the talking, I met a guy named Jon who was on his way to DLD, thanks to my wife being social while I was using the restroom. Jon is a very nice guy from the New York area, great advocate of beer and a genuinely good person. We chatted for quite a while about beer releases, and good beer, and whatnot. He left to go to Binny’s while we finished eating. When we were leaving we looked for some of the Matilda glasses with the M on them, but they changed the design to a dumb f’n Goose. Lol.  So we headed out. Ran into Jon into the parking lot again as he was just getting back from Binny’s (it is right behind the brewpub) we went over to Binny’s and grabbed a few bottles (smuttynose Maibock, Lost Abbey 10 Commandments, and a Jolly Pumpkin I think) would have bought more but I spent too much in Milwaukee so I held myself back. We left to check into the hotel. Whaddayaknow, we get ready to check into the hotel and there comes Jon pulling into the parking lot. His room wasn’t ready so he just came and hung out in our room for a bit. He then left when he got a phone call from his roommate for the night. I made my first trade call to see if Alcstradamus (person I was trading with) had arrived. He said he had just got in and was at the door. I met him there and chatted for a minute and told him what room I was at. His room also wasn’t ready yet so he asked if he could just come to my room to hang out for a bit and he would pop the bottle of Cable Car in my room to drink as part of the trade. I said sure. Sure enough… who is his roommate? Jon. Here, the whole time the guy I’ve been seeing around and hanging out with is rooming with the guy I was trading with; crazy coincidences. Well, this began the epic journey that was Dark Lord Eve and my Birthday. The Cable Car was amazing. Best sour beer I’ve ever had. Once their room was ready, they took off to unpack and then off to the three floyds brewpub they went. My wife and I went to Flossmoor station to eat dinner and to do some trades I wanted to get done. I traded some Furious for Nesferatu with Cheezdawg pretty much right when I got there. We ordered some food, I had some delicious fish and chips with a Flossmoor IPA. My friend Travis then called me to try and figure out where he needed to be the next morning. I worked that out then went back in to have a stout float. This is turning into a great night. Got a call from another trader and he was there at the flossmoor. I didn’t expect that so I didn’t have his beer with me but he let me get my stuff then and I could get his to him at DLD.  Ivan the Terrible, DORIS, Stone 12th anniversary, a variety 6 pack of Shorts(which I think 4 bottles are infected, so that sucks) then he tossed in a Daisy Cutter as an extra, pretty good in trade for two 4 pks of Abrasive and a bottle of smoke. When fulfilling the trade I ran into Ben (Mothman) and BS’d with him for a while and got a glass of the Barrel Aged Baltic Porter from tap. Very tasty brew! Hung out a little while longer and then headed back to the hotel. I texted Jon when I got back to the hotel to find out where they were and they were just two doors down, I grabbed a growler of Masala Mama and headed over there. Holy Shangra la! Captain Lawrence, Kate the Great, Old Rabbits Foot, Czar Jack, Cascade Apricot Sour, Southampton RIS, Gratititude, even some delicious homebrews from Pennsylvania! I’m not even sure I can remember all the amazing beers that were opened that night. All…. Yes.. ALL of them were amazing brews. I met some awesome people who advocate beer in the highest manner. I don’t’ think I could have asked for a better ending to a great day. Happy Birthday to me once again! Crashed at about 2 AM, lightly toasted, not hammered, I was good to go for tomorrow.

Day 4 - Saturday, April 24th 2010

Already there in Hotel! How nice, woke up and had some hot breakfast in the hotel. Packed the car up and headed to Three Floyds Brewery

               First things first on arrival – found ThomasHardy to finish the trade that I had got my end for already. Called him, found him, popped my czar jack growler and poured him a full goblet to the brim as my trade extra. (I came back around later and filled him up a second time) CHECK!

Then, it was time to call Beau and see where those folks are, he had already been making me envious by texting me at 6:30 saying he was already there. It must have been about 9 AM by then. I found the Justdrinkbeer.com group at the corner already enjoying some delicious coffee beer for the morning. GET OUT YOUR GLASSES GANG I’M POURING CZAR JACK!!! I handed off my Darkness, Abrasive, and Black Butte Porter as the remainder of a two part trade. I get my BORIS and BA’d BORIS and filled my glass with some Heine Brothers Coffee Stout from the BBC. No, not british broadcasting channel… Bluegrass Brewing Company. Tasty breakfast treat… I wanted an oatmeal cookie for dunking. Stayed there for a while and chatted, I got a text from my next trade recipient so I headed over to find WarriorSoul to exchange a growler of Czar Jack for a Kate the Great and some locals. He handed me a Captain Lawrence and a Flying Fish wild Rice IPA to go along with the Kate. 2 great brews, Awesome! They even poured me some growler fresh smoking oats – smoked oatmeal porter from Avery. I would have to come back to give them fills of Czar Jack. Realized at this point I needed cash for my Dark Lord so we walked to a nearby gas station to get some cash. Just as we were getting back to the brewpub, my friend Travis arrived in the taxi. He took a train down from Chicago and through his normal social self, realized that 4 other people at the train station needed to take a taxi to the brewpub so they split the fare and it only costed him $7, Awsome!  All together he paid $12 to get to the fest, and he pretty much drank for free all day, how’s that for a great day. I got a call from my final beer trader and just then they opened the flood gates and people stormed the brewpub. It was chaotic anarchy, like a riot. After about 15-20 minutes of texting back and forth with NickD and wandering around aimlessly I ran into WarriorSoul and gave him and his group a round of Czar Jack pours, I then ran into ThomasHardy again, I refilled his glass with the Czar. A random dude with Jolly Pumpkin brews came by asking if we wanted to swap growler pours for JP pours. HELL YEAH! I love me some JP as does my wife. We exchanged some tasters and BS’d for a while. I told him I would let him have some Masala Mama when I popped it, we swapped numbers. I finally then met up with NickD at the guest taps. I traded him some Smoke, Abrasive, and central waters BBBW and he tossed me some consecration, supplication, and LA Red Poppy. I filled his taster cup to the brim with some Czar Jack. He had 3 glasses of Guest taps that he just had gotten poured; he let me take some samples of those. Awsome brews, Winter Warmer, Avery Moloch, and Brooklyn Sorachi Ace. They were all very tasty but hell if I could tell you exactly what they tasted like now anymore. We then headed back to meet up with the Justdrinkbeer.com crew. They had since moved up towards the front and had a nice area where they were chillin’. My Czar jack has expired; I think it’s time to pop the Masala Mama.  I texted Elijah(the random dude) where we were and I opened that bad boy up. I started pouring to all kinds of people. I got tastes of Gubna from Oskar Blues, I got a bottle of Schlafly, and a bottle from Terrapin just for handing out tasters. Joy was all around J. The Lines still did not seem to be shrinking. I was still holding off. A kind JustDrinkBeer.com member, ODaniel (I think that is correct) popped a lovely bottle of Black Ops and was generous enough to let me have a taste of this marvelous elixir. I concentrated and aligned every taste bud on my tongue for this beauty. What an awesome brew. Not sure what I liked more… Czar Jack or Black Ops. If you can get a bottle of Black Ops, Do So! Man what a great beer. Beau and Eric decided to go wait in line. Two guys that had been hangin out in the area (one of them I guess was Elijah’s cousin) asked me to do a trade with some Accentric Ales from Bells, a raspberry eisbock from Keunen’s for some of my New Glarus. I followed them to their vehicle to get their goods and then off to my vehicle to get them my goods. Trade locked and loaded. We walked back to the spot and I looked at the line, looked at the time… oh man, maybe it isn’t a bad idea to get in line now. It was almost 3:00 and the lines were not even close to gone. I think it is time to hit the line. We walked and walked and walked allllll the way down to the end of the street and around the corner to the end of the line and joined in. WOW! Is this ever going to finish? After an hour or so we were given the bad news of an allotment drop from 4 to 3. Heartbreaking, but not completely, I had 4 tickets thank god. The line didn’t seem to move very fast and it was growing behind us. Swarms of people started coming by all panic stricken telling us to cut to the front because it’s a madhouse up there. A few people near us decided to go up and check it out. A few people said F it and went to cut. They came back with beer in hand and told us to do it. We held strong and kept drinking!!! Then the worst part, some idiot was flying by with a wheelie cooler that had his DL allotment on top and he hit the curb doin like 10 mph and his case went flying, CRASH! Bottles busted in the street. I took a trip to the bathroom and as I was up in the crowd another idiot that didn’t know how to carry a box dropped it, SMASH! 6 bottles of Dark Lord crushed on the tar. UGGG!!! All this waste and I haven’t gotten any yet!!!. Discouraged I returned to the line. Some kind Minnesotans came by and shared some Town Hall Growlers. Cans of IPA and bottles of IPA were being poured. A 3F’s employee came down the line yelling for people without tickets to get out of the line and for people with tickets to hold your ground as there will be enough bottles to get to us. The line finally started to move extremely fast. We went right up to the front. Pandemoneum of people screaming to have tickets out and in the air with ID’s ready along with cash. It was finally going to happen; I was going to get my DarkLord. I got inside the pub and got into a station and they brought me 11 bottles of 2010 and one of 09 as I asked. The newb takin the money calculated all retarded and tried to charge me $245… I corrected him and gave him my $185. And in my arms was a case of DarkLord. I cradled that shit like a baby. I wasn’t going to lose any of my DarkLord… I softly nuzzled the box. Over to the vanilla bean/oak aged dark lord line. ALL GONE!!! WTF!! I didn’t even get to try the VB DL? Or oak aged. This is retarded. Guess I need to change my philosophy for next year. I decided I would just go toss the DarkLord in my car, head to the hotel, and get some food. We hadn’t eaten all day

Ate at a pizza place right by the hotel, awesome Chicago style stuffed pizza from Eduardo's, went back to the hotel, watched a movie and crashed

Day 5 - Sunday, April 25th 2010

Arrival – Kopps restaurant on Port Washington in Milwaukee to eat

Arrival - Tyranena Brewery at 3:30 for tasting

We got a flight of beer from here and a pint of their Cabernet Barrel Aged Brown Ale; Very tasty stuff. Tyranena is a standup brewery; they have a great lineup of solid brews. They had an Altbier that was very tasty but I’ve never seen it in bottles. I am gonna have to look for that, I’m wondering if they even sell it in bottles. I almost got a growler of it to go. We ordered some food to be delivered to the tasting room/brewpub and we at there. Then we started the final leg of our journey home

Arrived Home and unpacked the necessities – hit pillow around midnight

What an amazing 5 days. Now back to the grind……. till next time.

Bring your own imperial stout tasting.

            I’ve been putting together beer tastings here and there for the last 4 years or so. I am starting to learn a lot of tricks to doing so. My first tastings were inevitably horrible. We ended up with 20-30 beers with only 6-8 people. It still sort of worked out because most of us really had never even had more than 3 or 4 styles of beer. This tasting at least got us to experience a lot of different styles but it kind of turned into a drunkfest at the end and some I couldn’t really remember what they tasted like.               

             A little further down the road I tried my hand at another tasting. I put it together for my brother’s birthday. I told all my brothers friends to bring one beer for the tasting and to try and stay away from American Lagers. Well, it turned into a complete mess once again. People brought two or three 6 packs of different beers. There were lienenkugels, Heineken, and Finnegans… not quite what I was looking for. There were also some Brau Brothers, Sprecher, Summit, and Chimay. It was pure overload; didn’t even get to the last 5 or 6 beers because everyone was getting tanked. I skipped all the garbage beer and only tasted the last 8 styles and that worked.            

              I decided things needed to change. I put some thought into the idea and decided that maybe it’s a bad idea to tell everyone to bring something. Maybe I will just bring the choices and we can go from there. That ended up costing too much money. I decided to make a list and have each taster bring that one beer I tell them to bring. Ah Ha!, that seemed to work. I had a successful dIPA tasting with 6 different beers and 6 different tasters.  Even better, I did it half blind. Each person only knew what they brought (except me) and they were poured out of sight and brought to the tasting table with numbered tags.  It worked out so well, I decided I wanted to do another one.              

               This next tasting will occur April 17th in the community room at my apartment complex, great little spot to do this at. We will start with a meal based completely on beer influenced dishes: Cajun Beer Can Chicken(I’ll keep the spice to somewhat of a minimal to spare the taste buds), Beer Battered Catfish Hush Puppies, Stout simmered collared greens with bacon cubes, and some Beer Batter Pretzels with a beer mustard sauce. Pallet will be cleansed with water and some fresh fruit after dinner is finished. Then the tasting will begin.

               This will be a completely blind tasting. What I did was create a list of about 35-40 double/imperial/Russian imperial stouts. I split each grouping of stouts into 5 parts and distributed each list to each person that is going to be a taster(I have my own list for myself). Their job is to pick 2 different ones out of their list and purchase it. They then bring both to the tasting covered and labeled as A-1 and A-2 or B-1 and B-2 (each letter represents the taster). Then the pourer will go through the bottles and choose one from each person and pour it, take note of which they chose, and then bring the tasting samples to the tasters who are awaiting at the tasting table for their delicious samples. Basically, no one will even know which one of what they brought will be used. There can be suspicion, but no certainty.  The tasters will sample, take notes, and then we will argue about the best one . Then we will reveal which ones were used. More arguing, lol. Then we will probably start cracking some of the other bottles that were brought.

 There is one person that might bring Darkness, if they don't, i will probably crack mine after we are done anyway. otherwise I can do the same thing with the Old Rasputin XII since i have 2 bottles of it. if no one brings it, I can crack mine. This should be a lot of fun, I am looking forward to it.