Snow Brawl at Concordia Ale House

With the Holiday Ale Festival going on concurrently I'll take a wild guess and say that this Brawl at Concordia Ale House is getting a lot less love than most of them. However after visiting HAF twice early in its run and being asked by a buddy to join him at Concordia yesterday I found no reason not to do just that.

For those unfamiliar with Concordia's Brawls, they are basically blind beer tastings where each tray has 10 - 12 beers and people vote for their favorite. Sometimes the beers are all one style (i.e. IPAs), sometimes the beers are specifically from physical locations (i.e. half from Oregon, half from Washington) and sometimes there is a combination of things going on. Snow Brawl, unsurprisingly, was a tray of winter beers - 10 beers representing breweries in Oregon, Washington, California and Colorado.

Overall I was unimpressed with the majority of the beers, which is a departure from most Brawls I've been to. However winter beers tend to go lighter on the hops than I'd like so there is a good chance that's the reason. That's also the reason that I chose #1 as my favorite. It was the hoppiest of the bunch and I unabashedly chose it.

Concordia is great about getting the results out, usually in the wee hours separating Sunday from Monday, and I'll be even more interested than usual to have the beer and brewery names revealed. If you haven't stopped in yet you still have all day today. As a bonus, breakfast will be available until 2:00 p.m. and football will be on the TVs.