Would You Pay $24 for 32 Ounces of Beer?

32 ounces of beer to go is often known around Portland as a grumbler or growlette, but whatever you call it, it's half of your standard 64-ounce growler. With that in mind your initial answer to that question might be, "hell no!" Without any context my reply would probably be something similar.

Today my favorite watering hole is holding their Christmas Eve Eve celebration with an amazing 10-tap lineup, with a few more special kegs waiting in the wings. During the course of my Eve Eve drinking I overheard that the bar would be willing to fill grumblers for $24. That's in line with the special beer pricing for the event, $3 per 4 ounce pour.

As good as many of these beers were I'm still not sure I'd pay that price for most of them. But there was one beer that I was severely tempted to lay down that kind of cash for. It's a 9+% barleywine from an East Coast brewery that does not distribute to this market. Besides being delicious, it's a rare find out this way and I'm not even sure what kind of favors had to be called in to get it.

In that same vein was a posting from a Minnesota brewery last week that mentioned they had what I think is probably my favorite beer of all time, a 14% old ale, available once again. While I doubt they were offering it in anything other than a glass, a pint if you're lucky, you can bet that if I could buy a 32-ounce of grumbler of it for $24 I wouldn't give it a second thought.

So what do you think? Is $24 for 32 ounces outrageous? Or are there beer(s) out there you'd be willing to fork out that kind of dough for (whether or not it would actually be possible)?

Brewing, Growing...It's All Good

Today I was in Barley John’s neck of the woods and since that’s not something I can say very often I felt obliged to stop in, say hi and grab a growler. (It would have been a perfect day to grab a pint and enjoy their patio, too, however I resisted the temptation to do what I wanted to do and instead do what I knew I should do.)

As I walked in the door, the windows between the brewery and the vestibule were all full of condensation and since the awful heat and humidity of the weekend was behind us that could only mean one thing: brewing! Sure enough, even before my hand reached the inner door the wonderful, wet, grainy smell of brewing wafted to my nose. Heaven, pure heaven.

I probably wasn’t inside more than five minutes to get my growler filled (with Stockyard IPA) and pay. Reluctantly, I headed out with my jug 'o goodness but before I completely departed I took in the hop vines that are going to town as well as the garden. It’s a beautiful site to see so much green and growing on this strange, triangular patch of asphalt Barley John’s calls home.

St. Paul Summer Beer Fest

Sunday’s St. Paul Summer Beer Fest capped off a month that has been chock full of beer events. Like last Saturday’s Indulge, this was the first go around for this festival. I’m pleased to say that other than two minor items they did a fantastic job. And it certainly didn’t hurt that it was an absolutely gorgeous day to be outside at a beer fest, especially after the HOT weather we’ve been slogging through.

I’ll go ahead and get the two minor stumbles out of the way first.
#1 Apparently someone forgot to tell the organizers that us beer geeks are rabid about quick entry into festivals so the best way to appease us is to send two person teams down the line. One does the requisite ID check while the other tears tickets and applies wrist bands. A simple fix.

#2 While it was good to have water stations with dump buckets out in the center of the festival area, it’s also a super duper idea to have pitchers of water at each table. It kind of makes for an annoying disturbance to have to head to the middle between each sample. Again, a simple fix.

Now that’s out of the way, on to the good parts, in no particular order.
#1 Lots of places have good and/or easily recognizable tap handles. But then there’s a few that have really cool ones. Winner of “really cool ones” yesterday goes to Magic Hat.
#2 As I mentioned above in the first #2, water is an important feature at a beer fest. And no one took better care of folks yesterday than Barley John’s. Check this out! (picture courtesy of Cal)
#3 Crispin, which I was introduced to at Indulge, had a competitor this week. While I think Crispin makes a better product, Original Sin has some excellent artwork. Too bad they were only selling posters and not shirts. Hint, hint guys!!

#4 After enjoying seeing Chris at every event Furthermore has put on or been a part of, at long last I got to meet Aran!

#5 On a similar note, it was good to see Trevor, newest member and formerly mystery Beer Ninja, of Lift Bridge.

Two notable missing participants were Cold Spring and Great Waters. I’ll own up to not being a particular fan of Cold Spring in the past, but after having had their absolutely outstanding John Henry last week I was hoping to see them again and have some more of that beer. I didn’t get the skinny on why Great Waters wasn’t there, but did get to see half the team as Joel was helping out the Town Hall folks. Isn’t it great when we can play together nicely?

Overall, it was a great time and I look forward to this being an annual event on my beer calendar.

Autumn Brew Review

The best beer festival within a three hour drive has come and gone but not without a great afternoon spent with a ton of friends drinking some really great beers. I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere, except for during Town Hall pint club, where I’ve run into so many people I know which was really fun. Usually at these things once we’re inside the gate Mag and I part ways, knowing we’ll run into one another sooner or later. On Saturday, I think hardly 5 minutes went by between my departure from some group or another to get my glass refilled before I’d run into someone else.

For the first time I also went with a fairly well laid out plan. I had down the first place I wanted to go (the Surly tent to see if the VIPs had left any of the Oak Aged Cranberry Cynic), as well as the next four, and an additional 12 more I didn’t want to leave without trying. All in all, I did pretty well even though I had to wait to try Avery’s Brett Gueze (way too much gueze for me) and I missed three others.

Besides just drinking Mag and I also helped Ryan out with the MNBeer mystery tasting game. While it did mean I might have missed out on some drinking it was a great time and once things got going people seemed to really enjoy it. Lots of people gave the wrong answers but all were good sports and honestly, I’m not sure I would have done much better than the average person. The biggest challenge was trying to remember which beer I’d given to which player and that’s while I was pretty much sober and limiting myself to two players at a time. I knew there was a reason I’ve never been a waitress!

There were way too many beers to evaluate them all but my top three probably were Barley John’s Wedding Ale, Town Hall’s Fresh Hop and Flat Earth’s Rode Haring. There were some disappointments, too, but there’s no reason to dwell on those. Everyone will make something now and then that won’t be up my alley but overall I had nothing but a great experience. Oh, and Barley John's and Lift Bridge had some REALLY cute long sleeved girl shirts, both of which I intend to pick up very soon.

Firkin Fest - Well Worth the Hangover

Well, from my perspective, the Happy Gnome's Firkin Fest was a success. And I think Kris, Kat, and Scott would agree. I didn't mind, at all, that it appeared Firkin Fest was an afterthought from the St. Patty's celebration the day before. I mean, they already had the tent up and porta-potties primed. The crowd was pretty small and well mannered. For $20, I got more to drink than I really needed on a Sunday...or any day for that matter. And Kris and I got to see many friends. $20 got you 16 tickets (1 4 oz. pour per ticket) plus an additional ticket you could use to get a sample of Surly 2. Of course, I don't think anyone actually paid attention to whether or not you gave a ticket per drink. Kris' favorite beer and the one I thought was most interesting was Summit's Oatmeal Stout made with Belgian brettanomyces (yeast). The yeast gave the beer a distinctive, and not unpleasant, cheese smell. The flavor was pretty interesting as well. Of course, I'm not sure if it was supposed to smell like cheese, but then again, I'M not supposed to smell like cheese, but who cares? I was happy to hear that many of our beer friends at Firkin Fest are also going to be at Gitchee Gumee.

Of course, we couldn't just stop at Firkin Fest. We decided to head up to Barley John's after Firkin Fest to take part in their anniversary celebration. They had a nice fire going to take the chill off the March Sunday and, of course, I stood too close to it. There was a nice crowd there and we saw many faces from Firkin Fest. And we continued to drink. Oh boy.

Needless to say, my headache is finally gone but the heart-burn still rages. Good times...good times.

Too Much Beer vs. Too Little Beer

I've had a chance now to try out both Barley John's double IPA and Town Hall's double IPA. And, aside from a double dose of heartburn, found both really enjoyable. I think I enjoyed Town Hall's more, but it's a close one. Town Hall's aroma was slighthly more...hm, enjoyable I guess and, to me, that's a huge part of my beer experiences. Also, I think I could enjoy a couple of their double IPA's without palate burn-out. In any event, I highly recommend both.

So, now we go from a beer-filled last couple of days in the Twin Cities to possibly a beer-sparse couple of days in Dallas. It's not exactly a good-beer wasteland, but good beer is a little harder for us to find at Grammama's house. That's okay, I guess, since I'm sure we'll be make up our carb shortfall from a lack of beer by eating a few pounds of potatoes and bread a day. Gotta keep my playing weight up, you know.

MNBeer Meeting at Barley John's

Kris and I went to Barley John's last night for the express purpose of getting together w/ some of the folks who contribute to MNBeer.com to talk about a new Beer of the Month feature. Of course, drinking and talk of beer related things supplanted any "work" we intended to get done. Colin, of Barley John's brewing fame, joined us. I've got a couple of take-aways from the evening:
1) I know nothing about brewing and beer, except how to drink it...and I don't do that very well.
2) I continue to be delighted by the fine, friendly folks I meet at any brew-pub, beer event, etc. I attend. Or maybe I just like hanging w/ drunks...
3) Barley John's continues to make damn good beer. I had avoided their Wild Brunette for the last couple of years, not because I didn't enjoy it the first time I had it, but rather because I have a psychological aversion to non-traditional (whatever that means) ingredients in beer, especially rice. And also, there are always other, tasty options available. Well, I finally broke down last night and had a Brunette. I enjoyed the hell out of it.

...'nough said