Good Day for Beer - Bad Day for my Nipples

Yesterday's Brewers Bazaar was...well, interesting. It wasn't your typical beer tasting kind of event in that we didn't see very many familiar faces and the crowd was mostly a non-craft beer kind of crowd with pockets of beer folks. It was fun, nonetheless. And the breweries and brewpubs were well represented. Kris and I had previously had opportunities to meet and chat with Jeff Williamson of Flat Earth and Bob DuVernois of Great Waters, but yesterday we got to meet and spend some time chatting with Dave Berg of August Schell, a couple of the guys from the new Lift Bridge brewery in Stillwater, and Trevor Brau of Brau Brothers. Hell, even Mark Stutrud, founder of Summit, was there serving beer and chatting up the attendees. The guys from Fitger's (Brian and Bob, I think) were familiar faces and I think they work at the brewery, but I didn't ask in what capacity. I will, yet again, re-declare that most of the folks that I meet at these beer events, including the brewers and their reps are damn nice folks.

Now, let's talk about my nipples. I know you want to. When we were in Portland several weeks ago, I'd picked up a cool Rogue shirt (kind of a Hawaiian shirt). I washed it before wearing it, but didn't wear a shirt underneath it. The material was a bit rough and I'll be damned if it didn't start wearing my nipples raw. God that hurts. So, early on I was forced with a bit of a Sophie's Choice. I could soldier on with my beer drinking, leaving my nipples to the ravages of Satan's threads or I could swallow my pride and find some bandaids or tape to protect my nipples. Turns out I don't really have any pride to salvage, so I begged for some tape from the fest workers. At the end of the day, I decided I'd rather go through the excruciating pain of ripping packing tape off my sensitive and hairy nipples versus the excruciating pain of tearing my dried-blood soaked shirt away from the ragged stumps of what were once my nipples.

Some good things from the mailman

It's finally Friday and a beautiful one at that! A cloud in my sky is that there were still no Great Taste tickets nor were my City Pages tickets in the mail either. That being said there were two good things. 1. My Great Waters gift certificates arrived. 2. An update from Sandra Masin's office regarding the Pedal Pub bill (she's the State Representative for my district). Now anyone that knows me knows how little regard I have for politicians and aside from the fact that this information was posted on MNBeer late last night, I have to admit I was slightly impressed to have received the communication. In addition to the mail, there is the Stillwater Brewers Bazaar to look forward to tomorrow. Gosh I hope tomorrow is as nice as today!

Hump Day

Nothing in the mailbox yesterday afternoon. I hope the mailman didn’t steal my tickets.

In other beer happenings, we made it to Sea Salt last night for Surly’s two firkins. This was my first visit there and with the exception of the lines for both food and beer, it was pretty good. The fish tacos were very good as was the pickled herring (for some perverse reason I like this stuff) and the calamari was the best I can remember having. Having not consumed a lot of Surly lately, it was my first taste of Bitter Brewer. Both the regular version and the firkin version were good, with the tea flavors being more pronounced in the cloudy firkin beer. This is most definitely a session beer that I hope to have many sessions of, however since it is a one-time release I’m going to have to get in gear before it’s all gone. Furious is probably my favorite Surly product and the firkin of Furious didn’t disappoint. Big thanks to the good folks in our party who stood in line to make sure that we all got at least one glass from each of the firkins!