The Full Bar - all my pages

Friday, August 10, 2007

The Pain and Joys of Hoarding

I realized earlier this year that I literally had too much beer. The Dedicated Beer Fridge was full to bursting, I had almost a case in our regular fridge, there were two cases sitting under the kitchen table, and 14 cases under the basement steps. Some of it was beer that was never meant to age -- I had most of that in the DBF -- some of it was probably over the hill, and I had no good storage space for more beer. Something had to give.

I happened to talk to Scott "The Dude" Morrison about my problem. "Dude, R.O.S.!" he said, with a big Dude grin. R.O.S.? "You need to have a Really Old Shit party! Get it all out and drink it!"

Great idea. So I'm planning an R.O.S. party, and I've been inventorying. It's sick. I've got a case of 24 different American barleywines (only one in multiple years: 5 years of OD MIllennium, the newest from 2002); 20+ Baltic porters (some mid-90s Okocim, Dojlidy, Koff, Baltika, Pripps, OD Winter, and of course The Hammer); 3 cases of Christmas beers dating back to 1998; some precious few bottles of King & Barnes Christmas, one of the very best beers I've ever had; a lot of Anchor OSA, going back to 1986; Samichlaus back to 1992; almost a whole case of SNCA 1996; a bunch of one-off brewpub bottlings; some wonderful anniversary beers; Batch #1 of Immort Ale; some Weyerbacher Triple from about 1998 that's tasting wonderful; and so much more.

I'm inviting a bunch of beer folks over, not allowing anyone to bring beer, and we're gonna drink it. Because I don't want to mis-treat beer like this anymore. Hoarding is a bad thing, folks. Like I keep saying about whiskey: they make this stuff to drink. I apologize to The Great Beer Gods; I humbly abase myself. I offer this R.O.S. party as appeasement.

And I'm going to thaw out all my hoarded home-made sausage and grill it for the party, too. O Great Sausage Gods...

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