Race you to Christmas!

I am becoming a slave to my calendar...yesterday was a taping for American Beer Blogger at Porter's Pub in Easton, had a great time with Larry Porter, and found out about Weyerbacher's coming new graphics and logo, and talked to owner Troy Reynard about Two Rivers Brewing, a new brewpub coming to town soon. Good taping, good fun, good beer...and then on the road along the river back home to make dinner before heading to a dress rehearsal.

After the second of those evening rehearsals this week, my church choir's Christmas concert is tonight (and of course, I'd be happy to see any of you at St. Andrew's RCC in Newtown: it's a very good concert, with a small string ensemble). Tomorrow night I'm at Appalachian Brewing in Harrisburg for a book signing and fundraiser for the "American Beer Blogger" Kickstarter campaign (come out and pledge!).

I get to spend the weekend with the family, then Tuesday 12/20 I'll be visiting Valley Malt in western Massachusetts to see their custom micromaltings operation, dropping in to check out Element Brewing, and checking in with Will Meyers at Cambridge Brewing to sample some beers he's made with Valley Malt...and then over to Craft Beer Cellar for a Kickstarter fund-raising event with Suzanne and Kate, and Chris Lohring will be there with plenty of Notch Session beers (including the new Černé Pivo dark lager), and brewer Nate Heck will be joining us from Harpoon with their latest 100 Barrel release; come on out, 4-6, get some Notch and fresh Harpoon, and make a pledge to bring great beer (and some real fun) to TV! (I then pick up my son and drive home...should get in around 1 AM...)

Thursday 12/22 is the Book Singing Party at the Grey Lodge! It's not a typo: have a beer, pick up a signed copy of Pennsylvania Breweries or New Jersey Breweries, and join the surprisingly musical crowd at the G Lodge in singing some Christmas carols. We just had a great time at the family's annual caroling party, and my pitchpipe's all warmed up. It's an old-time Christmas...in a bar! We'll be harmonizing from 7:30 to 9:00, and remember, we all sound better after a couple drinks. 

After that? Well, next Friday, the family's going to do our usual last-minute Christmas shopping and lunch and wandering around Bethlehem, PA (and maybe grabbing a couple quick beers at Bethlehem Brew Works and the Hotel Bethlehem). After that...it's into the Christmas/New Year's week, and a chance to relax before I start on a round of Kickstarter fundraisers...more about that later!

Drinking Trappist Beer on Good Friday. Again.

Here I am, looking back four years, and it's so similar...didn't eat (I've got even less in my belly this year; a banana and one cup of coffee), did pheresis this morning, came home and cleaned, and I'm leaving to sing Good Friday services in about half an hour (warm-ups; services are at 3:00, of course)...and I'm drinking La Trappe Dubbel (a sample of the new stuff, provided by importer Artisanal Imports, thanks, Lanny!).

Because it's a fast day, and while I'm not drinking only beer through Lent like some folks (though my hat's off to him), I've built a little tradition around Trappist beers on Good Friday, and big beers tomorrow, before singing at Easter Vigil. The first is my own, the second grew out of the timing of Split Thy Skull, the pioneering Philly big beer event held at Sugar Mom's on Easter Saturday (and yeah, it's on for tomorrow)...well, actually, it grew out of one year when my wife's brother Carl showed up for Easter at the Trenton train station with a shoebox full of Dominion Millennium and we killed two of them on the way home...

Anyway! Here I am, on Good Friday, after the jumpstart I got from Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday masses (and Night Prayer last night...chant, it was marvelous, soothing, and left me floating on a cloud of faith and awe of my God and Savior), ready to go sing till I cry -- Good Friday is tough. And I'm banging through a 750 of La Trappe?

You bet. For one thing...it's really good. Fruit, chocolate, malt, spice, even a little hintsy bit of coffee in there, this is a stuffed suitcase of delicious -- and it's not fat or flabby.

For another? It's tradition. This is how you get through fasts. You don't eat, but you gotta keep going. If I tried getting through a music-heavy service like this -- we're doing selections from Stainer's The Crucifixion in addition to the regular stuff -- without food or big beer, well, you know. Probably nothing would happen. Ha! But I want this beer, this monk-inspired beer, and it's going to work for me. It always has.

Tomorrow? Any big beer will do, and I've got some cued up. Good Friday? Gimme monk beer. I need the spiritual inspiration, the beauty in my mouth and my mind. Off I go. God bless you all.

Tradition! A Fallen Friar at Easter Vigil

For over ten years, I have had a tradition of drinking strong beers before singing at the Easter Vigil services at my church. It began when my brother-in-law Carl arrived at the train station for Easter one Saturday afternoon, oh, years ago, when we still had a Taurus station wagon, when Nora was a baby. We loaded his luggage in the back, and he got in the front with a shoebox. What's that, I asked, and he grinned and opened it up: three bottles of Old Dominion Millennium. ... In later years, I would attend the Split Thy Skull barleywine event at Sugar Mom's on the afternoon in question, and make my way home, and sing. Yes, I did, and beautifully, I'd say; others have said so.

I did not falter this year. This afternoon, while cutting up leftover turkey for a skillet of hash (nice, too, with the Worcestershire sauce tang), I polished off a 22 oz. bottle of BridgePort Brewing's Fallen Friar Triple. It was nice: spicy, not flabby and sweet (just the way I like tripels), with a woody/brett tang to it, almost like someone had mixed a bottle of Chimay White and Orval. Tasty. I followed that with a 12 oz. bottle of the newly re-launched Dundee Pale Bock from Genesee. And that, which I am still finishing off, is just plain good: malty, juicy, authoritative.

Fear not. I'm losing weight, but I'm still big enough to ground that much beer. I'm ready to sing. It is the pinnacle of the Christian year. Christ is risen, risen indeed!

I'm a sucker

You know... I keep buying Gale's Prize Old Ale, kind of a constant rebirth of hope. I've had a couple that were just excellent, and I keep hoping that the next one will be as well, and I keep getting screwed.

Today was no different. I have a long tradition of drinking heavy stuff on the afternoon of Easter Sunday (and then singing Easter Vigil), so after a big stashed bottle of Lagunitas Eye of the Hairball wheatwine, I pulled out the Gale's, a 1998. Pulled the cork, poured the beer -- pleh! Sour. Real sour. Undrinkable sour. Dammit. I find myself hoping that Fuller's will do it better.

The 2003 Heavyweight Old Salty I opened instead...now that was a treat. Warming, too. Thanks, Tom, Bill. Good job.

But now it's time to make dinner: Rieker's Specials (four different burgers on a skewer, with German barbecue sauce), spätzle, and some salad. Then it's time to sing and welcome the Resurrection.

Good Beer Day

I had no business whatsoever going to the IPA Project at Sly Fox today. Work, a concert to sing tonight, family issues that I don't want to go into...I should have stayed home. But I didn't, and it's all worked out. I should worry less.

I did go, and immediately ran into Matt "Beer Yard" Guyer, who confirmed my thought about the best way to go at the IPA Project: eschew the flights and just pick something to get a real size of. I grabbed a flight attendant (the ever-popular and brilliant Corey Reid (portrait of whom you see to the left...) and ordered up a 12 oz. Aurora.

Quick explanation: the IPA Project is a series of single-hop IPAs. In December, at the Sly Fox's anniversary, they pull out kegs of all the IPAs and offer them all at once. Brilliant. Except this year...Well, the Aurora was okay. The Fuggles was okay. The 2008 Odyssey (DIPA, multi-hopped, cask) was okay. The Mt. Rainier? A bit better, but in a crisp refreshing way, not a knock-out way. By this time, I'm starting to think, what the hell, the hops shortage has made all hoppy beer boring? Hate to dis Sly Fox IPAs this way, but damn, my socks were not being knocked off! (Kinda cool when former Sly Fox (and Independence and Stoudt's and Sunnybrook) brewer Bill Moore showed up, though; and yeah, Uncle Jack was there, looking pretty good after his brush with severe abdominal discomfort last month: that's Guyer, Jack, and Bill in the pic.)

Then Uncle Jack kind of talked me into getting one more 12 oz. glass, and I got the Galena. Now, Galena is generally considered to be an industrial-grade hop, a bitterness source, and that's about it. But...I remember back in the 1990s, Great Lakes (before Andy Tveekrem left there to become the wizard behind the curtain at Dogfish Head) had a barleywine they called Steamroller that was never offered for sale (as far as I know), just an "under the table" beer at festivals: huge, hi-alcohol, bitter, and dry-hopped on a bed of Galenas. And it was brilliant, as I recall. And so was this. The Galena was easily the best IPA of the day. Well, at Sly Fox, anyway.

Because when I left Sly Fox, I realized, I've got just time enough to stop at Victory and get maybe a growler or two of the great beers I've been hearing they had on tap right now. So I did. And it was good. Although it did take too long to get a beer, because two bartenders had a long talk about boyfriends, and Oh MY God!, and school, and NO WAY! right in front of me, and then walked off in opposite directions...till the guy sitting next to me at the bar called out to the one and said, "Hey, this guy's thirsty, you know?" Bless him. Bartenders at Victory; what's it take?

Anyway, I got me a pint of Uncle Teddy's Bitter (great, as always), and two growlers: St. Vic (which I'm polishing off right now, although I planned on saving it till Sunday, but I caught the bail on the flip-top when I was setting it down, and I had to drink it...really) and Yakima Twilight, a dark DIPA that tasted just fantastic when a guy at the bar offered me a sip. The St. Vic is great, smooth, malty, just a tad raunchy/smoky/chewy, and I love that. More about the YT when we drink up that one.

All in all: hell of a good beer day. And the concert went well, BTW, thanks for asking.