The Best Craft Beer Week Ever Part 1

Sorry for the posting hiatus – Masters Thesis = No time for beer posting or meetings. Earlier this evening, I just got the email telling me my thesis had been accepted by the University, and I’m officially done… now, it’s time to celebrate, craft beer style!

Well, the Craft Brewer’s Conference is in Boston right now, know what that means? It means this is an absurdly good week for beer! I had received an email from a fellow club member on Monday night after saying that I wanted to go to the Jolly Pumpkin/Nøgne ø/High and Mighty tasting at the Wine Gallery on Thursday asking whether I would want to go to anything else. Yeah, at that point, I hadn’t looked at BeerAdvocate’s Beer Calendar. This week might singlehandedly drain my bank account!

Yesterday, a friend and I met at Deep Ellum at 4:30 for the express purpose of cask Maharaja – something that didn’t disappoint. I really like this DIPA, very deep, citric, and full bodied. That was the only beer I had while my buddy had a few more. One beer he had was brewed by Mayflower exclusively for the conference – The Audacity of Hops. This beer was described as a “highly hopped belgian style tripel,” although the end result was more like a higher octane Belgian wheat ale. The first thing that came to mind was a Weinstephaner with a bit more of a kick. Regardless, a tasty brew. His other beer was a Dogfish India Brown… one of my old standbys. It was interesting to have one on draft, it’s almost a porter! The roastiness is definitely brought out a lot more.

Next, we levitated over to Sunset Grill and Tap for the Stone Event (see what I did there? har har…) 12 Stone Brews on tap, some of them extremely rare – Arrogant Bastard aged in Bourbon Barrels, 2006 Double Bastard aged in Brandy Barrels, 2008 Old Guardian in Red Wine Barrels… it was nasty! I personally couldn’t get away from the first of those. Having originally ordered one of the 06 Double Bastards, I switched with a friend because the vanilla flavor is one of my all-time favorites. We actually did a side-by-side tasting of OAKED Arrogant Bastard and the bourbon barrel variety, and while the Oaked is more well balanced, I preferred the bourbon on this occasion – call it the tastebuds being excited over the vanilla.

We definitely dorked out last night. I have to say, the more you get into craft beer, the more you see brewmasters and company owners as rockstars. It blew my mind when the day started by Dan Paquette and his wife, other wise known as the fine folks behind Pretty Things Ales, sat down next to us at Deep Ellum. More than that, Dan had confused my buddy for someone at the conference and reintroduced himself! While the two of them did meet recently at a tasting, my friend wasn’t a brewer or anything. At Sunset, it was awesome to get a chance to give Mitch and Greg from Stone a handshake. We also met their MA distributor, who seemed like a cool guy as well. That place was apparently the who’s who of brewing. The Alstrom Brothers were there, Dan and his wife had traveled over to join the festivities, the Allagash crew was there, Harpoon, etc. My twitter account notified me that apparently Tim and Amy (a.k.a Here For the Beer) was there as well. I would have liked to talk to them for a sec, I really like what they’re doing (after all, what could be sweeter than running a little pub in your bed and breakfast and video blogging from some of the best beer bars in America.) Anyways, awesome night! Tonight, we’re doing the tasting over at Wine Gallery, then I’m joining a friend from out-of-town for some wonderful craft brews at the Publick House. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to hit a Short’s Brewing Company party at the Roadhouse. I’ll keep on posting.