Matt Meshulam's Brain Dump

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending The Wine and Cheese Place’s annual Beerfest. Some highlights:

• The beer of the day came from my favorite brewery, Bell’s. Spring has barely sprung, but I can’t wait for January again to get my hands on Hopslam Ale, their seasonal double IPA. Bell’s was also giving out awesome refrigerator magnets with an availability calendar for all their brews.
• Weirdest drinkable beer: Magic Hat’s spring 2009 Odd Notion, a poppy agave pilsner. A Classic European pilsner given a new springtime spin with wild sour accents of organic agave and natural blue poppy seeds planting a sweet, nutty balance. Our Poppy Agave Pilsner is summoned by a strengthening sun from two-row Pilsner malt and Noble hops. It melts snow and thaws souls with 30 IBUs and an ABV of 5%. Maybe it was just because I had been tasting beers for two hours at this point, but I would probably buy a sixpack of this if it were sold in Missouri.
• Weirdest, least drinkable, beer: Avery Mephistopheles Stout. Their rep proudly described this beer as “obnoxious.” At 16% alcohol and over 100 IBU’s, it’d be hard to disagree. I initially thought the meager sample sizes were a product of stinginess, it turned out to be mercy.
• With their 100% wind powered brewery and a remarkably in-depth analysis of their carbon footprint, New Belgium is a model for “green” brewing. They upheld this image with their giveaways:
  

  What's that? Lip balm?

  

  Nope, a patch kit for your bike!

Thanks to everyone at TW&CP for putting on such a great (free!) event. In conclusion, hooray beer!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.