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Hangin at the general!

Date night! Dubbel and big fat steakmmmm

Saturday we hosted the local homebrew club’s annual competition. The club here is called  B.U.Z.Z. Which stands for Brewers Unlimited for Zany Zymurgy. Yeah, the clubs always have names like that. I’ve been tight with the Keystone Hops homebrew club for years now and was happy to discover upon arriving in the W.C. that these guys are great too. In fact lots of the membership overlaps! (Some people just can’t get enough good beer. Nice.) Landing in a new place and hosting a homebrew comp is like going from zero to 100 in your car. I still don’t even know where everything here IS yet. No bother, Jean and the rest of the crew jumped right in and the comp went off

Best of Show Flight, BUZZ Off '09

without a single hitch. I judged Belgian Strong Ale in the morning, had a very long flight after lunch with some great people and then did the Best of Show panel to wrap up the day. I am prepping right now to Judge the Great American Beer Festival but I’ll tell you what, there are some GREAT judges in the local group. Nice work gang.

Whit and I had dinner Monday night with the Brysons. You all know my friend Lew I hope. His wife is a hoot too and it’s been too long since we had a chance to sit down. Man, I love those guys…and I have got to quit eating so much. We had dinner at the brewery which is a but uncreative, but the menu in West Chester is new. I am obligated to try everything on it, right? Well Whit insists that I don’t have to try it all TODAY but what’s the fun in waiting? Good times!

Jean

Hey all, just wanted to drop a note to let you know that the berwery is now being installed in our Maple Shade, New Jersey location. Chris has his hands full right now getting all of that super sexy stainless hooked up and running. This place is totally going to rock! Thought I’d show you a photo of his gear leaving our warehouse in Wilmington on it’s way to NJ

Saturday was our annual beer festival to benefit the Media Youth Center. The weather turned out to be great! As usual the fest was a complete sell out at 1200 tickets.We had a blast and managed to raise some fundage for a great cause and got to spend a day with some great brewers and friends. Thanks everyone for the support. Anyway, here are a few highlights you might be interested in: Super secret Mug Club beers were a great success (Especially the Eddie!) watch for these to continue at any festival we attend. We poured 3 liter bottles of Russian Imperial Stout at 2 and 4 pm and the crowd went nuts for it. Drew Carey made an appearance, there was a ‘Battle of the Beer Bloggers’ hand in ice competition. Brian from the Brew Lounge won that, for the record.

Set up and tear down went at record pace and we made it to the Post fest BBQ at Case de Anderson (DA is Iron Hill’s Culinary Director) for a little turkey burger action. Nice.

Tomorrow we’re loading brewery equipment for our new location in Maple Shade. Chris should be brewing up a storm over in Jersey Land shortly.

So I had a quick little trip to New England last week to help a friend with some brewery equipment in Portland Maine. I’ve got to tell you I dig the North East. It snows FOR REAL up there. Kind ‘a reminds me of my youth out in the midwest where it wasn’t even considered a respectable fall if we got less than 6 inches. I flew in on Sunday and woke up Monday to 14 inches if new white fluff. Here’s the kicker: the roads were plowed and kids were headed to school. That’s a bunch of Mainers for ya’. Nice work! We had a little free time to see the local color including the The Great Lost Bear   which is a great little beer bar near downtown Portland. For the record I’d say good not great…but that’d be by Philly standards. They did have Dupont on tap, but the rest of the line-up featured lots of Butter Death Hell from the likes of Shipyard et.al. Man, those Mainers know snow, but they sure do like their diacetyl laden beers. I LOVE the Alagash stuff (Belgian not butter) and managed to have a good time anyway. We popped into Gritty McDuffs for some eats and just a touch more butter then headed home. Gotta’ get back there soon!

Virginia may be for lovers, but Philly is definately for BEER LOVERS baby! What a weekend. I think I took a few years off of my life for sure. Here’s how it all went down:

Friday:  Doug and I wrapped up the week racking some barrel aged beer, including a firkin of Bourbon Porter that I promised to Scoats for Friday the Firkinteenth at the Grey Lodge Pub.This is one of my favorite events at one of my favorite bars. Click on over to the site if you don’t know about the bar and the event.  You ought to! As usual parking was a PITA and a just about had to drop the firkin on a couple of people to get through the door. Totally worth it. Scoats tapped the Bourbon love right after we arrived and it was finished in about a half hour. They poured 20 firkins in 7 hours this time around. Nice work guys! I will say that they’ve got the Grey Lodge looking sharp. It’s now very clean and the food is really good…but i do kind of miss the ‘Dank Factor’ of the old days. I know…everybody’s a critic!

I ran into Vice ‘Vin-Dog’ Desrosier (still not sure how to spell his name after all these years….better learn) and his girl in the ‘Neast and we finished off a couple of cask pints before heading into town for dinner at The Good Dog. I love this place too….it’s kind of like drinking in a hallway with all of your friends, good craft beer, and burgers you’d make at home if you really had the time. The dinner was a low grade celebration. In case you haven’t heard, Vince will soon be Head Brewer here in North Wales and I will be moving on to West Chester. We ate too much, we drank too much and I headed home to the Mrs. to prep for Valentine’s Day.

Saturday: So for some reason my head REALLY hurt on Saturday morning. It is entierly possible that I was over-served 2 or 10 pints of lost coast IPA at one of the bars I visited Friday. My wife was very understanding but insisted that I buck up for round 2. Whit wasn’t in the mood for sappy Halmark inspired love gestures (i love my wife. She ROCKS!) and had us set up for dinner with the Johnsonators. Nick and Meg suggested a new bar in Limerick for dinner that is about half way between our houses and we trucked on out to the Craft Ale House to see what was what. This place is tiny, very new, and has one of the best draft lists I’ve seen on the suburbs in a while. Hit it up.

We fed our faces, drank our way down their list and ended up crashing at Castle Johnsonstein after like 4 hours of sour beer and Rock Band. I don’t own a video game platfom and I think I might just have to go buy one now. Man, that was fun…at least until I woke up. The sun shines RIGHT into their guest bedroom. Ouch. It took me a while to get up the courage to stand up.

Sunday:  Afer a well deserved nap we headed into town for some Sushi with Whit’s cousin and boyfriend. Nice kids. Sushi was good but not memorable excep for the fact that the spot is right across the street from Tria. I did not fall off of the turnip wagon yesterday here folks. We scooted in for a little Sunday School but they were packed so we walked up the street to Nodding Head for a quick pint while we waited. Bethany bought us a quick pint and we made it back to Tria just in time for BANANNA PANINI!!! If we did have kids, I think I might sell one for a years supply of these babies. Nice.

What a great weekend. For the record I do, in fact, love my wife dearly…and she was along for the whole ride. Check out her cool new publicity shots! Neat, huh?