Beers with Friends

My friends and I had been trying to get together for this bottle share for quite a few months, but one of them has a job that makes it a bit tough to schedule. However, he finally had a Monday off and so messaged us that it was time. As it happened I was walking home from Sabrina's, kind of drunk already, so of course I said totally! I was originally planning on not even drinking the Monday before Thanksgiving but oh well, sacrifices must be made right?

We started off with one of the better beers of the night, Goose Island Bourbon County Rare. This is a special version of Bourbon County, aged in barrels for two years instead of the eight months or so. It did sell for quite a bit more per bottle (about $40 vs $12 for two regular bourbon county).

De Struise Sint Amatus 12

Following on my fun beer Wednesday, I grabbed this one for last night. It's been in my beer fridge for a while now and grabbed my eye last night so why not. Sint Amatus 12 is a quad that I think was partially bourbon barrel aged, but I'm not 100% sure.

Bourbon in the nose though whether it's from actual barrels or my imagination I don't know. Along with that I found caramel, vanilla, and plum. Quite complex. Medium carbonation. Body followed the nose with plum, caramel, some cherry, and maybe a little of that bourbon flavor in the back as well. As I drank more, some chocolate appeared which was just delicious. Very solid quad and no hints of alcohol. Delicious stuff.

Farmer's Cabinet De Struise Pig Dinner

About a week and a half ago (the last Thursday in March whenever that was), the Farmer's Cabinet held a ridiculously awesome beer dinner. I first heard about it in February and even though Jo and I were heading to Beer for Beasts the weekend directly after the dinner was being held, we decided I should go to this. Urbain (pronounced urban which I didn't actually know), the head brewer from De Struise brewery in Belgium, was coming to brew with Terry of the Cabinet Brewhouse (the Farmer's Cabinet brewery) and so they asked him to attend a dinner at the restaurant while in town. They bought a 300 pound pig from outside Lancaster, PA, brought it in and made every single course of the meal from a different part of it. With each course, they also paired a different beer from De Struise. Just a really impressive idea. If you expand the menu, you should be able to get an idea of the different courses.

Pre-Thanksgiving Trip to Capone's

In what has turned into an every other month tradition, Jo and I took a trip to Capone's the weekend before Thanksgiving. I had something to pick up plus there turned out to be a Mikkeller and De Struise event that day. Win win!

I, of course, started off with a sampler of the available special beers.

Going clockwise from the front, I ordered Mikkeller Black Hole Red Wine, Mikkeller Black Hole White Wine, De Struise Black Damnation, and De Struise Black Damnation 4: Coffee Club.

Blue Dog Wealth of Riches

Sometimes I think I may have issues with my obsession getting the better of me, but then I just shrug and get over it. This past Saturday was definitely one of those times when I decided to head out to Chalfont, PA to go to the Blue Dog tavern. First, if Google maps is telling you it's going to take two hours by public transportation, it's probably right. Second, if you are going to the suburbs and Google maps says you need to walk a mile from the train station, there probably aren't going to be sidewalks and so people are going to look at you like you're a psycho when you're walking down the side of a road on the shoulder. Oh and some of the sidewalks do this.

The Last Day of Philly Beer Week

The most glaring omission from my Philly Beer Week posts has definitely been Jose Pistola's. It's easily my favorite lunch spot during the year so it seems like I should have planned to go there during the biggest beer week of the year. Well, I did have a lunch planned, smart guy, and if you had looked at my schedule you would have known that! So there. It just happened to be on the last day of beer week so it took me a while to get to it. For this lunch, Adam had been saving up Jolly Pumpkin beers so he had a decent variety by then.

I started with the Jolly Pumpkin Luciernaga which turns out to be a Belgian Pale Ale.

Coffee Beer Brunch at Eulogy

It's been three days and I'm finally almost done with the weekend events for Philly Beer Week. Woo! We started Sunday with the 2nd annual Coffee Beer Brunch at Eulogy. The idea behind the coffee beer brunch is sort of self-evident. Eulogy had about two-thirds of their tap list as coffee stouts and they had a bunch of brunch specials. Really good idea in my opinion and Jo and I had a great brunch.

Since we had things to do that day, I wasn't going to be able to try everything so instead I just took some sips of Jo's first beer as well.

An Evening with De Struise

I decided my cellar needed a little cleaning so why not go into some of the beers I picked up from Belgium.  De Struise is a very small brewery in Belgium run by only a few people.  Seems like a nice place and the owners appear on BeerAdvocate every once and a while which is neat.  If I ever get to Belgium it's definitely a place I want to visit.  Since one was a Belgian Strong Pale Ale and the other an Imperial Stout, I decided to start with the former, the De Struise Tsjeeses.  Don't ask me how to pronounce the name, though, as I have no clue.

Absolutely Awesome Stout Tasting

Before attending the Troegs Splinter Black release, I was sent a message on BeerAdvocate asking if I'd be up for trading a bottle to a local in Philly.  I said if I got some extra bottles, we could work something out.  However, after seeing what he had to offer we both decided that instead of trading for more bottles to sit on our shelves, lonely and undrunk, it would be a lot more fun to get together and do a tasting where I'd bring a bottle of Splinter Black and he'd bring some stuff.  It may seem odd meeting up with a total stranger, but I'm an odd guy so it evens out.  We met up at The Belgian Cafe just before Christmas to ensure that neither of us was a crazy murderer and, after realizing we were both relatively normal (well, almost normal), decided to do the tasting some time in January.

We talked a bit more after Christmas and came up with the date of January 15th.  He invited a friend of his who also lived nearby and after a few more messages we decided to make it a stout tasting.  For this one, we were doing it at my apartment.  They arrived around 3:15 and, lo and behold, his friend Josh turned out to be one of the random guys we met on the way to the POPE during the Craft Beer Express.  I honestly couldn't believe the coincidence.  Just really random.  We quickly set out the six bottles on the table and couldn't wait to get started.

From left to right, we had: Olde Hickory The Event Horizon, Olde Hickory Hickory Stick Stout, Big Sky Ivan the Terrible, Surly Darkness (finally!), Troegs Splinter Black, and Dock Street Prince Myshkin.