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).

Beers at Sabrina's

Just before Thanksgiving, some friends of mine decided that their cellars were getting too large. To try and start to fix the issue, they asked on twitter if people wanted to go to a BYOB and share some beers and have dinner. I had nothing to do that night and Jo didn't care about eating dinner alone so I figured why not. After some back and forth, we decided on Sabrina's in Fairmount as I figured it wouldn't be too busy as it's mostly a brunch place and it's informal enough that they wouldn't mind us sitting around drinking forever.

After ordering some food and settling in we decided to start with Deschutes The Dissident, the one sour Matt brought along.

Philly Beer Week Day 8: Jose Pistola's & A Beer Garden

We're almost to the end of Philly Beer Week! Just two more relatively full days and I'll be done and you can go back to reading shorter posts. On this Friday, Jo had the day off so we were going to have lunch at Jose Pistola's and I had planned to check out the With Love Beer Garden later on. We also ended up with an unscheduled stop at St. Stephen's Green for dinner which turned out great because they still had a bunch of great beers on tap.

As I said, the day started at my favorite lunch spot, Jose Pistola's. They were hosting a lunch for Hill Farmstead and how could I miss that? For those that don't know, Hill Farmstead is really well known for their hoppier stuff though Shaun Hill has a deft touch with mostly everything he brews as far as I can tell. I started with a glass of Florence, a saison.

Hanging with PhillyTapFinder

My wife was out of town this past weekend which means time to go out! Since PhillyTapFinder's wife was out of town, we decided to meet up after work and hang out for a while. And, well, a while turned into almost seven hours.

We started out at Prohibition Taproom. Jo and I went there once a while ago but haven't been back since. The most unique part of the place is the oddly shaped bar which is shaped like an E with seats all around it. The inside is really nice looking though and it's a really comfortable place to spend time. When I arrived, Jared had already ordered a glass of Hill Farmstead Abner and was tweeting about how good it was so that's how I started.

Ballast Point at Capone's

With the first day of Philly Beer Week under my belt, my wife and I planned some errands around stopping at Capone's for lunch for the Ballast Point event. I knew this would be the only day I could get out there and how could I have a beer week without involving Capone's?

We arrived around 12:15 and while there were a few people, it wasn't too crowded. Apparently the Hill Farmstead event the day before was ridiculous as a bus full of beer geeks showed up so that would explain that. Even though this was the Ballast Point event, I noticed Hill Farmstead Fear & Trembling was still on draft and decided to start with that instead. This was brewed with some smoked malt then aged in some sort of red wine barrels if I remember correctly. There are a bunch of different versions of it on BeerAdvocate but I think it was the Cabernet version.