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.
