Ok, those of you who are jealous of me being in the best beer city of the best beer country in the world attending the biggest beer festival in the world ....... I am afraid that your bad wishes and curses have come true. It is very boring and ho-hum. You were right - I won't enjoy it.
Just let me explain how boring it is, so you may as well look away now.......
Ok now that they are gone let me say that it is FANTASTIC !
There is every beer style that you could imagine, but then some.
There is the 'normal' range of Pils, Amber and Pale Ales plus tounge blowing IPA's as well as mind blowing beers - try a double Imperial IPA 11% 100IBU plus and as smooth as silk. Then there is the 'out there' styles such as barrel conditioned Saisons, Imperial Porters and Brettanomyces Pale ale.
Last night I poured for about 6 breweries including an old favourite Terrapin Brewery in Atlanta Georgia. They are the Rye brewery with a Rye Pale Ale (10% Rye), Double Oaked Rye Pale Ale (Barrel matured and 20% Rye) and a delicious 50% Rye Black ale made as a joint venture with Left Handed Brewery in Denver. Top beers all of them.
The attendees are an attraction as much as the festival itself. So far I have observed:
- The beer geek that has a notebook and only samples one of the 6 beers on tap and then takes copious notes. They are usually unaccompanied.
- The beer loony. We have ours (Dr Kurtz) but the presence of excessive homulones leads to a unique brain reaction that forces them to wear a funny, beer related hat together with a loud, beer related shirt. They slowly and deliveratly taste everything, but don't say anything worth listening to.
- The beer evaluator. They are obvious by the 'pallet cleanser' around their neck. They usually have pretzels strung on a greasy string to nibble on between drinks. It is a particularly touching moments when you see two Beer Evaluators nibbling on each others pretzels. The trendy ones have soft, Sourdough pretzyls or even more 'earthy' is fruit sticks to provide a snack and cleanse after a bad or hoppy beer.
- The beer olympiad. These guys and gals keep a record of how many beers thay have tasted. The impromtu olympiad keeps track with ticks along there arm, but there was one particularly prepared couple that had white T shirts with 'beers that I have drunk' on the front and a number of ticks and crosses counting off the samples. When I saw them they had 40 ticks and it was a particlularly sought after task of all the male servers to have the pleasure of 'adding the mark' to the bumpy bits of the female taster
- The Beer drinker. These revellers are there just for the alcohol. They usually have an attractive wife/girlfriend on their arm and while they are skulling every beer on offer, the girlfriiend has a few sipps of whater wheat beer is on offer - particularly if it has some form of fruit in it. Abita's Blue Haze (Rasberry Wheat) was particularly popular.
- The beer official. These are people who have been told to pop by and taste a particular beer. I had someone that had been told by the head of the AHA that you 'must try this beer' to Chuck Hann who popped by to renew his tastebuds.
The festival is absolutely chaotic. There is the background noise of 10,000 tipsy patrons plus whenever anyone drops their glass there is a huge roar that goes up. When I asked what the roar was for I got 3 different answers.
- in the days when the glass was actually glass (they are plastic this year) it meant that the taster's session was over as they could not taste anything else in their smashed glass - hence the roar of anguish.
- when the dropped glass smashed another reason for the roar was the delight from the crowd that there was now more beer to go go around as there was one less taster - hence the roar of elation.
- but the best one was that the glass was a worthy worrior that had fought well and should be sent to valhalla (the vikings version of heaven) with a suitable war cry.
Finally, being a volunteer pourer gives you such power. For those you don't like you stop exactly at the 1 oz (ie 30ml) mark and say 'sorry, that's the rules'. For nice people you can slip and give them a double pour for which they offer you their first born.
Oh, and just to give you a non-beer prospective on the USA - I went to get a local SIM card for my phone and it was $25 for a SIM card or $20 for a G3 phone which includes the SIM. I put it on a 10c/min plan with a maximum charge of $1 for any day of use.
We certainly have a lot to catch up in the Beer (and phone) stakes.
Dave