Kansas City

Went out to Kansas City to visit my good friend Aric and his gal Mindy. We had a blast! We did so many things, but I'll just highlight those that relate to BEER.

First, straight from the airport, we stopped at McCoy's Public House. A popular brew pub, they have a great outdoor deck, good food, and their beer is delicious. The Hog Pound Brown is clean and wonderful. As a bonus, they were actually brewing while we were there. The (bad cellphone) picture is the mash tun, door open and spent grains in view. It smelled awesome.

Next was visiting Boulevard Brewing. They are a local staple and seem to have complete penetration in the KC bars. Every single pub we visited that weekend (and there were many) had at least the Pale Ale on tap, and most had the wheat as well. Often, the Boulevard was the only alternative to A. Busch or Miller/Coors. The Pale Ale is a favorite of Aric's, so between the stock in his fridge and its ubiquity out on the town, we drank a ton of it. Whoever is doing the local marketing/selling for this company is really kicking ass. You can't go a block in KC without seeing Boulevard's name.

We took the tour and it is quite clear that the brewery expects to grow in the coming years. They just opened a second brewhouse - all completely new and very shiny. They are also installing a brand new bottling line which can handle several times the volume of their current line, nicknamed The Crusher due to its propensity to smash bottles instead of capping them.

The tour ends in the tap room of course. I tasted many of their beers and, like Flying Dog, all were good even if some were not to my exact tastes. If you're in the Midwest, look for Boulevard beer and give it a try. Their Saison grew on me big time, the wheat is clean and light, and the Pale Ale is great.

Saturday afternoon, we went to Grinders. I honestly cant put in to words how much I loved this place. If I lived in KC, I would make sure I lived within walking distance.

The mushroom pizza we had was indescribably good. We also got a big-ass basket of tater-tots covered in Cheese Whiz. CHEESE WHIZ!

And the beer. Oh the beer. Check out the beer list on their site and you can see that these people are serious. Any time I see a beer list organized by style I know I'm in for a treat. About 80 to choose from with 20 on tap. Add to that the fact that Grinders' back yard is now a concert venue and we watched The Mighty Mighty Bosstone's people setting up and sound checking for that nights show while lounging in the sun with good friends and the local dog (pictured above) curled up at our feet and the best pizza I've ever had and a very friendly waitress and F-18s flying overhead (big airshow in town - ROCK) and a beer list fit for a king... I could go on for hours. Just perfect.

Sunday Aric whipped up some homebrew! It was cool watching another person's routine. Aric has brewed hundreds of batches but, of course, he was out of beer when I visited. UNACCEPTABLE! Actually he had a batch all ready, but his tap line popped off the tap and the whole five gallon keg ended up on his basement floor about a week before I arrived. Horror of horrors!

I can't wait to go back to KC and take the whole family. It's a great town.

Beer Fest!

Yesterday, Jess and I attended the 4th Annual Hagerstown Suns Beer Tasting Festival at the baseball stadium. With your admission price, you get 10 5 oz. samples, so together we got to try 20 different beers. Awesome!

We tried all kinds of stuff that I have not had an opportunity to taste before without committing to a whole pint of it. Barley Wines, Dopple Bocks, etc. All fun to try, even if they are not our style.

Jess found several beers that she really loved, including Ommegang Witte, Ommegang Hennepin Farmhouse Saison, and her absolute favorite (and mine, perhaps influenced by the 90 degree heat): Penn Brewing's Weizen. She loved it so much, that she constructed an ad-hoc Best of Show Award and presented it to the guys from Penn Brewery. They loved it, promised it would end up on thier soon-to-be-released redesigned website, and gave her a free bottle of Weizen. Nice! That is Dale from Penn and Jess in the picture. Jess is holding the "award." So funny. ALL the beers we tried from Penn were great - if you see some in your beer story, buy it.

We also tried beers from local Clipper City. They only brought their BIG beers, so I wasn't really in to them, but the guy from the brewery was cool and we chatted about beer a bit. We hope to get up there for a tour at some point.

We enjoyed the beers from Erie Brewing including their Sunshine Wit and the somewhat famous Railbender Ale.

The cellphone pictures make it look overcast, but it was a very hot evening. The beer went down nice!

Greatest Website Ever

Genius! Beermapping.com is using the google maps API to build a visual database of every brewery, brewpub, homebrew store, beer bar, and beer store in existence. Here is the DC/Baltimore area map. Finally, someone is doing something meaningful with the internet.
http://beermapping.com/

Cheese and Beer - Not Always a Good Thing

Jess and I went to a local brewpub in Frederick called Barley and Hops for the first time the other day. We were really excited about unleashing another local source of micro-brews on to our newly expanded taste buds.

We were very disappointed. We tried almost every beer they offered and we didn't really like any of them. I found most of them to be syrupy and unpleasant or, in the case of their light lager, tasteless. All the beer was served very warm as well.

This contrasts greatly with our trip to Flying Dog's brewery where, although some were not our cup of tea exactly, all tasted like beer and were totally drinkable.

The topper of the whole experience was the Belgian Wit. Before I even got it to my face, I could smell a strong cheese (Parmesan to be exact) odor emanating from the beer. I took a sip anyway and it tasted like cheese as well. Not just a tinge or twang, but like someone had dumped a bunch of Parmesan in the beer. It was so strong that I entertained the thought that it might be intentional, but I felt more likely that there was some kind of problem (mold maybe?) either with the lines or the batch.

We asked the bartender "Is this beer supposed to have a cheese flavor?" to which she responded, "I don't know. Whatever it tastes like is what it is supposed to taste like." Very unhelpful. We asked if should would taste it or even smell it to see if anything seemed off, but she, the bartender at a brewpub, refused and wrinkled her face up as if to say, "I would NEVER drink the beer here!"

I can't say that I blame her, actually.

Brewery Tour

We took the tour at Flying Dog Saturday. It was really fun. Of course, we forgot our camera, so all I have are these poopy cell phone shots.

Mash Tun and Brew Kettels

Fermenters (about 50 of them!)

We learned that Flying Dog bought Wild Goose and Blueridge beer. Blueridge was discontinued, but they still brew Wild Goose here. We got to sample a ton of beer, including an unnamed test batch which was cool. I also tried their Double Pale Ale which has an IBU of about 90 - whoa.

Some Flying Dogs

I grabbed a sampler 12-pack of Flying Dog brew to help hold me over while my kegs are dry. I bought it because I had heard of it before but never tried it. Got it home and it was pretty damn good, although both Jess and I detected a slight off-flavor that makes me think the 12-pack had been around a long time, or perhaps stored in a hot-ass warehouse for a while.

The 12-pack included bottles of Pale Ale, Hefe-Weizen, Amber Lager, Golden Ale, and their IPA. All were good (minus the slight off taste common to all) and Jess liked the Hefe (shocker).

I looked them up on the inner-toobs and realized why I had heard the name - they brew right in Frederick, MD! We're going on a tasting/tour of the brewery with some friends this weekend. Then we'll know for sure if those bottles were off!