"It's probably better we missed the Scotch Tasting Seminar."

Cease all the wondering! We did in fact, round up Jake (now with myspace!) and go to the beerfest. And, we did in fact make it there at happy hour, which meant 9 taste tickets instead of 6.

Wonder of wonders.

Y'know, I didn't really think about the fact that the tasting glass is 6 oz. and that 6 tastes x 6 oz. = 36 oz. of beer in the early afternoon. I especially did not take happy hour into account, where happy hour = 54 oz of beer. Also, Dragons did not drink all their tickets' worth (because of the driving), so he handed off 2 tickets each to Jake and myself. Of course, this could have meant that I got 66 oz. of beer, but that's just ridiculous, really, so I ended up doing a more sensible thing, which was to have a couple of the two-ticket beers, which were fantastic.

Before a certain point, I was really hopeful that I would be able to retain quite a bit of information about the various beers we tried, and in fact, I did take notes, but these drunken scrawls are quite illegible to a sober mind. I think at least four of these just say "Delicious!" or "Fruity!" which is not that helpful.

I do recall that I was getting a lot of love from the ambers and the reds, and less so from the Belgian stylee, and that I still adore all kinds of porter.

Jake kept pushing us to sample the 1554, so we finally did, and it was quite tasty and unusual. The 1554 is a really dark beer that is light in body. It's got some of the porter taste overtones, and if it's something I can find in the store or a pub somewhere, it seems like it would make a good porter substitute in warm weather. Other than that it is dimply delightful.

Here are some of my other notes:

Red Menace Big Amber Ale (Hales Ales Brewery) - Delicious and smooth. I remember liking this a LOT.

Flying Dog In-Heat Wheat (Flying Dog Brewery) - Banana-y and Good. Thick.

Blind Pig Dunkel Weizen Ale (Leavenworth Brewery) - Good in an average way (I don't know what that means either).

Mudshark Porter (Fish Brewing Co.) - Dark with more coffee breath than chocolate. Fish Brewing Co. (that name doesn't sound tasty, does it?) makes all-organic beers, which is kind of neat and I fully support.

Widmer W '06 (Widmer Brothers Brewing Co.) - All I remember is that this beer is 7% ABV.

Young's Double Chocolate Stout (Young's) - Tastes just like it sounds. Good stuff. This was the last beer I got, a two-ticket glass, mostly because I knew it would be tasty and I shouldn't be having two more beers.

Triple (Urthel) - Fruity and light for a triple. "Sorority girl special".

Bottleworks Van den Vern Grand Cru (De Proefbrouwerij) - Super Fruity! So Good! Like Triple, but darker.

1554 (New Belgium Brewing Co.) - Crisp for a dark beer. Delicious black ale.

Roger's Pilsner (Georgetown Brewing Co.) - Inobtrusive and smooth.

Wyder's Raspberry Cider (Wyder's Cider) - The raspberry is present, but restrained. Refreshing.

Red Tail Ale (Mendocina Brewing Co.) - Standard Red. In other words, tasty.

Doggie Style Pale Ale (Flying Dog Brewery) - Good, but with a weird bitter back of tongue aftertaste. I really enjoy their graphics and branding, though.

I know that's much more than nine beers listed there, but we were trading sips back and forth and so were able to cover a lot more ground than we would have individually.

Also, ran into the free beer guy from bowling while we were there. I couldn't (still can't) remember his name.

I'm looking at my list here and it turns out I did not sample any IPAs, even though they were second in representation only to the hefeweizens. Weird.

We hung around long enough to grab sample pies from Pies & Pints and they are just as spectacular as I remember.