Champaign/Urbana Bars... my goal

The other day as I was looking around the web for information on bars owned by Carlos Nieto, I came across this website. It's a nice little rundown of some of the bars in C/U. As I read it I realized that it was 4 years old, and many things have changed since then. So I thought... Someone's gotta do it... so it'll be me.

So at least once a week now, in addition to the beers and all the other crap that I fill your free time with, I'm going to review a bar. Tuesday night is normally the night that Kriddy and I have to go to a bar (at least it's the NORMAL night for that) we get out some other nights, but mostly it's Tuesday that we hit bars. So on Wednesday's you'll be able to read up on some bars.

Things I'll try to get in are (of course) beer selection; wait staff knowledge of the beer selection; food selection; atmosphere and overall impression. Yes, I'm biased to certain bars and there are some that I know that I hate; with pool being in house and not traveling anymore, it'll be difficult to get to the dives, so I'll go from memory on those.

First up, the dives...

I think the biggest dive in CU is D.R. Diggers. Diggers is kind of like Moe's tavern, without the possibility of any fun nights. When you walk in, there'll be a bunch of regulars there who look at you over the top of their macro lager, as though you don't belong there. There'll be some girl who just turned 21 a couple of months ago, who used to be pretty in highschool, but the past 3 years have aged her poorly. She'll be hanging out with her friend who's a couple years older and several nights closing the bar ahead of her, she's the mentor. They are only 15-20 years away from being straight up bar hags... prune tang. They'll come up to you and ask you to buy them a drink... refuse to do it. If they offer to buy you a drink... RUN!!!

Diggers has 2 pool tables in the back. They are coin-op per game but can also be fed dollars and played by the minute. The juke box is Touch Tunes. The songs played normally on it vary from "my dog just died" country; to "i'm going to kill you" death metal. You can play pretty much anything in there, someone might like it, one of the surly drunks at the bar won't. Just stay away from him.

I've heard their food is ok. It's mostly fried fare, but it's pretty good drunk food.

Diggers is poorly lit. It feels dark. The ceiling over the pool tables has fiber optic lights punched through it which gives it a starry feel, but it's still... very dark. As for the beer, there is nothing too interesting there. Mostly macro's. You might be able to find the Michelob seasonal there (I've had Winters Bourbon Cask Ale on draft there) but the highlight of their selection is HAMMS (for $1.50 I believe).

Diggers has "for entertainment only" video poker.

Diggers "allows" smoking (Illinois has a no smoking law). Unfortunately, it's back near the pool tables, so that really sucks. Some people go out and follow the rules/law, other go near the back door, others just sit, hidden away in a corner, puffing away. This gives off a seedy-dive feel. I'm pretty sure once while I was relieving myself in the men's room, that a drug deal was taking place in the stall.

Diggers is not a place I chose to go to. I only go there for billiards, since I'm not in a traveling league... I won't be there for a while.

The next dive is The Phoenix. The Phoenix has absolutely no redeeming qualities, or at least no reason to go there that I couldn't get at a different bar.

The Phoenix beer selection is really bad. They don't sell bottles because people who get into fights would kill another person with it. The Phoenix probably has the largest selection of 24 oz canned beer in CU. If you are stuck drinking horrible beer, you might as well get a really huge friggin can of it, right? WRONG!

They have 2 pool tables, both coin op. There is also "for entertainment only" video poker.

They also have Touch Tunes, but get really mad when you play something that isn't Lynrd Skynrd... It seems very southern rock-y.

The bar is also very dark. The front windows are tinted dark. It's dark. There is a stage where bands play, and I'm pretty sure it's only local death metal bands. I've never been there on a music night.

It's a biker bar some of the time. Kriddy is pretty sure that once while she was there a guy was jacking off in the corner while looking at her. On another occasion, two bikers in full leather pulled up in front of the bar, parked came inside and shouted "Let's get this party started". Which would be scary enough, except the guy who said it was speaking through a mechanical larynx. This is a scary bar. I am uncomfortable there.

Another major issue with this bar is, the "allow" smoking. One of the parts of the Smoke free Illinois thingy is that bars can't have ashtrays on the table. The Phoenix technically doesn't have ashtrays. The last time I was there, they had Altoids cases on the tables, that could easily be closed, should some sort of enforcement person show up. We were there for pool and outside of us, there were maybe 10 other people in the bar. It seemed all 10 people were smoking. I stunk worse than when I smoked. Kriddy had to take a shower before she could go to bed, the smell of smoke was too strong for her. Renee got sick from the overpowering smell.

For food, the Phoenix has frozen pizza... and some bags of chips and stuff.

If you are looking for a place where you'll get beat up, can drink crappy beer from 24 oz cans, and can smoke, then the Phoenix is probably for you!

The final dive for today is Boomerangs. It seemed like we were always at Boomerangs every year for the all star game. I'm not sure how that worked, but for quite a few years we'd be sitting in front of the same tv watching the all-star game. Boomerangs has two pool tables.

Boomerangs bathroom, during the winter, is possibly one of the coldest places on the face of the earth. In addition to being 20 degrees colder than the outside temperature, they somehow manage to pump water into the sink that is 10 degrees below freezing. You will get contact frostbite if you touch the sink. Don't stick your tongue on it.

Their food menu is decent greasy spoon grill fare.

They have one of the larger Leinenkugel selections in town on draft. Otherwise, there is nothing to spectacular for beer.

The jukebox is an internet jukebox, but not touchtunes. I'm not sure the name of the style, but it's one of the greatest I've seen. You can listen to at Boomerangs. I can torture their patrons for hours with nearly the entire KMFDM collection.

Boomerangs isn't as dark as the other dives. It's also a starting off point for some people as it shares a parking lot with the the Silver Bullet (dancers wanted, no exp. needed).

If you are looking for these three dives, they work from west to east. Diggers is off Springfield Ave on 604 S. Country Fair Drive. The Phoenix is at 215 S. Neil Street. Boomerangs is 1309 E Washington St.

There's more dives in town, I'm sure I'll remember more... I'm not trying to leave anyone out. I'll get them later.

V

Beer, Bread, Bacon

Yesterday (I guess you could just look at the date of the post to find out when it was, although just putting in May 26 would probably save a lot of useless words; but I'm verbose, so whatchagonnadoaboutit?) we had a Memorial Day gathering at the house. We invited a bunch of people, and even rescheduled it so that the gathering would be at a better time/day for more people to come by and have some good beers. I forgot that, I shouldn't bother.

In attendance were, XG, nEighbour, big brad and donna, meat jennifer and the girls, hippy, and nate also showed up. Originally I had hoped to just be sitting around under the shade tree, sipping on good beer; but it was a little wet from some rain, so we spent most of the time in the garage, sitting around, sipping on good beer.

One of the things in life that everyone needs, is a good friend, who is a chef. I can not emphasize enough, how awesome it is to have a friend who, not only can cook, but can put together some AWESOME dishes. XG is that person for me. Several years ago she made the best cheesecake I've ever had, for me to take up to my dad's for thanksgiving. When I asked her to come down for the gathering, she asked if she could bring anything; so I thought, what would go better with beer, than it's brother (or is it a cousin?), BREAD.

Beer is usually 4 ingredients, Barley, Water, Yeast and Hops. If you take away the hops and use a different grain like wheat, you've pretty much got bread. So XG brought down some great bread, (there was even the possibility of us making some beer bread with leftover beer from the Mama Mia Pizza Beer, but it was too hot inside to run the oven for any time). She made an OUTSTANDING focaccia, a loaf of french (I think) and a loaf of something similar (I can't remember exactly). She also made some pretzels along with a cheese dip. Everythign was awesome!

Heck, I was dipping the bread into one of the beers, loosening up the bread and thickening up the beer. It was great. Beer as gravy!

I started sampling beers around noon, and finally finished around 10 or so (I think). There was a wide range of beer from all over the U.S. and the world, covering a lot of styles too.

Brad brought an Avery Collaboration (batch 002), and some little kings. Meat was going to bring beers, but didn't' need to as we didn't even finish up all the beer I put into the fridge. We had: Stone Imperial Russian Stout (I later sold a bottle to brad, cuz he really liked it); Mikkeller Blackhole; Mikkeller Bad Worse barleywine; Hoogstraten Poorter; Terrapin Side Project #1 Hop Shortage; BBC Russian Imperial Porter (good for dipping bread into); 3 Monts Flanders Golden; Lefthand Double IPA; Mama Mia Pizza Beer; and Grumpy Troll Brandy Spetznaz.

Brad conned me into putting a DL 2k8 into the cooler, so we also had one of those. Ah, now I see why I feel a little funny today, I drank half a bottle of Dark Lord. nEighbour brought over a bottle from his fridge, that was my and hippy's stout, that beer has definitely improved with time. Brad really seemed to enjoy it, and I liked it a lot more too. Also in the fridge was my Welcome Back Pat, in the newly acquired Tap a Draft System. That one came out pretty good too.

Those were the main beers that were drank, additinoally there was a Great Lakes Blackout Stout that someone had, and probably some other things. (I had a couple of Old Styles, to hydrate).

Other than the bread that XG brought, everyone brought some food. Brad and donna brought these ribeye griller things that had cheese. Kriddy made some little smokies. Jennifer made some jalapeño stuffed things. Oh, and oddly enough everything was wrapped in bacon. (Hence the title; beer, bread, bacon.) All the food was awesome and I couldn't stop eating. Brad's griller things were outstanding. He didn't like cooking them on the charcoal grill, but they came out great. Jennifers Jalapeno things were damn good. Kriddys smokies were a hit too. After everyone left, I started eating the bread dipped in the bottom of the crock pot that had the smokies. Bread dipped in bacon grease is one of my new favorite foods. I guess it's probably not very healthy.

I'm sitting here today, oozing hops. Also, I'm a little queasy. I don't have a headache, as I don't get headaches, but this is about as close as I come to a hangover.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, which was nice. Another good part was that nobody died on my deck. I keep thinking I'm going to have one of those Chicago style "kill all your friends" parties, but my deck somehow stands up. I'd guess if everyone was on it the whole time, it may not survive, but who knows.

Struise Mikkeller

Last night I had my bottle of Struise Mikkeller.

It's a rather tasty brew. As you can see, it had an awesome full head. It was more than head, it was practically meringue. After the head got set and I continued to pour down the middle, the liquid beer punched a hole that looked almost like a donut. The beer itself was brown, with maybe a little sickly yellow hue to it. There was also some flocculation, but not too much. There was some brown chunks that settled to the bottom of the glass, and also some that managed to get stuck in the thick foam.

Before I opened it, I read part of the label, but not the full thing. Here it is...

RateBeer Special Release:
Behold the second of RateBeer.com’s Worldwide Masters Series! This request edition ale is the crafted alchemy of a party of some of Europe’s finest brewers, Mikkel Bjergsø and Kristian Keller of Mikkeller (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Urbain Coutteau, Carlo Grootaert, Phil Driessens, and Peter Braem of De Struise Brouwers (Woesten-Vleteren, Belgium).
Both breweries have attracted considerable international attention for their artful interpretations of traditional ale styles enlived by a rich sense of invention. And both are also very highly esteemed by the RateBeer.com international community of beer tasters. We hope you enjoy this unique little treasure.
Struise-Mikkeller-- the product of master brewing and friendship. Celebrate this sense of camaraderie by sharing this bottle with your good friends!
- Joe Tucker, RateBeer.com

Struise-Mikkeller is as we said in the past "Best of two worlds". We delivered an IPA with 130 IBU, but a bitterness hidden the Struise way, counter balanced by maltyness, alcohol and rest sugars. People who do not like Ipa's will actually be amazed, the general hop bomb addict will not understand, so yes this is a controverse brew... enjoy anyway!

So it's 130 friggin IBU!!! Supposedly we can't tell anything above 100, but technicalities aside, I expected to have my taste buds ripped off my tongue. I was wrong...

When I opened the bottle, I thought I got a bottle of "Sunny D". The smell of citrus jumped from the bottle. I've never smelled a beer that had as much citrus aroma. Would that be cascade hops? Which one has that much orange aroma? Is it Sapphire hops?

The beer was thin and drying. The flocculation gave it a feel of an orange juice that had a very small amount of pulp in it.

The taste was strong orange, with a hint of lime and other citrus. For 130 IBU (International Bitterness Units) it wasn't bitter at all. When I see a high IBU I expect pine flavor. There was no pine in there at all. It was all citrus flavor. This Double IPA had more lemony flavor than the Leinenkugel Summer Shandy's that I had earlier at BW. There was a slight hint of pepper that snuck in near the end.

It finished very clean, like an orange juice.

The only other Imperial IPA that I've had that was anywhere near this citrus-y was Goose Island Imperial IPA.

This would be awesome with BW Mango Habanero sauce. It would be probably the worst beer in the world to have after brushing your teeth, therefore Kriddy didn't even try a sip.

In other news, we lost at softball last night. :( I slid and scraped up my leg a bit, but not too horribly. It's been just under 2 years since I've slid, the last time didn't go so well. I've still got the scars from it. I put neosporin on it today and have it wrapped so hopefully it'll heal better and faster this time. This is what that last time looked like.



Day of

next day

creative bandaiding

So hopefully this time doesn't get as bad as last time. I'm wearing tall socks now when I play, so that cut down on the abrasion to my leg initially, and I'm treating it better, so it should be ok.

In other other news, my tap a draft is out for delivery, yay!!!

The party has been moved to Monday, bring a beer and a lawn chair.

go CUB(s)(eerClub)

Last night was the May edition of the Champaign Urbana Beer Club. Each gathering has a theme, Feb was "beer and chocolate"; March was "beers from East of the Mississippi"; April was "beers from West of the Mississippi"; last night was "Imported Beers".

Each person is to bring about 24-36 ounces of beer to share with the group. That's about 2 bottles of 12 oz beer, or a little more than a bomber. As Kriddy goes with me, I normally take 3 bottles of beer.

Back in Feb, we took Highland Black Mocha Stout and Sweetwater Happy Ending. March was Yazoo Hefeweizen, Yazoo Pale and Yazoo Dos Perros Altbier (along with a Dixie Lager). April was Siletz Oatmeal Stout and Siletz Chocolate Porter. If you look at the events list you'll see that there's some great beers that people bring in, from all over the u.s.

For last night, we took in some of the beers that we picked up in Indianapolis. Originally I picked up some bottles in Asheville that I was going to take, but changed my mind. It was going to be hoogstraten Poorter and Fantome La Dalmatienne, but instead I took in most of the BrewDog Line.

I gave up four beers last night.

Brewdog the Physics (Amber)
Brewdog Riptide (Imperial Stout)
Brewdog Hardcore IPA
Brewdog Paradox 008 Islay Bowmore 1987

I've still got another bottle of the 008, so I didn't part with anything too hard to come by.

This will come off as very conceited, but the Paradox 008 was the hit of the night. Everyone seemed to love it. Many people asked where I got it, so I got to explain to them how to get to Crown Liquors #6 on the south side of Indy, on route 31. (South of 465, exit 2b, I think). Crown has most of the Brewdog line (Brew Dog or Brewdog or BrewDog?) but only the 008 of the Paradox line. I wasn't able to completely enjoy the beers (like sitting at home or in the bar and write about it), and I didn't take any tasting notes, but none of the BrewDogs disappointed (at least not me).

Some of the other highlights of the night were Brasserie Dieu Du Ciel Peche Mortel. That's a great beer. Ed (Darklord) brought in two bottles of it. One for the early crowd and one for later, when it's down to the real drinkers. After the crowd thinned out, Dr. Andy busted out a bottle of Westy 12. So that was pretty cool.

Other bottles of interest were Rochefort 10; J.W. Lees Vintage Harves Ale; Chimay Blue; Fullers Vintage Ale. Someone brought in a Hvedegoop, so we got to try that.

The Champaign Urbana Beer Club is a great place to go meet like minded people (if you have beer on your mind). They are very accepting of new people (at first I was afraid of not fitting in) and they all have good beer stories to tell. It's a good mix of people, because CU is right in the middle of the country. Noah routinely goes west to California and gets beer from the San Diego (I think he said) area. Dr. Andy is from Washington state and has family there, so he's the pacific hookup. It turns out they are happy to have me and Kriddy there, because we are the only ones who go to the Southeast. So, we filled a void in the group (that they might not have known was there). So now we're the hookup for DuckRabbit; Highland; Terrapin; and Sweetwater beers... It's a lot of responsibility, but I'll try to handle it.

Our next trip to Asheville is scheduled for the end of July. So place your orders now.

In other news, I'm almost done mowing my back yard. There's only one patch of foot and a half tall grass left before I can say I'm done. I should be able to get to it sometime on Saturday.

Also, I ordered the Tap a Draft system from Northern Brewer. It should be in tomorrow. It's also available on Amazon, but is $40 more, so I thought I'd be frugal. So now I need to make some room in my fridge for MORE BEER!!!. The first one to go on draft will be Welcome Back Pat wheat... should Pat ever come back.

I might have to clean out my beer room due to unforeseen circumstances, but that's not a problem. All my empty bottles will probably find their way into the garage, and the full stuff will work it's way into my cellar, behind the bar.

We're probably going to be having a beer gathering at Kriddy's on Sunday, because I've got a lot of beer I need to drink. It won't quite be the same as the New Years Eve lineup, but I've got at least a 12 pack of bombers that I need to share. We were invited to go to one of the beer club people's place on Sunday, but I'm not sure what to do. Maybe we just do that instead and don't worry about the "hosting" issues.

The only problem with not hosting, is you don't really get to control how much you drink, and then you stand over your beer guarding it. Not sure if I want to do that or not. It'd be more fun to just sit around in the back yard on a lawn chair, under the tree with some buddies sippin on some really really really good beer.

So that settles it, my place, Sunday, 5 p.m. Bring a lawn chair.

V

kwak kwak waddle waddle

We are wipper snappers...

Last night, had 3 new beers, happily they went from good to not as good. (Yeah, when was the last time I said a beer was bad?)

Started out the evening with a Duck Rabbit Rabid Duck Russian Imperial Stout. This was an AWESOME beer. It's got an A- rating on BA, (I looked this morning after I drank it, don't want to be a bandwagon person; I liked it before I knew everyone else liked it.)

It poured like black oil. That picture isn't poorly lit, that shit is BLACK! It had brown thin foam, totally a different color than the beer. I held my glass up to a light (and granted it was a big goblet) but absolutely NO LIGHT shone through. There were no bright patches where even a glimmer of light made it through. This shit absorbed light.

It smelled like coffee and chocolate and black olives with a hint of smoke or even a burned smell. This stuff was thick! It wasn't Dark Lord thick, but it is definitely (why do I always spell that word wrong) a thick ass stout. When I went to take my first sip, as my lip pressed against the beer, it had resistance. This beer had SURFACE TENSION; water bugs would have no problem walking across this thing. Jesus could have easily walked across this; and Moses would have had trouble parting it. I pressed through to get to the beer. This stuff completely coated the mouth, it didn't lift off either. It was slightly gritty, but not horrible. It's a thick beer.

It had the slight taste of Black Chocolate, possibly bakers chocolate, the bitter, not sweet stuff. There was a little bit of grape/raisin to it, but not a lot. It finished with a coffee or espresso feel. I also got the sense of a nut, a dark nut, maybe Brazil nuts? This beer was awesome. At around $12 a 6 pack, this is probably the best $2 beer I've ever had. If you can find it, get it, you won't be disappointed.

After drinking this (Kriddy had a BBC stout), we went to hooters for trivia.

(that's not me in the picture)

Yeah, I know all those girls. Trivia was Scary Movies, we won. While there, I had a Boulevard Pale followed by a Killians. After trivia, we went to 7 Saints to drop off the 6 pack for Chibuisi. He had mentioned before that he tried a Bells so I put together a pack for him. It had the Cherry, Expedition, Best Brown, Third Coast, Amber and Pale; so a nice little pack. Andy showed up and gave me $100 for the Darklord and other beers, and looked at the pack and was a little jealous I think. But then after thinking about it, he felt a little bad for improving his cellar at my beer's expense. While at 7S, I had a Flying Dog Rabid Dog IPA, followed by Dark Horse Black bier, then went home.


Got home and poured myself a Pauwel Kwak. The picture doesn't do it justice (well maybe the globe on the bottom does). It was a lovely amber color, almost reddish, like a killians. It smelled like an amber, with a little bit more banana in the nose. The head was almost too big (and then I ruined it), but it still stuck around. It was somewhat thin, and felt... um... clean. It didn't have much carbonation in the mouth feel, despite all that head.

It had a nutty and fruity taste. Not and amber flavor. It was definitely Belgian yeast, giving off that fruity taste in an amber colored beer. There was thin hops and a big malt presence. It finished clean, with a pleasant aftertaste that hung longer in the mouth thicker than I expected for as thin as it felt initially.

I'm not sure if the glass part is supposed to come out of the wood, because mine seemed wedged in there pretty good. So I left it in, and used it as a stein. I killed the head with one of the ways you can easily do to get the head smaller in a beer. If you have run away foam in a glass, you can get rid of it simply by rubbing your finger against the side (outside) of your nose and then touching the foam with your finger tip. The oils in your sweat will cause the bubbles to dissipate. It's on wikipedia in the article on NOSE GREASE.

Nose grease has mild antifoaming properties and can be used to break down a high head on freshly poured beer or soft drinks. Wiping nose grease onto one's finger and then touching or stirring the foam causes it to dissipate rapidly

Last was the Hitachino Nest Sweet Stout. I've not been a fan of the other Hicachino's that I've had, but I tried to go in with an open mind. Well, it was 1130 or so, and I'd already had 6 beers, so how close minded could I be?

It poured black, with thin whitish foam that didn't stick around too long. It smelled peppery with a little grape and alcohol. It felt thin (not thin compared to the Duck Rabbit, thin compared to other stouts).

My first reaction to the taste was... WOW.

It was black olive, strong black olive. There might have been a little green olive thrown in, but there was definitely (yay, I spelled it right without spell check) no pimento. (As I wrote it out last night, I put "no red thingies"). There was a little grape flavor but that mostly came from the smell. I didn't get any smoke, chocolate, vanilla or coffee flavor. It was slightly salty and definitely (damn, spelled it wrong again!) not sweet, despite the sweet stout name. Most of the flavor came late, and hit the back sides of the tongue. Eventually it reached the tip of the tongue, but that was really late. After letting it sit, it dried out my mouth, almost like a white wine.

I didn't notice until this morning that the label says "Lacto" so it's a milk stout. I didn't taste the sweetness, but this morning, as I'm lactose intolerant, I definitely noticed the lactose. (I'll let you figure out what I mean by that.)

This morning my feelings on the beer are different than how much I seemed to enjoy it last night. I like beers that remind me of black olives. (I picked up all these beers in Asheville)

I forgot to mention a funny thing that happened to us in Asheville. On Saturday as we were heading out to go on the Brews Cruise, Frank checked the mail, there was a letter from his mom. They knew we were heading down, so she had clipped an article in their local paper (wisconsin rapids, I think) on beer, and sent it down to them to give to me. The letter said something like...

Thanks for everything, we had a good time at the wedding and reception...
If Virgil hasn't made it down there, we saw this in the paper and thought of him.

That's really nice, especially considering I've only met them 3 times, first at Franks 30'th birthday party, second at the bride/groom couples shower, and finally at the reception.

So a shoutout to Frank's Mom.

Congratulations go to Jim (from 7 Saints) who got a job up in Chicago for a beer distributor. He'll be working with some great beers, and maybe someday he might be able to get text messages on his phone.

A couple of beer reviews.

As I mentioned, while in Asheville, we stopped at the Thirsty Monk.

The first beer I had there was a St. Bernardus Abt. 12 60th Anniversary.

The beer was served in St. Bernardus glasses, and on St. Bernardus coasters, so the whole look and feel "thing" was appropriate. The Thirsty Monk is very dark, so the picture isn't very bright. This is also a problem if you are trying to look closely into your beer. There are a couple of lights around the wall, so you can hold the glass up to a light to check it out.

The beer was caramel in color with a hint of amber, the head didn't stick around for a long time, but had a good cling. It smelled of raisins or grapes (same thing?) with a little bit of wine to it. It was thin to medium on the tongue, with the feel of small bubbles.

It tasted of bread, muffins, possibly with raisins in it. Delicious beer.

It clung to the tongue, leaving a pleasant aftertaste. After drinking, it almost had a syrupy feeling.

As I was drinking, I tried to think what food would be good, and I think the best food, that I'd like with this would be Billy Barooz (in Champaign) Cajun Creole Pasta. Yeah, that stuff totally rips up my insides, but I love it, and this beer would be GREAT with that. I'm going to have to ask the manager or owner, if I could bring it in sometime to try. Granted, it wouldn't be the 60th anniversary, but just the "regular" St. Bernardus Abt. 12.

The second beer we had was the La Chouffe McChouffe Scottish Ale.

This one poured reddish to brown, and had very little head, even with a very aggressive pour. The head didn't linger, and didn't leave much lace. (Scottish lace? well, scots wear kilts, right? and they don't wear any undies, so no scottish lace, right?)

Kriddy said it smelled of grape, I couldn't place it exactly, but thought it fruity smelling. It was very thin on the tongue.

It tasted like a brown ale, (I know that's generic, but that's what I thought) it tasted like BROWN. There was some caramel, with the taste of white bread that had been lightly toasted, not enough that the bread darkens, but just enough to harden the bread. There was no distinct hops flavor at all in the beer. There was also no aftertaste. It completely cleaned off the palate (which I thought odd).

Both beers were good, but the St. Bernardus was my favorite beer that night.

Beer B-Ashe-ville

If you remember back to "(Insert Witty Title Here)" Kriddy and I went to the wedding for our friends. If you remember back to "The May Beer Crawl 9-10" we got the presents from that reception.

Well, after a week of chauffeuring those gifts around in the car; we finally drove to Asheville. We left on Friday morning around 845, and pulled in around 630 or so (with the time change it took about 8-9 hours or so). The drive itself was uneventful; but somewhat saddish. The route to Asheville from Champaign Urbana goes from here, to Indianapolis, to Louisville, to Lexington, to Knoxville, to Asheville.

My car was full of stuff. In Indy there's several liquor stores, Lexington has the Liquor Barn... we drove past some great places and didn't have any room for more beer :(

We had to get there at a decent time too, as the groom was making steaks on the grill; so we couldn't stop for extended layovers for sampling either.

We got there on Friday and delivered the goods (also was thrown in a congratulatory Dark Lord 2008). After eating, we got into the car and headed into downtown Asheville to a place called the "Thirsty Monk". This place is nice. It's hard to miss, it's the big purple building, with a monk drawn on the side. (Note: I'll make two or more postings today; this one will be the rundown of what happened and stuff, so if you are here for the fun exploits, then this is the blog for you; if you are here for beer reviews, then you'll just haveta wait, cuz I haven't written that yet). The bar has Belgian beers, lots and lots of Belgian beers and belgian style beers too. As you walk down into the place, on the left side of the walkway is a variety of empty beer bottles affixed to the wall. I noticed a bottle of Oud Beersel Gueze and pointed it out to Kriddy as we had just had it on May 3. According to the menu there are 14 beers on tap. Several are popular belgian beers, Delirium Tremens and Noctrnum; Kasteel Rouge; they also had a trappist, Chimay White on draft; in addition to a local Pisgah Solstice; and some national brews, Brooklyn Blanche de Brooklyn; and Brother Thelonius.

Kriddy of course wanted a stout, so I got her a De Dolle Extra Export Stout; Dana wanted one of the Delirium's and Frank and I split a St. Bernardus Abt. 12 60th anniversary. After we finished that (reviews to follow) we shared a La Chouffe McChouffe.

A very nice aspect of the Thirsty Monk, is that they seem to have appropriate glasses for every drink. Not just that they have an assortment of appropriate style glasses; they have the brewery glasses. Dana's Delirium came in a delirium glass; our beers were both served in brewery glasses (La Chouffe and St. Bernardus). Other people were drinking from Kasteel glasses and there was a huge selection of glassware behind the counter. The glass selection itself would probably make beer OCD people jealous. Before presenting each glass they were rinsed in sight to ensure the best presentation for the beers. (Kriddys stout was given a plain tulip:( ).

For going out to have a beer, this is a fine spot in Asheville to do it. For going out to have a Belgian or Belgian style beer, this is probably one of the best places in the U.S. to do it.

After we finished up there, we headed out to find a different place to have some beer. We walked past Greenman Ales and found a bar that didn't have a cover charge. It also didn't have a great selection. I got the Pisgah Pale, which was served in a plastic Miller Lite pint glass. Also people were smoking inside (it's allowed because it's a pool hall too, or something like that). Mix the smoking with the plastic glass, and it wasn't a great place to be. We didn't stay there long, and it didn't leave enough of a good impression for me to remember (or even write down) the name.

We then headed back towards our hosts place, but stopped off at a bar, which I believe was named "Pub". Right next to the flea market area. Inside, I had an O Pale Ale. Everyone else had something too, but nothing too spectacular.

Frank and Dana don't have a great pint glass selection, heck, they only had 2 glasses. Both from the Brews Cruise that they took with some friends previously. So while at the pub, we talked the waitress into letting us lift some glasses from her. So we added 2 glasses to their collection. They weren't standard pint glasses, but they were nice to look at. I don't remember exactly what they were, but Frank asked how they got into his dishwasher on Saturday morning. We finished up at "pub" and went back and crashed.

After we woke up we headed down to the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company. It was there, that we would meet up with the Asheville Brews Cruise. While we were waiting, I shared the ABC Scout Stout with Kriddy while frank and Dana had the Ninja Porter. When we did meet up with Mark (the driver for the day) he presented us with a gift bag containing an itinerary, some mints, some Cheezits (that seemed popular) and some other schwag with info about Asheville. On the tour was us 4 and two other people who were kind of local, the Thomas'.

We then headed out to our first brewery, Highland Brewing Company. Now, I've been to many breweries and brewpubs this year, mostly it was just to have the sampler platter, and had a quick look at their brewing setup. At Three Floyds Dark Lord was distributed in the warehouse, and you walked past the brewing area. The brews cruise is AWESOME. Mark has contacts with the local brewers and you spend time with actual beer people. It's like beer class. When we were at Highland, the brewery was shown to us by Paul, the assistant brewer.

Paul was a great guy to get information from (and seemed like a nice guy too), all you had to do was ask the right questions, and he could talk for quite a long time on the subject. At first, I was probably the "kid in class" that everyone hates because he never stops asking questions. Eventually, (I think) the others there were happy I was with them.

Sure, I asked how the hop shortage was going to/ or had affected them, and Paul talked about their contracts and that it shouldn't be too bad this year, but next year, might be trouble. He told us about where they got their malt (Wisconsin) and also talked about their yeast. After he told us about the worldwide hop shortage, he talked about their Imperial Kashmir IPA. This beer was made with more than 200 pounds of hops. The last few remaining bottles are at the brewery and are for sale at $10 each (22 oz bomber). Frank and I each got one, so I'm not sure how many more are left.

Paul showed us around the brewery and it was very hands on, you could touch the outside of everything, if you wanted. We saw the entire area from their Mash tun to the bottling line to cold storage, and everything else in between. (An interesting thing they do, not sure how many other places do; is their hot wort, as it is chilled, the warm temperature is transferred to the next water that will be going into the brewpot, which saves energy; the cold from the new water is transferred to the wort, while the heat from the wort is transferred to the new water). Also interesting is that because most of their beers are similar styled as scottish ales, they use the same yeast in most of their beers.

While we were going through the tour, I asked if Paul did any home brewing, he said not really, they do their experimenting at the brewery, and he showed us their small scale setup. Then he took us in the cooler, where he had a beer they might do in a small cask, so we got lucky to try the unnamed (but I called it) Paul's Imperial Stout. It was a hopped up version of their Black Mocha Porter.

The brews cruise isn't just a museum visit, it's a beer filled museum visit. While inside the breweries, Mark made sure our glasses were never quite empty. In addition to Paul's imperial, we also got Gaelic, Kashmir, Oatmeal Porter, Black Mocha and their newest spring/summer offering Shining Rock Lager.

As I'd never done the "tour" of a brewery, it was nice to actually go through with it. Once is probably enough to get how it's done everywhere, except for the factories, but I don't really want to go on a tour of a factory that makes beer.

Our next stop was French Broad Brewery. I didn't get the name of the brewmaster, but he was the one who explained his beers over pretzels to us. A great guy, and produced some damn good beers too. His operation was a whole lot smaller than Highlands. While Highland (with a name like Highland) specialized in Scottish style ales. French Broad seemed to specialize in lighter beers. Their Kolsch (style) would be awesome to drink after mowing. But plan ahead, as their beers aren't bottled. Go get a growler before you start your yard work.

We were lucky to get to drink a brewmaster test run of a belgian stout-ish beer. It was good, Frank wanted a growler of it to go, but we finished off the rest of the 5 gallon, so there was no to go cups. However we were given the recipe. (Email me, if you are interested).

Our final stop was back where we started at Asheville Pizza. There we ate and sampled the Shiva IPA, Scottish ale, Ninja Porter and Scout Stout. We were shown around the place, which is very neat. They have a huge game room, and a movie theater. Movie and beer, WHOO HOO. I had the Reuben, which was pretty good. Kriddy hadda pizza, which she seemed to enjoy.

The entire time on the Brews Cruise was about 3-4 hours, it cost $35 a person (out of town rate) and the glasses stay full. We were also given pint glasses at the end (you don't want to be worried about those while walking around).

The last part of the cruise is sometimes a stop at Bruisin' Ales. They have a good selection of stuff that isn't available in Illinois. Also, since we were on the cruise, we got to have a beer while we were perusing the store. I picked out Dale's Pale Ale from Oscar Blues. I'm drawing a blank as to what Frank picked. As we'd already had many local beers I didn't get any Highlands. I did get a 4 pack of Dogfish Palo Santo Marron, and a 6er of Duck Rabbit RIS. Meat has been looking for Pyramid Imperial Hefeweizen for a few months or so, so when I saw it, I got the two last bottles in stock. Also got a 4 pack of Kwak that came with a half yard (or is it a foot).

Bruisin Ales has a Big monk thing that if you open it up has beer in it. We got one of the Single and Triple ales from it.
The guy behind the counter was great, and since we spent $147, he offered us a free glass, so we got a Chimay glass.

After that, we headed back to our host's for a nap.

After freshening up we headed out to Pomodoros (if that's how you spell tomato in Italian or is it greek?) for evening meal. I had the calamari (which wasn't quite as good as the calamari at ShoreLine up in Michigan City) and washed it down with an Alfa Helenic Beer which wasn't that great (it seems to have bad reviews all around).

After that we headed to an ice cream place, where I got to watch everyone else enjoy some ice cream. Kriddy and Dana had some ice cream made with Highland Black Mocha Stout; they both seemed to like it. After that, around 10, we headed back to get ready for Sunday.

Woke up, headed to Bristol for NHRA. It was overcast and dreary. Not hot, so if they ran, it'd be good times. We found our seats after I about crapped my pants several times, due to them testing the rebuilt engines. Even if I'm braced for it, I'm still a very jumpy person. When they hit that nitro methane button, I always jump. We watched the first round of Top Fuel, then the rain started. Each rain delay at drag racing, is a wait for the rain to stop, and then a wait for drying the track. We watched 3 or 4 rain delays before we finally left, which was right at the end of Funny car. We didn't see any pro stock. We did manage to get through 4 rounds of beer at $20 a shot, for fizzy yellow water, so that was great... (wheres my thumbs up emoticon?) We headed out to try to find Depot Street Brewing, but it's in Tennessee, so they were closed on Sunday.

Went back and ate at the Wild Wing Cafe, they had shirts that said "Beer, It's not just for breakfast anymore". With that kind of advertising, I expected a huge beer list, but was very disappointed. There were about as many hot sauce varieties (33) as beers. After we finished there, went back to the house and Frank opened his bottle of the Highland Imperial Kashmir IPA, it was outstanding. Even though it was an "older" IPA, it still had a strong hops smell to it. (You'll get that from 200 pounds). It wasn't very bitter (although it probably was technically bitter) but had most of the hops flavors in it... depending on what you looked for. Spicy, piney, grassy, they were all in there, at some form or another.

After we finished that off, we watched the end of NHRA on ESPN2, where they carried the finish of Funny Car, live, at 1030. That would have been a REALLY long day, had we stayed.

Went to bed, and prepped for the ride home.

Left Asheville around 645, and around noon, pulled up towards Louisville. Kriddy was getting hungry so she looked on the GPS for a brewpub. I couldn't remember the name of it, but knew it was BB something, so when she pulled up the list, and there was Bluegrass Brewing Company, we were set.

Walked in and the bastard love child of Bruce Vilanch and Brian Posehn was tending bar. Sat down, order the sampler. Last year, I had 4 of their beers, and I got to add 7 more to my list. So that was nice. All their beer were good. After he gave us the first 7 samples, I looked at the tap handles and wondered where the rest were (there were way more than 7 taps). So he brought us out three other samples, Gross Batard, Raspberry Meade and Frambozen. I was especially impressed with the Raspberry Meade, it was probably the best meade I've had.

I ordered the fish platter, which was a HUGE FRIGGIN piece of fish. Kriddy got an Italian beef sammich. The fish was outstanding. Remember how I mentioned Gordon Biersch had bad fish. That was just chunks of fish that weren't done properly. This slab of fish was over a foot long and about an inch thick in the middle. It was completely cooked all the way through, all of it was flaky. The batter wasn't burned, but was the color of a belgian triple. I saved up the nutbrown sample to drink with the fish, and it went well with it. Kriddy had the stout (of course) and that went pretty good with the sammich.

We told Jeff (the love child) about going on the brews cruise, and he thought it'd be a great idea to start one up around Louisville. We told him we were heading up towards indy on the way home, and he said for us to stop at Oaken Barrel, and mentioned another place, that I just can't remember now (Brass Monkey in Kokomo? Half Moon?) Dang, I need to write more things down.

After we headed back north on I 65, we stopped at Parti Pak Liquors and got about $100 worth of beer, or so it seemed. Then headed up the road to Crown Liquors. Crown seems to be the little hole in the wall place that everyone ignores. You'd expect Partipak to be that place, but Partipak has a reputation among beer aficionados (it's rated A+ on Beer Advocate) . Crown Liquors doesn't seem to have that cult following. Either crown restocks the shelves after each customer, or they don't have as many people go through. Either way, doesn't matter to me, I'm stopping there every trip I take to Indy. (It's right off U.S. 31 on the south of Indy). Crown has a wide range of Stone, Three Floyds, Mikkeller, Bells and a bunch of other stuff, and it's almost always in stock. I took their last two 6 packs of Bells Hopslam (and will be selling one of them to Meat). The guy working asked me about the Brewdog line (I had just gotten a few down the street) so I asked about the Paradox line, and he showed me where he had some. So I got a bottle of the 8. Crapola, I thought I had previously got the 4,5 and 9, but I got the 5,8,and 9 (back in C-bus) so now I've got another bottle of 8, which I'll just add to Meat's bill.

As I was pretty much grabbing everything in Crown that I hadn't had, and/or wanted, I was ringing up a hefty bill. So the guy working took my email was was going to pass it to their beer guy, to see if I wanted to do any trading. Also, for "special" customers, he had a bottle (or maybe two) of Darklord that he would sell, I mentioned I had 19 of them at home, and didn't really need any more. So we spent over $100 there too.

The GF is now a huge fan of the bourbon aged beers (just not the GIBCS so much, but that one gets better with age). She really liked the BBC Jeffs Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout, so we picked up a pack of that somewhere. We also got her a bottle of the Barley Island Bourbon Barrel Oatmeal (bourbon barrel oatmeal stout, this will probably be her favoritest beer in the world) and a bottle of Stone Smoked Porter as she really liked the O'fallon whiskey aged smoked porter.

It was a great time. All weekend went well, not too many bad beers, (except the coors light at the race). Next trip there will be for Bele Chere. Hopefully we'll be able to get Mark to take us to some of the other breweries, and also to the new ones.