Surlyfest!

I've been looking forward to Surlyfest ever since I heard about it and I wasn't disappointed. Luckily Josh was available to head to the fest with me since everybody else seemed to have a prior engagement.

I kicked off the day with a Coffee Bender and when Josh showed up at my house, we had a Surly CynicAle in my bar before we took off for the brewery. I had only had a sample of this before when I took the tour and wasn't super impressed with it but after hearing good things about it I decided to give it another try and picked up a 4-pack at the Crystal Liquor Barrel when I ordered my keg. I'm not sure if there were too many other beers for it to stand out or just my "well it's no Furious" attitude but after giving it another chance it blew me away. I'm sure part of it is the fact that I've been drinking and loving a lot of wheat beers and saisons over the summer but this is one of the top that I've had. Gave it a 3.9 on Rate Beer and said:
Cloudy yellow color, foamy white head that quickly dissipated. Wheat, yeast aroma with a hint of citrus. Wheat flavor with a slight hoppy note, lingering tangy finish. I enjoyed this much more than I did at the brewery tour. It stands up much better alone than in a lineup.

The day started off with a nice bonus as we found out we got 5 drink tokens instead of the 4 that we expected and got better when we heard Tool playing until the first band got fired up.

The place was surprisingly undercrowded for a sold out event but it might have just seemed that way because I'm used to Bockfest in New Ulm. The food was very reasonably priced and pretty kickass (Josh had his first Chicago dog experience). We got at couple of minutes of chat time with Omar and met head brewer Todd as well.

Ran into Alvey from the Four Firkins and he introduced us to some very cool fellow beer lovers. I found out that it's very easy to have a discussion with random strangers at an event like that because you know that most of them probably love the same stuff that you do.

Kudos to Omar for making the call to make the socially responsible decision and limit the number of beers everyone could have instead of seeing how many he could sell in a four hour time period. I would have loved more tokens but it was nice to not have "those guys" in the crowd that are working on their fifth beer by the time you get in the gate.

I didn't do an official rating on the Surlyfest beer even though I had a couple of them but do not fear, Surlyfest made an appearance at the inaugural meeting of Beer Club (more on that to come). It was a great time and I decided that we're definitely getting a good sized group or even a small army to attend next year. You heard me, plan on it next year.

A weekend of supporting my local breweries

Last Friday I swung by Surly Brewing to pick up my tickets for Surlyfest. I'm hoping that Paul is able to go with me but either way, I wanted to make sure I had a couple tickets. I also picked up a Surlyfest Tshirt and a Darkness goblet and chatted with Omar for a few minutes about the Vikes, tailgating and the Surlywagon which will have a presence in Minneapolis this fall at football games.

Had a wedding to go in Bloomington and decided to hit the area early to avoid rush hour traffic and have a beer in the meantime. Since Majors was just a mile or two from the church, it seemed like a good place to go. I saw they had Firebrick from Schell's on tap and had been meaning to try that again for awhile so I ordered. It happened to be happy hour so I got a 2-for-1. Nice. I'm not sure if it's because I'm not too familiar with that style (Vienna-style lager) but I wasn't able to pick a whole lot of flavors out of it. It's a solid beer that I rated a 3.3 but it didn't really stand out in the crowd for me. Of course, in a lineup of macrobrews, I'd order this every time. Here's my RateBeer review:
Tap at Majors. Deep copper color and a faint malty aroma. Medium mouthfeel, with the malt again coming through as the main flavor for me. Decent beer, I'll drink it again.

Saturday I went to the State Fair and of course my mission was to see what this beer on a stick from Summit was all about. So I took off, wearing my black Surly shirt to represent and was surprised by how many comments I got on it ranging from "nice shirt" to have-to-stop-and-give-a-high-five. Even the guy in the Summit booth liked it.

Speaking of Summit, the beer on a stick isn't exactly what you might think. It's a small paddle with holes cut out for you to put three 7oz cups of Summit into, one EPA, one Oktoberfest and one Horizon Red. At $7.50 it's not a bad deal for the State Fair, especially if you haven't had them and want to sample some of each. If you brought your paddle back you could get a "refill" for $6.50. So I did and since they let you call audibles I got one Oktoberfest for Allison and two Horizon Reds for myself because that beer is really growing on me.

Also traded in a 27" TV (the gigantic kind) for two four packs of Surly Coffee Bender. The price for electronics has definitely changed quite a bit in the past 5 years or so.

Went bowling later that day and had a couple Surly Benders on tap for only $3.15 which is pretty much like stealing. Check it out if you can - http://www.newhopebowl.net/ Great pizza, good deals on bowling and did I mention $3.15 glasses of Surly Bender?

Sunday was quite uneventful for beer due to back to back fantasy football drafts followed by volleyball at 8:00 but I had to have some beer or it wouldn't have seemed like a draft. Had a couple Coffee Benders during the first draft and a tall Honeyweiss during the second one.

Last night was pretty much the same story, had dinner downtown and it was accompanied by a couple Surly Furious pints. Looking forward to life slowing down again so I can get caught up with all the good beers I have on deck.

Cheers!