So Friday 12.11.09 was the annual Sly Fox Brewery single hop variety celebration date, this year dubbed the Hop Project.
See the rest of the Sly Fox Hop Project pictures HERE
This was the sixth year Sly Fox has done its single hop variety year long deal with it climaxing during the celebration date, originally called IPA Day then later called the Hop Project. I have been to the last four years and have had a great time, though this year is the last year. They say (straight dope) it is a combo of reasons roughly based on the idea that the year long brewing of the single hops beers is taxing on the brewing schedule and they do not officially celebrate for their anniversary, which happens to also be in December. So, basically it appears as if they will stop doing the single hop beers throughout the year, yet will retain a celebration day in December for their anniversary with promises of not disappointing. Fair enough.
This year it was Erik, Robert, and I that went up. The doors open at 10AM and we arrived a little before 11AM. Three out of the last four years we have sat in the same seat, this year being one of them. So from being in the same area the last four years I feel as though it gives us a unique perspective on the the flow. I think Sly Fox definitely has there systems down; waitresses were on top of their stuff, beer flights and food flowed easily, and I don’t think I heard any complaints. But, I felt as though it were less busy than in the past. Typically the restaurant fills in wave; there’s the early morning idiots like us, then the lunch crowd / people who take half days from work, and the end of work / happy hour time frame crowd. We’re typically out before it gets much later, but I would assume there is a later resurgence also. Anyway, usually by the time lunch rolls around it begins to fill up, and by the time the after work crowd shows up it is busy, I didn’t feel that way this year, it never felt full to me, but maybe that was just me.
Another change was in the past Sly Fox had always brewed IPAs to showcase the hop varietal beers, this year it was Pale Ales, which may have been a good idea. You figure, a Pale Ale has less malt and is less complex than an IPA so there should be a better chance to show case the hops, plus Pale Ales are lower in alcohol which lets people sample the same amount without feeling the effects so heavily, and there is an opportunity for Sly Fox to use less ingredients thus make more money. They sold the beers in three small flights with five ounce beers, four beers per flight. If I remember correctly my favorites from each flight were the Cask 2009 Odyssey, the Boadicea, and the Argentine Cascade. After the flights we stayed for lunch and a couple pints. We were probably there from roughly 11-ish to 5-ish, which is slightly longer than I anticipated but not as long as it has been in the past.
Overall hats off to Sly Fox once again for one of my favorite annual beer events, and I can’t wait to see what they pull off for next year with their anniversary party.
So Sunday (9.27.09) was the 4th Annual Dogfish Dash 5K/10K and Robert’s and my 4th year participating in the 10K.
There were a few changes this year. First was the name (see shirt above), it has it listed as the Off-Centered Dogfish Dash, umm, ok, was that necessary, whatever :). And while I’m on the shirt, what’s up with the chicken in the logo instead of the dogfish? Seriously we asked a couple people that worked there and they all were like “dunno”. So, anyway, back to the real changes, first off it was in Milton this year versus Rehoboth the past three. Milton is an odd little town, but it was nice to take a run through it. Also, it was big, capped at 1,000 people and sold out, though supposedly about 25% of the people didn’t show because of the rain. Also, the food was all cold food versus hot food and cold food at the pub, understandable though since there is no pub at the brewery. But the biggest change was the lack of flow of fine fine Dogfish Head beer. Basically they had one jockey-box set-up with four handles, they couldn’t pour the beer fast enough plus it was pouring over 50% foam, ugh. It seriously took us over 20 minutes to get one beer, our ONLY beer from the jockey-box. They later brought out about 10 cases of Festina Peche which they blew through in like 30 minutes to help alleviate the jockey-box scenario. And later we found the tasting tent, which was way off to the side, where they were pouring about 6oz servings of Palo Santo, 90 Minute, Punkin, and Midas Touch – at least that tent had some flow. I know DFH is already aware of this “problem” and I guarantee it will be fixed for next year.
BUT, besides the changes, which sounds like bitching, it was a good time! We got lucky with the rain. I woke up about 5AM (about and hour and a half before I had to wake up) to the sound of rain pouring on the roof of my dad’s place. When we got to the brewery about 7:30AM it was still drizzling. By 8AM for the start it had stopped. By the time we wrapped up our 10K about 9AM it still wasn’t raining. But within, say 15 minutes, it rained for over the next hour as we all tried to enjoy beer, yogurt, and cereal. Oh, and no coffee, WTF!?
And, in case anyone was wondering, both Robert and I were running about 80%+. If I would have had 2 Advil, another 30 minutes, and a large coffee before the run I would have been 100% easy. Much better than last year, where we both were like 10-20%, yuck. So, kind of regardless, we’ll be back again next year! Thanks Dogfish Head, thanks Matt.
OK, so last Saturday (09.19.09) I was down at Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, DE for the 5th Annual Intergalactic Bocce Tournament, and it was just as bizarro as ever!
If you want to see the rest of the pictures click here.
So once again the Erik Mitchell Band was invited back as the “Bocce Band” to play everyone’s favorite show of the year, the Dogfish Head Intergalactic Bocce Tournament. Fortunately for me, for this gig in particular, I have been dubbed essentially an honorary member of the band. My main “duty” as being in the band is to hopefully be able to borrow the van from work (which I was able to), help set-up and break-down equipment, and take pictures to document the day. All while enjoying several refreshing Dogfish Head beers and hanging out with the freaks. I think I can handle that! From the bands perspective this is quite a “big” gig in the sense of the amount of time they play and the amount of songs they play. This year they started roughly around 1:30PM and finished roughly around 8:00PM, so like 6.5 hours. They played 4 sets, with at least 12 songs per set, except for maybe the fourth set. Each set was roughly 1.5 hours long, so in the whole time frame they really only took less than an hour break spread throughout. So, if you’re interested here is a copy of the 2009 Dogfish Head Bocce Tournament Set List from the show, enjoy.
Besides the band, there was so much else going on! This tournament is a total freak fest in the best way possible. When DFH talks about doing things for Off-Centered People, these are their people. We ran into lots of familiar faces like Tom and Eric from Punkin Drublic with a crazy new Amish theme, Jim and John from Midas Touch My Balls who were the old guys last year and this year they were the old guys widows (with obituaries and everything), John Deere Flava Flav, T-Pain, and Shawty Pimp from the Pallino Pimps rockin out their nautical “I’m On A Boat” theme, Lee (Nacho Libre) and the rest of the Alpha Males kickin a construction theme with man hole … covers, and of course last years champs Bonsai Bocce running with the same theme as last year in their Karate Kid gear, plus Real Fake Tits and his crew from Mama’s Roast Beef were rolling with a German beer girl theme, and Sam and his peeps were crazy cross-dressing bocce lovers … anyone else in the freak show? Oh yeah, Motley Brue with Nikki Fuckin’ Six Pack were back after being gone last year and being Motley Jue the year before that, so they were kicking their 80’s glam rock gear, Knights of the Malted Balls (2009 champs!) had there same knight gear on, Beer Junta (I think that’s their names) had a Mad Scientist type thing going on (sorry if I’m mixing two teams together), the Bocce Beer Monks were there again but by the time Saturday rolled around their team was basically out of costume just relaxing, also Jebus was back again with the Holy Rollers rocking out a baby Jebus and the three wise men type theme this year, and Cat Bird Ass Brewery switched things up and were bikers this year, I think they changed their name too, but I can’t remember to what, and of course the winning team from Arizona from the DFH West Bocce Tournament these guys had full size fabric Dogfish Head bottles for costumes, they looked pretty cool, and I think the last team was a group of architects and/or engineers who have been working with Dogfish Head to redo the exterior of the brewery, look at the pictures to see what I mean.
I spent a lot of my time hanging out with the different teams that weren’t actively playing, and hanging out with some of the Dogfish Head staff, so big hey to Audrey, Marissa, Matt, and John. I also tried to take a bunch of pictures and actually filmed a couple short videos of the band too. With the pictures I originally was going to borrow Karen’s camera, but when she lent it to me we realized the LCD screen on the back was cracked, and with a digital camera that makes it much more difficult to see what you’re actually shooting. So I instead I used Erik’s camera, which worked out just fine. He also brought the video camera but the battery wasn’t fully charged. So I think (Erik has the camera so I am not sure) we have about 20-40 minutes of each the second, third, and fourth sets from the show. I actually can’t wait to see them no matter how poor the quality or short they are. The food I thought was also superior this year in my opinion. They again had it catered and lunch was cold sandwiches, wraps, chips, fruit, that kind of stuff and it was pretty good, and dinner was more hot food with a BBQ flair, ribs, pork sandwiches, all sorts of sides – yeah dinner was real good. It was actually smart for DFH to do dinner at Milton instead of Rehoboth in my opinion because it freed up their upstairs from all the freaks and didn’t overwhelm their kitchen with like an extra 60+ orders on a Saturday night. They also did the awards ceremony at Milton this year, which I assume went well, but the band was packing up their equipment during it as to not hold things up because we were already behind schedule with the buses.
All in all it was a great time, from the Friday night party before the party, or Bocce Eve as we have dubbed it, which we determined has the feeling of Christmas Eve and Mischief Night rolled into one – hyper anticipation, to breakfast at Timmy D’s (that’s for you Carson), to the ridiculous bus ride home (how often do you look forward to a bus ride?), all the way through the Saturday night mayhem. Yeah, that’s the cool part, just because bocce is over and we’re no longer in Milton doesn’t mean the fun stops. This year Erik announced during the show that we’d be showing our 3rd place winning movie from the Dogfish Head Film Fest “World Wide Clout” back at our hotel room and essentially invited everyone back. Fortunately we only had like 15 people show up, people from all sorts of teams, the architects, the pimps, the old ladies, and I think the construction guys. Then after the WWC showing and hanging it was time to raid the Dogfish Head brew pub again, so we were down there enjoying ourselves for a while. And of all things bizarro we ran into a couple from Austin, TX who also had entered the Film Fest who happen to be at the pub and recognized Robert and I. I swear, with how crazy everything was that day it seriously felt like we imagined them there, the timing was just crazy. Oh, he also announced about our silly shaving bet with Robert, so hopefully that sparked some interest there too.
So, not to make this post any longer, I’ll leave you with a couple links to even MORE pictures if you are so inclined to look at more drunk cross dressing people playing bocce :). First are pictures from Jimmy Balls from MTBM here. Next are the pictures from the “unofficial” Dogfish Head photographer, Jess Daleiden, for the bocce tournament, you can find Friday’s pictures here (which is the day we were not there) and Saturday’s pictures here. If anyone wants more just ask, there’s always more from this event. And in case your interested, re-caps of the past: 2008, 2007, & 2006 (sorry no 2005).
The trip was kind of a three part trip, first to Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY, second to Ft. Kent, ME, and third to the Bottle and Cork in Dewey Beach, DE to see Keller Williams. It was both a long week and a fast week if that makes any kind of sense. It started last Friday July 31st with Erik, Robert, and myself going up to Brewery Ommegang to volunteer for their Belgium Comes to Cooperstown (BCTC) event. This is the third year Robert and I have done it and the first Erik has joined us. It was very similar to the last two, but with a couple legal changes. It seems Ommegang ran into some issues with the State of New York and beer festivals in between last years and this. For my volunteer shift I was pouring beer for a brewery from CT called Olde Burnside Brewing Company, they were pretty nice guys and I had a blast. Both Friday and Saturday nights were of course big party nights, tons of fun.
See the rest of the pictures from Ft. Kent, ME HERE.
From Cooperstown we travelled to Ft. Kent, ME which is pretty much the northernmost most part of Maine. It was a 12 hour drive from Ommegang to Ft. Kent. We stayed at this cool lodge called the Trackdown Kennels & Lodge. It’s basically a hunters lodge, but since it was off season it was just a cool chill lodge for us to kick it in. We then spent the next two days with Robert’s family, who’s father is originally from Ft. Kent, for his parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. I originally was a little hesitant in going up, I had never even met his parents before, but soon after we met them I knew we would be OK. Ft. Kent is very laid back, almost additively so. Once I really got use to the vibe (which was just about when we were leaving) I could have kicked it there for quite a while. The Anniversary party was pretty much a family reunion with about 90 members of his family there and people traveling in from as far as AZ and CA, it was very cool.
See the rest of the pictures from Keller Williams HERE.
Then from Ft. Kent we travelled back to DE, it was about 13 hours, which is actually the fastest I have ever made that drive. I had been to Limestone, ME twice, which is very near Ft. Kent, and if my memory serves me right it was closer to 18 hours both times, so I was pleased to say the least. We got home about midnight-ish on Wednesday and on Thursday Robert, Karen, and I were leaving to head to Dewey Beach to see Keller Williams at the Bottle and Cork. There were a bunch of people we were meeting down there for the show; Craig, Alycia, Abby, and Wooly. The show was tons of fun though it took quite a while for the crowd to really get into it, lot of talking and such, but hey it’s a bar I guess. Keller played a ton of cover songs, so that’s both cool and also a little disappointing just because I would have liked to see more originals. Anyway, after the show we all went back to Abby’s dad’s beach house in Millville and hung up late and then got up early and got going. Friday Robert and I were wiped and we actually cut the beach portion of the trip a day short, originally planning on staying until Saturday.
Overall it was a really great trip, and a great way to spend a week off from work. Hopefully there will be more great trips like that in the future. If you want more details on anything or have any questions let me know, I just don’t feel like typing too too much right now.
“I Am A Craft Brewer” is a collaborative video representing the camaraderie, character and integrity of the American Craft Brewing movement. Created by Greg Koch, CEO of the Stone Brewing Co. and Chris & Jared of Redtail Media…and more than 35 amazing craft brewers from all over the country. The video was shown to a packed audience of 1700 craft brewers and industry members at the 2009 Craft Brewers Conference as an introduction to Greg’s Keynote Speech entitled “Be Remarkable: Collaboration Ethics Camaraderie Passion.” As is tradition for the CBC Keynote, a toast to the audience was offered. This time, the beers offered for the toast were all collaboratively brewed craft beers including Isabella Proximus, Collaboration Not Litigation, AleSmith/Mikkeller/Stone Belgian Style Triple, Jolly Pumpkin/Nøgne-Ø/Stone Special Holiday Ale, and 2009 Symposium Ale “Audacity of Hops.”
A couple days ago on Friday I was invited to a “free” happy hour event at ZoT restaurant in Philadelphia.
My friend Sharon won a “free” happy hour for her work by putting her business card in one of those things on the bar, but she doesn’t remember putting one in there. Anyway, the happy hour was from 6:30-8:30PM and included free mussels and 1/2 price drafts – at a Belgian bar – you know I’m there! Basically the deal worked out that it was 1 free kilo of mussels (however you’d like them prepared, and they had like 30 preparations) for every 4 people that came. We had 10 people show up and kind of had to pry a little to get the third set of mussels to come out. Plus, I was surprised that they advertised over 150 beers but only had like 6 drafts, 3 beers from Belgium and like 3 American-style Belgian beers – whatever still cool.
All-in-all it was a really fun time and we didn’t leave until like 12:00AM. I would totally go back there again. And not to compare it to Monk’s (as I am sure every other Belgian bar in Philly is), but in comparison to Monk’s 😉 it was much easier to get into, much more room, and the wait-staff seemed less douchey. If you’re in the Philly area and what to check out another Belgian bar, check out ZoT! Thanks, Sharon.
It’s a wrap, or whatever such nonsense they say when all the shooting for a film is done. So, now time to celebrate!
We actually finished shooting yesterday, Monday, February 16, 2009. We were suppose to finish on Sunday, but we had technical difficulties and had to re-shoot a scene on Monday. The good news is the Monday footage was even better. Still, I’m not going to say much about the film. But, it is due to DFH by March 1st and the Film Fest is the first weekend in April, so probably between those two dates it will become available to all to watch. Now it’s time to finish the editing, focus on the soundtrack, and add some sound effects. It’s going to be sweet, though more of the burden has been shifted to Erik and Sharon now. Break a leg, or some other such nonsense 🙂
Erik, Sharon, Robert, and myself arrived at West Chester at about 1:30PM. There was about a 20 minute wait for tables, so we put our name in and grabbed a beer. I knew I would be drinking Belgian-style beers all day, so I decided to start with something else. I got IH’s seasonal beer an American Brown, it was really good, but I think the one that Garrett and I brewed packed in more flavor.
After we got a table we all ordered the 10 beer Belgian sampler. At $20 a piece it was a good way to try a lot of different beers. I felt slightly bad for our waitress because she was going to have to bring out 40 little cups, but at the same time she already hada $80 tab running and we’d only been there 2 minutes, I guess it’s fair. Anyway, we got to try a pretty good selection of the beers, here are the ones I can remember:
And, those were only the ones I tasted, there were others that kicked before we got to taste them and others that hadn’t gone on tap by the time we left around 7:30PM. Basically they had 10 designated taps in the back with a A, B, and sometimes C beer that would come on. So depending on when you ordered your sampler or what time it was when you arrived it would depend on what was available. I think we got to try a pretty large array. I think my two favorites were the Cherry Dubbel from Iron Hill’s North Wales location that the guy who worked there kept referencing as Larry’s Cherry which sounded all sorts of weird/wrong to me. Also the Permanent Midnight from Iron Hill’s Lancaster location was really good too. One weird thing about that beer, Robert pulled two plastic “pubic hairs” out of his sample, it was pretty bizarre. Fortunately he didn’t choke on them or anything. He really could have made a fuss with the management, but he played it cool instead and just wanted to warn them that it happened so hopefully to avoid any situations with other patrons.
Overall it was a real good time and am looking forward to going up again next year. My one piece of advice, if it is at all doable, to Iron Hill would be to have all of the beers on tap at once. That way, say there are 20 beers available, they could have four 5 beer samplers available. The samplers wouldn’t be so overwhelming for the waitstaff, there would be more beer options for the patrons, and you could choose more carefully what it was you are trying to drink if there were specific beers that you really wanted to try. Just a thought.
Recently back from our third year in a row of celebrating New Year’s Eve at Dogfish Head Brewpub.
(This picture just seems to capture the New Year’s vibe)
You can click here to check out the rest of the pictures.
Per usual DFH put on one hell of a party! For NYE DFH has two dinners available, an early seating at 6:30 so you can have a good dinner, but plan your own NYE festivities, and a late seating at 9:00 so you can have a good dinner, AND plan your NYE festivities around DFH. The first year we opted for the early dinner and to go back to the beach house and do our own thing, fun, but not as fun as it could be. So last year and this year we chose to do the late seating and get a hotel room within walking distance, smart – very smart. Things were only slightly different this year than last, last year I believe dinner last year was at 8:30 and was $75, this year it was at 9:00 and was $85. The difference? I think it gave DFH more time in between the two dinners to make sure everything was straight, plus the $85 included gratuity as the $75 did not. I liked that it was included, but it makes me wonder how many of the wait-staff got screwed last year?
The menu was bangin’, actually I think my favorite of the three years so far. Typically there is some course that I am not really big on, not really so much this year. Anyway, here’s the menu:
Truffled Butternut Squash Soup paired with a pint of Punkin’ Ale
Warm Lobster Salad paired with a 10 oz of Midas Touch
Seared Foie Gras and Lingonberry Jam on Brioche Toast paired with a 10 oz vintage Black & Blue
Prosciutto-Wrapped Beef Tenderloin paired with a 10 oz Palo Santo Marron
Brown Honey Rum Tiramisu paired with a 10 oz vintage World Wide Stout
I’ll try to briefly run through the menu, but you know how briefly can go sometimes. I am not a squash kind of guy, I don’t really dislike it anymore, but it is not my friend. Anyway, the soup was ridiculous, I could have eaten enough for a meal. It was paired with the Punkin’ Ale which makes sense, but after about a half pint of Punkin’ – I’m good. The Lobster “Salad” was my king of salad! A big pile of homemade roasted garlic mashed potatoes, with freshly steamed big chunks of lobster, a little arugala spread around with large slivers of parmesan on top – delicious. None of us had had Foie Gras before so we were all excited and apprehensive about trying it. It was OK. This was actually the course I was looking the most forward to and it was the one I was closest to being disappointed about. I would definitely like to try it again, but it wasn’t a big seller for me. When the beef tenderloin came out I almost lost it. For a fourth course plate this baby was full! It was probably an 8 0z cut of beef wrapped in prosciutto (I liked this better than bacon), along with blue cheese mashed potatoes and some random veggies. I barely ate the veggies, and the mashed potatoes were great, but I had already grubbed on the ones with the lobster, but the beef, – the beef was delicious. I really could only eat half by this point, but it didn’t matter. My only complaint was they were not cooked evenly, in the sense that all of ours were medium except for Dave’s and his was medium-rare and tasted that much better. Oh, well. Finally the tiramisu (probably my favorite dessert of all time) was bangin’. Very well made with just enough rum for flavor but to keep it from getting boozy, I could only finish half of this also.
And the beers . . . ah, yes, the beers. We arrived at about quarter of 9:00 so we had time for a pre-game beer. Originally I tried to order a brewpub exclusive porter called Arms Akimbo Porter, but they had taken it off for the night for the special beers, bummer. So I went with a 60 Minute IPA which lasted until the beef tenderloin came out, geez. As I’ve already said the Punkin’ was fine, but not my favorite. Midas Touch was a good change because I hardly ever buy it, mental note – buy Midas Touch more. The vintage Black & Blue was OK too, I’d rather it was Red & White, but I understand the choice for it paired perfectly with the lingonberry jam. Before the Palo Santo Marron came out I was talking it up to Dave as one of my top 3 favorite DFH beers, he was stoked to try it. When it came out he took one sip and pushed his glass over to me saying I could finish it, different strokes I suppose. Then we ended with the WWS which is always an ass-kicker. I always know it, but always forget about it. WWS is one of those beers you should drink alone, not five beers in and drinking more later. Let’s just say this was the beer that made the night shift perspective, not completely in a bad way.
Also, for the second year in a row, Nate Myers and the Aces were playing. They are a blues-rock-harmonica-heavy band that randomly covers some fun hip-hop tracks, I really dig these guys. Also, they have a song called “Jager & Waffles” so you know they’re good in my book! Of course we picked up the CD.
The next morning found everyone in decent shape and we rolled like we meant business. A little greazy diner breakfast followed by out traditional shot and a beer at Irish Eyes. The shot and a beer kept on expanding until half the day was gone and we were all feeling fine. A Nic-O-Boli for lunch and we were ready to call it a day. New Year’s Eve has always been fun times for me, I think I enjoy the safe but ruckus NYE-style. Until next time I suppose!
I know, I know, it was over a week ago and my slacker-ass is only now getting around to posting about the Kennett Brewfest, oh well, deal with it.
So two Saturdays ago (yes, 10.04.08) was the annual Kennett Brewfest, probably the closest and best brewfest that I go to the most regularly. It’s funny, with me, Kennett has a reputation of being either really good or not so good, but never bad, and they seem to happen every other year. Well, since last year was the closest fest I’ve been to at Kennett where I almost didn’t have a good time, you know this one couldn’t suck!
A couple changes were made to help make things better, but really it boiled down to two changes that kind of go hand-in-hand, that being only a limited number of tickets were sold this year and there were no day of sales for tickets. They also happened to have more breweries this year (mostly distributor represented), so between the extra booth spaces for people to visit and the little bit less people it felt a little roomier and generally the lines moved a bit faster. Biggest complaint for this year, which has been a problem for a couple years now, is they have one section where there is an aisle where maybe eight breweries face each other from each side. Well, once the lines form for all sixteen of those breweries it is almost impossible to get through that aisle plus there appears to be a lot of line jumping. It was the only area where waiting for a beer kind of sucked.
Highlights for me? Definitely Voo Doo’s Big Black Voo Doo Daddy, one hell of an Imperial Stout, Oak Aged Arrogant Bastard from Stone never disappoints, and the beers from Oskar Blues were all great. Until next year!
