I know Erik Mitchell and the Band sounds a little awkward, but I know he doesn’t want to be referred to as The Erik Mitchell Band, but I think there should be a designation between Erik Mitchell playing by himself and with the band. Can I say Erik Mitchell any more times?
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View more pictures from these two shows here, including multiple, short, poor quality video with poor quality audio (I’m sure they love this)!
Regardless. Fortunately, Karen & I have gotten to see Erik Mitchell and the Band play twice in the last three days in Delaware, it doesn’t get any nicer than that! First, we got to go see Erik, Robert, and Corey play over at the Brandywine Zoo in 103F weather. Erik and Robert have played there acoustically a few times this summer already, but this was the first time they were allowed to plug-in, so they did it up and brought Corey down to help rock the animals. It was really a lot of fun hanging at the zoo and watching the band play. But, I will remind everyone that it was 103F on Saturday, so it was very still and very moist fun. I honestly felt kind of bad for the band, the only one that didn’t look like he was going to melt was Corey. After the zoo and a short air conditioning break we all met back up at Mitchell Square Gardens and had some good grub, some good beers, some good company, and some good ol’ cornholin’!
Today at Rockford Park was just as much fun as on Saturday, only a little shorter and a little cooler. Not only that, this time Mitchell was able to muster up John Conahan to come down and sit in on keys with them. John adds a nice dynamic to the flow that these guys kick out and the harmony vocals are typically pretty nice too. Not that he didn’t contribute in a positive fashion this time, but his keys sounded a little “sharp” sometimes tonight. I hope that this four-set looks into playing more shows together because they seem to work together well, some more in Delaware would be especially nice for us locals. It was neat seeing a show at Rockford Park, I didn’t even know they had a summer concert series, go figure. Plus, they open the tower during the performances so we got to climb to the top and check things out, great view of Wilmington all around.
(Plug time) To read and hear more about Erik Mitchell and his band check out some of his websites for all the information you’ll need including set lits, upcoming events, music to listen to, and music to buy.
This year there appears to be a new homebrew competition on the scene, Malt Madness presented by the Lehigh Valley Homebrewers. Of course, I didn’t want to bypass an opportunity!
So, between Garrett and myself we’ll be sending in 6 beers for this competition. Garrett is entering 2 on his own, 2 in conjunction with me, and I’ll be entering 2 on my own also. He is entering his Travelers & Tourists and his Abbey Brown both in the Dubbel category. We’ll be entering the Gnarleywine in the Barleywine category and the Saturday IPA in the American IPA category together. And I’ll be entering my Saison in the Saison category and the Hazelnut Brown in the Specialty Beer category as a Rogue Hazelnut Nectar clone. We’ll see how it all goes, there’s a lot of very drinkable beers in that group.
I’m not too worried about Garrett’s beers, they are both excellent with the T&T as a stand-out to me. The Gnarleywine I am excited to here some feed-back on that one. The IPA I AM worried about though. It is an excellent beer, very big and fresh still, but I am once again having issues with bottle-conditioning for carbonation. I just tried one the other day and we had actually decided to not enter it because of the lack of carbonation, but at the last minute tonight while preparing the beers for shipping I said “screw it!” and decided to enter it anyway. I figured it’s till two weeks away from the competition and maybe the carbonation will come up, because otherwise I think it is an excellent IPA. So, we’ll see. The two I entered on my own I have mixed feelings about. I think the Saison is good, but not really a Saison, so I am waiting to get reamed a new one by the judges on that. I was going to enter it as a Belgian Specialty Beer but could not justify how it was one, so I’ll take an ass-kicking instead. And the Hazelnut I expect to do decent (like a 30 or so), but I can’t imagine there won’t be more stand-out-ish beers in the specialty category that will push mine out of placing. The Hazelnut will be “too normal” next to a Prickly-Pear Sage-Infused Braggot or something ridiculous like that. I was thinking of going up and judging, and I still might, but the competition is all the way up in Allentown and that’s a little far to go early in the morning and then again later in the afternoon after judging all day.
On another note/update it appears as if there is minor secondary fermentation going on in the carboy of ABA with the peaches. I have not pulled the bung or anything to see how things smell in there. Just looking at the carboy makes me think this is going to be a bitch to rack and I’ll have the easy potential to lose at least a gallon of beers, poo.
And on a side note, I’m not sure how much time I am really going to have this week, but hopefully I’ll be able to put up a new post almost every day this week. I really do like it better when the website is used, so check back everyday so as not to miss anything!
Well, I transferred the American Brown Ales over to secondaries and decided I was going to twist one of the five gallon carboys.
With the ABA we brewed and fermented everything identically. So as to not have ten gallons of the same beer (without knowing what it was going to be like) I decided to twist half of the batch in the secondary fermenter. I added fresh peaches, now that’s a twist! I thought a darker brew with the bright sweetness of peaches sounded good to me, I hope I am right.
Originally I had planned on cutting and grilling the peaches to kill any bacteria and acquire all that lovely melanoidin grilled flavor and the syrupy goodness that would have came from the peaches. But at the last moment I remembered something about heat setting the pectins in fruit, or something like that, so that in homebrew the beer won’t fall clear. Not my biggest concern, but no one wants to drink a cloudy beer that is supposed to be clear. So instead I decided on freezing the peaches in hopes of killing any bacteria and to help burst the cell walls of the fruit hopefully releasing even more fruity goodness.
So the original transfer date was to be Saturday, that fell through. Then Sunday, fell through too. Then Monday, instead was the day the peaches went into the freezer. So Tuesday morning the peaches came out of the freezer and into the fridge to thaw during the day. Tuesday night it was time to cube the peaches. They started as three pounds and ended as two and half after pitting them. After they were cubed I decided to take it one step further and pureed the peaches to hopefully have maximum peach exposure in the beer.
The peaches temped out very cold still, 34F to be exact, and I was going to wait to add the beer to them but I was already ready to go. So first I added the peaches to the carboy then racked the ABA on top of the peaches. I gave the carboy a quick stir twice while filling to try and keep the peaches in suspension. I then placed the airlock and have since walked away. I was expecting to see a noticeable secondary fermentation but have not seen much activity at all.
Hopefully this will turn out to be a good experiment. I have only had one real drain pour (Chocolate Covered Cherry Porter), one that kind of turned into a drain pour (The Enigma Stout), and a fifth of a batch that well . . . I saved some taste-buds by getting rid of that one (The Cocoa-Pebble Oatmeal Stout). Thinking back, it has been since 2002 since I made a beer with fruit in it with the Celebration Ale, WOW – 5 years ago!
So essentially over the last three days I prepared to bottle and bottled the Saturday IPA.
It was pretty uneventful per usual, which is always good with bottling. Saturday I put four cases of “clean” (read: no mold/funk) bottles in a PBW hot water solution to soak overnight to help with label removal and to help dissolve any organic material that may remain in the bottles that I didn’t notice.
Sunday came along and I sat in the basement for about three hours delabeling, rinsing, and sanitizing all 96 bottles. This part of brewing for me really is a labor of love, I can’t stand it sometimes. The work itself isn’t hard, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time or something, like I should be doing something more productive.
Monday (yesterday) was the actual bottling day. Karen offered to help me which always makes the time go by faster but also puts me more on edge. I’m not sure why because she knows what she is doing, I guess it’s more of a lack of total control during a delicate part of the process. The bottling went well though, I was filling Karen was capping. This was the 10 gallons of IPA that was fermented with two different yeast strains, then later 1oz. of bourbonized oak chips were added to one of them. After checking the FGs of each carboy (1.015 – OO1 yeast & 1.005 – dry yeast) and sampling each one side by side, I was surprised there really wasn’t too much of a difference. The one with the lower gravity was the one that had the chips added to it and I did not notice any flavor profile that suggested oak or bourbon, oh well. Hopefully we won’t see any problems with carbonation, which has been not 100% as of late.
That’s a picture of a quart of the 001 IPA that I was able to enjoy while bottling. I know the thought of warm uncarbonated realatively young beer to some of you is not appetizing, but I quite enjoyed it.
On Sunday Garret and I whipped up another 20 gallon batch, this time of an American Brown Ale. Hopefully something less hoppy than a brown Pale Ale and less chocolate-roasty than a Porter. Much like the color gray (at least all of the good grays) an ABA is easy to make yet difficult to nail.
Things got started on Saturday bright and early after a mentally foggy and late night before. My plan was to get to Garret’s around 7:30AM, but it was probably closer to 8:00AM by the time I got there and definitely by the time I unloaded the car. This time I brought down some extra stuff with me. Besides the normal carboys I also brought down my burner and propane to contribute to the experiment and the keg of Hazelnut Brown I had since the Scavenger Hunt.
While we were heating the foundation water for the mash I got a crash course in counter pressure filling bottles from a keg. Garret had recently put about a half keg of the Gnarleywine on tap and had decided to CPF the remaining gallon or so into bottles. I have never CPF yet have thought about the possibilities of how useful this technique would be for high alcohol beers that have problems bottle-conditioning (think Double Dubbel and Gnarleywine). It actually wasn’t difficult and made a lot of sense after I say it in motion. Essentially you pressurize an empty bottle so that you add beer at the same pressure that the beer is in the keg, after you pressurize you lay a cushion of CO2 in the bottle as not to oxidize the beer, then add the beer from the keg, and finally quickly cap the bottle. I was quite surprised with the force that the CP filler pushed back with. I think we got 15 or 16 bottles out of what was left.
For the ABA batch we were going to do our first 20 gallon batch in one mash tun, this was the grand experiment. Garret is fortunate to have a lot of stainless steel vessels to try and come up with different configurations on how to make this work. Here is basically what we had and how we did it. We had (2) 28 gallon kettles A & B, (1) 25 gallon kettle, and (1) 14 gallon kettle, two 75,000btu burners #1 & #2 and two March pumps to move liquid around. In the picture at the top the top most kettle is the 28 gallon kettle B, the one below that is the 28 gallon A, and the one below that is the 25 gallon kettle. The one by itself on the right of the picture is the 14 gallon kettle. OK, here we go:
Essentially after we heated the foundation water (while we were CPFing) we pumped that water from the 25 gallon kettle to the 28 gallon kettle A. We mashed in our grains and at that point had about an hour to heat approximately 26 gallons of water to between approximately 180-212 degrees.
We used burner #1 to heat 20 gallons of water in the 25 gallon kettle to 180 degrees and burner #2 to heat 6 gallons of water in the 14 gallon kettle to 212 degrees. Both burners brought the water to the desired temperature in the time frame we were looking for.
We then manually scooped the 6 gallons of boiling water (3 quarts per scoop) into the 28 gallon kettle A with the grains. This was our mash-out water which denatures the enzymes in the grains by raising the temperature thus locking in your fermentation profile, plus making the mash less viscous so it will run off better. The mash then sits for another 10 minutes.
We then pumped the 20 gallons of 180 degree water from the 25 gallon kettle to the 28 gallon kettle B. The 25 gallon kettle was then removed from the burner and placed below the 28 gallon kettle A with the grains in it. So now we essentially have a heavy duty 20 gallon gravity fed brew set-up, well set up.
At this point we recirculated the mash until it ran clear and then let it run off into the 25 gallon kettle which we were using more as a collection vessel/grant than anything else because both the kettles that were large enough to actually boil the wort were now occupied.
This is the first time we had used one of the boil false bottoms in the stainless kettles as a mash tun false bottom. Typically for this size batch we would use (2) 10 gallon coolers. The main benifit to the coolers in the insulation factor, so we wrapped the stainless mash tun up in two sleeping bags to help retain heat which worked perfectly. Definitely better to use one vessel (ease and clean-up) but we were concerned with the differences in the false bottoms. The mash began to slow about 20 minutes into the run-off and threatened to get stuck, so we chose to cut it off, remix the grain, let it re-set-up, re-recirculate and start again.
I forgot to mention, Garret has been looking for a better/easier way to mix this huge amount of grains and water together and has adopted and bettered an idea from one of the guys in his brew club. He now uses a paint stirrer called a Squirrel Mixer that just does one hell of a job mixing the grains and water, I was amazed by its efficiency.
This time, the rest of the run-off ran just fine. We could only collect about 24 gallons in the 25 gallon kettle and we needed more like 26. So once the wort got up to the 24 gallon level we switched the run-off into two plastic 1 gallon pitchers we have. Now we had all the wort collected, but we needed it in one kettle.
We quickly emptied and cleaned the mash tun (which is the 28 gallon kettle A), set it back up as the boil kettle and pumped the wort from the 25 gallon kettle up to the 28 gallon boil kettle now up on burner #1 and dumped in the extra 2 gallons from the pitchers.
At this point everything was essentially ready to go it was just all a matter of doing the right thing in the time sequence. We did happen to run out of propane about half way through the boil, but like any good homebrewer Garret had at least one back-up.
After everything was boiled and chilled and transferred we tried a couple of beers. We had already had a few of Garret’s Titless Wits which were quite tasty. We also tried a Unibroue Ephemere apple beer which was pretty good, like a cross between an effervescent hard cider and a lager. Then we tapped the Hazelnut Brown which was nice also. I wish I had remembered to bring a bottle of Rogue’s Hazelnut Nectar with me (which this beer was modeled after) so we could do a comparison tasting, but I did enjoy it none the less. And we wrapped up the beer tasting with a Stone Ruination ale which a wonder-fuckin-ful beer that I was overly impressed with. Those Stone bastards have mastered the hops my friends, oh yes they have. After that we pretty much wrapped things up, I think both of us exhausted and happy with the results. Looking forward to doing another 20 gallon batch as soon as the weather cools down!
So I transfered the Saturday IPA last weekend (I’m a little behind on posts) into secondaries – man does this beer already smell goo-oo-ood! Let me state once more for the record: OVER a pound and a half total whole leaf hops in this beer – nice!
With this beer we added a 1/2 ounce each Columbus & Simcoe hops to the secondaries, it should be a way hoppy IPA. If you look, at the thumbnail you can see there is a little black spot in the hops today. That lovely black spot is 1oz. of bourbon (Wild Turkey 101) soaked oak chips. These chips have probably been soaking for a good 6 months+ so it should be nice. So that’s 5 gallons of bangin’ American IPA and 5 gallons of bourbon oaked American IPA – SWEET!
OK, we finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last Saturday, so it is now legal to talk to us about the book. Thanks to all for not ruining anything, I’m sure none of you would have done it on purpose. Our media black-out was a success for the week.
I have decided that not only do I have something to say about this book, but many of you probably do too and may not have a sounding-off point. So, I am going to open the ‘comments’ section of this post to let anyone who wants to give there opinion of the book and see if any discussion starts. *****SPOILER WARNING***** to anyone who has not read HP book 7 (or possibly book 6 also if you are the type that has only watched the movies)! Only click on the comments section if you are fully aware that there will be major plot spoiler information contained within. Remember, you have been warned, don’t blame me when you decide to look anyway.
Last Friday Robert & I went down to Fordham Brewing Company in Dover, DE before work to pick up some base grains and a very fair price. We left around 6:30AM so we could stop and get breakfast, get to Fordham, and still make it back to work by 9:00AM.
We already knew where we where going to go for breakfast, Helen’s Famous Sausage House of course! If you have never had a Helen’s sausage sandwich before and you are a breakfast sandwich person, then you are missing out on one of the best breakfast sandwiches ever (heart-attack on a roll). A Helen’s sausage sandwich is two homemade sausage links that are larger than hotdogs deep fried with a fried egg and Cheese-Wiz on a hotdog roll. It is so obnoxious, that I typically take off one of the links and eat it first, then eat the remainder as a sandwich. It is an awfully good treat, but typically my digestive track is correct for the rest of the day.
After Helen’s we continued down to Fordham. We met up with Walter the head brewer there and bullshitted for a little while. We talked about what’s new at Fordham, how things have been in the last year, and when am I going to come down and volunteer again. While we were there (at 8:00 in the morning) Walt offered us some beer samples after a very brief and informal brewery tour. We tried two beers, my favorite their Tavern Ale which is only sold on tap and is a cross between an American and an English Pale Ale and there new summer seasonal which was a Hefeweizen aged on raspberry puree. The summer seasonal was pretty good, definitely something Karen would have liked, but it is unfortunate for them that they missed some sort of labeling approval and could not bottle it this year, so it is only available on draft.
Some of the news I picked up down at Fordham is huge for them. First off they hired two new employees, both brewers, one from Old Dominion in VA and one from the American Brewer’s Guild. Also, Fordham has “bought out” Old Dominion, now owning Old Dominion in VA, Fordham in DE, and all the Ram’s Heads in MD, and reforming under the mother company name of Coastal Brewing Company. On top of that, Anheuser-Busch apparently “bought out” a large chunk (49% I believe) of Coastal Brewing. Supposedly it has to do with a distribution deal, and Fordham and Old Dominion products should soon be available minimally up and down the east coast wherever Anheuser-Busch products are available – which is everywhere. I believe Walt said that Fordham currently produces around 7,500 bbls of beer annual right now and A-B promised them an increase to 250,000 bbls of beer annually in the next five years with the majority of the production coming out of Dover, DE. Take all of this with a grain of salt because it was all spoken about very conversationally and I am only putting down what I think I remember. So enjoy the tasty nuggets!
Karen and I headed over to Stewart’s Brew Pub in Bear, DE for their 12th Anniversary party. The main theme for the party was that Stewart’s was going to rock out with 12 Barleywines.
Before we arrived at Stewart’s I wanted to stop by Garret’s house so that I could try our almost one year old barleywine on tap. Not only would I get to try a draft variation but I could also compare ours to all of the ones Stewart’s would have. Garret has split his half of the Gnarleywine into two half sized kegs. One keg he left alone and let the beer age, the other keg he added oak wood chips that had been soaked in bourbon. The Gnarleywine at Garret’s from the kegerator is basically the same as what I have in bottles, except his is carbonated and mine is well, not. I thought the flavor and aroma were as expected and the carbonation did help the mouthfeel. I hadn’t had one in a few months and was really surprised at how hot the Gnarleywine still seemed. He then brought up a taste of the Boubonized Gnarleywine and though the keg seemed to have lost pressure and lost carbonation I thought it was incredible. I thought the oak and bourbon notes really tied together the hotness that the Gnarleywine had so that it seemed more appropriate. I think the BGNW is where it is at.
After Garret’s we headed on over to Stewart’s. It was pretty busy, but not obnoxiouly so. We decided to order the 12 barleywine flight so that we could sample them all. They had 4 vintages from Stewart’s and 8 guest barleywines. My favorites were Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot and most of the Stewart’s vintages and Karen’s was the Young’s Old Nick from England. We also picked up some sandwiches while we were there. After the barleywines and dinner I wound up talking to an old friend I hadn’t seen in like 10 years, Wyatt Creswell, while enjoying one of Stewart’s delicious American Brown Ales. Very hoppy (in a good way) for an American Brown yet still rich and malty – nice. Overall I’d say the Stewart’s 12th Anniversary party was a success. I need to remember to check out some of their other events.
This weekend, July 20-22, was the annual event at Brewery Ommegang called Belgium Comes To Cooperstown (BCTC). This was their 4th year holding the event and my first year attending. I must say, all of the good things I have heard about this event are true, it was a really great time!
Click HERE to see all the rest of the pictures. Sorry there isn’t many, I kept forgetting I had my camera with me.
This year Ommegang limited the number of tickets being sold to 800 tickets (previously I don’t believe there was a cap). Of those 800 tickets, 200 of these tickets were to be VIP tickets. VIP ticket holders were entitled to a 750ml bottle of Ommegeddon (there newest beer), a special 6 course meal paired with beer Friday night, camping Friday night, a ticket to the BCTC beer festival event on Saturday, and camping Saturday night for $120. Not a bad deal in my opinion for a weekend of fun, but unfortunately these tickets sold out in 5 days. The other 600 tickets included a ticket to the BCTC beer festival and Saturday night camping for $90, a little bit pricey but could be worth the cost. These tickets sold out also before we got a chance to purchase them. So about two weeks ago now I contacted the brewery to see if they still needed volunteers for the fest. They said they did and we were on our way. For the volunteers included was camping Friday and Saturday and a ticket to the BCTC beer fest on Saturday – plus the deal was for every four hour shift you volunteered you were compensated with a case of Ommegang beer! So all of this for the cost of our time, I think we scored!
We had been in contact with the brewery previously and signed up for a volunteer shift both on Friday and Saturday, that way guaranteeing we could camp both nights plus so we both could score two cases of Ommegang beer each. So, it was Robert and I who decided to volunteer for Ommegang. I took off from work on Friday and Monday and he was already off. We left the house on Friday around 6:30AM (just slightly behind schedule) to make the 5ish hour drive. We needed to be there by noon to start our first shift. Both days we had 12-4 shifts, not bad. Everything went fine on the drive up except for the hour of stand-still traffic we hit on the North East Extension of the PA Turnpike thanks to an environmental spill. We made it to Ommegang right at noon and luckily for us they were not quite ready for the volunteers so we were able to pitch our tent and throw our gear down before starting our shift. On Friday I got assigned to traffic control. Essentially we (myself, a guy from Milwaukee we met named Craig, and Robert for part of the time) had to direct the different cars where to go depending on what they were there for. Of course we were told conflicting information from different employees, but eventually Craig and I agreed on what we were telling the cars so at least from our end it started to go smoothly. One of the groups I checked in was the crew from Stewart’s in Bear, so it was good to see Ric and Natalie to know some familiar faces. About a third of the way through our shift Robert was reassigned to do another section, basically they said they needed some muscles and he volunteered, so he got the job of being the ‘hey-can-you-move-this’ guy.
After our shift on Friday we went back to the beer booth to get out vouchers for our case of beer, it was very much like getting your paycheck, and when we went to the store to acquire the cases it was very much like blowing your whole paycheck at the bar, bizarre. Anyway, we were allowed to choose from the Ommegang (Abbey Ale), Rare Vos (Amber Ale), Hennepin (Saison), and the Witte (White Ale). We also found out we could upgrade by paying extra to the two “bigger” beers they have the Three Philosophers (Quad) and the Ommegeddon (Belgian Farmhouse-style with Brettanomyces). We got paid with the Ommegang and Ommegeddon for that shift. After we were done there the Friday night fun began and we started drinking some top notch beers with fellow campers and playing some Cornhole until dark. After a dinner break, we began walking around the campgrounds and hanging and drinking with all the great and diverse people that were there. We probably crashed around 2AM calling it a night.
Saturday morning came around early, we were probably up between 7-8AM, partially because that’s how camping goes and partially because there was a mandatory meeting for the volunteers from 9-10AM on how to tell if someone is drunk and how to deal with them. The meeting was a pure waist of time. The lady in charge could have honestly made her point much clearer if she would have said what she really wanted us to hear and been done in 10 minutes instead of drawing it out with stories and losing most of out attentions. After the meeting we had about two hours before our shift began. I’m glad we had that break for while we were sitting in the meeting I had delayed-hang-over set in and I really needed those next two hours to drink some water, eat some food, and find my face.
For our shifts on Saturday Robert and I were assigned as beer pours for the first half of the fest. So the actual beer fest part of the whole weekend was scheduled from 2-6PM on Saturday, our shift was 12-4PM. So by volunteering we worked half of the tasting time but got to drink half of the tasting time too. There were some volunteers that did the same thing but flipped, I’m glad that isn’t what we got. Anyway, from 12-2 we were suppose to help set up and from 2-4 pour beers at the fest. Each volunteer was assigned to a specific brewery – Robert got The Tap Brewpub and I got Troegs. Well, The Tap never showed up and Troegs rolled up with a posse of about four people so they didn’t need my help. So instead for the first two hours we just randomly helped who ever needed help, mostly hauling bags of ice and standing around. At two o’clock I went back to Troegs to see if they need help pouring and of course they didn’t and Robert hooked up with the guy from Shelton Bros. Distributing and helped him pour Jolly Pumpkin beers for two hours. So from 2-4 I basically walked around again, refilled ice for a few people, took out some trash, and basically killed time until four. At four Robert and I stripped off our volunteer shirts, grabbed our beer case vouchers, went to pick up our beers (Three Philosophers and the Hennepin this time), ran back to the car to drop them off, and ran back to the fest to play catch-up. In all honesty, two hours of drinking huge Belgian-style beers was probably better than four because I was starting to “loose my edge” after two hours. Some highlights of beers I can remember are the Gorm Noire from Three Floyds, the Hop Goddess and Ink Well from Offshore, the 06.06.06 Vertical Epic from Stone, and everything from the Lost Abbey.
After the fest we moseyed back to the camp site, grabbed some more beers and the Cornhole sets and started all over again. We wound up finishing the last Cornhole game on Saturday a good 30 minutes after dark. It was pretty sweet having the set with us because we got to hang out with several other people who we may not have met otherwise, everyone was totally into the game. We also happened to run into the Unibroue representative while playing and he had me follow him back to his car and he hooked us up with six 750ml of Unibroue beer, Chambly Noire, La Fin Du Monde, Maudite, and some others. After it got dark it was time for wondering around the camp grounds again. While we were wondering around we saw a game similar to Cornhole but very different at three different campsites. It was like mini-cornhole played with metal washers instead of corn bags. The boards were smaller and closer together too, plus two of the three sets had three holes on the boar instead of one, it looked quite interesting. We wound up kicking it with the Iron Hill compound, the Stewart’s crew, and the employees from Ommegang mostly. After a while (near midnight) a cool band took the stage, there was live music from 2PM-2AM. They were called Mecca Bodega and they threw down some serious percussion good time dancin’ fun. We kicked it in the music tent during most of there set. After the Mecca Bodega throw-down we meandered back to our tent to hit the hay about 2AM.
When Sunday morning arrived it was between 7-8AM again. So a whopping total of about 10 hours sleep for the weekend, nice! Fortunately, besides being a bit tired, we both woke up feeling rather fresh. We took our time eating breakfast, drinking coffee, and breaking down camp. While we were breaking down camp two separate other campers that had volunteered came over and asked us if we wanted one of their beer vouchers because they didn’t have enough room in their cars to bring home the beer. Of course we took the vouchers and thanked them several times. We redeemed these two vouchers for the only two styles of beer we hadn’t acquired yet which were the Witte and the Rare Vos. So we wound up scoring one of each style beer Ommegang makes, sweet! To be fair and because we wanted to, we decided we were going to split each case, so we actually got a half case of each style a piece. Packing the car was interesting, but we got it all to fit. It was funny, driving the car I could really feel the weight of everything we had, but after a half an hour or so on the highway it felt “normal”.
All in all it was a great weekend and I would totally go back again. In all honesty I feel as if volunteering was definitely a good choice and would probably do the same next year. Robert has already talked to Ommegang about trying to get Erik Mitchell and the band booked to play next year, so that’s really cool, especially since the person we need to talk to is one of the ones we were hanging out with a lot. For me, this is now the fest that all the rest will get compared to, thanks to Brewery Ommegang!
