Notable Moments in 2010 Beer Drinking

And almost a week has passed, but in that week I tried 14 new beers! By far my biggest week of the year fell, not coincidentally, on the same week as my beeriest uncle's visit. Fresh from a five-week high school Europe tour (his eighth running?), I was psyched to score a Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus, as well as a couple classic Cali IPAs. Not to be outdone, my Uncle Mike on my mom's side brought nine Thai beers back with him on his latest return trip; he lives in Thailand. Being known as the beer guy has its perks: I've accepted beer gifts from traveling friends, generous preschool parents and various extended family members. The beer crowd is generally a giving one. Now, if only I could land some presents from breweries, distributors, liquor stores...

Some other highlights of the year so far:

KBS.

My favorite beer of 2010 has undoubtedly been Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout. I had a 2008 bottle resting in my basement, and when beer spending ceased, those beers I'd been saving became fair game. It's hard to believe I'd gone this long without having this stout of midwest legend, but sometimes it's worth keeping some prize beers untried as long as you can. Luckily, there are so many thousands of pot-of-gold beers, I'll be able to spend my lifetime following rainbows.

The KBS was a perfect stout; better, in my opinion, than its Midwest counterparts Surly Darkness and Bells Expedition Stout, and even better, I thought, than Deschutes The Abyss. Of course, I didn't try these back-to-back. You'd be in trouble if you did. But I was licking my lips after every KBS sip, drumming on the kitchen counter with excitement, in the middle of one of those rare, perfect beer drinking moments. Motor oil black, with a rich, boozy blast of coffee, oak, vanilla and bourbon. The flavor sequence is magnificent: the roasted coffee up front, a sweet toffee vanilla coating as you're swallowing, and that oak-ey bourbon burn after it goes down. I loved the throat burn and nasal sting, and though it packed all these flavors, it was amazingly mellow, earthy and smooth. The only flawless beer I've had this year.

Beer in the hospital

We were told on our hospital tour that nurses had heard of people celebrating with beers in the delivery room, but had never seen it...She advised us that if we wanted to do it, do it with caution. No, I didn't ask about this in front of the entire tour group. She brought it up unprovoked. What, you think I can't go a night without a beer? Well, I went two nights, I think, but when we were told we'd be spending a couple more nights in that tiny, uncomfortable room, I could make it no longer. In came the beer, smuggled between bags of Funyuns and takeout dinner. First came Two Brothers Moaten, which I mentioned previously, then Harviestoun Old Dubh 12. The nurses were clueless, and I didn't mind drinking them out of Styrofoam cups.

St. Paul Summer Beer Fest

I won a pair of tickets to the June festival, held in St. Paul's Midway Stadium parking lot, and it's lucky I didn't realize they were VIP tickets until we picked them up ten minutes before the gates opened for the general public. Had I known we could have access to all those beers an hour early, I would have been a hurtin' individual the next morning. With a pace like the one I displayed that afternoon, an extra hour of drinking would have been devastating. Overall, I enjoyed the experience, though I was less than thrilled with the available samples. Somewhere in between a major geek fest (See: Firkin Fest) and a get wasted drunk fest (See: City Pages Beer Fest), this festival had a good enough number of breweries, 70+, but very few offered anything you couldn't find easily on any liquor store shelf or in house draught list. With that said, I managed to sample 32 new beers, and though I don't count them officially, I get a handle on the beers I'd like to try and those I'd like to avoid. The day's best: Surly Bourbon Aged Brown Eye and Great Lakes Nosferatu, both exceptions to the mass availability rule.

Six Months-a-Drinkin'

About time, don't you think?

Flash back to early 2010, when I felt lamely inspired by Julie and Julia to re-dedicate myself to my beer blog. I would take pictures! Expand my content! Have some goal-oriented project! And then, Kristie was put on bedrest. Money got tighter, housework piled up and I felt guilty--not just because I could drink and she couldn't, but because every time I went out, I knew she was home watching a rerun of Gilmore Girls and popping contraction-stopping pills. Blogging about beer was far from my mind.

But wait, there's more. We eventually had a child, in early March: you know, this pregnancy thing is finite and the end product is much more time-consuming than the journey. Show me a man who's increased his craft beer drinking after having a child, and I'll show you a negligent father.

Don't be daft, now. I kept drinking beer, and drinking good beer. I just drank at a much more relaxed pace, and often settled for 12-pack samplers (usually underwhelming) or 6-pack staples (usually IPAs). I bought virtually no bottles large in size, price or reputation. I dipped into my under-developed basement reserves. I skipped many tantalizing tastings, events and festivals. Times were a bit desperate, but you can't keep a man from his beer. With that in mind, here's a brief recap of the last half year of my drinking endeavors.

In the first six months of the year, I tried 92 new beers. That may seem like a big number, but it doesn't compare to 2008 or '09, when at this point of the year I'd enjoyed more beers than days. Still, those I tried were the tastiest, on average, of any year's beers since I started keeping track. Though I've only given one beer the full five stars (I'll touch on that later), more than a third of those I've rated I considered better than average on a craft beer scale. Translation: Budweiser, on my scale, is not an average beer. Budweiser is a one-star at best. I consider an average craft beer to be 3.5 stars on a scale that accounts for those skunkiest of skunk. It makes sense to me. Anyway, 37 of 92 garnered four or more stars, and another 20 checked in at the 'average' 3.5-star level.

OK, this is getting far too nerdy. I'm a stats guy, what can I say. So, in the early months of the year, many of those above average beers fell roughly under the Flemish/Flanders Red Ale category. New Belgium's La Folie calls itself a Sour Brown ale, but who am I to argue with Beer Advocate. A bold sour smell, like the one La Folie has, is the only invitation I need, and the dry, chalky finish is a crisp and refreshing way to subdue the potent sourness that dominates the tongue. Maybe the wordiest sentence I've ever written. Soon after, I tried Ommegang's Flemish offering, Rouge, at the Blue Nile and had a Flemish classic on tap at the Muddy Pig: Rodenbach Grand Cru. Without question, the end of winter meant the rise of the Flemish Red. These three are universally sour, and that is a pretty quick turnoff for some. I, on the other hand, can't get enough of them. I always tell people trying them for the first time that they must suspend their idea of what a 'beer' is, and enjoy what they're tasting on its own merits.

I had been saving a bottle of Westvleteren 8 for a special occasion, and there are none more special than the birth of a child, so it was soon after we returned home with her that I cracked it. I must say, I wasn't as blown away as I hoped I would be. Perhaps this was a case of me pumping a beer up so high that it had no chance of meeting my expectations. Reputation often dampens enjoyment, unfortunately. It was still great. It wasn't, however, the first beer I had as a father. That honor went to Two Brothers Moaten, another Flemish red, and a collaboration between the Illinois brewery and Urthel, a respected Belgian brewery. Like the Westy, expectations set by the three outstanding reds gave Moaten no chance to live up to its honor as the celebratory fatherhood brew. This time, it was more the case of Moaten being a below average beer, rather than one over-hyped into submission.

So, I've taken you into mid-March, and my unplanned and lengthy introduction is forcing me to split my mid-year recap into several posts. Hopefully, it'll be fewer days before my next post than it was months since my last.