Best "Beer Celebrity" Encounter

I drank a Big Hurt lager once.

 

I met a dude who works at Victory at a Victory tasting here in RI.

 

And you lived to tell about it -- that is impressive!

(I have to say, I saw that in the store the other day and thought, "You know... no. I think not.")

 

I used to have a spuds Mackenzie shirt.

 

I had the pleasure to speak to Shaun Hill of Hill Farmstead at a Philly Beer Week event. Below is something I posted previously:

“Permit me to tell a Shaun Hill story. I have never been to the brewery but I got a chance to meet Shaun Hill at Teresa’s Next Door (Wayne, PA) as part of Philly Beer Week. My wife and I had a chance to talk to Shaun for 10-15 minutes. He is a very pleasant guy and very open in communicating. I am a homebrewer so I asked a number of technical brewing questions which Shaun patiently and cordially answered. I then made an honest statement to Shaun: “I have had a large number of your beers and every one of your beers has been very, very good.” Shaun replied: “That’s because we never let a ‘bad’ batch out of our brewery.” I replied: “You never had to dump a batch, did you? He responded” “Yes, and that is tough to do when you only have $5,000.00 in the bank.” So, apparently Shaun did experience a few ‘hiccups’ during his startup but he had the integrity to not sell what he considered to be subpar beer. Yup, Shaun Hill is an excellent brewer on many levels.”

Cheers!

 

I give respect for the people who are responsible for my amazing beers I get to consume, I just have not a clue who they are. I have met a handful of brewers and employees at tastings, but if I walked past them on the street I would not realize who they were.

 

I've met leschkie.

 

I had the pleasure of working with Sam once a long time ago. He struck me as being a truly great face for the industry.

 

It was fun meeting Pete Slosberg at City Beer Store for a Reunion Ale release party. He was such a mellow and approachable guy. I also met James Watt of BrewDog at City Beer and he was fun to talk to. He also signed my Tactical Nuclear Penguin bottle wrapper and drew a penguin to boot.

 

Easy...the first time I met SubpoenaDeuces, Mr. Don't Drink Beer himself. He adulterates rare beerz like no brewer I've ever seen.

 

Patrick Rue from The Bruery walked into my bar a few days ago out of the blue. Said he was in town for a meeting at Google - apparently the Android team is building a small (read: $100k +) brewing system... anyways, we sell quite a bit of Bruery beers and he said he'd heard good things about us so he stopped in for lunch. Super nice guy, very humble and we all got to geek out together when someone walked in with Google Glass and let us check them out. Definitely a day I won't forget. My other notable experience are meeting Alex Tweet from Ballast Point and learning about how he got his job by winning their homebrew contest by making Indra Kunindra (I love that beer!) I've also meet Vinnie from RR twice; the first time was at SF Beer Week 2012 opening gala and he spent a good 10 minutes talking to me and my buddy and answering our questions. Pretty much all the brewers I've met have been awesome people!

 

Sam Calagione at his pub.

 

You are much wiser than I.

 

I met Michael Jackson at the end of the night at GABF in '97. Very nice man. Very nice and drunk, I mean. He was trying to tell me about how great this certain beer he was drinking was and I tried not to laugh, because he could hardly stand up, let alone taste his beer. I also met Elvira (yeah, the one that looked like a Munster with big cleavage) there, introducing her new beer that lasted about 5 minutes on the market. I must admit that she looked much better than her beer tasted!

 

Jim Koch pouring samples of Utopias at this year's EBF in Boston was a treat.

 

Didn't get to talk to him, but saw Greg Koch of Stone leaving Alpine just as I was walking in. He was driving a big ol' pimped-out Escalade, haha.

 

Larry Bell is usually in front of or behind me in line to get coffee at least once a week. Often wearing an Oberon hat, haha.

 

Guys that brew beer or finance beer companies or run their distribution etc etc are not celebrities, nor do I really care or seek to speak with them. I drink beer. I don't fuck it with hobby hands.

 

I live about 15 minutes from Stoudt's and Ed is always walking around at the beer fests or around the restaurant attached to the brewery on busy nights. Carol Stoudt is usually around as well.