New Beer Sunday (week 500)

Greetings, fellow NBSers,

It was a sunny and HOT day in the Lilac City (at least for this time of year), nearly 90 degrees at it's maximum. Now it's dark and (presumably) cooler. I had to listen to the 'hawks battle the Broncos at work, and I missed watching one hell of a game. Yesterday I worked through my favorite college teams' games as well, and they also emerged victorious.

I wanted to greet the 500th NBS with a good 'un, so after dinner I popped the cork of an oak-aged barleywine received via trade with ShroudOfDoom, from an obscure brewery in Pennsylvania called Victory, not sure if anyone's heard of 'em...

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/345/88415/?ba=woemad

A great beer to wind down a work week extended by two days spent filling in for other people. Bottled last November, it still had some alcohol heat, but not to an unpleasant degree. Kinda dug the opening toffee sweetness, as it was perfectly balanced with some dark fruit, vanilla and bourbon notes. No more beers new or old tonight, this big-ass bottle will be all I need tonight!

 

<aged groan> Thanks! I was a young man of 34 (God, those seven years have flown by!).

 

Personally, I think it should be law that people shouldn't get married until they are 30 or can demonstrate they've been out in the world enough to have experienced a few of the curve balls life can throw at them. I was informally engaged at 19, and I thank god every day it didn't work out, as I was a totally different person then (and so was she). But I also know you aren't going to listen to listen to anyone at age 18, so I hope it works out.

 

Well hi-de-ho neighourinos!

Today is my little brother's birthday, so we just got back from the big city, and the Oktoberfest held therein in the neighbourhood where I was born. It was a grand weekend. Drank a lot of tasty beer (though I'll be honest: I was hoping for my stuff I didn't recognize...), heard some music (Staxx Brothers killed their set), great weather (so hot. so much heat for the PNW), saw some good people, ate A LOT of good food (that chopped brisket tasted every bit of 20 hours of slow smoking), and watched a hell of a football game with Russell Wilson just deciding that he was going to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it in the overtime period, after an impressive comeback by the Denver defense and someone wearing 18.

Just got back late this evening, so my grand schemes for an afternoon full of back to backing the basic APA, a special release APA, the basic IPA, and the limited release DIPA from the brewery named for the neighbourhood where I was born and where we attended oktoberfest yesterday seemed overly ambitious to achieve within a one hour time frame (especially considering I was planning on writing out accompanying reviews for each one, etc).
So instead, I opted for another Seattle area brew, one that I picked up a couple of weeks ago, and am only now getting around to cracking. Fat Woody Scotch Ale, from Silver City, takes their basic scotch ale (which is pretty well regarded 'round these parts) and ages it for a month or so on some American white oak. The outcome is ridiculously smoothe and delicious. It becomes a bit more sweet, taking the edge of the finish off quite a bit, and instead imparting a rich vanilla and surprisingly creamy smoothe characterisitic, while maintaining malty caramel, brown sugar, a bit of boozy raisins, and a subtle peatiness that just comes together and hits my spot quite well, anyway.

Hope y'all have had a fantastic day/week/weekend/whatever time unit you choose to measure, and here's to 500 more weeks of (NBS)!!

(I'll admit: I've perused a couple of their youtube videos and was not as impressed as I was at their live set. The videos aren't bad by any means -- I like the creativity of the videos -- but the music, and the band just have so much more... presence when live. They really were quite fantastic in person, and it was largely the stage presence and just immediate command over the crowd displayed by the lead singer, though the rest of the band certainly did their part. I've seen a LOT of live music in my life, and these guys killed it)

 

Smakawhat you are on a roll! Congrats =)

 

NBS was fantastic this week! Awesome participation and some very nice beers. Great job getting us started cavedave.