What beer are you drinking now? #3966

Beautiful island and view! We took son and nephew a few years ago…Santorini Brewing was just getting started…good IPA as I recall. Enjoy your trip, we are loving your photos - Cheers!

 

It’s a great morning BAs! Took yesterday off from drinking as a Hurricane Prep day. The news is: storm was a total non event at the house! I’ve been up since 7 taking down shutters I put up yesterday…coffee break time - Parabola (2023) on the back patio:



Poured at 57° and warming up quickly this low 80s, super humid morning. Tasty!

Gusty 30 mph winds, off and on rain now. Other than a few twigs down, nothing to report here at the house. The condo is close to the water; I’ll check on it this afternoon.

Cheers and have a great day y’all!

 

A proper pint of St. Bernardus Tripel

Alright, BA… A little late here, but almost 2 years from our original one, Raul and Mrs. Raul are having a proper French wedding this Saturday. Please drink a Pliny or French beer if you can to celebrate!! Cheers.

 

Cheers y'all!

Modelo Especial

 

G'day all!

Time for some malty bliss.

Prost!

 

Cantillon - Vigneronne

 

Recongratulations!

No Pliny or French beers in town.

Maybe just a new beer to me.

 

You need a tiny bit of background to understand this: I came here to Japan to meet with 15-20 sales/support engineers, train them on new software we've been building for years that they've never seen, and meet with bigwigs to make plans for how we proceed with our project. This is, by a substantial margin, the largest single project my company has ever embarked upon in its ~89 year history. I'm the project manager.

Monday night, I was too exhausted to go out to find beer to drink. I did go out to shop for beer and bring it back to the room before dinner, though I didn't have a chance to drink it. ~3 hours of sleep in a 48 hour period will do that to you.

Tuesday night, as we were finishing dinner and I thought I might go beer-adventuring on my own, I got a text from a friend/colleague I haven't seen in 5+ years that he just randomly happened to be in the same town at the same time, so I met up with him for three liters of boring Asahi Super Dry (-2 degrees!). It's hard for me to describe how unlikely and unexpected this was, but it was a fantastic surprise to meet him, even for shitty beer.

Wednesday night (that's right now for anyone else who gets confused about these time zone thingies), we had the "big wig" dinner. I got back to the hotel room a bit before 9 and thought, "I could get to this craft beer bar before it closes at 10 (according to Google), it's only a 20 minute walk." It's ~90 degrees and ~80% humidity

So, I speedwalked my fat, sweaty, body-by-beer ass for 20 minutes to discover it was closed.

No Japanese craft beer enjoyed so far. Fuck you, Google.
Then, things get more interesting. I had already known that there was a German bar/restaurant in town, and I walked by it on my way to Blue Magic, so I thought I'd stop in and see what they had, and hopefully cheer myself up after the abysmal failure.


...continuing for two photo limit...

 

...continuing after two photo limit...

I ordered myself a Tucher Weizen, and started to think, "Damn, those dudes at the table across from me look familiar."


So, as it turns out, half a dozen of our "audience" plus a half dozen unrelated people in the same company were there having beer, shocked to find me there, and this sparked a lot of excited conversation about who I was, who they were, who we knew in common, what we all worked on, and why the hell was this crazy American drinking German beer alone in a small industrial town in Japan?

What the fuck.

They were just finishing up and left shortly after I received my beer (maybe I scared them off, how would I know).

I then chatted with the owner of the German bar, a nice German lady married to a Japanese guy. She's been living in Utsunomiya for 44 years, and as it happens is from a town about 10 god damn miles from the unknown little German spot I'm visiting for work on Tuesday. She gave me a tip to go visit a super interesting moderately historical beer/restaurant area about two blocks from her place (didn't see any interesting beer, but it was fascinating and I want to go back).

I stopped at a convenience store as I strolled back to the hotel and since there's no regulations about public drinking in Japan grabbed a fairly random beverage.


I peered into every bar and restaurant I strolled by on the way back to the hotel, hoping to see a non Kirin/Asahi/Sapporo/Suntory tap, bottle, or can. I saw no such thing.

When I finally got back to the hotel, I decided I wanted to type up this whole experience, and I needed a beer to do it, and what luck...day one had deposited some interesting beers in my mini fridge.

.,.one more continuation to go...

 

...continuing...

So here's a Japanese triple IPA named Sanjuku from a brewery named Ushitora.

Tomorrow, at the end of the work day, I take the train into Tokyo and will stay close to the Haneda airport (where I'll fly from on Friday). I'm not sure if I'll get to go out on my own looking for beer, but I think there's about a 70% chance that I will.

 

Troll life babbbbbbbby:

 

Another beautiful day exploring Paros. I think they should hold this spot for us for retirement.

 

Cantillon - Mamouche

 

This is a tasty Blonde Ale brewed with Jasmine.

Prost!

 

Howdy beer peeps - a cool and fall like 63 degrees here on the north coast - seems like a marzen and punkin kinda day to me....



Fall Hiking Spree starts Friday Sept 1 here with our local (and awesome) Metroparks system - the longest running and largest one of its kind in the US! I have been doing this for decades!


lots of hiking fun coming soon!

 

T'IJ (Amsterdam) special edition gold blond beer.
This is good beer
Cheers

 

Cheers!