Firestone walker beer fest

Is anyone else at work on this Monday morning, just daydreaming/reminiscing (sic) about how awesome the festival was?

 

Which, along with Velvet Fog, may have been my favorite beer of the event. Soooo good.

Also, for the sake of completeness, New Belgium was pouring Summersault and Tart Lychee.

 

I had to work yesterday, was pretty rough, but some very nice person brought in the leftover keg of KRBC Dirty Hippie and let me fill a couple growlers.

 

A massive surprise from a brewery I'd written off. I'm glad Chris suggested I give it a try

 

That sounds awesome. Closest thing I can relate to it is when my clients show up for court at like 9am blowing .25 bac of malt liquor breath around the room.

 

Ha, that sounds less awesome, especially if you are a defense attorney and your client is fighting a DUI.

Security was pretty strict with not letting anyone (except Stone and FW) pour beer after 5. They made the people at Anderson Valley dump a whole pitcher on the ground.

 

Yeah, but the Bell's line next door was practically zero and that Wild One was most tasty.

 

Which was FANTASTIC!

 

darkmoon66

Member

from San Diego, CA, US

File under: signs of end times.

EDIT: Damn, formatting came out weird on this one, but you get the idea

 

TAPS also had Remy Ooh-la-la (Remy with blackberries)...which was divine!

 

Russian River poured Temptation from a very large format bottle (9L?). Fun to watch the mayhem of outstreached arms and jammed in people waving glasses before the server. The bottle was so big he had to put it down several times because he got tired from holding it.

 

I'm not a fan of sours, but I still wanted to try as many as I could just to see if anything struck my fancy. I wasn't enjoying them until I hit Lost Abbey and had Mo Betta Bretta. Is this considered a sour? Whatever it is, it was delicious and I immediately got back in line for more.

 

That was one of the only things that I didn't like about the festival. There was already a rather long line for RR as they had put on Pliny (when Alpine had virtually no line next door and pouring Duet and Bad Boy) and then to pull out the magnum and basically encouraged chaos as people just swarmed the tent. Watching from the periphery it really looked like someone could have gotten hurt in that mess.

 

I agree that the RR booth was pretty hectic, but I have to say, I loved the fact that there was no line for Bad Boy.

 

I was right there too getting Bad Boy when Russian River opened up that jerobaum of Temptaion. A lot of people in that RR line were either bummed out or pissed because people in the periphery just bum rushed the booth to get a taste of vintage Temptation. RR does the "scheduled large format bottle pour" thing all the time but it probably shouldn't be done at an event as big as this one was.

 

I wouldn't consider it a sour, but it's a funky beer. It's made with 100% brettanomyces, where all sours at least have lactic acid, usually from lactobacillus and often from pediococcus. You'll get a bit of tartness from brett, but not real sourness. Russian River Sanctification is similar to Mo Betta, actually.

 

I'll just re-emphasize that this was Bourbon Vanilla Dark Lord. Having had a bottle of 2010 Dark Lord the night before, it's in no way worth it. But what 3 Floyds poured at the festival was one of the best beers I've ever had. Better than 2008 BCBS.

 

Lol, I'm fully aware

Just messin' with you Cali guys and your Dark Lord hate (FWIW, the last time I had the 2010, I thought it was really starting to go downhill, so I'm not surprised)

 

The Mo Betta Bretta tasted very young, the brett presence was very low and the beer was a tad sweet.

 

This was easily one of my favorite beers of the day.