Sunday, July 16, 2006

Beer Event: Belgium Comes To Cooperstown, Day 2 (Night)

2006 Belgium Comes To Cooperstown Festival How cruel it is indeed to give us raving beer enthusiasts only a short four hours to try and work our way through 150-200 of the best beers gathered in one place at one time ;-) On the other hand, we may not have sampled as many as we'd like but we did meet some old friends and made many new ones. So it's only 6pm, the taps have been shut off (save for a few trying to drain the last few glasses), and we're now trying to determine what the next course of action and beverage of choice will be. Hm, food would probably be a good idea, eh? We fire up the grill for some burgers and dogs and break out the salads and other accompaniments. We spend the next couple of hours downing some of our stash that we brought with us while recap the day over dinner. The sun is going down and we do a bit of spot cleaning around our campsite. Then, as the jam band continues to rock the stage and fill the grounds with some great tunes, we plan our night. Actually, it's not all that elaborate. It basically consists of us filling our hands and pockets with several of our beers. We are also taking up the Offshore guys for a taste of their barleywine, which was mysteriously absent. But, no matter, we hung with them for a while, chatted, and enjoyed more of their Hop Goddess. Following are more brief tidbits of the remainder of the late Saturday night at Ommegang. - More fires, more pallets - Management putting a stop to the pallet-burning ("we spend good money on these") - Bob Barrar from Media Iron Hill discussing his Russian Imperial Stout that I purchased from North Wales Brewers Reserve - The Iron Hill/Troegs campsite almost up in flames - Axe-wielding Garrett Oliver - Soft glow of the festival lights cutting through the low-hanging fog - "Here, the phone's for you...It's Joe" - Girls Gone Wild on an empty festival table at 1am - Smooth Berliner Weisse with Woodruff from Bob Brower - Lots of walking around, visiting with anyone and everyone - Johnny Cash singalong at 1am - "Did you just call me a Dirty B**ch?"..."No, I said Dirty Bastard"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jim from Offshore here. Great to get to hang out with you guys over the weekend. Sorry we never ended up breaking out that 7 year old barleywine. We may have to save it for next years festivities!
Hopefully you'll be seeing LOTS MORE of Offshore off island very, very soon.
First up: Hop Goddess

Adam said...

Hey Allie,

Nice to meet you. Just for the record. Scott was the guy in question. He is not affiliated with this site. Heck we don't even admit we know him usually ;-)

Thanks for dropping by. Yeah...hard to keep the good feelings from the weekend going until Tuesday...heheh.

Adam said...

Hey Jim! Thanks for stopping by.

Yeah, it was a good time. The Hop Goddess was delicious. Would be nice to break out the barleywine. I brewed some myself. I guess its about 6 months old now. Just had one last night and it keeps getting better and better.

wilder4 said...

any idea who the girls gone wild were? any cowboy hats and footrubs involved??