"Blame Canada" For What? Being Awesome?

Before we get into my recent trip to Canada, let’s talk upcoming events:

1. Peak casks are being tapped at Perimeter (5:00) and Duluth (6:00) Friday, June 25th (could be TODAY!). Both are IPA, but it is possible a Brown Ale shows up. Long story.
2. Another Peak IPA cask is being tapped at Mall of GA on Saturday, June 26th (6:00). The new Terrapin Reunion Beer 2010 will be debuting at The Fred with a cask event on Saturday as well. This one is at 4:00 though.
3. Come out and meet the guys behind 21st Amendment Brewing Co. from San Francisco at Metropolis on Monday, June 28th from 6:00 to 8:00. Their “Brew Free Or Die IPA” and “Hell Or High Watermelon” are just recently available here in Atlanta.
4. More Peak casks being tapped the following week at Suwanee on Tuesday, June 29th (6:00) and Ellard Village on Friday, July 2nd (6:00). Both of these should be Brown Ale but like I said, long story.
5. The beer dinner menu for Matt & Fred’s Big Picnic 2 has been posted on the Taco Mac web site. This is one of two special dinners we do each year (the other is in December). They are bigger than our usual dinners, with some tricks up our sleeves. You have to try the “Jean Girard”. Gregory loves it, and you will too.

And now for some errant rambling for your amusement:

Let’s see….how do I put this bluntly? Holy crap I have been busy! A lot of folks think that I have some cake job where I just get to run around drinking beer all the time. While that may be partially true some of the time (and entirely true at other times), I actually have relatively boring desk duties that don’t get done when I am off doing more interesting “work”. But let’s face it; you don’t really care to hear about any of that. You can probably find real life bitching and moaning right there in your own life. You don’t need the internet for that.

So let me tell you about Montreal. If I didn’t like you, I would tell that it was terrible and that you should never go there. However, it was everything I just said, except the absolute opposite. It was beautiful, cool & breezy, clean and it hosts one of the best beer festivals I have ever been to. What was so great about Mondial de la Biere? Well the fact that I had never seen 90% of the beers there is a start. The venue—an old stone building with opaque cantilevered ceilings and enormous courtyard—was another. Throw in the plethora of beautiful women in low-cut shirts everywhere, drinking beer and speaking French and you are starting to get the picture. So what is the deal with French Canadian brewing? Oh, just a ton of excellently made beers heavily influenced by Belgian and U.S. craft brewing, that’s all. I mean, who knew? Who had a clue that a ridiculously good beer culture was percolating just north of Vermont in Quebec? Sure, Unibroue is great. Dieu du Ciel is known as an outstanding brewery to people who can afford it. But the breadth and scope of what I discovered was pretty astounding.

"Like what, Fred?” Settle down. We will get to that later. First of all, I was the guest of Unibroue. If you don’t know who they are, look at the labels of Maudite, La Fin du Monde, Trois Pistoles or any of those beers that you (hopefully) are familiar with by now. The brewery that makes them is called Uniborue, and it is outside of Montreal in a little town called Chambly. We went there, but that comes later in the story. The festival ran from Wednesday to Sunday and from 11 am to 10 pm. The cost of admission was free. Before you get too excited, I should tell you that the beer was not free. You bought tickets for beer, and each beer was “priced” according to how strong or rare or wacky they were. I really like this format because you could move around as you pleased—even leaving for dinner or whatever you needed to do—and not feel like you were missing out on anything. The festival would be there when you got back, even if that was tomorrow. And the pour sizes, since you were paying for them, were substantial enough that you did not feel rushed into getting any refills. Thanks to the fine people at Unibroue, who rightfully had a huge booth at the event, I had a VIP pass that got me as much of their beer as I wanted. For zero tickets. That was hard to walk away from, let me tell you, especially their new “U Blonde”. Not available in the states yet, but delicious. There was lavender and lemongrass in it plus one other thing that I can’t remember right now. This is a new recipe, so ignore any reviews that you might read on it. They nailed this one, and the Mondial de la Biere was the debut of the new formulation.

So you want to hear about some other beers? OK, so imagine a Belgian tripel, a really well-made one. Delicious, right? I’ve seen them aged in bourbon barrels before. And there is no shortage of them hopped up like an IPA. Love those. But have you ever had one aged in a red wine barrel? Specifically in a Canadian-grow cabernet barrel? Oh it wasn’t good, this beer they call Vent d’Anges was out of this world. Broadway Pub in Shawinigan, Quebec is a brew pub owned by a guy named Marc who used to brew for Unibroue. No wonder his beers rocked. He also has a beer called simply “Dandelion”. It is a Belgian-style blonde that has—you guessed it!—dandelion flowers, stems and roots in it that Marc hand- picks from his and his neighbors’ yards. And the hops he uses? None. Absolutely zero hops, which I have only seen done in one other place. That is at Hair Of The Dog in Portland, OR. The beer called Hair Of The Dog Greg is bittered using a ton of winter squash (green ones with whites stripes). I had it back in 2007, and it was great.

The Dieu du Ciel people had about 8 of their beers that we can get here in bottles, but at Mondial they had them all on draft. Yes, Peche Mortel of draft. Yes it was out of control! I had one of their beers called Routes des épices (The Spice Route) that had black peppercorns and other spices in it. Very good. Dieu du Ciel also makes a beer called Pionnière that is black IPA. As if that is not enough beer porn for you, then let me tell you about their Isseki Nicho. It is an “Imperial Dark Saison” weighing in at 9.4% and hopped with Japanese hops. Those last two beers pretty much destroyed the known beer universe as far as I am concerned.

I could go on for hours about a bunch of beers that most of you haven’t seen before, but that gets boring after a while. I think you get the picture. Mondial is where it’s at people. Especially if you can see the tower of your hotel from the festival site. We literally stayed across the street from the thing. You can look at the slide show and get a pretty good idea of how this whole thing went down. I will tell you that once we got friendly with some of these people behind the counters (and they all had deluxe bar/booth set-ups), they stopped taking our tickets. We got caught behind the velvet ropes at St. Sylvestre’s table (they make 3 Monts & Gavroche among other beers). These people were just shoveling beers and little appetizers at us. I guess a guy from Kentucky who knew a guy from Athens that I was with knew the VP of the brewery from some beer dinner or something. So we were in with those folks big time. Nice group of people there.

We had a chance to visit one of their brew pubs in Montreal (there are 4 or 5, I think) called Benelux. A friend of mine from Terrapin recommended it, and we were all glad we took his advice. The beers were outstanding, and we had a plate of local cheeses and stuff like that while we were there. The place is in an old bank I guess, because they have a private sitting area that is in the old vault. There was the big vault door swung open and everything. It was very cool.

The food we ate was great everywhere we went in Montreal. I had some rabbit with green lentils at this one place, and steak au Poivre at another. The last night we went to this restaurant that specialized in mussels. I had a big pot of mussels in a white wine/Dijon mustard broth. They rocked.

We arrived in Montreal Wednesday evening and left Saturday morning. It was a short trip, but well worth the time in the air. The highlight of the whole shebang was our Friday afternoon journey to Chambly. Unfortunately we could not go to the brewery that day. There was a labor dispute going on, and I guess some angry employees were making things inhospitable. But we still took a bus full of Unibroue reps from around the country and their customers (people like me) across the river about 30 minutes to the picturesque little town of Chambly. On the outskirts of town is the Le Fourquet-Forchette, a restaurant owned by the brewery (which is in Chambly, in case you were not paying attention earlier). The name refers to the French words for “fork” and the paddle-looking thing that brewers used to use to stir the mash in the old days. The name symbolizes the harmony of well-paired beer and food.

First off, the restaurant is next to a castle (the one on the Blanch de Chambly bottle), at the intersection of two rivers that make a large lake. Sound nice? It was beautiful. Add into this scenario that it was 75 degrees and sunny, with big puffy white clouds in the brilliantly blue sky. The restaurant had a tent behind it (facing the water) on their stone patio. Under the tent were long tables, all decked out with buckets full of corked & wire-locked 750 ml Unibroue beers. Before we were seated we were given a reception “beer cocktail”. That is basically what you call it when you mix beer with something else, like if you mixed a Quel Q’Chose with Champagne. What we got was their Raftman amber ale mixed with a small amount of concentrated sweet tea, a lemon slice, and a few ice cubes. Sound crazy? It was. I mean it was crazy delicious. I was very skeptical at first. I mean, why f*#k up a good beer, you know? Well this was so good that we are serving it at our July beer dinner as our reception beer. OK, so I stole their idea. Or was it really theirs in the first place…?

After that we were seated and introduced to the artist that does their amazing labels, their brewmaster, and their chef. If you go to their web site and see the guy talking about the beers and the stories behind them, it was that guy. He told us all about the region and some of its history, and then a lot of the legends and lore of French Canada. Mainly we learned about how these things tie in with the names and label art of their beers. If you ever get a chance, it would be worthwhile to know some of these stories if you are at all interested in history. In fact, as Americans we don’t really focus much on the history of our colonial neighbor, and the fact is that they are very much intertwined.

Then lunch was served. We started with a butternut squash soup. Then we received a placemat that had a circle on it that looked a pie cut into 12 pieces, maybe more. The words in the “slice” described the food that came on that part of the plate once it was served. The edge of the circle had the label of the beer you were supposed to drink corresponding to each food’s description. The servers were dressed like colonial milk maids or something. All very rustic and colonial themes going on everywhere. The plate had different meats and cheeses and things like that gong around in a circle, very tightly compacted. The theme, again, was local and colonial. On the plate with the local cheeses, among other things, was cured duck and salmon, smoked scallops, bison meat, and something called pemmican. If you don’t know what pemmican is (and it is not the beef jerky of the same name), let me explain. First of all, Native Americans ate or used ALL of the animals they killed. Apparently not every part of the animal tastes good. I am here to tell you that right now. Basically pemmican is a small amount of dried meat, nuts and (in this case) dried cranberries mixed with animal fat to make sort of a pâté consistency. We also had some regular pâté that was delicious, I would like to add, but the pemmican had too strong a flavor and oily consistency for me. I am a pretty bold eater, but I had to draw the line there. Everything else was great, so I am not complaining. Plus we were opening beer after beer after beer. Using these small, curvy, stemmed glasses they had out, we could taste almost every beer they make over a very long lunch. It is safe to say that I got over the pemmican pretty quickly. I took a lot of pictures here, so enjoy those if you have time. Between the setting, the hospitality and the beer, this rates as one of the peak beer experiences I have ever had. And I have had a few.

So that is it for Montreal. Hope you enjoy the pictures. I will be gone part of next week for a visit back home to see mom and the family. All other travel plans are on hold for now as we get prepared to open out first store in Charlotte, NC. Then there is Deckard’s (more details to follow) opening in September, so the rest of summer is jammed. I do have a notable birthday coming up once all of that is over, and that trip is shaping up nicely. Stay tuned. Have a great weekend and Fourth of July. Talk to you soon.

Event Update!

Whoa! I'm back people. Sorry for the delay. I hope that everybody has been doing OK while I was away. Since you heard from me last I was in Montreal for half of a week. When I got back it was straight into a week that saw our company charity golf tournament and the Beer Connoisseur Festival (pictured).

I am working on a story and slide show for you about my Montreal trip (hint: It did not suck), but it is just taking too damn long to get it done. I have special events coming up that urgently need your attention. Let's begin:

1. Peak Organic IPA & Brown Ale Casks- This Friday (tomorrow!) we have an IPA getting tapped in Decatur at 6:00 pm. Next Friday we are tapping an IPA at Perimeter at 5:00 pm, then a Brown Ale at Dulth at 6:00 pm. Wanna drink a beer with me at Perimeter? Better be there early, because I gotta split for Duluth in a hurry. No time to hang around there unfortunately. Saturday the 26th we will be tapping the last IPA at Mall of GA. They should be getting ready to tap around 5:30 or 6:00. We have some more of these on the East side, and I will let you know once we set a date to pop 'em open.


2. Also on Saturday the 26th we will have some casks of Terrapin Reunion Beer 2010 at The Fred. This starts at 4:00 pm, and I would be on time if I were you. What can I say about this beer....hmm....big-ass Scotch Ale-style beer made with a true Trappist yeast strain from Belgium. Casks. Two of them. Can't wait to try it. Be there. Terrapin guys will be in attendance, and they are fun to party with.


3. Monday the 28th we have a meet & greet with the owners of 21st Amendment Brewing Co. from San Francisco. Stop by Metropolis Taco Mac between 6-8 pm to meet the people behind Live Free Or Die IPA, Hell Or High Watermelon and other beers. The two beers mentioned are the only ones available in GA right now. I bet if you come out and help these guys see how ravenous Atlanta is for new beer, they might be encouraged to send us some other beers pretty soon. Oh, and if you are not getting psyched about the watermelon beer, let me tell you something: I do not like watermelon very much at all, and I like this beer a lot. They use mostly the rind, not the fruit. The beer smells like watermelon but does not taste very much like it. And in case you were asleep during history class, the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment. OK, if that dos not make any sense to you, the 18th Amendment is better known as Prohibition. For those of you still sitting on the short bus: You hate the 18th Amendment. It took away people's ability to legally consume alcohol. You are very supportive of the 21st Amendment. In fact, if many of you had to name the single aspect of the United States Constitution that you are the most ardently supportive of, regardless of any domestic or international turmoil affecting the planet, it would the 21st Amendment. I know this because I have met many of you and know how you feel about drinking. On a survey asking how you regard drinking, you would check "Very Positively". If you had to rate the importance of drinking to you on a scale of 1 to 10, you would write in "11", and not be joking in the least. If you had to describe, in five words or less, what lengths you would go to in order to drink some rare and obscure beer, you would say, "...would trample own mother", and have a word to spare. You know who you are.


4. The menu for the July 13th beer dinner is ready. The problem is that Marie is on vacation. She handles our web site, so you won't be able to see the menu for a few days. You can still purchase tickets via http://www.tacomac.com/. I can tell you that we will be featuring 7 beers from different breweries, and that Matt's food will be like a super-deluxe picnic without the ants. We will start with a beer cocktail I had in Chambly, Quebec recently. We named it after one of our favorite French-speaking characters and his husband. Hint: It is from a movie about auto racing, sort of. Anyway, this dinner is one of two bigger and more elaborate ones we do each year (the other is for the holidays). They are a big hit. Feel free to arrive in your favorite picnic or beach apparel. It is a laid-back affair with top-notch food and drink. (If you absolutely need to see a menu before Marie gets back, send us an e-mail to the "Comments" section of our web site. I can e-mail you the menu.)


5. Holy crap July is going to rock. Why? Because we took the tired old "Christmas In July" and made it way cooler than ever. We are going to release a ton of cellared items at every store throughout the month of July. I am gathering all of the data into a calendar right now, and if I can figure out how to link that sucker here I will. Otherwise it is intended to be on our web site but, right....the Marie thing. Just go down to your local store over the next few weeks and find out what they have cooked up. Remember that if you are looking for Brewniversity credits, these are the kind that go away forever once the beer is gone. I know that some of you are really excited right now, and you should be. There are over 40 vintage dated drafts and 15 vintage dated bottled beers that are about to come out all over Taco Mac land.

That is all I have for you for now. Thanks to everyone who came out to the 1st annual Beer Connoisseur Festival last Saturday. It was a great success, even though God was playing a cruel joke on us with the weather. Next year we are going to do it bigger, better and earlier in the year. We laid a strong foundation for this to become Atlanta's premier beer event of the year in the future. If you missed, that is OK. There were 1,100 people who didn't, and they sure looked like they were having a good time. Stay tuned for that story about Montreal. I might have it done tomorrow. Bye.

Free Beer!

That is right, folks, the beer is free!

IF you volunteer to pour at the Beer Connoisseur Festival at The Prado. The parking lot from in front of our store to the end where 5 Seasons is will be closed off on Saturday, June 12th for a beer festival hosted by Taco Mac & Beer Connoisseur magazine. For those of you who don't know, Beer Connoisseur is a new national magazine being published right here in Atlanta. You should subscribe. It is a beautifully done quarterly magazine that gives beer its rightful opportunity to show off.

The beer festival is a charitable event, so in case you needed a reason to get out and drink beer, there you go. If you think that being behind the counter pouring beer and talking to people sounds fun, then go to the web site at http://www.beerconnoisseurfestival.com/ to sign up as a volunteer. You will "work" for half of the day and have the other half to goof off and drink beer. It'll be like being me for a day.

That is the big news for now. I am going to the Braves game on Memorial Day, so look for me if you are watching. I will be behind 3rd base, about 12 rows from the wall.

Tuesday is the big release of SweetWater Sch'Wheat, their new American Wheat Ale. You can find the bottles now, but the draft is coming to every Taco Mac store Tuesday. It is also our June beer of the month, so if you want some SweetWater glasses, here is your chance.

Wednesday I am off to Montreal. There is a beer festival called Mondial de la Biere, which features a lot of beer that I have never heard of. I am a guest of Uniboue, makers of La Fin du Monde and Maudite, so I will be touring their facility. The other brewery I really want to get to is Dieu du Ciel. If you have not had any of their beer, go get some now. Bring a lot of money with you, because you're going to need it. I think what I am going to find out is that Canada is a lot like the U.S. & Scandinavia right now--tons of innovative small breweries going nuts. Should be a good trip. I will be back Saturday with lots of good pictures.

The final slide show of my England trip is over there on the right. It is basically the two days we spent in London. We went to this great pub along the way called The Cock Hotel. You can see what the bar looked like there, plus the really cool cellar. They have this old chute that they still use to slide kegs down in to the cellar. When you see the giant firkin in the middle of the room, that is called a Hog's Head.

We went to this open air market that had an amazing cheese shop. We bought some cheeses and got some beers at the pub across the street, then snacked and drank on the street. Something about the neighborhood, or the Borough Market in general, brought out a lot of good looking people. The only thing that got us out of there was the sun setting and the temperature starting to drop. Other than that, I was about as pleased with my day as a person could be.

We rode the London Eye, which is a huge Ferris Wheel contraption. But instead of two-person cars it has giant capsules that hold about 15-20 people. It is also taller that your standard Ferris Wheel, so the views of London were incredible. After that we saw the sights around London, you know, touristy stuff. We had dinner at a traditional pub whose owner is married to a Thai lady. So in this great pub you get the most amazing Thai food. If you ever go to London, you have to go to The Churchill Arms for beers and Thai food. We stopped by a pub called St. Stephen's, which is in the shadow of Big Ben. The clock, not the sexually aggressive quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. If you are in his shadow, you might not like what happens next. Needless to say that after visiting St. Stephen's, I had a great song in my head the rest of the day.

Lastly we went to the London Pub Of The Year in '07 & '09 called The Bricklayer's Arms. That should pretty much speak for itself as far as how great that place was. The trip home was a little long, especially getting out of the airport. It is great to travel, but it sure feels good to be home. I am sure that I will be saying the same thing on Saturday when I get back from Montreal. Talk to you then. Happy Memorial Day.

Is Your Name Dick? Dick Shrinks?

To the right is a new slide show of a few of my pictures from California. If you click on the picture it will expand to a larger view. If you did not know that, then welcome to what we like to call "Earth". What planet are you from? Please don't eat me, Mr. or Mrs. Space Alien.

I spent Saturday in San Francisco, starting at a place called Tee Off for lunch. I saw it on Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives on the Food Network. If you don't watch that show, then you just would not understand. If you do, you know that I am talking about a killer place that no tourist guide is ever going to send you to. Of the three possibilities based on the shows title, this one definitely qualified as "dive". The beer selection was very good (we were in San Francisco after all), and my fish & chips were great. My friend had a huge iron skillet of macaroni & cheese packed with pancetta. After that we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and headed out to drink some beer. Magnolia Brewery first, and they had my favorite, Stout Of Circumstance. It was not available the last two times I have been there. It's a nice heavy dry stout, big on the licorice. Next we met a friend from Atlanta who lives in SF now at the Toronado. This is the famous beer bar that is a pretty old & beat up hole in the wall. How is the beer selection? I had a Moonlight Death & Taxes to start with. This is a beer that I look for as soon as I get into the Bay Area. It is a black ale, so it is rich and roasty but still refreshing to drink. Not heavy like a porter. Bob had a 2009 Russian River Consecration. Why yes, that is a ridiculously awesome beer to have on draft. And is was ridiculously good. I don't really need to tell you about everything we had while we were there. It is the Toronado, so everything was top-notch. I will tell you that I made sure to have a Pliny The Elder before I left though. Enough said.

Later we went to Zeitgeist and introduced Bob to Fernet Branca. What is Fernet Branca? If I told you, then I would rob you of the experience of trying it for the first time. You have to be totally unprepared in order to get the full effect. It truly is unlike anything you have ever tasted. That is all I am gong to say. It is available here in GA, but has not caught on like it has on the west coast. It is basically the liqueur of choice for service industry personnel in SF, and you know that service industry people are usually a little "out there" in general. To make a living that way, you have to be a little nuts. That's why I have always enjoyed being in the restaurant business. The definition of "normal" is pretty loose. Anyway, we may be selling Fernet Branca at The Fred soon. You should try it. Really.

After that we tried to go to Monk's Kettle, but it was too crowded, so we went across the street for some dim sum and called it a night. We had a big day coming up on Sunday.

Sunday morning we were getting some coffee and noticed all of these people walking down the street in costumes, drinking beer. It was 7:30 in the morning, mind you. Now the night before a guy at the Toronado was telling us about a crazy event called the "Bay To Breakers" run that his dad has flown into town for from New Hampshire. He said that is was a crazy road "race" that nobody actually "ran", but was just an excuse to get drunk. Apparently it is encouraged to stop along the way for drinks. All day. It is a seven mile course, and you get five hours to do it. As a point of reference, you could easily walk twelve miles in five hours, so nobody is actually running.

So we figure out that this must be what the guy was talking about, and that our hotel was two blocks from the starting line. We walked down there and there were people everywhere. All dressed up in various wild costumes, most of them drinking beer. As 8 o'clock came, everybody started the "race". Instead of milling around and raising hell, they moved slowly down the street raising hell. People were throwing stuff, squirting each other, jumping around screaming, etc. Then the floats came. People were pushing floats with other people on them. There was a giant DJ booth float, a Viking float, a sexy nurse float. All kinds of music playing and people waving at the crowd and drinking beer. One girl was pouring Coors Light from on top of a float into people's mouths on the street. Imagine that you are walking next to a moving float and some girl is pouring beer from a can towards your mouth. At 8 o'clock in the morning. How much beer do suppose gets in your mouth vs. on your face and head? Right, not much. This was the scene when Bob spotted two guys in interesting costumes. None. Fully naked, except one guy had glasses on and the other had a vest. Please check what the median temperature in San Francisco is in the early morning hours in May. I'll do it for you. It's cold. Roughly 45 degrees cold. These guys figured it would be cool to head outside butt naked for an afternoon "run". Now you are probably picturing a couple of crazy college kids. Nope, these guys were in their 50's. Looked like a lawyer and maybe a school teacher, if they were naked in the street surrounded by thousands of drunk people. Eventually these guys move past, and the "race", which basically looked like a freak parade, was underway. Then along came another naked guy, except this guy was younger and had his face painted blue. I guess that was in case he ran into his boss or something.

"Hey, Jim. Did I see you walking stark naked down the middle of the street yesterday morning while I was getting the newspaper?"

"Nope. wasn't me."

"Is that blue make-up on your ear, Jim?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The first two naked guys still perplex me. I am pretty sure that if I said, to any of my friends, "Hey, for the Bay To Breakers this Sunday, let's just go naked!" none of them would say, "Hell yes! Who cares if it is 45 degrees and there will be thousands of other people around!" So actually the naked guy by himself started to make sense. Who wants to hang around him? I mean really. "Dude, that is so cool how you are completely naked and your face is painted blue. I wish I had thought of that. Let's hang out." That conversation didn't happen. Ever. Anywhere.

So apparently during this event multiple laws are not enforced:

1. Open Intoxicants--This is a big part of this event and appears to be encouraged.


2. Public Drunkenness--Also seems to be a prerequisite for participation.


3. Public Nudity--There were police and fire fighters there, and it wasn't like the naked guys were being discreet. Unless your definition of discreet is walking downtown with your junk bouncing around and your face painted blue.

I did not take too many pictures of this event for one major reason: I did not want to look too much like a tourist. This is clearly a big deal for the locals, and I didn't want to look like some square that has never seen anything like this before. Of course I had never seen anything like this before, but that is beside the point. Bob & I immediately started discussing future participation in the Bay To Breakers "run" next year. Clothed.

So that is how Sunday started. Then we picked up our friend from Atlanta and her boyfriend (also from Atlanta) and headed north. We got to the pub at Russian River Brewing Co. at noon and had some great subs and pizza. I had a Perdition (a "Biere de Sonoma"--great biere de garde style) and Blind Pig IPA. After that we drove south to Petaluma, dropped our gear at the hotel and got a cab to Lagunitas.

The circus was really cool and laid back. There were lots of other breweries there pouring beer, trapeze artists, burlesque show, live bands, and all kinds of crazy stuff. The party got fired up a little later once everybody had a chance to get warmed up. Unlike the crazies in San Fran, this was a Sunday afternoon in Sonoma County. Very chilled out. But once this band called Gooferman started playing, the party really got going. These guys were very funky, with some rock and punk elements. Think old Red Hot Chili Peppers with a saxophone. Except that they were in full clown make-up, and most of the songs were R-Rated in a sexual way. They also had these super-sexy dancers in wild torn-up clothes and crazy make-up and wigs. The band actually finished the show walking through the crowd and out the gates of where the party was held. It was awesome. I would go see these guys again in a heartbeat, and how they came up with the concept for their band is beyond me. This was not a special get-up for the circus party. They perform like that every time they play.

Anyway, so that was over around 7 o'clock and then it was time to get some dinner and wind down. I have been to plenty of Lagunitas parties, and let me tell you something: When they are over, you don't need a whole lot of after-party partying. Plus I had a rental car to return and a flight back home in the morning. We were also facing Monday morning rush-hour traffic coming over the Golden Gate Bridge, all the way through the city to the airport. Turns out that wasn't so bad, but we didn't know that the night before. I was thinking that it would be like 400 south from Cumming to Hartsfield-Jackson on a Monday morning. Forget about that. We got from Petaluma to the airport in an hour and a half, and we dropped our friends off in the city along the way.

That's all for now folks. Enjoy the pictures and have a great week. Don't forget that if you want to get into the Beer Connoisseur Festival on June 12th for free, you can. All you need to do is volunteer to work a few hours pouring beer, and your admission will be exactly $0.00. Go to http://www.beerconnoisseurfestival.com/ to volunteer. Bye.