Jack Curtin’s LIQUID DIET

So Guyer calls this morning and insists I have to go this evening tasting thing he’s set up at Craft Ale House for the fine folks at the online magazine www.AroundMainLine.com. It’s free beer, so I go.

The topic is summer beer in cans and Guyer actually brings some which fit that description. AML publisher Sarah Lockhard thinks we are going to take it all seriously, which is downer, but I bring BDawg,which brightens things up a whole buncha lotta. The photographer (I’ll have her name soon, promise) Photographer April Ziegler ignores us and just focuses pretty much on the World’s. Most. High. Maintenance. Dog. He thinks this is perfectly appropriate.

Guyer starts plying me, Sarah, Tim Ohst of Sly Fox, some guy who nobody ever bothered to introduce me to (April’s husband it turns out, see Comments) and himself with beers. From cans. I am not sure what it is we are trying to determine, but, like I said, it’s free beer.

CAH owner Gary Fry looks on, nervous about what real, paying customers might think about all this. Guyer has told him it is good publicity. Periodically Gary goes inside and brings out food: Pierogies which are to die for, scallops which are astonishingly good, french fries which may be even better…this is going very well. I determine that I need to eat here more often.

We sample many beers. It would be cruel of me to write about them and scoop the online magazine. Plus I do not, you know, remember a lot. Perhaps it is all for the best.

At some point, Sarah tells me her site gets a slew of visits whenever I link to it; I try to decide which other sites I should therefore stop linking to. You know who you are.

As things wind down, the mysterious and stylishly dangerous Nick Johnson appears, carrying with him growlers of Troegs Scratch Beer #19, which is a double espresso oatmeal last-essence-of-Brugger sort of thing. This turns out to be a good thing because it is excellent.

Gary pulls me aside to say that More-Than-One Guy Hagner has called and will be delivering a new keg of Atomic Punk IPA tomorrow. He also assures me he will have Weyerbacher Zotten on draft tomorrow. Every time I think I’ve escaped, they pull me back in. We shall return on the morrow for sure.

BDawg has now been captured dozens of time on whatever it is that supplanted film when I wasn’t looking. The place is starting to fill up with homebrewers. Tom Foley is one of them. Time to call it a night.

I forgot to say earlier than Guyer has brought with him a half-full 12oz bottle of Yards Saison, which the brewery website says has been reformulated into, of all things, a Saison. He and the crew at the Beer Yard saved it just for me. I am touched. When we get home, BDawg, whom I can call “Buddy” when we’re on the premises, and I agree that it really is a Saison.

And that’s the way it went out here in the far ‘burbs tonight.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Beer Buddies, Cafes, Restaurants, Taverns, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.