The 2010 Great Nebraska Beer Fest

So Saturday Stacie, Schenck, Melissa and I went to the The Great Nebraska Beer Fest at Shadowlake Town Center in Papillion. If tickets would have cost us only 15 bucks a person (like the festival of Iowa Beers will cost us next weekend), then the whole day would have been wonderful.

However, the tickets were $30 a piece, and at that price, the beer fest wasn't all that great. There was a lot of great beer, don't get me wrong, but for that price, I expected more.

With 20-25 breweries represented, he illusion of quality was there. However, some of those breweries sent nothing but a few bottles, and volunteers poured them. Not knowing anything about the specific beer.

Also, there was no free stuff. Not that I am cheapskate (read: I am a cheapskate) but for $30 a person, I want to walk outta there with some stickers, glasses, key chains... the like. When we left, all I had was a drunk (which was very nice), 2 stickers and a coozee. Bullshit.

But, instead of ragging on what I didn't like, let's get to what I did like: the beer.

(I'll go down the list of breweries and name which beer I liked best, or what I liked least or whatever.)

Upstream Brewing Co. - Omaha, Nebraska

I don't care much for Upstream, but I tried the Harvest Peach Saison and loved it. That and the Ebenezer are my two favorite beers they got.

Empyrean - Lincoln, Nebraska
I love Empyrean. My favorite from them was the Better World Wheat. I was saddened by the Cask Condiioned Lazlo's Limited Summer Ale, but only because the keg wasn't cold, and it was a very hot day out. Empyrean still wins in my book.

Lucky Bucket - Omaha, Nebraska
I first heard of Lucky Bucket last week at El Bait Shop (the best beer bar in the world). I was intrigued, but hadn't got a chance to try the Pre-Probition Style Lager yet. Well, Schenck tried it at the beer fest and did not like it. For one, it was out of a bottle. That's like going to Iron Chef and trying to serve a McNugget. I tried the Oktoberfest Sour Belgian Porter, because it was kegged, and it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

Thunderhead Brewery - Kearney, Nebraska
This was one of my favorite beers of the day. Thunderhead couldn't send a representive down because of a scheduling conflict and was almost going to have to pull out of the beer fest all together, but the guys from Empyrean went and picked up a keg of Grand Ale Grand Cru and had it side by side with the Empyrean beers. The Grand Ale was a wonderful wheat beer, like a wit, that made the temperature go down with every sip.

Schilling Bridge - Pawnee City, Nebraska
I tried the Cherry Wheat from these guys and I was pleasantly surprised. It came from a bottle but tasted great. Although, they have a beer called "Git-R-Done", nuff said about this brewery.

Gottberg - Columbus, Nebraska
I really liked the Tin Lizzie Hefeweizen.

Tallgrass- Manhattan, KS
I only had one of the Tallgras brews, because they were mainly darker beers and came in a tall boy can, but the Buffalo Sweat Stout was really good, and this was Stacie's favorite beer.

Boulevard - Kansas City, MO
I don't like Boulevard, so I didn't drink anything from them. But, they did bring stickers, so there's that.

Boston Beer Company - Boston, MA
Sam Adams was represented well, but only in bottle form. The dumbest thing was they had the imperial bottles on the table where everyone could see them, but they wouldn't taste them because of some Nebraska law. Bullshit. I drank the Oktoberfest.

Left Hand Brewing Company - Longmont, CO
I really like Left Hand, and if I could remember when we visited the brewery, I am sure I'd cherish the memories. I drank some Milk Stout, but it didn't taste the same with out 10 or 11 basic menthol lights.

Avery Brewing Company - Boulder, CO
I had never heard of them, apperently Schenck really wanted to go to them back in March. I loved the White Rascal belgian white. It was crisp a delicious.

Odell's - Fort Collins, CO
Another brewery we missed on our brew tour last spring, Odell's didn't impress me. THe Easystreet Wheat wasn't anything special, but I didn't hate it.

North Coast - Fort Bragg, CA
I liked the Bluestar alright, I was looking forward to trying North Coast for a long time. I was surprised to see them at the beer fest.

Breckenridge Brewing - Breckenridge, CO
I drank 2 glasses of the Vanilla Porter, and loved it. I wish I hadn't been so hung over when we went there back in March.

Schell - New Elm, MN
I drank the Lakemaid just to try it out. I remember seeing this all over Minnesota. It wasn't terrible for a lager, but I don't see myself going out of the way to drink it again.

Rock Bottom - DSM, Iowa
I hadn't tried Rock Bottom Brewery before, but I was happy with the Liquid Sun Wheat. It was very good.

Crabtree Brewing Company - Greeley, CO
This is my most memorable brewery of the day. We followed the truck to Shadow Lake, they were funny, nice and had good beers. The Ginger Beer was way better than it sounded. Also, they gave us a sticker. Great showing.

My "Best in Show" award would go to the Railroaders Brew Club. A group of homebrewers who brought the best beers I drank. Plus, they were the most energetic and social brewers of the day. The best beer was the Watermelon Wheat (served with a piece of watermelon) and a hoppy beer, served with a hop garnish. They were side by side with the South Omaha Brewers, another homebrewer club that also had some great beers.

There were some more breweries there that I didn't drink. (most notably, the Nebraska Brewing Company, who held the event. However, thanks to Julianne I do have a growler now, waiting to be filled.)

So like I said, if the tickets would have been half price, it would have been a wonderful afternoon. Instead, it was just an expensive day of drinking with some great friends. Which really, isn't all that bad in retrospect.

I fully intend on writing a review of the 6th Annual Festival of Iowa Beers next week. So stay tuned.

Microbrew Adventures in Colorado

So, in March my friends Erick, JJ and I decided to go on a road trip.

We met up, packed a car and headed west towards Las Vegas (or as I like to call it, Lost Wages) to visit one of our other good friends and fellow home brewer, Joey Bag of Donuts.

Well, as luck would have it, there are several microbreweries between southwest Iowa and Las Vegas, so we decided to visit some.

1st Brewery: New Belgium Brewery - Fort Collins, Co

New Belgium was a great brewery. The three of us all gave it high marks. You could really tell they took a lot of time to make a visit to the brewery a well rounded experience.

The story goes like this:

We walk in, have our complementary beers, and then inquire about the tour. We are told that you need to go online to sign up for the tour, which we didn't do. We do get our name on the list though, just in case someone doesn't show.

I get a textual message from Nick saying that when he visited the brewery a few years ago they told him to write a haiku about New Belgium and that if we read it infront of the bar, we'd get a free beer... well JJ, Erick and I like free beer. So we put our poetry hats on.

They were fedoras.

We came up with this:

Sunshine Wheat, Fat Tire.
We All Love Mothership Wit.
Fifteen Fifty-Four.

Pretty fucking good, huh?

So I go up to the bar and ask the fella about the haiku, and he says he'd never heard of it, dammit. Haiku written in vein... the worse kind of haiku.

Then, as luck would have it, someone skipped the tour so we got in. Awesome.

So the tour begins and there is a table full of beers. The tour guide starts talking, makes a few jokes and gets some laughs. I make some jokes... get some half assed laughs but I can tell this guide works alone, so I decide to lay off the jokes.

Then, this fella with a hat that looked like a bear. (Bearhat = asshole, amiright?) starts talking. He was annoying, but harmless. Him and the tour guide developed a repour and I knew I was not gonna be the class clown of this tour.

The tour guide handed everyone a beer, and continued to talk about the brewery, and goes over some rules. Then Bearhat pulls every bodies favorite (read: nobodies favorite) trick where they point off into space and go "whats that" and then steals another beer.

Tour guide gets pissed. Bearhat looked like an asshole, and the rest of the tour was pretty great.

We asked if we could try a beer you can't get anywhere else, and the guide let us try the Biere De Marz, which was wonderful. JJ and I finished ours quickly, not realizing he wanted us to slow drink it, so he poured us another. (That's when Erick finished his and got another. We can work a system.)

Another cool thing was we got to try an Abbey, that had been bottled that day. It was good.

At the end of the tour, where they were very good about getting us a 3/4 drunk, we went down a slide and watched a video.

We bought growlers, and all in all the experience was great and a hell of a way to kick off our brew tour.

2nd Brewery: Coopersmith's Pub & Brewing - Fort Collins, Co

Coopersmith's was a brewpub. We were pretty drunk by the time we got there. The first thing I noticed walking in was the names of the beers, like Columbine Kolsch and Punjabi Pale Ale.

Now, to me those sounded sorta sketchy, but they both were pretty good.

We ate dinner at Coopersmith's and they (like any respectable Witherspoons franchise in Europe) had a 2 dinner special. I had fish and chips and drank.

The beer was very good, and the staff were knowledgable. We didn't take a tour, but did get a little history of the place, learning that it was started by 2 former Old Chicago managers.

My personal favorite beer on tap was the Punjabi Cask Conditioned Pale Ale. I bought a growler, and would very much like to go back next time I am in Fort Collins and drink some more.

3rd Brewery: Oskar Blues - Lyons, Co... I mean Longmont, Co.

Oskar Blues is popular for being the only micro/craft brewery that solely cans their beer. That sounds like a joke. It is not.

The whole place wasn't a joke either. We originally drove to the brewery in Lyons which is a brewpub, but no longer the major brewery. That is in Longmont. So we drove to Longmont, and passed another Oskar Blues restaurant, on the way to the new brewery.

The brewery was a giant warehouse looking building. We weren't for sure if it was the right place, maybe we should have stopped at the resturant, but then we saw this door.

And went inside. There was a tiny bar, called "The Tasty Weasel". We tried some beer, Dale's Pale Ale and Mama's Little Yellow Pils standing out in my mind, and then took the tour.

The tour was given by the cutest girl, and she was full of energy and willing to answer all our questions. However, she couldn't. She had only given a handful of tours, but she was cute, so we let it slide.

She also introduced us to the brewer, Eric, who did answer some questions.

Oskar Blues was very impressive, and the fact that they only can seems to be very controversial. We had never heard of the brewery, but they are in over 25 states.

After the tour, we got to hang out in the employee break area, drink and play this shuffle board style game.

At the Oskar Blues restaurant in Longmont, we ate lunch and drank some more. Also, JJ spilled a glass of water everywhere.

4th Brewery: Left Hand Brewing Company - Longmont, Co

Of all the breweries we'd been to at this point, Left Hand was the one I was most familiar with. I had drank a lot of the Left Hand Milk Stout and Sawtooth Ale in my time.

In my mind, the brewery was going to be a lot like New Belgium. Big, Fancy, Flashy. It wasn't. That isn't a bad thing though.

The bartender was great, and there was a couple sitting next to us who gave us a good history of the brewery as well as a history of themselves.

After having a flight of beers, we inquired about a tour. The bartender told us if she could find someone to give us one, we could go.

She did.

At the time I am writing this, I have forgotten his name. Because I was drunk. This was after we'd been to Oskar Blues and drank a lot at Left Hand already. But, what I do remember is that the tour was amazing.

He kept telling us that he wasn't for sure what we wanted to know, and that he hadn't given tours before. But then we spent about an hour and a half going around the brewery, learning everything and taking photos.

I don't want to publish everything that went on in the brewery because of OSHA restrictions, but ask me and you'll get the low down.

I was to drunk when we left to get a growler, but I still plan on going back.

5th Brewery: CB and Potts - Denver, Co

I will not dignify this brewery with information. Just stay away. If not for the picture below I wouldn't even believe we went there.

6th Brewery: Breckenridge Brewery & Pub - Breckenridge, Co
We went to the Breckenridge Brewpub the day after our adventures in Longmont. So we were all a little under the weather. That sucked, considering they had such great beer.

Breckenridge, famous for it's Oatmeal Stout, is no longer only made in the town it's named for, but is now in Denver. But, the brewpub is still supplied by it's on sight brewery.

We met the brew master, and he gave us a tour. He was a really nice guy. For a popular brewery, it was run small. I liked that. The brew master made all the beer, and there were only a handful of employees.

I wish we could have hit the brewery in Denver, just for comparison, but that'll be for another time.

As a whole, the brewery leg of our trip was pretty good. CB and Potts wasn't the only shit brewery we stopped at, there were a couple in Las Vegas that were bad. But still, we drank more good beer than bad.