Saturday, October 4, 2014

Oh god, I'm awful! Also, Craftoberfest was awesome!

The ladies from Side Launch (right) serving up some beer at Craftoberfest.
Was July really my last post? I geez, I am so sorry.

Here's the problem, though - Jeff has been drinking a lot of home brew lately and not spending as much time or money at the liquor store. So asking him about something new he has tried becomes less and less frequent. (He makes a pretty great stout, FYI.)

I should correct that - he regularly tries the new offerings from Royal City Brewing in Guelph, but if I wrote about that each time he tried one, this blog would only be about Royal City. Which they might not mind (Jeff generally likes everything he's tried from there).

I will write about an event we went to last weekend - the launch of Craftoberfest in Kitchener.

Jeff is lucky I'm a pretty awesome wife, because I am rather pregnant, but tagged along with him so he'd have a safe ride home (and he promised to feed me).

Not having a beer in my hand also meant I was free to take notes, which I did. We resorted to the ol' lightening bolt system - there is no real range, but on this particular night, three lightening bolts was a pretty OK beer, five was pretty darn good and anything above that was sensational.

There was a great group of breweries at Imbibe in Kitchener, and Jeff tried pretty much all of them (save for Steam Whistle, Waterloo Dark and Wellington - he skipped Wellington only because he had the one-off they were featuring at home. It was Put Your Dukes Up, a beer Jeff has had and liked ... hey, I guess that would have been an OK blog post).

Moving on.

Royal City at Craftoberfest.
Good-to-great beers from the evening included:

Great Lakes' Thrust! An IPA - Great Lakes wasn't actually at the event (which was disappointing) but they had sent a beer that was on tap at the bar.

Innocente's Guilty Conscious

Royal City's Harvest Ale - which had sweet potato and butternut squash

Nickel Brook's Ontario Wet Hop P.A. - which he noted was an improvement over the same beer made last year (the guy handing out the beer also agreed with that).

Block Three's Sawmill ESP

Flying Monkey's Division by Zero - this was an 11% imperial red. The other beer they had was their Antigravity light beer. "You can either pussyfoot or get slapped in the face," Jeff said of the selection. Of the Division by Zero, "It's a freakin' hammer."

Spearhead's Belgian stout on raspberries - the raspberries were subdued

Beau's Mexican Spiced Ale

Block Three
Admittedly, there were a few he tried that he was not a fan of, but they were few and far between.

As well, Saw Dust City had a drink called CLR (coconut lime refresher), which he was OK with and said it tasted like an "island-y drink." "It's pretty refreshing, so it lives up to the name."

The event itself was great. We've been itching to hit up Imbibe for a while, but making the drive to Kitchener hasn't been a priority. Now, I would say we'll go back again soon. It's a great place and the staff seemed pretty awesome.

The launch spilled into the neighbouring The Museum, which was also pretty cool. There was some live music and a few speeches.

But the best part about the event was celebrating craft beer. Because while KW is known for Oktoberfest, the event is sponsored by Molson's. This means craft breweries have been kept out of the halls and events at a festival meant to celebrate beer. Does that make any sense? Not really.

Craftoberfest runs this year from Sept. 27 to Oct. 18. There are several events in and around the city and surrounding areas. If you are in the area, I highly recommend checking out an event.

Craftoberfest is a great thing. Thank you to everyone who made it happen. I am looking forward to returning to some kind of event next year.

Oh yeah - cannot forget the nachos from the Breadbaron. Sooooo good!
Om nom nom nom.

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