Dead Buffalo Soliders

October 20 - 22, 2012

Some friends and I recently took our 3rd Annual G.A.M.E. (Grown-Ass Man Extravaganza) trip to see the Tennessee Titans play on the road way up in Buffalo, New York.  We checked out Niagara Falls while we were in the area while staying just across the Canadian border.  There was also some pretty good beer found along the way as well.



Syndicate Brewing in Niagara Falls, Ontario, is a great little brewpub and was just a few minutes from our hotel.  Their Sinister Sam IPA was very good.  Their seasonal Pumpkin 3.14 (Pi - get it) was decent as well.  Their food was outstanding.  I know buffalo wings are famous just south of here, but the ones here are pretty darn good.



Go Titans and the MINIVAN BAR is now open!  Tailgating was a lot of fun in the suburban setting of Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, NY,  just outside Buffalo.  Notice the growler of Sinister Sam IPA"smuggled" back across the border from Canada among several other libations.

 

We took a ride on the famous Maid of the Mist to get an up-close and soggy look at Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side of Niagara.  Even our rain ponchos were in support of breast cancer awareness.

After the game we decided to find some of the edibles that make Buffalo famous.  They say there are none better than at Duff's and I have to agree.  They were excellent.



The view from our room at the Double Tree Fallsview was pretty spectacular.  We also got a chance to go up in the Skylon Tower, silhouetted in this shot, for a bird's eye view of Niagara Falls.



The game was a  thriller with the Titans pulling out a win at the end of the game by a score of 35-34.  Our lower-bowl end zone seats were pretty good and the Bills fans for the most part were pretty good folks to us. The weather couldn't have been much nicer.

On our way back to the airport in Buffalo for our trip home, we stopped at the Lake Effect Diner for brunch.  I heard of the place thru the great Food Network TV Show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and it totally met our expectations with great food, friendly service and even some good beer - I had a bottle of the Oktoberfest Lager from Great Lakes Brewing over in Cleveland, Ohio, which was decent.

A few more beer notes:

I had a bottle of Lakefront Brewing's (Milwaukee,, WI)  Fixed Gear Red Ale at the Midway Airport in Chicago on our connection going to Buffalo.  It was OK.

Thanks to my friends Wayne, Chris and John for coming along on the trip.  Can't wait to do it again next season!

To San Fran and Back Again - A west coast trip and other updates

We took a trip out San Francisco plus a bit more of Northern California with several friends over the Labor Day weekend for an early celebration of my wife's birthday.  I had a few beer highlights on the trip but not as many as I planned since I just didn't have time to visit too many brewpubs while in the area.

On our first night there we had dinner at Magnolia Pub & Brewery on famous Haight Street near our rental house.  Their speciality was Belgium-style beers which I have said many times are not my favorite.  But I did try their Tillies Union Ale on tap which was decent.  They also had some "guest" taps and I tried the Bombay by Boat IPA draught by Moonlight Brewing over in Santa Roza and it was great.

A few other new-to-me beers that I had while on the trip was Stone Brewing's Cali-Belgiaque IPA at NOPA Restaurant.  I split this pint bottle with our friend, Roman, who lives out here which was good because I wasn't crazy about it.  I had a bottle of Napa Brewing's Lost Dog Red Ale at Napa Valley Burgers after a bicycle ride over the Golden Gate Bridge to the lovely seaside town of Sausilito.  It was decent.  On our last day there I had a bottle of California's Marin Brewing's IPA at Q Restaurant and Wine Bar, a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives recommendation.  The food was excellent and the beer was pretty good.

A couple of non-beer related items of late worth noting include:

I was able to catch a show from actor and comedian, Jay Mohr "(Bob Sugar is a child!") at Zanies Comedy Club in Nashville on Tuesday, September 25.  Thanks to my friend, Danny, for going with me as he filled in for my wife, Ashlee, who couldn't make it since she was in Chattanooga with her ailing mother.

I also attended the SOLD OUT Henry Rollins' show at The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville on October 12.  This was Henry's stop in Tennessee's capital for his Capitalism Tour which hit every U.S. capital before election day.  Whether you agree with his politics or not, you have to admire a spoken word artist who can go 2 hours and 40 minutes without an intermission or even a sip of water.  Amazing!  Thanks to my friends Mike and Wayne (filling in for Ashlee again) for attending with me.

Hill City IPA @ Good Dog, Chattanooga, TN
November 2, 2012.  Very hoppy!

BANKing some more good brew in the OBX



 Another trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina has come and gone...

 We took another cheap beach trip back out to the Outer Banks (OBX) along with our friends, Nate and Ginny.  Nate's a big craft bere fan like me and had never been out here before so we made stops at all the places I had discovered before including The Weeping Radish Brewery in Jarvisburg, NC (where I picked up a pint bottle of the Black Radish lager to go), the Outer Banks Brewing Station in Kill Devil Hills  where I had a draught pint of the Viking's Liking, an interesting obsure Norse style of beer, and we also had dinner at Full Moon Cafe and Brewing in Manteo on our last night there.  While I am not a big fan of Full Moon's own beers I did have a nice bottle of Natty Greene's Southern Pale Ale from Greensboro, NC, with my delicous dinner.

My newest craft beer discovery on the trip to the OBX was the Brew Thru.  These are a chain of beer/convenience stores sprinkled up and down the Outer Banks in which you actually drive in "thru" the store to make your purchases which are brought to your vehicle.  They actually have a fairly good craft beer section and we found a good variety of local brews (Carolina Strawberry Wheat Beer) as well as good stuff from around the country. including Baba Black Lager that Nate bought aand let me sample as well as a HopNotch IPA and a Dubhe IPA.  Those three were from Uinta Brewing in Salt Lake City, Utah and  all three were very good.  We got an interesting six pack of Hell or High Watermelon Wheat Beers from 21st Amendment Brewing (cans only) in San Francisco (I will be visiting those guys in September!).  It was interesting.  I can't say I am a fan of it, but I do appreciate the creativity of it.  I got a 12-pack of good old reliable Ranger IPAs from New Belgium Brewing in cans for consumption on the beach during our trip.

 i



The awesomeness that is The Brew Thru in the OBX...



A dishonorable? mention....



Hey, it was free beer! Hard to pass that up in this day and age.
Budweiser threw a great party in downtown Nashville
recently that included free music from good bands, free beer,
free local food and even party favors - that's a glow stick pictured above.



Meanwhile in Bristol, VA/TN....



Our pals at Starr Hill who we visited a few years back up in Crozet, VA,
 were the craft beer of choice at The Mumford & Sons all-day music

   festival held recently in this musically-historic little town.



updates

A few random updates from the first half of 2012:

I had the coffee stout draught at Blackstone Brewery in Nashville - a seasonal brewmaster special.  Delish!

I had a Whole Hog Six Hops IPA in a bottle from Steven's Point, WI at Taco Mac in Chattanooga.  Pretty good!

I had a Hap & Harry's Lynchburg Lager in a bottle at 3rd & Lindsley in Nashville (not very good...make that "awful").

I had Jackalope's (new Nashville microbrewer) Spruce Beerstein at 3 Bros. Deli and Brewhouse in Murfreesboro during Preds game on their big TV.

Great birthday card from my wife, Ashlee....



Oh yeah!



Just do it!

Just a little BunBEERy

The wife and I attended a new music festival up in Cincinnati, OH, called Bunbury which was very good.  They had a craft beer garden as well which I appreciated.  Nothing really new on tap that I hadn't tried before, but again I like the fact that the festival, even though heavily sponsored by Bud Light, still recognizes the value of craft brewing.

Only new-to-me beer I tried at Bunbury was their
official one made locally in Cincy.
I had the Maibock Lager which was pretty good.



Great sign, not seen on this trip, but posted at one in Indiana we visited last year
called Big Woods Brewing.

Beering Through Europe

My wife and I took a wonderful trip to Europe for our 11th wedding anniversary back in May and I was able to grab some pretty good beer along the way.


While waiting for our international flight out of Chicago we had time to check out Revolution Brewing just
 a few EL stops south of O'Hare Airport.I had the Anti-Hero IPA (left above) and their Eugene Porter  while Ashlee tried their Black Power Oatmeal Stout  (right. above).  Afterwards, we moved onto another great beer bar
called The Map Room where I had the Bear RepublicHOP Rod Rye out of Sonoma, California.



Our first stop in Europe was Warsaw, Poland, a vibrant and growing city now out from under the boot of Communism.  Browarmia was on the first (and one of the few) microbreweries to spring up in the city after the dawn of capitalism found Poland.  Their house stout pictured above was excellent.  Ashlee really enjoyed their cherry wheat  beer.




This photo is a bit blurry, but it's worth posting  just to see the "beer tubes" used at Browarmia in Warsaw, Poland.  Instead of ordering pitchers of beer, larger groups can have tall glass tubes of beer (3 to 5 liters) installed at their table that everyone can tap into.  We should have made friends with these folks!



I found this pint can beauty in a little corner market  just around the corner from our hotel in Warsaw.  Tyskie is one of the oldest-produced and most popular beer brands in Poland.  This one is their pale lager.



Our next stop was Italy and while it's a country not really known for great beer (the wine was awesome!), if I have to have a Peroni, then I would much rather it be on a warm day in the lovely seaaide village of Portofino on the Italian Riveria than at some Olive Garden in the U.S.



My favorite beer of the trip was found in The Netherlands and most of it was found in a supermarket around the corner from the houseboat we rented on a quiet canal in Amsterdam.  The store had a large selectionnof tasty (and high gravity) beers from not only The Netherlands but nearby Belgium as well.  And the view and ambiance while enjoying these beers could not be beat.



On a sightseeing day-trip out from Amsterdam we stopped for lunch in the town square of Delft, South Holland.   We chose this restaurant from several on the square because of its view and the fact that they were advertising craft beer.  I had the Monk's Stout from Dupont Brewing in Belgium (left)while Ashlee tried one of their ales.  Both were delicious.



More canal beer in Amsterdam!

Even more canal beer!

And even more canal beer!

Great trip.  Great beer.  Great memories.

More bricks in "The Wall" of Beer - Road Trip to Tulsa, OK

My long-time and best friend, Craig, and his co-worker and friend (and mine too now), Barry, decided to take a road trip recently way out to Tulsa, Oklahoma, over a 3-day weekend to catch one of the few Saturday-night shows on the current Roger Waters "The Wall" Live tour.  Along the way and in Tulsa we were able to find a decent amount of good beer as well.

Six or so hours out of Paris, TN, where Craig lives, we stopped for lunch (and a few beers, of course) at Springfield (Missouri) Brewing Company.  The beer was solid and the food was good.  Their brewpub was a beauty and made for a perfect stopping point to stretch our legs and our livers a bit.  I opted for their Pale Ale which was decent.  Craig and Barry (both fans of darker beers) tried their  rotating "Dark Horse" tap which currently was pouring the Del Fuego, a roasted German-style stout with chili pepper infusion.  I got a sip of Craig's and thought it was OK, although it didn't pack the punch of the pepper-infused Special Speedway Stout I had out in California over the new year at AleSmith Brewing (see earlier blog).



Tulsa itself has no craft brewpubs to visit within its city limits that I could find mention of during an extensive  Internet search.  This is surprising since I read recently that over 900 new brewpubs opened across the U.S. last year???  Holy crap, that's a lot beer!  Tulsa overall looks to a be fairly quiet  and buttoned-up kind of town (well, what did you expect, it is the home of Oral Roberts U).   The one redeeming small district that seems to wear a party hat most of the time is their Blue Dome District, a little section of streets with numerous bars, hip eateries and urban shopping.  We found two great beer bars there with more than enough craft beer on tap  to suit us quite nicely.  The now famous "blue dome" building pictured above was a 1920's-built gas station along famous Route 66.



The first establishment we found was Fassler Hall, a perfect replica of a German beer hall, with lots of the Motherland beers on tap and even one of my favorite American IPAs, Single Wide, from Boulevard Brewing over in Kansas City.  This was the first time I had been able to try it on draught and it was tremendous.  Their food menu was an interesting selection of house-made sausages and just speaking for myself, the Habanero Chicken Sausage was out of this world good.  Now THAT is how you infuse peppers into something!  Whoooo!  Are ya hearing me, Springfield???

Before the concert on Saturday, we ambled back over to the Blue Dome District for a late breakfast at the funky Blue Dome Diner.  It was a bit of a walk from our hotel, a nice little Double Tree that we got a great rate on, but the weather was great and the downtown streets were quiet and safe.  After brunch, we were able to get in our second good beer bar,  McNellie's Irish Pub (actually it's the James E. McNellie's Public House if you are not into the whole brevity-thing).  This had been our first destination of choice the night before except that it was very, very crowded.  Now I know why.  The beer selection here was amazing!  Try over 350 different ones with well over 50 on draught.  There were so many beers that  I had never heard of that I didn't know where to start.  I opted for the "Double Dragon" flight (photo above) which had four of five beers with double the main ingredients that I had not had before.  From L to R there was the Tallgrass Oasis Double ESB (Manhattan, KS), the Great Divide Double IPA (Denver), the Ommegang Abbey Ale (Cooperstown, NY), the Ayinger Celebrator Dopplebock (Bavaria region of Germany) and good old Young's Double Chocolate Stout (England).  Loved them all except the Ommegang, but as I have stated many times on here, I just don't dig on the Belgian style of brewing.  I moved on from there to a full draught glass of the (cask-conditioned) Marshall Atlas IPA from...drumroll, please....Tulsa!!  Yep, they've got a craft brewery here, but it's just not open to the public for tours, nor does it have a brewpub attached to it.  No matter...their beer is outstanding...at least this IPA is, and anyone that can do cask beer this good is OK (get it) in my book.  So I could actually walk out of there and back to the hotel and to the concert later that evening, I hand to end with a draught pint of COOP Ale Work's  F5 IPA out of Oklahoma City.  Another great hoppy and delicious IPA and a good regional beer to end our wonderful visit to McNelllie's on.

The concert was held in the futuristic-looking BOK Center just around the corner from our hotel.  It's actually a bit smaller inside than it looks from the outside.  The show was tremendous.  A visual and musical feast  from start to finish of one of the greatest albums (and concepts) of all time.  You are a legend, Mr. Waters.  Thank you so much for your vision and your enthusiasm after all these years.  We all felt privileged and grateful to have seen this amazing show in this lovely city on the plains.   Below is a quick glimpse of just some of the amazing start of the close-to-3-hour show.  "Daddy what'd ya leave behind for me!!"