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Back during the winter holidays, we had our customary family trip to Kansas City to see my in-laws, and attended a great party thrown by a beer club called the Gents at a great bar called The Foundry, at the invitation of fellow beer blogger Bull E. Vard. Some entertainment website called Nightlife KC decided we were photo-worthy. I have no idea why. (That's me on the left, my lovely wife, and then Bull on the right). Much to my shame, I think that's water that I'm drinking.

Yes, this is a totally lame post. Sorry, I'll try to do better next time. (But it was a great party.)

Mini Beer Bloggers Summit

I had a pleasant surprise last week when I got word that the KC Worthog would be visiting Austin. The Worthog (see photo, right, taken at Whip-In) is a native of Portland, Oregon, aka Beervana, although in more recent years she's found herself in Kansas City. That's how I got to know her — as I've noted many times before, Mrs. I Love Beer is a KC native, so I'm up there about twice a year and have gotten to know several of that city's beer bloggers.

This was her first visit to Austin, and she asked me to show her around. Of course I was happy to oblige — I've been in Austin since 1986, and really, in my heart, I was an Austinite long before I moved here, so I love playing tour guide.

We were joined on our endeavor by Debbie Cerda, aka Snax, who does her own beer blogging for the Austin Examiner. That was perfect: I think those two really hit it off, as they are both brewers, while I am not, so they were able to converse on a level that I just could not.

Our night out, summarized:

• Uncle Billy's Brew & Que: Worthog had the sampler, I had the Hop Zombie, and we split brisket, jalapeño cheese sausage, and pulled pork. Amy said the pulled pork was inferior to KC, but the brisket was better than KC. I'd generally agree — I like KC bbq, but I'll always maintain that Texas style is better, and we're a beef state. She liked Uncle Billy's beer, and I thought the Hop Zombie was great. Darn it, I can't remember what Snax had.
• Whip-In: Believe it or not, until a few days before Worthog hit town, I was a Whip-In virgin. A later post will detail my first time, but as soon as she said she was visiting Austin, I knew we had to go there. That place is ridiculous. The tap selection is insane. Snax had the 2005 Sisyphus, I think Worthog had the Saint Arnold Divine Reserve No.6, and I had a Live Oak Primus. And then Worthog bought me my first taste of mead. Yum. I also had a Southern Star Buried Hatchet Stout and helped Snax finish off her Boulevard Chocolate Ale and Worthog finish off her (512) Pecan Porter. She said she was impressed by the 512. I had to grab a 4-pack of Green Flash Double Stout before I left, and am glad I did.
• Then I had to show her my 'hood, so we went to Black Star Co-0p. Snax got a Recalcitrant Dockhand, Worthog got another sampler, and I had a magnificent Moontower, Black Star's rich, malty winter seasonal. (They refuse to label their beers by style, but I'll go out on a limb and call it an imperial stout. If you get one, let it sit for a good 15 minutes, if you can stand it, because Black Star serves it a little too cold.) And then Snax bought us a plate of Black Star's bacon toffee, which sounds weird but tastes insanely good. I have a friend who has a T-shirt that reads, "Bacon is like a little hug from God." Well, bacon toffee is like a wet, sloppy kiss from God. Then I took Worthog back to her hotel, but I made sure to show her a real moontower on the way back.

I think she had fun. She gave our town good marks in a Facebook post. Now if I could just get Bull E. Vard, Beergirl, Muddy Mo, Bad Ben and other Kansas Citians to come to town for the same treatment.

The 3rd KC Beer Bloggers' Summit …

… was again a great success. In fact, this was the best one yet. But unfortunately, I'm a dumbass and didn't bring my camera and get a picture of it. (So I shamelessly stole this picture from the KC Beer Blog with absolutely no consideration for copyrights whatsoever.)

We met up at the Foundry, a great beer bar in the Westport district with a huge selection and very knowledgeable waitstaff (you don't have to worry about those guys bringing your Belgian beer in a frozen mug!).

Present: OregonAmy, her hubby John, Bull E. Vard, Beergirl (my first time actually sitting and having a beer with her after three ill-fated attempts!), Muddy Mo, Bad Ben, my lovely wife, and her old friend Tom.

I had a great time everybody! Let's do it again in December.

Yummy Christmas Presents

More on the aforementioned Kansas City trip to see the family: We hooked up with our Philadelphia friends the Jarigues (Erin is a friend since childhood of M'Lady), and they presented me with a great treat of six Philly-area beers.

I tried the first before we ever left KC (yeah, I'm the type to shake my present under the tree to try to figure out what it is), and was rewarded for my impatience. Tröegs Brewing's Troegenator Doublebock (or "Dopplebock" for you German purists) is an outstanding rendition of this heavy-as-lead winter seasonal. As their website notes, this style was created by monks who needed nutrition during periods of fasting, and this stuff is like liquid bread. (Not Wonder Bread, either – more like heavy duty wheat with a thick, chewy crust.) It's not for the faint of tastebud, and you better have a deep love of malt. Fortunately, I do. It easily stacks up against my longtime favorite in this style, Spaten Optimator (which, for some reason, I must always pronounce with my best Ahnuld Schwarzenegger accent).

Thanks, guys! It's always awesome to try some beer that I can't get here in Texas, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the sixer. (They also included a Golden Monkey from Victory, which is distributed here, but hey, I'll take it anyway. For the record, I'll gladly accept free Victory beer any time.)

Since Erin is in a family way, it was up to me and Ben to then sample the limited-edition Boulevard Bourbon Barrel Quad that my mother-in-law gave me. I can't say I was as blown away as some of my KC beer blogger friends – I wasn't quite sure what to make of the cherry flavor, and maybe I just needed a cleaner palate after putting away some Boulevard Nutcracker. I think Ben felt the same way. Nonetheless, I liked it, and continue to applaud Boulevard's adventurousness with the Smokestack Series. The MIL got me two bottles, so maybe my appraisal will come up on the next try. (UPDATE: Yes, I thought this was excellent on the second go-around. I think letting it warm for several minutes is a good tactic with this beer.)

What did rock my world was the Double Wide IPA (another Smokestack) that I accidentally left in the MIL's fridge last winter. A year's worth of aging didn't hurt this beer one bit. Maybe the DWIPA raised my expectation too high for the BBQ (Get it? Bourbon Barrel Quad? Kansas City BBQ? Those guys are clever.) Now, if only Boulevard will put on the market that imperial stout that they tested on me and some other beer bloggers earlier this year. It was great.

Up next: Boulevard's other limited-edition brew, the Brett Saison, which the KC crowd has been raving about and I'm anxious to sample. As far as I know, it's not been for sale in Texas, making my biannual KC trips all the more valuable. Um, well, that and visiting my in-laws. ;-)

The Great Kansas City Beer Blogger Summit II

Well, I guess if three of us getting together can be called a summit, then so be it. Quality trumped the lack of quantity, however, and we had a great time.

Unfortunately, trying to round up six people at holiday time is like herding cats. Absent: Muddy Mo came up sick today; Bull had family obligations to deal with; I'm still not convinced that Wes actually exists; and, despite my pursuit of a meeting with her for a year and a half now, Beergirl and I are apparently cursed to never have a beer together. She ended up having a funeral to deal with today, and what the hell are you gonna do about that? (Sara, please tell your hubby I am so sorry.) Man, we have rotten luck getting together. Oh well, maybe next summer.

Present: me, Bad Ben, and the newcomer to our group, Oregon Amy. Plus Ben's wife Vickie (sp?) and Amy's husband John, who homebrews. We settled in to a fun evening of talking about beer (natch), brewing (mostly between John and Ben, as I still haven't taking the brewing plunge) and running (Ben, when he's not brewing or drinking, is an ultramarathoner).

Additionally, we were joined by Mags (my designated driver, among other things), the beer-loving Jarigues, and Mags' and Erin's high school friend Wanda.

Our meeting place again was 75th Street Brewery, which I can't recommend highly enough. What a great little place. Located in southern KC, they have tasty food (although I must mock them for their menu item of "Tex-Mex Fondue" — what we Texans would call "queso"), and even tastier beer.

The Christmas ale was nice, albeit not what I expected. I was thinking malty and heavy, but instead got spicy. Their IPA was quite fine — the hops were restrained, just the right balanced note, a refreshing change from how over-the-top some IPAs can be. The stout was a silky-smooth nitro number which the wife particularly approved of. They had something called a "wheat wine," a variation on barleywine, which was a bit sour for my taste, as was their bourbon barrel brown — not bad, but more than I could handle for a whole glass.

I capped off the evening by distributing bottles of Saint Arnold Christmas Ale and Real Ale Fireman's Four, which I hope my Texas beer-deprived KC friends will enjoy.

Okay guys, I've given up hope that we can actually get all of us together at once, but maybe I can see more than half of you next summer? I'm already planning a trip for mid-June.

In the picture, l-r: John, Oregon Amy, me, Bad Ben, Vickie.

(Okay, I'm ready for some of you guys to come visit me in Austin now!)

Things I Learned Today

1. McCoy's, in the Westport district of Kansas City, brews some great beer. Their imperial stout was great.

2. The Foundry, McCoy's adjacent beer bar, has really magnificent beer selection. Delirium Noel on tap!

The Great Kansas City Beer Bloggers Summit …

… actually happened this time! In a monumental, unprecedented meeting of the minds and livers, M'Lady, Bad Ben, Bull E. Vard, and Muddy Mo finally got our acts together and managed to share brews at one of their (and now my) favorite places, the 75th Street Brewery in the Waldo neighborhood of Kansas City. And I'm happy to say: what a great group of guys. It was a real pleasure to lift a glass with them. Meeting people with whom you've only chatted on the Internet is always an uncertainty, but they were fun, witty, and turned me on to some good beer.

And I'm so glad it actually happened; my attempt to arrange such a meeting met with failure in the summer, and with everyone's scattered holiday plans, we were lucky to pull this off.

Sadly absent from the festivities: Beergirl (a tragic irony, as we were in her neighborhood, but she is off in Mexico), Bull's blogging partner Wes Port, and Chris (who like me has family in KC suburb Parkville, but he'd already headed back to Orlando – too bad, we could have met up at the Power Plant).

75th Street is a mighty fine establishment. Good food, and some outstanding beers, in what appears to be a really nice neighborhood. I doubt we'll ever satisfy the wishes of M'Lady's mother-in-law and move to KC, but if we did, this would be a 'hood we'd look at.

But you want to know about the beer. I had a sampler flight: wheat, raspberry wheat, IPA, a mixture of the IPA and wheat, abbey ale, and imperial stout. The brewers are clearly shooting for a British feel: served a little warmer than is typical of most American bars, and with a nitro pull instead of carbonation. There was only one failure in the bunch: the wheat is completely lacking in flavor. Now, I'll qualify that — as I've admitted many times, I generally don't care for wheats. But even my wheat-loving wife agreed. In fact, she actually thought it tasted bad. Not a good thing in a town that boasts Boulevard Wheat, which I'm told is outstanding.

After that, things looked up – in a couple of cases, way up. The addition of raspberry improved the wheat considerably. I'm lukewarm on fruit beers, but I have a weakness for raspberry as long as it's not overdone. The IPA was solid, too — I wish I'd had time for a full glass. But I saved my full-glass drinking for the abbey and the imperial stout. The abbey was a wonderful rendition of a style for which I'm already a sucker — a rich, clean flavor that brought my tastebuds to attention. I'd compare it favorably to New Belgium's version, which I love.

But the unquestioned star — and I think everyone at the table would agree, as they all got a glass — was the imperial stout. It had a powerful, earthy flavor with a very balanced coffee note that gave it just the right depth without being overpowering, as can sometimes happen with coffeeish stouts. It was served in 8-0z. servings in a brandy snifter, and it truly deserved such an elegant presentation. Even the wife, for whom stouts are rarely the first choice, said, "Yeah, you need to get all up in that." It even had a great nose — like the best of whiskeys, I almost could have just smelled it all afternoon without even taking a sip.

75th Street is a pretty far distance south from my mother-in-law's house in the North KC suburbs, but I can nonetheless tell that this will be a fixture on future visits. It's well worth the trip.

Good News for Craft Brewers

There's an interesting article in the Kansas City Star today about how the craft brewing industry is enjoying a healthy growth. You should probably read the article today, because I don't think the Star archives its articles. The thrust of the article is that beer sales are outpacing liquor, but I think the more interesting point is that craft brewers increased their sales 17.4% over this time last year. Needless to say, that's happy news. (The photo of Boulevard beers shown here was taken by the Star.)

The Great Kansas City Beer Bloggers Summit …

[EDIT: Okay, my curiousity is killing me – why is the Number One driver of hits to my site the picture of the Kansas City skyline to the right? What are all you people looking for? Please let me know in the comments section below.]

… never quite happened. Or at least, it was less than what I hoped for.

Faithful readers will remember that back in April, I stumbled across (via the Internet) a nice young lady in Kansas City who is doing pretty much the same thing I'm doing; she calls herself A Beer Kind of Girl (or just "Beergirl" for short). Beergirl told me to drop her a line if ever I was in her neighborhood – so of course, I did, since M'Lady is from KC and we're there every six months or so like clockwork to visit the family.

Unfortunately, tentative plans to meet up somewhere – hopefully to have her expose me to a great KC beer bar – never materialized. A new job smacked her with a menacing deadline, killing the first few days. Then she got deathly ill. That killed the next few. Now I was faced with a dilemma: On a brief business visit to Austin in May, she raved over how much she loved Shiner Bock, so I decided to take her a gift 12-pack of Texas beers. And I needed to get that beer to her, because I needed the space in my car to take home my usual case of Boulevard (an excellent Kansas City beer not available in Texas; see my many previous posts). So finally, a last-ditch effort — M'Lady and I scheduled a tour of the newly expanded Boulevard Brewery, maybe she could come with us? She would be off work early that day, so it seemed like we might finally get to lift one together … but no. Those meanies at Boulevard said the tour was full and no way would they let one more person in. If their beer weren't so good, I'd hold a grudge. Thus fizzled out a great meeting of the minds and livers.

However, she met M'Lady and I in the Boulevard parking lot right before the tour, hinicetomeetyouhereissomeTexasbeer. I handed over three each of Saint Arnold Pils, Saint Arnold Elissa IPA, Shiner 98, and Shiner Kolsch, which hopefully should whet her appetite for another Austin trip. (Austin is a great place for a vacation, HINT, HINT. With all the Shiner, Saint Arnold, Live Oak, and Real Ale you can drink!)

Beergirl is lucky she gets to take that tour any time she wants – it was awesome. After roaming through the production facility we of course went to the much-anticipated drinking room for about 20 minutes of sampling. I would have been happy enough having my favorite regulars, their Pale Ale and Bully Porter, but they also had their new Lunar Ale, as well as sneak previews of stuff not on the shelves yet.

I was a little disappointed in the Lunar. I expected a bold Belgian flavor; instead, it was a strange mix of styles, sort of like a German dunkleweisen mixed with a Belgian dubbel, that ended up being less than the sum of its parts. Decent enough, but not overly impressive.

Much better were two others: A Belgian saisson farmhouse ale due for release in the fall. Golden in color, with a crisp, flowery taste. I'm looking forward to a full bottle; hopefully the mother-in-law can score one for me. After that, I tried an IPA, and oh it was glorious! The bartender told me it "a slightly different version" of it would eventually become a regular part of their year-round lineup. I can't imagine why they would want to change a thing from what they served me – unless they've figured out a way to make it even better. This makes me look forward to my KC trips even more.

I grabbed some other beers while I was in KC, as well. Beergirl had raved about a Saint Louis brand called Schlafly. I tried their Pale Ale, which was about as mediocre as a pale ale could be – seriously, they should be embarrassed to put this on the same shelves as Boulevard's version. However, I also grabbed a 750ml bottle of their 2006 Imperial Stout, which was marvelous. It was aged in oak barrels, and it was mighty strong, both in ABV and flavor. Well done, and I hope they'll make more this winter for my holiday trip.

I tried another St. Louis brew from a brewery called Lemp, which apparently has a very long history and was recently resurrected. I tried their Jurassic Dark, a "roasted German Style Wheat Ale" that was quite tasty.

As for watering holes, I never got to actually sample one with Beergirl, but M'Lady and I did follow her advice to try Grinders, a cool downtown food and brew dive/concert venue with tasty wings and an impressive beer selection. It reminded me a lot of The Parlor, a funky punk pizza place here in Austin. Margaret immediately declared it her favorite place in KC and even left me on kid-watching duty one night so she could take her girlfriends there. I started with a Boulevard Pale just out of a sense of duty, but I then moved on to something that was a Unibroue product, but I'm not sure which one. The menu said Maudite, and I was brought a beverage that was beguilingly black and so utterly glorious in taste that I think my head spun around 360 degrees. So I came home and feverishly bought a bottle, and it poured out … a rich brown. And delicious, but not quite as good as what I had at Grinders. I'm pretty sure they actually served me Trois Pistoles, by the same brewery, which I've had before at Gingerman, and which had the same revelatory effect on me. In any case, the lesson here is that you can't go wrong with Unibroue, no matter what you actually get.

Damn that was a long post. And it was a long trip. I hope it was worth it.

Hey, chicks can beer-blog too

I just stumbled across this blog today. Nice to see it's not just geeky guys who blog about beer. I may have to hunt her down for a beer — she lives in Kansas City, where my wife comes from. (You've read me proclaim my love of Boulevard Brewing Co. many times on this site.) I've already gotten what sounds like a good KC brewpub recommendation from her blog, always good info to have.