Beerfest

I've tried a lot of different beer over the last few months. Hawaii had a limited supply of brew, and it was a bit of a challenge to find something you've never tried. I can't keep up with all the different beers I've tried here, since I have rarely bought the same beer twice (Dogfish Head's Punkin' Ale being the one exception).

Earlier this month, I attended Capital City Brewing's Octoberfest. For $25, got to sample 10x 4oz. beers. They had a decent selection. The weakest I tried was Holy Brew...purely a gimmick beer with their "liquid confession" marketing campaign and pseudo-biblical fonts. They were also giving out free stickers and tattoos. Their line was the longest, so we fell victim to clever marketing. The beer was very bland, watered down, and their server said we have a "lighter and darker" beer. He couldn't tell me if they were selling ales or lagers...it was definitely a lager, somewhere along the lines of Natural Light.

The best beer was Avery's Kaiser Imperial Octoberfest....strong stuff, one of the best Octoberfest's I've drank.

The Milk Stout was another notably awful beer...brewed with lactose. Yum! I'll have to throw a gallon of milk in my next batch of homebrew and see if I can concoct something this shitty.

My Facebook play-by-play is below.




After drinking all our beer, we saw this merkin roll down the street like a tumbleweed and land at our feet.




I found this gem at Wegmans earlier in the week. Normally I check the price of standalone large beers and stay away...usually not a good value. This label sang to me...I didn't look at the price, so there will be no PQ for the Sierra Nevada Harvest Wet Hop Ale. It's an A+++ brew, the best I've had...maybe ever. Maybe I'm a sucker for their marketing, but this beer tasted...well, fresh. Just the right amount of hops, a bit piney and citrusy. Very good stuff. I haven't seen it anywhere else, but I need to buy this one again...may have to make the 30 minute drive to Wegmans for some more.