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Overview:
Featuring a variety of mid-Atlantic and Northeast brews. It is highly
recommended!! Very good beer, great German food, the Daisy Jug Band, and a
lot of fun! We've attended every year since 1995.
Click the year for pictures from 2000,
1999, or before.
The
Brickskeller Tasting - November 9, 1999 - California Hop Harvest Beer Show
and Tasting.
Hosted by Tom Dalldorf, owner of the Celebrator
Beer News, this was an evening of heavenly, and heavily, hopped beer.
Six of us attended and enjoyed some of the best beers we've ever had...no
joking, and we've really put down some quality beer in our time. If you
like hops, this was hop heavon. Hop Harvest beers are produced in very
limited quantities and are made from the first hops harvested in the season.
In some cases the hops are picked on one day, driven down to California during
the night, and are added next day by the waiting brewer. These beers where
just incredible...the hop aroma and taste were fresh and strong. These
first beers included Hales's Ales Harvest
Ale (Seattle, WA), Sierra Nevada
Harvest Ale (Chico, CA), and Russian
River Harvest Ale (Guerneville, CA). The next beers we had were also
outstanding Gold and Silver medal winners, but nothing compared to those first
few! To finish off the night we drank from an open keg of SN Celebration
Ale.
The
Brickskeller Tastings - March 17, 1999 - Scottish Beer Tasting and Festival
with Bruce Williams of Heather Ales
Jerry, Dustan, and Dean enjoyed a fine evening at one of Brickskeller's
Tasting events, hosted by Bob Tupper. First we saw a video where they
demonstrated how they collect the heather flowers for brewing. Ales
containing heather go back 4000 years in Scotland and way pre-date the use of
hops (hops didn't start becoming popular in beer until the 18th century).
Before hops they also used several other additives in ales. Then brewer
Bruce Williams hosted the rest of the evening as we tasted authentic
re-creations of ancient ale recipes containing heather (Froach
Heather Ale), gooseberries (Grozet),
elderberries, spruce and pine (Alba
Scotts Pine Ale), and a variety of other, mostly strong (SkullSplitter)
ales from Heather Ales and other scottish micro breweries. These beers
where very, very different, but well made and good. We also enjoyed some
fine live scottish folk music and a sampling of scottish fare. My favorite
beer was Dark Island by
Orkney brewery, a fine, chocolatey dark ale, but Dustan and Jerry really liked
Froach and the others.
The GBBF, London,
August 4-8, 1998.
Attended by Jerry, Dustan, and Paul.
The 1997 GBBF drew more than 42,000 beer lovers to sample more than 300
beers. They consumed more than 35,000 gallons of beer during the five days of
beer judging, live jazz, rock and comedy performances along with sumptuous food.
The minimum serving of beer is 10 ounces, so if you want to savor the flavor
instead of slamming suds, take a few friends to split the beer.
Click here for pictures!
The GABF
"on-the-road" in Baltimore, May 15-16, 1998.
Several of us SMASH'ers attended. It was okay...kind of institutional,
no live music or good beer food, lots of brews (some damn good), but most of the
folks from the brewerys didn't make the trip (the beer was poured by
volunteers), and they only gave us 1 ounce at a time to drink!
Over 125 breweries, including invited breweries from the region, are expected
to present more than 400 beers to a crowd of more than 10,000 during this
two-day salute to American brewing.
Oktoberfest, Munich, Sep-Oct 1997.
The famous and original. Attended by our esteemed Brew Meister and his
sister Anne.
Click here for pictures!
In Annapolis, featuring Fordham Beer. About twenty of us homebrewers
(otherwise known as "hostile tourists" in the microbrew industry)
arranged for a brewclub brewery tour to see how they make their good beer and
afterwards feasted on great food and more beer.
The BURP annual homebrew campout. It is
really great! Out in a field in Western Maryland, from Friday night to
Sunday morning, homebrew clubs from the region converge to share beer.
There's a potluck and band on Saturday night and merriment for all! Keg
row is not to be missed! We attended in '96, '97, and '99.
Click the year for pictures: 1999,
1996
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