New beergeek.TV and Beer Ramblings (0)

This post was written by Chris

Posted 23 November, 2007 in On the homefront, Rocky Mountains, Travel in North America

Our latest and greatest episode of “One Pint at a Time” was posted a few hours ago. Called Beer Beyond Denver, the episode chronicles our beer adventures when we went out to Colorado for the Cal v. Colorado St. football game back in September.

Episode highlights include an interview with Chris Katechis, ‘Commander in Craft Beer’ of Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons, CO, Merideth doing her best impersonation of Elaine Benes and my reaching 350 breweries.

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For all the episodes of “One Pint at a Time” go to beergeekTV.

For those expecting a Pacific Northwest episode, I struggled with writing Merideth’s voice over for the past few weeks and finally decided that I needed to move on. In the end, that was a good decision because I was able to put this episode together in a day… it practically edited itself. Hopefully, I will get the Pacific Northwest episode posted before we leave for Europe on December 12th. Maybe a few beers will inspire me…

Speaking of beer… last time we were at City Beer in SF, I bought a bottle of St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, a 10.5% Belgian. On Thanksgiving Eve, I brought it down to Ol’ Factory Cafe to share with some friends and the consensus amongst us all was that the beer was amazing. If you can find this beer, I highly recommend that you buy it straight away. And good luck because it apparently was a limited release here in the States.

In more beer news, we’ll be up in Boulder Creek on Sunday for our annual Christmas Tree Hunt which means you will be able to find us at Boulder Creek Brewery around opening time (11:30am) enjoying a few pints and having some lunch.

Our Christmas Tree Hunt is a week earlier than usual (in fact, it has never been in November) because the following weekend we will be in Chico to see Flogging Molly.

Moreover, if I can get a hold of the people at Butte Creek Brewery and schedule a visit, Merideth will get her 350th brewery. We will also be going to Sierra Nevada… which is very exciting because we haven’t been there in almost 10 years.

Finally, and somewhat a pre-announcement, Merideth is going to have a beer article in the January issue of Carmel Valley Magazine. When the issue comes out January 1st, we will be sure to remind everyone.

Slainte… and if you are in Boulder Creek or Chico the same time we are, let us know.

Livin’ the Lifestyle (and Holiday Beers) (0)

This post was written by Chris

Posted 13 November, 2007 in On the homefront

There are certain tenets and beliefs that are essential to being a beer geek. We have ours listed here. One of the most important tenets, I think, is to “abstain from drinking at events or functions rather than drinking crappy beer.”

Several years back at the Holiday Bowl (the one we got blown out by Texas Tech instead of playing in the Rose Bowl), we attended the Cal Alumni tailgate and had paid extra money to have beer included. Even after my putting on the form “please have good beer” our choices at the event were the full range of Miller products… Miller, Miller MGD and Miller Lite. Suffice to say, we didn’t have any beer which in the end probably was a good thing. We had just returned from Europe the day prior and I was nodding off at the tailgate party at 4:30 in the afternoon.

Which brings us to this past Friday. One of our good friends, Matt Luke, was being inducted into the Cal Sports Hall of Fame and he invited us to attend the dinner; an invitation we gladly accepted.

But both Merideth and I were really worried what beer we were going to be able to get at the hosted bar. So, with certain amount of dread we walked up to the bar and, at first, it wasn’t looking good; there weren’t any bottles of beer displayed. So, Merideth cautiously asked the bartender what the beer choices were… and on this day, the beer gods were smiling upon us… Trumer Pils was our lone beer choice.

But in the few seconds it took to take the bottle from the bartender to when I started pouring the beer into my cup, I must have done something to anger the beer gods. The plastic cup I was given had a hole in the bottom so beer dripped all over my nice wool vest which made me look like a lush… I just get there and I am spilling beer all over myself.

→ This is my favorite time of the beer year… Holiday beer season. It is just getting into full swing and I am frantically seeking out new holiday beers to try. So far I have tried the holiday offerings from Avery, Marin Brewing, Full Sail and, of course, my absolute favorites, Sierra Nevada Celebration and Anchor X-mas. Following the theme of angering the beer gods, Barclays didn’t have Anchor x-mas on tap this past weekend so I have only have tried the bottled version. And since we live in the beer backwater, no one around here will have it on draught…

December in Europe (0)

This post was written by Chris

Posted 5 November, 2007 in England, Germany, Ireland, Travel in Europe

I am so excited about writing this post as this means that our trip to Europe in December is a done deal and planning is almost finished. The weather aside, Europe is a special place during the holiday season and we are very pleased to be going back.

We have a lot planned for this trip…

• Filming Dublin, London and Bavaria episodes of beergeekTV
• Seeing our friends Paul and Eilís in London and Dublin (the benefits of having friends who are London Irish)
• Visiting with our German friends Ute and Wolfgang.
• We’ll finish up in Dublin with the Pogues show. This will be our third time seeing them in Dublin and the Pogues Christmas show is always very special.

We are leaving December 12th and returning on Christmas Eve. Our itinerary at this point is:

December 13-14: London
December 15-16: Munich
December 17-19: Bavarian Alps
December 20: Mannheim
December 21-23: Dublin

We are going to visit 12-15 new breweries on this trip including touring the Fullers brewery in London and the Augustiner brewery in Munich.