Molly's doing well with no signs of labor so I skipped out of work early and headed to the brewfest with Mike. Even at 4pm the place was crowded, and by the time we left there was a line 200 yrds long just to get in! On to the beers.

Lots of IPA's and IIPA's on tap. All were good with some being serious palette killers. Pliny the Elder from Russian River was probably the best, but I just wasn't in the mood for anything intensely hoppy. A pilsener from Bayern Brewing (Missoula, MT) was light and enjoyable with an interesting lager flavor. Flying Fish (Cherry Hill, NJ) brought their Farmhouse Summer Ale, a refreshing beer similar to an American Hefeweizen, but much more interesting. It has a great mild flavor contributed by the sour mash that the brewery employees. It would be great to see more breweries making sour mash beers. The best beer of the fest didn't actually sound that good on paper. However the flavor was killer. The beer: Ned Flanders by Rock Bottom (here in Portland). Its a flanders style red which is a reddish medium gravity ale from Belgium that uses other yeasts besides saccharomyces to ferment the beer. These wild yeasts include several strains brettanomyces, pediococcus, and lactobacillus that give the beer a complex and earthy sourness. Mmmmmmm......barnyard. To finish it off the brewer aged it in used bourbon barrels. Now I've had fantastic beers aged in bourbon barrels, but they're usually stouts. I didn't anticipate how well the fruity sourness would meld with the toasty vanilla from the bourbon barrel. So good I had to try it twice!

After months, OK years, of procrastination I finally got around to doing this. Hopefully this will be a good tool for everyone to keep up with the family since our email updates have been lacking.