WABL Brewers Festival 2011

It's timeline time!!! Yay. Clap.

21 days since I've been in a bar (Jubelpalooza @ Parkway Tavern).
Approx. 90 days since my last 'real' blog post (& by real I mean not some random event FYI that I posted to make myself feel better about not writing a real blog).
Approx. 4 months since I attended Brewers Festival in Kenmore, just now sitting down to write about it.

Hmmm, well that last part is fairly typical while the two facts before it are not. Been an interesting/rough/random couple of months in the life of zee pissed liBEERian so I'm attempting to get back to business and jump back on my horsey horse. I looked at this blank page forever, thinking I actually forgot how to do this. Let's find out, shall we?

WABL's Brewers Festival was something I was so very excited about. Happy dance excited. I think for 2 reasons: It is the event that got me started in beer blogging (SIB of 2010 also played its part) and I'm fairly certain that summer was invented just to make outdoor festivals of beery goodness even more amazing than they already are.

This is my unamused fake smile which clearly says 'Let me the hell in already, I'm dying of thirst!'

In preparation for the event, I gathered all of the information on which breweries would be pouring which beer on which days. Then I used that information to create a color-coded, date-prioritized spreadsheet that was our plan of attack. This thing was effing sick. I was approached many a time during the festival with questions as to where I got my oh so amazing beer guide. I was in love with this thing. Festival goers were in love with this thing. MGD and I wrote all of our beer notes (by 'our' I mean his notes, I make the medium for our ease of festival going but I have higher social obligations that are a priority over taking notes plus I end up writing all over myself) and other info onto these lovingly created sheets of paper.

So guess what the one thing was that we went home without, late Saturday night? Good thing we have photographic evidence as to the reason why...

I guess MGD's fancy camera finally caught me at a not so cute time. Had to happen eventually. Camera awareness skills: -3

Certain things happen when I've been drinking all day and those things include putting on my stupid clothes (fuzzy ball ski cap), going to the house of  a complete stranger we met at the festival in order to try his home brew, playing Mario Kart for hours while sitting next to a cat the size of a small bear cub (MGD's editing notes would like it stated for the record that it was actually the size of a BIG bear cub) and losing possessions that are of the utmost importance to me and my blog. Oh and making random weird faces (READ: lack of any camera awareness resulting in my usual pretty poses) while going off on some drunken tangent. You know, the usual.

But that was at the very tail end of our night, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start where it all started, at the Schooner Exact booth!!!

Schooner Exact Seamstress Union Epiphany Beer Reunion, two fisting with Heather McClung. In a platonic way of course.

Schooner Exact was one of our highly prioritized stops as they created the Seamstress Union beer that I first had at the 2010 Brewers Fest. And they are Schooner Exact of course. Lovely picture of Hutch (SE Brewer) and myself sporting his new aprons from Germany. After a quick costume change, we got Kim Sharpe Jones (of Washington Beer Blog) in on the action. I totally love/hate that pic of us but it's too damn funny not to post. Kendall and Kim of the Washington Beer Blog had a whole tent at this festival complete with WBB swag and a prize drawing, which was way awesome. If they & their blog have reached 'Tent Masters' level then I just MIGHT be able to get away with running around wearing a sandwich board that says 'the pissed liBEERian' on it. Might.

Snipes Mountain Brewery was pouring a Bourbon Barrel Aged Sour Pumpkin Stout (I know, right?!), so we made sure that was one of our first stops on Saturday morning. The beer drips (blasphemy!) all over the sign are courtesy of me. You're welcome Snipes. I tried to convince them that it gave their sign an authentic, rustic feel and I offered to lick it off the sign as well. I have a 'gesturing' problem more than a drinking problem. I had only had 3 or 4 beers by that point. I have to set stuff down when I need to talk because I need my hands free to tell a story. I'm sure a lot of you have heard me say "OMG, hold this 'cause I have to tell you something!!".  The Sour Pumpkin Stout was quite delicious, hence the licking offer.

One of the best parts of Brewers Festival is the keg toss. MGD weaseled his way up on to the stage (EDITING NOTE BY MGD: He said he didn't 'weasel' and never has. He simply walked up to the stage.) to snap some great shots of the event on Saturday. We are quite a magical team with my big breasticles and his big camera, people rarely stop us from doing anything or ask questions. It's probably why we found ourselves chillin' at the post festival Brewers after party, drinkin' some super secret beer. Where I 'accidentally' stole a Trivial Pursuit card. I call it an accident because I have no idea why I took the card, I'm not the type of person who steals stuff. I'm pretty sure it made complete sense to me at the time in my world of having drunk all day.

So the keg toss... pictures are worth a thousand words. Here's a bunch so you can stop reading for awhile. Plus, the facial expressions of these guys kills me. It looks like most of them have to poop.

As I mentioned before, I sadly lost my uber collection of notes on the beers we drank. I still have the beer lineup from the event and in looking through it I can pretty much guess what we drank and what we liked. See below.

7 Seas - Cascadian Dark Ale & Rude Parrot IPA (both MGD & I found the Rude Parrot to be phenomenal!)
Baron Brewing/Three Skulls Ale - Imperial Red
Big Al - Sourlicious & Five Star Chile IPA
Big Time - Cherry Trombipulator (Cherry Style Belgian Triple)
Black Raven - Possum Claus Bourbon Pecan Ale
Boundary Bay - Ginger Peach
Elysian - Rhubarbarella
Fish Brewing - Swordfish Double CDA
Foggy Noggin - Bit O Beaver (English Bitter)
Harmon - Vanilla Porter & Rajah's Royal IPA
Howe Sound - Pothole Filler (Imperial Stout)
Kona - Longboard Lager & Wailua Wheat (Nothing I haven't had multiple times but I had to keep going back to get swag. One lei, 3 gecko keychains & and bomb ass Kona beach towel that required some serious eyelash fluttering and annoying persistence that I have trademarked.)
Mac & Jack's - C U Lator Barleywine Ale
Northern Lights - Blueberry Creme Ale
Odin - Thor's Equinox & Odin's Gift (I distinctly recall sloshing my Equinox all over my hand due to some heavy gesturing while talking about the sour stout called Thor's Intrigue to the pourer. Real smooth on my part.)
Port Townsend - Green Tea Gold
Ram - CoConut Porter & Berry White (Raspberry Belgian White Ale)
Schooner Exact - Seamstress Union (yay!) & Bravehorse Pale Ale
Scuttlebutt - The Dirty Blonde (that's what he said)
Skookum - Cabernet Barrel Molasses Stout
Snipes - Sour Pumpkin Stout
Three Skulls - Cutthroat Imperial Red
Two Beers - Ginger/Lime Panorama Wheat & Infused Evo IPA (plus we got free koozies for stopping by!)
Wingman - Pomegranate P-51 Porter, Bourbon Barrel Porter, Blackberry Sour Ale (EFFING BOMB DIGGITY)

Dang, that's a lot of beer. I'm sure there are more that our collective group tasted and loved but this is what I can list with much certainty due to our usual preferences and I know how we be rollin' at festivals, yo. 

In between beer tasting I divided my time evenly between the following delights:

Ignoring Micah's muscles...












...but reaping the benefits of his tattoo placement prowess along with one of my very best gal pals.












Grabbing a quick Kenny (Port Townsend) hug before I talked him out of his Parkway Tavern sweatshirt. Add that to the swag list.












Harassing the mini golf guy during my 300th attempt to sink a putt. Maybe my time wasn't so evenly divided... He felt sorry for me and finally gave me a WABL Golf Ball. Swag list, add it.



















Somehow Brian and Mike (7 Seas) manage to mutually serve me and ignore me at the same time, great skills guys! Only to be matched later when I almost talked Mike out of that great shirt by telling him I'd switch with him at the end of the day. It was a plan until one of us didn't show, pretty sure it wasn't me...

Entertaining the locals with what I'm sure was scintillating conversational skills on my part.












Lending a hand at the last minute Friday rush in the Big Al tent. Where I quickly realized that I am designed to drink beer and socialize, not pour beer for others. These people all ran up and scared the crap outta me!
 











 Chased bubbles.












And wrestled fellow beer blogger Mike Besser (Brewdad) over a beer/token trade. I forget who won but that probably means it was him.












I'm sure many of you know, I heart Tacoma. It is with so much pride that I got the chance to see how awesome the Wingman Brewing guys did at the festival. They had a giant line of people wanting a taste and then who kept coming back for more, each day until they sold out. They were the darlings of Brewers Fest, great job guys!!

Kenny Thoburn of Wingman Brewers & their ridiculously long line

As you can tell from below I actually DO love hanging out with my brother (on the left),

just not in combination with my good friend who is like a brother to me (on the right)...

they bust out the 'time to harass our little sister' act a little too effectively as a team.

the pissed liBEERian

Real brother, me, fake brother