Beer Summit Recap
Ah, 6th Annual Winter Jubilee, I already miss you. As last time, the event was somewhat badly coordinated with no floor map available or list of beers, a line that went in front of the food (I made sure to eat beforehand), and lights that very annoyingly kept on flickering the whole time. It was also a bit too crowded, though the crowd thinned out a bit after a couple hours. Plus, most breweries brought a very limited selection of beers. Dogfish Head didn’t bring Randall like usual, Clipper City only had two despite having their whole Heavy Seas banner, and there were only two casks in the entire area.
However, I’m willing to discount most of these problems in exchange for fifty-five breweries all in one place pouring unlimited quantities of beer. I was also surprised at the speed at which I was able to get beer despite the large crowds. There were a number of great beers available, and most were good. There were a few really nasty ones that I ended up pouring out, though, in particular those from a small brewery on the North Shore. Here’s a tip for quickly assessing which beer to try: the hotter the chick pouring for you, the worse the beer. Ideally, you should be drinking beer poured by a fat old guy. I, of course, made the mistake of going to the two hottest women in the place and trying their beers. Not a good idea.
There were actually a few new beers that I hadn’t seen before, too, all of them imports. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble remembering what the heck they were because there was no beer list!!!
This time, we went to the second session, and I’m a bit torn as to whether going to the first or second is better. When in doubt, the answer is, of course, to go to both, but there are time, liver, and financial constraints. Anyway, I think the event was much improved from last year: they got rid of tickets and there’s now a cool mini mug. However, there’s still room for improvement. We’ll see how it goes next year.
In the meantime, the next two major events are the Wine Expo on Feb. 8-10 and the Extreme Beer Fest on Feb. 15-16. Unfortunately, the former is ridiculously expensive, and the latter is sold out. I will be at both.
Photo Credit: Michael Guo
Tags: Beer, beer fest, beer summit, winter jubilee
