It's as if you were all at my lunch table today. I swear we were talking about the exact same things.
The Tattoo sucking, or Cuba?
Sorry for my manners, good afternoon gentleman.
Joe, I took your comment on face value, wondering if this is some new euphemism - tatoo sucking.
I had to read back to get the context.
Aha.
Just stopped by a local sandwich/pizza place which carries an exotic variety of bottled beer and has a small bar with a similar rotating variety of drafts ... and guess what, today they have Southern Tier Choklat Stout, as well as some other great brews. My head was spinning from 3 samples, thought I'd better come home and eat lunch before going back. Only bad thing, no smoking on the chained off patio area. Sheesh.
Scott sent me a bottle of the ST Chocklat... so good! Easily one of my favorites since I've gone balls-to-the-wall with my beer consumption. Really wish we got that out here! And it's always hard to make recommendations because I never know what's available here but not somewhere else. So it'll be some beer that EVERYONE out here raves about (say, Alpine Nelson), but most people outside of southern California haven't heard of it unless they're really tied in to the craft beer world.
A friend of mine, sometimes does catering/serving jobs on the side and will call when she needs an extra set of hands, either for serving or bartending. Two weekends ago we did an event which was a postponed wedding reception (wedding took place in Guatemala) and I bartended for the most part. A good part of the bride's family came from California for the event, including the bride's grandmother, who said she was from San Diego and was well aware of local microbreweries, incl. Stone which she lives near. We were serving a couple of Port City (Alexandria, VA) products on tap (Monumental IPA and Optimal Wit).
Stone's an interesting case out here. They're getting SO big and their stuff is almost literally everywhere - bars, stadiums, grocery store, liquor stores, gas stations - that a lot people are starting to stop classifying them as a 'micro' brew. Personally, I think it's just beer snobs being beer snobs, saying this to show how cool they are for being in to craft beer before it exploded.
Word from them now is that they're looking for an east coast location for another brewery. They're on the path to being the next Sam Adams.
