Friday night, LaptopGirl and I went to this Bier Prost 2008 thingy at our local riverboat casino complex. I insisted on calling this a date. LaptopGirl insisted that it was merely a thingy. But then I guess her mom said it was a date. So there. Majority rules.
I don't think that either of us was at all sure what to expect there. The flyer said something like, "Beer and food from around the world." So that sounded cool. right? I guess I was expecting it to be more beery than it was. I mean, they had a bunch of tubs with bottles of beer in them. We got cute little ceramic sample cups that would hold about two ounces of beer. Then we'd walk around and ask the bored people working the tubs for whatever we wanted.
None of those people knew about or cared about beer. The only brewery representatives there were from NABC.
It was like the people running the event just went out to a liquor store and bought a bunch of bottles and then put them in tubs full of ice. Even the other attendees seemed to be there just for the charity aspect.
But most disappointing to me was the food. It was just like they called some caterer and said we want some various stuff, and that's all they got.
But the point of the thing, for the people running it, wasn't beer and it wasn't food. It was some charity thing that I never heard of before. So they obviously wanted to save costs wherever they could.
The point of the thing for me, of course, wasn't beer or food either. It was to get to spend some time with LaptopGirl away from Rich O's. And that goal was very well satisfied.
Anyway, I did have some beers. Most of these were just 2-ounce samples. Here are the ones that were new to me:
(bottle) Fizzy, with a nice aroma and a pretty good taste. Very light. More like a Belgian wheat than an American or German wheat. Pretty good. I'll look for this.Grimbergen Dubbel
(bottle) Dark brown with a nice head. Aroma of dark fruits and maybe some chocolate. The flavor was surprisingly good to me. I will definitely look for this again. Probably today.Grimbergen Blonde
(bottle) Usually I know to steer clear of any beer calling itself a blonde, but this was listed as a Belgian Triple in the flyer, so I tried it. I liked it. There was nothing outstanding about it, but neither was there anything wrong with it. Maybe a watered-down Delirium tremens. Good.Singha
(bottle) Straw and other dead weeds, in both the aroma and the flavor. Not very hoppy. Not very much of anything. Disgusting.Hansa Pils
(can) Pretty metallic. Quite gross. I don't think that even people who like lagers would like this.KEO
(can) Just gross. Smelled of rotten hops, and tasted very metallic. It tasted to me like it was skunked. Suprisingly bad.Okocim Porter
(bottle) I know I'd had this before, but I'd never reviewed it. As a Baltic Porter, it of course reminds me of my beloved Baltika 6. Dark and roasty and chocolatey. Just a touch of alcohol burn at the finish makes me want more right away. Good.After the thingy was over, we walked down to the actual riverboat casino and looked around for a couple of minutes. Then we went to the Legends bar to sit and talk some more. We each had another beer, in a full-sized glass this time.
Then we came back to New Albany, and LaptopGirl got this sudden intense craving to stop and eat at this one place I'd never been to before called Waffle House. Anxious to prolong the evening as much as I could, I readily agreed. So we sat and talked some more while she got something to eat, then I took her home and then I came home myself.
It was a really fun night for me. Kinda surreal, but really fun.
