Date 61 - Ice Cold Beer Here.

Date: Friday, October 19, 2012
Type: Out on the Town, Culture
Cost: $$
Planned By: Adam

Cleveland Beer Week 2012 is October 19th - October 27th. Adam found information about this online and asked if I wanted to go to the collaboration kick off. I knew it was something he would like to do, and even though I don't like beer that much I was pretty excited. Here is what the event consisted of: 5 bars, 6 collaborated 10 oz beers. All 6 beers had at least two of the Cleveland breweries collaborate to create a unique beer.

It all started at the Winking Lizard downtown. Our first beer was the Fat Heads and Chardon BrewWorks Smoked Maple Bacon Stout. Adam could taste the smoked maple bacon, but all I tasted was beer, but a pretty good beer. The second beer was also at The Winking Lizard and it was the Market Garden, Rocky River Brewing and Indigo Imp Tallboy, a wet-hopped brown ale. This was NOT 10oz. It was very hoppy and very difficult to drink. Luckily, the Winking Lizard has free popcorn. :)

Bar 2 was the City Tap. It was a very short walk which was nice because it was raining. The beer here was Brew Kettle and Willoughby Brewing: Hoppy Hellesbock. Again a bit difficult to drink, but Adam liked it.

 

Bar 3 was the Lincoln Taphouse in Tower city. Beer number four was the Buckeye Brewing, Ohio Brewing and Black Box: Nut Brown Ale with Maple Syrup. This one was my favorite. It had the least amount of hops and I could taste some of the other ingredients. Adam really liked this one, too.

Bar 4 was Pickwick and Frolic and they had the Thirsty Dog, Cornerstone Brewing, and LagerHeads: Belgian Style Dubbel with Plums. This was an interesting beer. It came in a huge (wine looking) glass and I have a hard time believing it was only 10oz. If I had had that much wine in that glass I would have gotten some funny looks. This one took us the longest to finish.

The last bar was the Corner Alley and they had the Great Lakes and Cellar Rats: Wet-Hopped Pale Ale. This one was definitely 10 oz. All the other bars had awesome beer tasting glasses and the Corner Alley had these lame plastic cups. The beer was OK, but by the end I did not want to be drinking beer anymore.

This date was a lot of fun, but looking back we should have only bought one ticket and shared. Poor Adam ended up drinking all his beer and probably half of mine. Oops. It was really cool trying the unique beers, but they should have had a food stop or something because six beers in a max of three hours is quite a lot of beer.

Cheers!