PCBW! Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week!

TheViperMan

http://pittsburghcraftbeerweek.com/

I'm going to be hitting up several events in the area - I won't get up into the city very much (just no time to deal with traffic) but am going to be focusing on venues in Bridgeville, Robinson, and one in Washington hopefully. Looking forward to sampling beers from Founders, Flying Dog, Brooklyn Brewery, and some awesome local homebrews!

If anyone's going to be in the area, let me know!

Jeff

esjaygee

Have fun! We just had Milwaukee Craft Beer Week here and I've had my fill of barrel aged beers and double IPAs for awhile. A fun but very caloric and expensive time indeed making this week "Milwaukee Drink Water Week" for me.

TheViperMan

lol - I hear ya esjaygee!

Only 4 days in to PCBW and I've had 19 different beers (luckily not all 12 ouncers!) Tonight I'll boost that count by SEVERAL - possibly up another nine or so.

So yeah, it has definitely been fun, but you're right on the expenses and such - I'm already a good $120 into this week just on... booze... :ohwell:

It's only one week a year though - that's what I'm telling myself!

bcf7683

Totally forgot about this... Might be taking a detour on the bike ride Saturday to the city :drinker:

esjaygee

It's only one week a year though - that's what I'm telling myself!

Same thing here... though Madison Beer Week starts in 10 days and I usually head up there twice. You have to get in line super early to get tickets to The Great Taste of The Midwest and one place is having a three year Vertical of Founder KBS at 5pm that night. That's going to be a long, long day :drinker:

TheViperMan

Founder KBS...

Founders KBS!! I just got to try that on Saturday at a homebrewing meeting/party, and then stopped at a local distributor and put my name on the waiting list to get a case... and THEN learned that a case costs $120 bucks!!! Holy Jeebus!!

Good stuff though

BigDog

I hear ya Viperman...

I only live about 30 miles from Founders and I can rarely ever get my hands on any KBS. It is really good and tasty stuff, but I don't like how they keep it on such a tight leash. They could make a lot more of it and let everybody get their fill of it, but I guess they enjoy keeping it scarce so the demand stays high. I think they should just let us all enjoy it when we want to.

But what do I know. They're the ones making all the money. ;-)

esjaygee

They rationed of all the KBS in Milwaukee one bottle at a time and at 6 to 6.50 a piece. I got my bottle at a bar for $10. If I found a case for $120, I'd probably buy one as that's "only" $5 a bottle. There are other bourbon barrel beers that are easier to get, a bunch cheaper and almost as good as KBS. Central Waters in Wisconsin makes a lot of barrel aged beers. The Rye Barrel Aged Stout and Bourbon Barrel Weizen Bock I had last week were stellar.

TheViperMan

I agree with both of ya - "rare beers" just don't make a lot of sense to me. It's not like we're buying one-of-a-kind Lamborghini's or something like that. The only thing I can think is that the actual bourbon barrels might be hard for Founders to get their hands on, and perhaps they're not "reusable" for multiple batches of beer. I have no idea. It also doesn't help that western PA does not seem to be considered a viable selling place for these kinds of beers - we really can't find the "bucket list beers". I hear Philadelphia is a pretty good "import town". Unfortunately I don't live there anymore!

I'm up to 30 different beers this week though, with a few more tastings to attend. Tonight it'll be PennBrewery which is right here in PGH, and tomorrow Brooklyn Brewery, which seems a bit hit-or-miss in my opinion. On the fitness side of things, I picked up a whopping 4 pounds on day one, but have hovered there ever since!

esjaygee

My Beer Week weight came off after a few days. I'm down 3.4 pounds since Monday and hope to be down another 2 or so by the weekend.

I'm a sucker for rare beers and beers I haven't tried yet. I'm not sure how many beers (probably 20) I had during beer week but I was rather sedentary, ate terrible and most beers were rather large beers. I had a lot more in terms of quantity on my trip to Grand Rapids a month back - well over 100 beers. Though those were mostly samples and my wife helped me on quite a few of them and I hardly ever felt the effects of the alcohol.

Speaking of Founders when they released CBS in 2011, someone in Pennsylvania followed around the distribution truck and bought up a lot of the CBS and put them on ebay. Luckily you can't sell on ebay anymore and Founders has taken steps to ensure that more people can get their hands on their beer. But it's tough but they do make a lot of excellent stuff.

I love your beer ticker!

TheViperMan

I only heard about CBS just the other day - Monday in fact, as I was getting on the waiting list for KBS. It's $160 a case when it comes around!

The ticker is available for download here if you'd like! http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/959816-dark-to-light-beer-ticker-image-for-download

esjaygee

Do you still have to buy everything by the case in Pennsylvania? I remember when listening to old Craft Beer Radio Podcasts (they're out of Pittsburgh) years ago they mentioned something about that a few times but that they were trying to get the law changed. I hardly ever buy a six pack of anything much less a case - though I did make an exception for Lagunitas Sucks :drinker: :drinker:

halffull_pgh

Hooray PGH Craft Beer Week. Not participating in as many things as I would like but I am doing the East End Brewery Keg Ride on Saturday. Should be a blast.

TheViperMan

Do you still have to buy everything by the case in Pennsylvania? I remember when listening to old Craft Beer Radio Podcasts (they're out of Pittsburgh) years ago they mentioned something about that a few times but that they were trying to get the law changed. I hardly ever buy a six pack of anything much less a case - though I did make an exception for Lagunitas Sucks :drinker: :drinker:

You can only buy cases from beer distributors, but have always been able to buy six-packs from bottle shops, which are usually attached to bars. Of course you usually pay more per-bottle for these.

However that trend is changing rapidly around here with the craft beer craze accelerating at such a pace. Now those six-pack shops are starting to separate the bottles out and allowing "make you own" arrangements, and the prices aren't ballooning out of control. There's actually a pretty nice bottle shop just down the street from me, and I've assembled a "custom" six pack that included a $10 bottle of 120-minute IPA and it only cost me about $18 total. And NONE of those other bottles were ANYTHING from Coors/Annheiser Bush/etc. I usually build six packs in the $12-14 range. A lot of bars are jumping on the bandwagon too - good bars at least - and we have at least two shops in the area that advertise 1000 different bottles of beer. One is infact called "The House of 1000". I have yet to get there as it's about a 45-minute drive.

SOOOOOOOOOO Pittsburgh Craft Beer week has come to an end!! It's been an awesome week. I sampled beers from Church Brew Works, CoStar, Founders, Rivertowne, Sierra Nevada, Penn Brewery, Bell's, Brooklyn Brewery, Lancaster Brewery, and closed out the week helping Flying Dog Brewery set the Guiness Book of World Records for largest beer-tasting event ever! All-in-all I tried over 50 different beers, not including at least 10 different homebrews, and got lots of free stuff like coasters, shirts, and pub glasses. I had a GREAT time, and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

I also only picked up 5 pounds, but it's been a crazy week... Friday my entire family caught some stomach bug that passed through each of us through Sunday. By saturday afternoon I was actually back to .4 pounds from my starting weight, but by this morning (Monday) was up 5. I attribute that to the Chinese food we splurged on last night! So I'm not worried, but to be safe, I'm declaring this week Pittsburgh Craft WATER Week!

Cheers, everyone!!!