OK, I see it playing out as a mud bowl and Chicago winning. I see Manning holds his head in his hands by the end and we are unclear as to whether it is the rain or tears. Likely this now assures a Colts win.
CNY Brewfest 2007 Is History
To say I had anything other than a blast would be something of a understatement. Being, I have to admit, my first US style beer fest with hundreds and hundreds of people in a large barn at the NY state fair with 52 beer vendors giving it away for free it was quite a lesson in craft beer culture. We met lots of great people and, at one point, one of my fellow Canucks mentioned that if this many people were drinking free beer for this long a fight would have broken out. In the Syracuse all they did was stand around and talk about really great beer.
There were booths from macrobreweries and imports, booths with people selling t-shirts and booths manned by the good folks who put out beer publications like The Great Lakes Brewing News. But most of the crowd’s attention was given to the craft brewers of New York state like Ithaca Beer Co., Sackets Harbour Brewing, Middle Ages Brewing, Ommegang and Lake Placid Brewing. I now have an UBU sticker for the bumper of my car!
I’ll put down a little more later tonight about the event but for now here are some more photos. Look at that good looking beer blog business card…
Later: OK, what were the beers of the fest? I guided a number of people to the Allagash White tap, especially after they tried the Blue Moon. One in my group kept going back for the Ithaca Double IPA and, by that measure, my favorite was the Stoudts Double IPA. Smuttynose’s Winter Ale was also a repeat customer. I certainly did not have one of every kind but I did have some great chats about great beer with folk I had not met before like Mickey who runs the festival, Stefan (Inertiaboy) and Luc (Lubiere) who I know from The Bar Towel, with Spencer Noakes, Craft Sales Director for the main distributor for the festival, with the publisher of The Great Lakes Brewing News who I got to thank for publishing some of my articles (like one in this month’s edition), Peter Quinn, Founder of the excellent Wachusett Brewing, as well as a whole crew of my brothers from Hamilton, Ontario who are connected to a great craft brew pub there – and whose card I lost so I can’t mention the place!
All in all very worthy and certainly an event that will see me return with a larger gang and maybe a bus from the north to get us around, Syracuse being the land that taxis forgot. Buy the way, the Bar Towellers last view of us was jumping in a car full of guys who had been attending the neighbouring golf show and who were good enough to get us to the Dinosaur BBQ. From there we did not get much farther. Next time, I will make sure my compadres will get better nap time.
Saturday In The States
It’s Brewfest Day – CNY brewfest that is. Brewfestia. I trust you got all the Brewfestia presents you wanted and that you’ll be singing all your favorite Brewfestia carols. Back for Superbowl Sunday.
Update: The results are in.
First Friday of February Chat
Another gentle dawn. Another month.
Friday this week finds us in a full fledged debate on who is most green. I have no idea why as I have resigned myself to ecological disaster a few short centuries after I am gone, sometime after the Venusians get us all and align themselves with our cats.
- Green is Canada’s new story on the global scene – forget what was said a few weeks ago, please. And it makes strange bed fellows – forget the labour management divisions of the past. I still can’t figure out why our Prime Minister’s conversion on the road to Damascus or at least the next election is not being called a flop-a-rama of the highest order.
- It is extraordinary in this day that people in leadership positions can say such dumb things.
- I am not one to reach for the Attends every time the twits at BoingBoing announce the GroupThink of the day but no doubt there is much foaming over the embarrassment that is the NFL’s demands that churches limit the screens they show TV shows on to 55 inches, as the ever excellent Deadspin cuts and pastes:
Initially, the league objected to the church’s plan to charge partygoers a fee to attend and that the church used the license-protected words “Super Bowl” in its promotions. Newland told the NFL his church would not charge partygoers — the fee had been intended only to pay for snacks — and that it would drop the use of the forbidden words. But the NFL wouldn’t bite. It objected to the church’s plans to use a projector to show the game on what effectively was a 12-foot-wide screen. It said the law limits the church to one TV no bigger than 55 inches.
The law? What law? The license between the NFL and the calbe network perhaps but show me the red hand with the pointy finger next to “55 inches” please in the terms and conditions of my cable TV agreement. I declare Sunday group projection TV night. Fight the power! Fight the power that restricts us to 55 inch TV screens!
- Hilarious to see the end of podcasting coming decidedly unbangily but with the whimperiest of whimpers as the 2007 bloggies cut the category for best podcast of a weblog. Remember when people podcasted? That was cool.
- I still haven’t got the story right about the Space Invaders rip off images being shown in Boston as reported Thursday in this article:
…yesterday, a subway worker less attuned to the latest in underground marketing techniques called the police after spotting one of the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” cartoon characters on an overpass in Charlestown. The terrorism scare that followed touched off a massive response from police. When it was discovered that the electronic boards were only ads for a cartoon, serious condemnation flowed from Washington and Boston.
What generation gap? Space Invaders was 28 years ago. Who in the work force who does not recognize this sort of character?
There. It is done. Soon there will be a week of February behind us, then it will be mid-month. Before long, we will meet March and this farce of a winter will be gone.
Nice And Quiet
What a pleasant week it has been without the refer logs leading me to the reviews of the whacked complaining of rudeness and telling lies about lying, with strangers making unwelcome accusations against each other of no interest to anyone. How nice to have the conviviality of sport and group work making for gentle days of peace. It is like the thought of the Russian gent to the left: “hmm – a hole, a line and hope of a fish.” There was a time when I stopped arguing elsewhere as arguing gained nothing: it was like shouting at a shoe that did not fit. It is nice to experience the same stopping here, moving on now between the group projects and the sports and whatever.
Maybe there is another level of bloggy understanding where ego leaves us and we know unknowing as it is? Be the link.
CNY Brewfest 2007 Update
With just six days to go until CNY Brewfest 2007 at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, the 11th annual, and preparations are being made – meaning that I have booked the hotel and have business cards being printed. Business cards? Me, too – I have no idea why. Anyway, I am going to post more information here as I collect it. At the bottom of the post is a list of all the participants as of last Thursday.
-
- There is some good information in the comments section to the original post.
- Here is an Mp3 of the radio ad that Mick, organizer and man about Teddy’s at Armory Square.
- I am having a little trouble figuring out the schedule for CENTRO, Syracuse’s bus service. If anyone want to send them a proposal as to having a useful website that might be handy.
- Here is that list of participants, local distributors listed in brackets. A nice mix with a hearty core of local upstate micros:
North Coast Brewing Co., Fort Bragg, California (TJ Sheehan)
Smuttynose Brewing Co., Portsmouth, New Hampshire (TJ Sheehan)
Otter Creek Brewing, Middlebury, Vermont (TJ Sheehan)
Magic Hat Brewing Co., South Burlington, Vermont (TJ Sheehan)
Sackets Harbor Brewing Co., Sackets Harbor, New York (TJ Sheehan)
Dogfish Head Brewing Co., Milton, Delaware (TJ Sheehan)
Stone Brewing Co., San Diego, Ca. (TJ Sheehan)
Lake Placid Craft Brewing Co., Plattsburgh, New York (TJ Sheehan)
Rogue Brewing Co., Ashland, Oregon (TJ Sheehan)
Middle Ages Brewing Co., Syracuse, New York (TJ Sheehan)
Lindemanns, Vlezenbeek, Belguim (TJ Sheehan)
Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, New York (TJ Sheehan)
Young’s Brewing Co., Wandsworth, London, England (TJ Sheehan)
Chimay Brewing Co., Cistercian Trappist Monks, Belguim (TJ Sheehan)
Wachusett Brewing Co., Westminster, Ma. (TJ Sheehan)
Lagunitas, Petaluma, Califonia (TJ Sheehan)
Samuel Smith Brewery, Tadcaster, England (TJ Sheehan)
Pabst Brewing Co., Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Onondaga)
Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Vancouver, Canada (Onondaga)
Bass Ale, Burton-on-Trent, England (Onondaga)
Hoegaarden Brewing Co., Hoegaarden, Belgium (Onondaga)
Stella Artois, Leuven Brewery, Belgium (Onondaga)
Heineken, Amsterdam, Netherlands (Onondaga)
Killians, Golden Colorado (Onondaga)
Newcastle Brewing Co., Tyne, England (Onondaga)
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, California (Onondaga)
Yuengling Brewing Co., Pottsville, Pennsylvania (Onondaga)
Blue Moon Brewing Co., Golden Colorado (Onondaga)
Saranac Brewing Co., Utica, New York (Onondaga)
Ale Street News, Maywood, New Jersey
Syracuse Suds Factory, Syracuse, New York
Rohrbach Brewing Co., Rochester, New York
Cooperstown Brewing Co., Cooperstown, New York (TJ Sheehan)
Salt City Brew Club, Manlius, New York
Anheuser Busch, St. Louis, Mo. (TJ Sheehan)
Harpoon Brewing Co., Boston , Mass & Windsor, VT. (TJ Sheehan)
Duvel Brewing Co., Breendonk, Belguim (TJ Sheehan)
Guinness, Dublin, Ireland (TJ Sheehan)
Sam Adams, Boston, Mass. (TJ Sheehan)
Spaten North America, Munich, Germany (TJ Sheehan)
Victory Brewing Co., Downingtown, Pennsylvania (TJ Sheehan)
Southern Tier Brewing Co., Lakewood, New York (TJ Sheehan)
Woodchuck Brewing Co., Middlebury, Vermont (TJ Sheehan)
Oskar Blues Brewing Co., Lyons, Colorado (TJ Sheehan)
Brooklyn Brewing Co., Brooklyn, New York (TJ Sheehan)
Miller Lite, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Sanzone)
Fosters, Australia (Sanzone)
Landmark Brewing Co., Syracuse, New York (Sanzone)
Leinenkugel (Sanzone)
Ithaca Beer Company, Ithaca, New York (Sanzone)
Friday Bullets For Shane
When I was seven, I had to go to the hospital in North Sydney. I had something but the doctors couldn’t figure out for a week they poked around me, one day taking so many blood tests that they ended up having to hold me down. They ended up figuring it out and I was out in about ten days.
Andrew from Bound By Gravity wrote me a few days ago about another seven year old boy who is in hospital in Ottawa with a tougher haul these days. He has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. But that boy, Shane, has a request. He wants cards from around the world for his birthday. Here is Andrew’s explanation of what you can do to help Shane. I like how Brooksie puts it:
Yes, you do have time to do this. He’s a seven year-old child with leukemia sitting in isolation at a hospital right now. You’ll make the time.
Right?
You can make the time, too. He address to write to is here. Bullet points in a moment.
- US College baseball season has begun.
- Earlier this week I saw a blip pass by that for some reason did not get much attention. Canadian pension funds are doing very well.
Canadian pension funds moved into a healthier financial position last year, buoyed by strong stock market performance and higher bond yields, Mercer Investment Consulting reported Tuesday. The median return for Canadian pooled balanced pension funds was 13 per cent for the year, “benefiting from strong performance in most of the major equity markets in 2006,” Mercer said in reporting the results of its pooled fund survey.
Whenever there is a tough patch for pensions, people go one about how the sky is falling and turn, in despair, to libertarianism. Expect packed union halls and a spike in NDP polling for the next wee while.
- A few weeks ago we discussed the meaning of local in our form of Federalism. It appears, however, that in the heartland of the individual, local does not actually mean the local community as the council of Fort MacMurray Alberta is looking for a stop to the expansion of the tar sands that are the windfall fueling the provincial boom and the local social bust. Here is the story for Jim Elve’s place. So is the best “local” really just the next big faceless bureaucracy below the national level?
- Rob posts an very lucid article from the New York Times on the way food and health have been treated for the last number of decades.
- Dick Cheney is getting a hard rap this week. Last night on CNN there was a little tag line on the screen which was something like “Cheney Deluded?” Now, if I was ever to have a bull headed crazy power freak in my like, Dick’s the man. Why? Well, he wrote Dad a letter one that hung on the cottage wall next to the one from Michael Palin for one thing. Maybe it is the Libby case where all of a sudden the defense is not backing up all those bloggers that claimed the charges were overkill. NPR has more on Dick the Contrarian, who even seethed at Wolf Blitzer this week – seethed!!
- I think I would be more sympathetic if there was a concurrent promise to create a Maritimes Union with centralized services, two of which were not nepotism and patronage…did I say that out loud?
That must be it. If you want to check out some great blogging, pop over to the beer blog and read about Knut’s adventures at the world’s northernmost bar. Tough crowd that likes a mural of a shot polar bear.