2007 Indiana Microbrewers Festival | Mike's Notes

I hate beer. Ok, that's not true - I really like beer. But if twelve months pass until my next tasting of a cask aged brew, I won't be upset.

I don't have many notes from the Microbrewers Festival, but there are a few things that stuck with me:

1) It seems like everyone's making a bourbon cask aged stout. I feel like I've sampled all of them. And I don't seem to like any of them.

I suspect that the other knights are all going to give rave reviews to those stouts we sampled. We were fortunate enough to have friends at the festival that allowed us to skip the lines (Mike Deweese of the highly recommended Badaboomz, Courtney of the Beer Geek favorite Hop Shop) to sample a few - and I'm sorry to say their efforts were wasted on me. Bad beer geek, I guess. Even Three Floyd's Dark Lord, which people take field trips to buy, didn't do it for me. If I had to describe the Dark Lord, I'd say it was almost "gamey", and reminded me of camping.

2) I very rarely use the word "boobies".

You might be surprised that the very same ladies who were selling and apparently also showing (their word) "boobies" in BeerJuggs : The Instructional Video recommended that I skip the restroom line and join some of the other male festival attendants in urinating in a random spot behind the outhouses. I told them of my concerns about where to walk; they reminded me that I don't drink with my feet. Nevertheless, I passed on the opportunity to skip the line.

3) Ted at Brugge Beer (and Brugge Brasserie) remains my favorite brewer.

I was knighted quite a while after the geeks made their first visit to Brugge Brasserie to review The Black; It remains my favorite beer and one of the few I'd give a five mug rating. Ted has once again done fantastic work with his (CODEWORD: Angry Melon) Diamond Kings of Heaven. It was easily my favorite beer of the day.

I'm sure my opinion was a bit biased - I skipped Friday
night's Brugge party because the beer was too affordable - I was afraid I wouldn't be able to control myself.

4) Beer people = Good people

I'd like to join Jim in thanking Bob Ostrander of Indiana Beer for getting us in to the festival early and I'd also like to thank all of the brewers for encouraging reaction to what we do at Hoosier Beer Geek. The Brewers of Indiana Guild have done a great job with the Festival, and I think we all look forward to next year.