Category: Travel in North America

Saturday began slowly, as we needed to recover from the night before. Plus we didn’t really have anywhere to be until the festival began at 2pm.

We took a walk with Matt and Michelle checking out some of the sites of downtown Anchorage. I also wanted to go to this one liquor store so I could buy some Alaskan beer for our tasting.

Merideth was able to do some birdwatching and saw what she was looking for; a waxwing.

It was a mostly clear day, so I have to say that the view from the Captain Cook monument was quite impressive. Your history lesson for the day… Captain Cook is credited with first exploring and describing the Anchorage area in 1778.

For lunch, we made our first visit to Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse, the famous beer bar in downtown Anchorage. Opened in 1994, Humpy’s was the first champion of Alaskan beer and has an impressive selection. Merideth says forget the highly recommended halibut tacos and get the crab roll. Moreover, one of the owners, Billy Opinsky, had the original idea to hold an Alaskan beer festival.

With a few beers and some food under our belts, it was time to get back to the festival.

There were two sessions on Saturday… we only went to the afternoon “connoisseurs” session where there were special beers not available at the other sessions. The most notable was a 1996 Smoked Porter from Alaskan.

Again, we hung out with Matt, Michelle, Jason and Kristina… and met up with our new Alaskan friends as well. And of course, we hobnobbed with all the beer people.

As for the beer…

Served from a firkin, the Anacortes Fresh Hop Imperial IPA might have been the best beer at the festival…

Other notables….Oaked Yeti from Great Divide, a Belgian Dark from Homer, Milk Stout from Left Hand, 2005 Darth Delerium from Moose’s Tooth, 2005 Epic Ale from Roots. And all the stuff from Midnight Sun, especially the seven deadly sins series.

As for the 1996 Alaskan Smoked Porter, it was being served way too cold [The brewery representative said they did it to keep down foaming] so it was difficult to get any flavors out of it. There was more smoke aroma than flavor. I had a 2005 recently that I enjoyed much more.

Now it was time to volunteer, though instead of bread cutting, we filled water pitchers and wiped down the tables between the sessions. All told, we did about 45 minutes of work; well worth it for the free admission.

Our final thoughts on the festival .. wow! A lot of credit has to go to Annie Chavez and Aurora Productions plus the Great Northern Brewers Club for putting on almost flawless events.

We finished up the night back at Humpy’s, drank a few beers and did something really strange; we decided to call it an early night.

Sunday, my birthday, began with a brewers breakfast at Café Amsterdam, the newest and best beer bar in Anchorage. Café Amsterdam is amazing… The best Alaskan beers plus a great selection of lower 48 craft beer and Belgians. We spent several hours there with Matt and Michelle, shooting the breeze with our Alaskan friends. Thanks to Ken and Shauna, the owners of Café Amsterdam, for their hospitality.

For my birthday dinner, we returned to Glacier Brewhouse and Merideth was nice enough to let we wallop her in scrabble. It was my birthday after all.

We would like to thank the following people for making the first trip of the Year in Beer a memorable one… Matt and Michelle… Jim aka “Dr. Fermento”… Annie Chavez… Mike from Celestial Meads… Don and Tracey… Ken and Shauna Pajak… Jason and Kristina…

 

Our first day here in Anchorage was certainly no fluke. We had another amazing day yesterday! It almost seemed like a slow start, since sunrise was not until 9:52am, but things quickly swung into action. We walked around the downtown area a bit, then hooked up with Jim Roberts aka “Dr. Fermento”. Jim has been a very welcoming goodwill ambassador for Anchorage and Alaska as a whole.

Since we don’t have a car, he actually picked us up and drove us to the Moose’s Tooth, a pizzeria that brews it’s own beer. The pizza was yummy and the beer tasty, too. Unfortunately, they do not brew on the restaurant’s premises, so we did not get to count it on the list. The actual brewery does not have regular tours and was a little further away.

We opted instead to go to the Midnight Sun. There we ran into Shaun O’Sullivan from 21^st Amendment and had a grand ol’ time tasting 2 of the beers in Midnight Sun’s 7 Deadly Sins series. We tried Sloth and Lust, in case you were wondering. Jim had to get moving along, since he was judging barleywines for the festival, so we had time to rest in our room before the festival.

Before we knew it, it was time for the festival to start. Now here’s what we actually came up here for! One of the many cool things about this trip is that we are just a few short blocks from the festival venue. Matter of fact, we can look down at the venue from our hotel room!

We went over with our new friends and fellow beer travelers Matt and Michelle. Matt had emailed Chris about a year ago during the Chief Beer Officer campaign and they have been internet friends since. This was the first time meeting them in person. Matt and Chris are amazingly alike and I know that if we lived closer, we would all be hanging out quite a bit. Later we met up with Michelle’s brother Jason and his girlfriend Kristina who live up here. By the end of the night, my cheeks were sore from laughing so much!

Anyway, as far as festivals go, this is a good one! We seemed to spend most of our time in the Alaskan beer section, which was just fine with all of us. For several hours, we drank great beer and hobnobbed with the likes of Tom Dalldorf from the Celebrator, Chris the brewer from Fort George Brewing in Astoria, Oregon and the “chicken man”.

This morning, we are off to shop at the Brown Jug to pick up more beer for our Alaska beer tasting. The connoisseurs session of the festival begins at 2pm and the next (and last) general session begins at 6pm. In between sessions we will be having a brand new experience…volunteering. We were not able to pour beer, so we are getting the less glamorous job of “bread cutting”. In an apparent effort to stem the puking, each brewery has a little basket of bread cubes. That’s where we come in. We’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out!

Here’s to another great day in Anchorage…it’s currently 14 degrees…

 

When we were leaving the house yesterday at 3am, we saw a mountain lion a quarter of mile from our house. While mountain lions are common where we live, seeing one is not. Ever the optimist, I took this as a good omen that our Alaska trip was going to be something special. And if our first day is a good measure, it will be.

We arrived in Anchorage safe and sound around 1pm yesterday and by 2pm, we were happily ensconced at the Glacier Brewhouse enjoying some great beer and food.

I have to admit my whole concept of pacing myself and taking it easy went out the window fairly quickly. With our taster set done, my first pint was a cask version of their Double IPA. I’m sucker for anything on cask. Between the sampler and pints, we tried 8 different Glacier Brewhouse brews; all good and several brilliant.

The staff was quite friendly and we learned a lot about growing up and living in Alaska from our bartender, J.C., who is a 4th generation Alaskan. His great grandparents came to Alaska early last century during one of the gold rushes.

With renewed energy and a slight buzz, we walked around downtown Anchorage a bit. The cold limited our walk to a short one and the low cloud cover obscured the mountains that surround the city. Hopefully, there will be a clear day coming up so we can really see the natural beauty of Anchorage.

The double highlight of the evening was at Snow Goose Restaurant/Sleeping Lady Brewery which is conveniently a block from our hotel.

Prior to coming to Alaska, I contacted Jim Roberts, who covers the Alaska beer scene for the Celebrator Beer News. Besides providing a load of helpful information, he also invited us to the events that we went to last night.

The first event was the unveiling of special beer…. an imperial stout that was dedicated to the memory of Jim’s son-in-law who died in Iraq last January 20th. Proceeds from the sale of the beer go to erecting a memorial to 53 soldiers from the local army unit who died in Iraq. To say that this was a powerful and sobering moment is an understatement.

Following the beer unveiling, we went downstairs for a meeting of the Great Northern Brewers Club. If you have never been to a homebrew club meeting… find one and go because they are loads of fun. Last night, the GNBC members brought snacks and their latest homebrews, making it a great big beer and food potluck.

We met a very nice couple, Don and Tracey who were lower 48ers until a job brought them to Anchorage. Besides being homebrewers, they also made some great caribou summer sausage and moose salami.

The featured speaker was Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head. He gave a spirited and entertaining account of the history of Dogfish and their beers.

As the meeting was winding down, the long day finally caught up to me and realizing we were here for four days, I decided it was best to call it a night.

I want to thank all the friendly Alaskans we met yesterday… J.C. the bartender and Kevin the brewer from Glacier Brewhouse, Don, Tracey, Mike from Celestial Meads and especially Dr. Fermento himself, Jim.

So, the Year in Beer is off and running and if the first day is any indication, the year is going to be a great and wonderful journey.

 

OK… it’s not really a buzz yet, but we are getting out there…

The Monterey County Herald had an article about me during my Chief Beer Officer campaign so it was only natural that they would do a follow up article on the YiB.

We met the writer, Marc Cabrera, at the Ol’ Factory Cafe (where else…) and over a few beers, told our story and the birth of the YiB. Thanks Marc, we’re very pleased with the article!

Click here to read the article…

Also, we did a phone interview with Jeff Houck, a food writer for the Tampa Tribune and the host of a blog called the Stew and a podcast called “Table Conversations“.

We were pretty excited about this interview not only because it was some national exposure, but also because of Jeff’s enthusiasm for the subject. You can’t help get excited when someone is jazzed about your stuff.

Click here to listen to our interview…

Stay tuned…. more to come.

The “Year in Beer” kicks off with our first ever visit to the 49th state… Alaska.

We heard that Anchorage was a great beer town and the beer festival a blast, but the real motivation of choosing a somewhat unconventional January location was to show everyone how serious we are about the “Year in Beer” (YiB). Basically, “If they are crazy enough to go to Alaska in January they just might be crazy enough to pull the whole year off.” However, I will admit that I did look to see if Hawaii had a beer festival in January… I couldn’t find one.

Are we prepared for the cold? Merideth has a nice new long coat, but for the most part I refused to buy a bunch of winter clothes that I will only wear for a few days. Obviously, I am not going to be wearing my normal shorts and a T-shirt but neither will I be wearing 8 layers of clothing. We are not spending much time outside so why do I need arctic clothing? In the end, it might not even be that cold, which I hear also presents a problem… Anchorage turns into a slushy mess.

I will say that traveling to such a remote place has me somewhat confused. Several times, I have mentally reminded myself to put my passport into my pile of travel stuff and then remember that Alaska is part of the United States.

OK… here is the really embarrassing ‘I know very little about Alaska’ moment… embarrassing mainly because I am really good at geography. For some strange reason, I thought ANCHORage was inland.

Ignorance aside, let’s get back to the reason for our trip: BEER.

The focus of the trip is the Great Alaska Beer & Barleywine Festival, which is on Friday and Saturday. Fifty breweries are going be pouring almost 200 different beers and meads. The festival is orchestrated by the Great Northern Brewers Club, Anchorage’s “biggest, best, and only homebrew club.”

Our strategy is not complicated… No matter how tempting, we will try not to drink beers from the lower 48. We didn’t travel to Alaska to drink Sierra Nevada, Full Sail, Rogue, Anchor and the rest. Beers that we don’t have easy access to at home will be tempting… maybe after we go through all the Alaskan beers, we can move on to them.

Secondly, we will most likely (Merideth most certainly) shy away from the Barleywines and other high alcohol beers so to focus on trying a wider range of Alaskan beer. Besides Alaskan Brewing’s smoked porter, we don’t see too much Alaskan beer in this part of the lower 48. So, this is our chance to really experience what Alaska has to offer.

A new adventure in our trip is that we are volunteering at the festival. I thought it would be a good way to meet people. Unfortunately, we are unable to pour beer (you need to go through a class to be able to pour), so we are going to help straighten up between the two Saturday sessions. If it goes well, we will make volunteering a regular occurrence this year.

Then there is always the quest to find all the beer industry pre- and post-parties. This is where you find all the good stuff.

Outside of the festival, there are 4 breweries in Anchorage to visit, as well as a handful of beer bars that are ‘must stops’. We have made some local connections to help us with our quest because in the end, it is all about the brewery list. And luckily, we will be meeting up with some fellow beer travelers who are more familiar with Anchorage, so we shouldn’t get lost.

Less than a week to go and the excitement is building! The YiB is finally here and Alaska… here we come!