Brewing for a party
Once again I had the opportunity to brew for our annual St. Patricks day party that we attend. Friday night I had about six different beers on draft at the house. The big winners were The Harry Knuckle Rye closely followed by the ctrlALTdelete.
For the actual party on Saturday I brought along 3 kegs, South Side Pride – The Irish Red, Seven Degrees Of Wilfrod Brimley (Oatmeal Stout), and The Winter Wader Patch Wit (Rye Wit). In addition to my beers they had a keg of Miller(?). The beers were all pretty well recieved but the wit proved to be the least popular. Of course I need to work with my Bartenders a bit on selling the beverages, given that one of them described the wit as:
“Yellow, Fizzy, and you know, Yeasty”
Needless to say, that person passed on trying it. Given that the crowd was more of a BMC group, I can understand that the wit was not popular. One gent tried the first two and liked them. Then he tried the thrid and said “This is not even drinkable” – Fair enough, my Wit’s have a tangy flavor from the acidulated malt that alot of people find unusual in beer. Add a solid blast of fresh indian coriander and they are in the “This doesn’t taste like beer” range.
I did have a great discussion with a husband and wife who tried all the beers. The gentleman was telling me that he used to live in Colorado before moving to New Jersey and told me about how they used to love Coors. They are not currently beer drinkers. They tried the Wit, then the stout, and then the Red. She liked the wit the most while , he loved the the red.
One last ancedote from the night. The following week I recieved an email from Bridget and it contained this:
We realized that no one, and I mean NO one, drank any of the green beer. My mom said that Patrick brought a pitcher upstairs to serve the “older crowd” and they all shook their heads and said “No, no, we’re not drinking THAT. We’ve got the good stuff”.
I just love that. These are not people that would find themselves wandering the craft beer asile or trying different beers. In my book thats my beer evangelism for the year (ok fine the month).
The biggest thrill though was that at the end of the night all of my beers were gone (Thanks Patrick) while 3/4ths of the Miller keg remained. I recieved a call from the host of the party the next week to ask if I would be open to brewing all the beer the next year.
Quite an honor.
And Quite a Pleasure.