Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Beer Week: Wednesday, 6.1

June 1st, and it feels like I've hardly played any golf this year. When picking golf buddies, make sure to find ones without any adult jobs. Try to find the Johnny Manziel types. Maybe they'll pay for your greens fees as well.

Rock and Brews hosts another big Ballast Point tap takeover, with this one featuring a keg of barrel-aged Victory at Sea Imperial Porter. Tapping scheduled at 6.

Another tap takeover is happening right down the street at Billy's Long Bar. Billy's has been kind of quiet this year in Beer Week event involvement. But they will welcome Alaskan Brewing and a multitude of Alaskan beers on tap, also at 6.

Nob Hill Bar and Grill welcomes Ska Brewing and kegs of barrel-aged Dementia and Bump and Grind Coffee Stout. I have to admit, I haven't tried Bump and Grind, and that's not anything to do with Ska. It's just that as a notoriously anti-day drinking person, I can never find a good time to drink coffee beers. You should though. Event starts at 5.

Uptown Sports Bar. Now that's a place I haven't been to in a long time. Maybe tonight I will visit for the rare appearance of a keg of Alpine (with un-improvements by Green Flash) Nelson. They've done a decent job at trying to re-create the distinct Nelson look and flavor after a few disastrous attempts.
Ask a Certified Cicerone and bad beer tasting at Tractor- yet another 6 pm event. This event allows you to talk to Cicerone Skye Devore about study tips for taking the Certified Cicerone exam. The whole Cicerone thing really took off after years of it being pushed...surprised how many bars around the country are hiring based on people having the cert, though I guess it's a better way of hiring for a serious craft beer bar than on looks. I have neither the cert nor the looks, yet I manage to scrape by. Skye will also be guiding folks through bad taste by opening cider, errrr, off-flavor kits to add common "off" tastes to beer (think diacetyl, acetaldehyde, and other unspellable words) to help you identify what makes that bad beer so bad. $5 for the bad beer tasting, free for the Cicerone study tips.

Mother Road achieved what few other Arizona breweries have up to this point: a good IPA. Unfortunately, we can't seem to get any cans fresher than March 7 here, but you can hopefully bug the Mother Road people about that at the Mother Road tap takeover at The Grain Station, starting at, you guessed it, 6 pm. Mother Road will also bring a firkin for your drinking pleasure.






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