January 25th, 2007
A Polack, an Englishman, and an Irishman walk into a bar…
Last night, Kristen, Sean and I went to Harpoon for their latest 100 Barrel tasting. The guest of honor of the evening was #17, the English Style Old Ale.
We got to Harpoon right at six when the event was starting, got inside, got ourselves a sampler of the new brew, and settled in. We made our way out onto the deck overlooking the brewing tanks, and ran into Jaime Schier, Harpoon’s Quality Control Manager. This was the first time we’d spoken with Jaime since we launched 2 Beer Guys, so we spoke with him about the site, and told him that he inspired us to create it. He discussed how beer is still the red-headed step child of the alcohol community, and how a certain wine maker is leveraging their crappy product into an ingenious marketing ploy.
After having enjoyed a few more samples of the beer, Fred (the brewer) came out and discussed his process for brewing the beer, and got sidetracked talking about all sorts of beer science, which prompted one friend in attendance to ask, what’s flocculation? This, of course, inspired Sean and I to start saying, flocc-u-later!
The snacks were good, with plenty of pretzels, popcorn, chocolate and vanilla Oreos, and Nutter Butters. The best snack of all came at the end of the event though. Sean felt compelled to get a snack out of the vending machine at the bottom of the stairs leading out of Harpoon. He wanted something that was at the bottom of the machine, in location HH. So, without thinking, he hit the H button twice, which unfortunately dispensed the product located in location H. BBQ Frito’s Twisters were not what he wanted!
After we left Harpoon, we stopped in Medford to have some tasty roast beef at Alamo Roast Beef, owned by Jenny Jansen’s uncle. A night of good, free beer followed by good beef. What more can one ask for?