Barrel Roll...

Yesterday, I managed to get my hands on a couple of the rarest(recent production) beers around (obviously there are plenty of homebrews made in lower quantities). About a month ago Josh got wind of a special beer release down at Alesmith Brewing in San Diego. The beers being released were barrel aged versions of their Imperial Stout (Speedway), Barleywine (Old Numbskull), and Scottish Ale (Wee Heavy). These beers were brewed in 2006 and aged in oak barrels until just before their release yesterday. Since Josh works and I was around and not doing too much from day to day, I decided to drive down solo and pick up some of these beers. The official release time was 1pm, but if you showed up earlier you got a ticket with your position in line written on it so that you didn't have to stand in place for several hours. I left a bit later than I planned to get down there, but I made very good time down 405 and 5 to get to San Diego around 11:40. This garnered me a ticket with number 59 on it.

There was a number of guys hanging out in the parking lot drinking some beers (there were even a few women there too). I had brought some beers down to trade, but there wasn't much of that going on so I just chilled out, read a book and ate some lunch while waiting for 1pm to roll around. Once the time came, people began to gather and get their beer in a pretty orderly way. While standing in line I heard tell that they were only releasing 180 bottles of the Speedway Stout. Which put me solidly in the good position since there was a two bottle per person limit. I waited my turn an got my bottles. Sweet!! I checked the hand-numbered bottles and discovered that the were only 235 bottles of Stout produced and 208 bottles of Barleywine. I knew that they might only be releasing 180 of them but I had no idea that that was the end of them. I am not sure what I was thinking, but man, seeing those low numbers really brought it home that these were some rare beers I had just bought. I mean when I picked up the sexual chocolate in NC I was psyched b/c it was one of 500 but I was now holding several beers that were each one of less than half of that total.

After acquiring these rare brews, I headed around to a couple of the other local craft breweries (Stone and Port/Lost Abbey) which are also some of the best in the world. I picked up a couple of their seasonal beers at each place. The Russian Imperial Stout from Stone, the Serpent Stout from Lost Abbey, and the Moonlit Sessions Lager from Port. These breweries are not separated by too much distance and it was easy to swing by both of them on the way back up to Josh's place in LA. Stone looks very cool; they have a big restaurant attached to the brewery and quite a lot of cool gear available in their shop. I guess the logo helps.