I almost feel like I should re-introduce myself. I'm not even totally sure who I have been over the last few months. Truth is my beer tasting and experimenting has been abysmal. My name is Mike Edleblute and I drink Cheap Beer. Ok, so if you read all my old blogs that is not a complete shocker. I never really labeled myself as a 'beer snob'. My last post was February and I see I talked about 4 posts a month this year. Well, that obviously has not happened. I remember when I started this blog I was wide eyed and excited about all the beer world had to offer. And it had a lot to offer. I got started at a brew on premise brewery which was a lot of fun. Met a lot of people, drank truly exciting beers from exciting locations. In the process of drinking those beers I learned things about the regions/stories/history that went in to making each and every ounce of those beers. After all, that was sort of my point of the site to begin with - You can't think about beer with out having numerous stories. Jimmy Buffett has a song entitled "All the stories we could tell"... thinking about the stories you can tell - how many of them have some level of brew involved in them:
Anyway, you get my point - beers are to stories as pages are to books. Well, I've done my fair share of drinking over the last few months. I got to visit Dogfish Head brewery finally. We took a family trip to Ocean City Maryland in July for a few days. On the way back from the beach to my parents we made it a point to stop in for a late lunch early dinner. I gotta say, the comments online were not very flattering to the brewery so I was nervous. I went there for the beer, food, and ambiance; 1 of 3 isn't bad right? HA, the beer was awesome, as I knew it would be. Unfortunately, my wife and I did not think super highly of the food that we ordered. It was OK, but sort of held true to my own opinion/theory "A brewery can have GREAT FOOD or GREAT BEER but hardly ever has both". And sadly, I didn't think the wait staff / or employees were all that exciting and fun either. They were not rude, but I guess I see Dogfish Head with a certain personality; I assume (ass out of u and me) that all its employees would have that same kind of personality. Maybe we were just there on an off day? Who knows... either way - I think I would have a slightly different opinion if:
Also, I have to give a shout out to SHORE BILLY Beers down in OC MD on the boardwalk. This place was pretty cool. We stopped in for a sampler of their beers and catch a little shade. I'm not even sure if we ate at this place or not - mainly just had a few beverages. The sampler came out on an old plastic skateboard which touched on my inner child a bit. I have to say - if I were younger, would be hanging in OC more often and not have kids - I think I could spend a lot of time at this place. Hell, if my kids were a little older and we were going to be spending more time down in OC I would be here more often. Hell - the family may be getting a place in OC MD next year for the week and I will be coming back to this place. Anytime I can sit in/at a brewery and be on the beach and have the ocean/waves/water as a back drop... this is an all time favorite for me. And this place has those things. Nice Job Shore Billy - congrats on opening and best of wishes!
Lets see, I think I rambled enough for this post. I have to have something to motivate me to come back tomorrow or next week to write. And I just thought of something. I realized in my last post I had talked about brewing my Irish Red again, I didn't mention how that turned out. I bet you are all waiting with baited breath to hear. Well there will be more about that in the next installment; Along with that - I'll be talking about my first 2 experiment batches with ALL GRAIN Brewing. I took the plunge. No longer will I be brewing extract beers if I can help it. Its all grain from here on out. That was a goal and I have achieved it - now I must perfect the goal!
Well cheers to you all! And I'd love to hear about any/all of your summer drinking story adventures - please comment back with any that you care/dare to share!
- so there we were, Jim just opened the second case of
- well Johnny had to be on his 7th or 8th beer and before you know it
- This one time we were camping and ran out of beer
- So we were out fishing one night... and Sam showed up with a case of Dogfish Head
Anyway, you get my point - beers are to stories as pages are to books. Well, I've done my fair share of drinking over the last few months. I got to visit Dogfish Head brewery finally. We took a family trip to Ocean City Maryland in July for a few days. On the way back from the beach to my parents we made it a point to stop in for a late lunch early dinner. I gotta say, the comments online were not very flattering to the brewery so I was nervous. I went there for the beer, food, and ambiance; 1 of 3 isn't bad right? HA, the beer was awesome, as I knew it would be. Unfortunately, my wife and I did not think super highly of the food that we ordered. It was OK, but sort of held true to my own opinion/theory "A brewery can have GREAT FOOD or GREAT BEER but hardly ever has both". And sadly, I didn't think the wait staff / or employees were all that exciting and fun either. They were not rude, but I guess I see Dogfish Head with a certain personality; I assume (ass out of u and me) that all its employees would have that same kind of personality. Maybe we were just there on an off day? Who knows... either way - I think I would have a slightly different opinion if:
- I was staying over night
- I could enjoy the bar/restaurant a bit longer then just 45 min to an hour we were passing through
- didn't have the kids with me so I could unwind and enjoy
Also, I have to give a shout out to SHORE BILLY Beers down in OC MD on the boardwalk. This place was pretty cool. We stopped in for a sampler of their beers and catch a little shade. I'm not even sure if we ate at this place or not - mainly just had a few beverages. The sampler came out on an old plastic skateboard which touched on my inner child a bit. I have to say - if I were younger, would be hanging in OC more often and not have kids - I think I could spend a lot of time at this place. Hell, if my kids were a little older and we were going to be spending more time down in OC I would be here more often. Hell - the family may be getting a place in OC MD next year for the week and I will be coming back to this place. Anytime I can sit in/at a brewery and be on the beach and have the ocean/waves/water as a back drop... this is an all time favorite for me. And this place has those things. Nice Job Shore Billy - congrats on opening and best of wishes!
Lets see, I think I rambled enough for this post. I have to have something to motivate me to come back tomorrow or next week to write. And I just thought of something. I realized in my last post I had talked about brewing my Irish Red again, I didn't mention how that turned out. I bet you are all waiting with baited breath to hear. Well there will be more about that in the next installment; Along with that - I'll be talking about my first 2 experiment batches with ALL GRAIN Brewing. I took the plunge. No longer will I be brewing extract beers if I can help it. Its all grain from here on out. That was a goal and I have achieved it - now I must perfect the goal!
Well cheers to you all! And I'd love to hear about any/all of your summer drinking story adventures - please comment back with any that you care/dare to share!
