Hair of the Dog

I felt pretty wrecked on Saturday morning after our late afternoon of tasting delicious Belgian-style beer. My brain was foggy and I just wanted to kick up my feet and relax for the afternoon. As I mentioned earlier, we had quite a few drink tickets leftover due to the fact that we received very healthy pours on Friday (and felt compelled to drink the entire contents of our glasses). Against our bodies' wishes, after Graham headed for home on Saturday we got dressed and strolled over again to the beer festival to complete our list of tastings.

I think there were 24 beers that had used the the Wyeast 3822, Ingelmunster Belgian yeast strain this years competition, so it would have been impossible to try full glasses of them all at Friday's pace. This time we employed a different (and wiser) strategy to ensure that we wouldn't pass out at 2pm from too much brew. If we tasted a beer that we didn't like (or felt did not measure up to the name of Belgian-style), we simply poured it out at one of the many beer buckets around the pub. It was a much better system and ensured that we had enough room for a glass each of our favorites at the end.

I have to say that there were a lot of good, drinkable beers (some that if bottled or on tap, I would have on a regular basis). However, the point of a beer competition is to find a great beer for the award. Other breweries clearly hadn't ever tasted a Belgian-style beer, or were just feeling uninspired so they decided to brew an IPA, Stout, or Porter with Belgian yeast. There were a couple that were very disappointing.

Double Mountain Brewery from Hood River, OR produced two varieties of a dark Belgian (10.8% abv) called Ingelmonster. We only tried the barrel-aged variety on Friday and when we went back to try the second on Saturday, they were all tapped out. I'm not sure if it was curiosity on the part of tasters -- it's not everyday that you stumble on a beer in the US with almost 11% alcohol content -- or if it really was that good. I loved the Ingelmonster Barrel and Jesse chose it for the People's Choice Award, so I wonder if the other variety wouldn't have been my top choice? I guess we'll never know. My People's Choice Award went to a beer called Streaking the Quad (9.4% abv) by Deschutes Brewery from Bend, OR. It was a little lighter in color than the Ingelmonster, but no less tasty.

I can't wait for the published results of the People's Choice Awards. I wonder if our beer-drinking palates are in tune for finding a good Belgian-style brew?