Westvleteren 12 - BEER 365!

We're about an hour away from the crush of people coming to the Beer Every Day Great Success Party. David cracks open our last beer, the highest rated beer in the world, the Westvleteren 12, a quadruple. I'll let the video do most of the talking.

It really is the smoothest quadruple, at 10.2%, I've ever had. There isn't a whole lot of complexity, but jebus it tastes so good and smooth. BAD BOYS rating, obviously. I'm a little high on the excitement right now, I can't believe this milestone is happening.

A cookie and a cake, the best of both worlds. THANKS TIFFANY!

A lot of people didn't think we would actually drink a different beer every day. Most thought there weren't that many beers available, to which I respond with:

or:

I don't really blame them for thinking this, it's a huge commitment and required focused dedication. And let's be honest, my longest relationship with a girlfriend is 6 months. 3 years ago. This year has doubled my longest relationship and guess what baby? It's still go'n strong. So whoever out there thought that I would date someone for a year before I drank a beer for a year, you obviously didn't realize I had my priorities straight. Zing.

A few people I'm especially thankful for, who experienced so many of the beers with us, are Karl, Tiffany, and Nick G. You guys were incredible this year and I am so proud and thankful that you are my friends. Karl is the most mentioned person on the blog besides David and is tagged in over 40 posts, nearly 1/9th of the beer we had this year, which if you consider the number of nights David and I were sitting in our apartment or having beers across town or countries from each other, incredibly impressive.


And, if I can toot my horn for a minute, I'm freaking damn proud that I've written about each and everyone one of these beers. Half of life, some people say, is just showing up. Well I showed up, drank a beer, and then chronicled my experiences. Too-tooot.

Having a blog is a lot of work, but it's also immensely rewarding. 14 months ago I had never thought I would be a blogger, but I really encourage everyone if that have a passion, to write about it. Take a picture every other day. Express yourself. Even if you don't share the blog, just go online and write about anything and everything, your life will change for the better. Anywho...

THE PARTY
So for our party, Karl orchestrated a blind tasting of five different beers from the year for David and I to compete with. I'll let the video I put together tell the tale of that and the overall party. About 25 people came to celebrate and celebrate we did. The evening was an amazing way to end an incredible year. I joked the next day with David, that even though we just finished drinking a every day for the last year, apparently, we can still party.

I'm going to post in the forthcoming weeks additional posts describing my year and what it meant to me. In the meantime, I put together a video slide-show of photos created from freeze frames in the 60 minutes of footage to hold you over in the meantime until I can edit the film down to an viewable duration.

This was an incredible year, thank you following along!

Slide-show below:

Tomorrow, David is going to take his first day off in 365 days from drinking a different beer, but I plan on continuing the experience until I reach a nice round number, maybe 400 or 425. And after that, I will absolutely still be reporting on beers and experiences. I can't just get enough.

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Awesomeness prevails. Onward and upward!

Mischief Gone Wild celebrates Nic and AJ's matrimony

Nick G, Beth, David and I head north to Paso Robles to watch our close friends Nic and AJ tie the knot. David and Christi rearranged the hotel sign in hilarious tribute.

Wedding was damn beautiful and so was the bride.

Here is the new couple, Nic Ewok and Amdrea Bear

I had my emotions on lockdown but the groom (who is a screenwriter) wrote vows which weaved a line from TRUE ROMANCE, "You are so cool," to become a metaphor to say "I love you" to his bride. It was pretty brilliant and I'll be damned if David and I almost succumbed to what many men refer to as, "as expulsion of eye water due to female-like irrationality." But we held it together.

The Beereverday boys dressed to impress.

After we helped the caterers dispose of their wine, the ceremony moved to the barn dance floor and we popped open a special Mischief 'Gone Wild.'

Someone brought a bomber of Pliny the Elder out to party as well. Love that Mischief label

The good fellows at The Bruery brewed up a batch of Mischief but rather than use their typical yeast to ferment the wort, they used Brettanomyces, a type of yeast used primarily in lambic and sour ales ales but is also popular among several Belgian brewers, including the trappist beer Orval who introduces the yeast at bottling. Many American craft breweries have had great success utilizing it, but brettanomyces is a notoriously difficult yeast for a homebrewer to cultivate and use correctly. It's not as easy as popping a smack pack or unscrewing a White Labs yeast; rather, people buy barrels which already have the yeast in it from older sour ale fermentations and then capture airborne yeast which is then cultivated and then saturated in the oak. Here is an interesting article from a blog I subscribe to: ambient spontaneous yeast starters.

My previous Mischief post is here: Bruery Mischief. It's easily one of our favorite beers this year and we're both looking forward to this twist on the classic. True to the original Mischief, the Gone Wild has the belgian strong pale ale body with exceptional carbonation and the Brettanomyces add a lively fruit and floral flavor as it goes down. Lively is putting it mildly, it's like a floral left cross to the tongue. The more I drink, the more I feel like describing it as Mischief on Redbull. It's got an "oomph" to it that's hard to describe. Turbocharged? You get it. I feel privileged for being able to try this limited run. I wouldn't trade the Gone Wild for the original Mischief, but but I certainly enjoyed it. TRANSFORMERS rating.

We certainly weren't done drinking yet (not by a long shot). One of Nic's best men Dallas Hammons was awesome enough to bring out his first homebrews, a bold Imperial Wheat. Check out his blog here. http://www.hammonshomebrew.com/

This was a fantastic weekend spent with close friends and their beer. Loving life.