Stop in at Stubbies - Gainesville

 A buddy of mine has been bragging on this bar for years.  In fact, when I owned ABBEY I grew tired of hearing him constantly go on about Stubbies http://stubbiesandsteins.com/.   

So on a trip to Gainesville to do an ABC tasting, we figured we had to stop by Stubbies and have at least one.  It just seemed the right thing to do.  Also, I could take this opportunity to make Bobert sorry for giving us a hard time all these years.  The idea, of course, was to catch us on film having a drink while he was invariably at work. Hardly a Jackass level prank, but we don't wanna hurt the guy - we just want him to curse us under his breath.

First of all, the decor is unreal.  For a place that has been serving massive beer for many years, it is remarkably clean.  There is clearly a German intent here, but that does not mean they are limiting themselves to German beers. Basically two rooms, the restaurant boasts (from what I saw) three large beer coolers, 24 drafts, and a respectable German-inspired food menu.

To say that they have 24 taps is understating the offerings they have.  This is truly a "no crap on tap" establishment.  I have been to places that boast 85 taps with 65 variations of Bud, Blue Moon White and three Blue Moon seasonals, and some other easy-seller.  Sorry folks, this is not 85 taps.  In the case of Stubbies, they have 24 taps of worthy beer, half of which are extremely rare and have to be hand-sold.  This is a beer bar my friends.

As for the brews, Rip went with his tried-and-true Duchesse De Borgogne http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/641/1745and I went with a brew I've never seen before - Oppigards Amarillo http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/10903/53576.  Very nice, and to have on draft, I feel very lucky.

The staff was very kind to us, and I wish I got the bartender's name, because he was very well-informed and polite.  A great combo in a beer bar.

Whatever the excuse for being in Gainesville, I will definitely be visiting Stubbies every time I'm in town.  Cheers!!

 

ARK at Beer Festivals

In case you haven't run into the Renegade Reps at the Jupiter Beer Festival, the DeLand Craft Beer Festival, or the World of Beer CraftFest, you have missed the newest addition to our repertoire.  Over the past few weeks, we have been given permission by the event organizers to bring the Animal Rescue Konsortium (ARK) http://arkfl.rescuegroups.org/ to our events and raise money for this no-kill shelter.

Maximilian is a weimeraner / whippet mix

As a 3-Dog owner and many-time cat owner, I am so thrilled to be able to help out such a group.  There is a common thought among those who rescue animals that they are not sure who saved who.  I do not have the vocabulary to describe to anyone who has not experience this truth how true it is.  Saving an animal is restorative.  It can take a person who has given up on humanity and make them feel like there really is good in the world.  You get to be a part of a group of people who can look at another life form and feel like they really can make a difference.  You get to feel the genuine emotion and appreciation of a life force who knows that you made that difference.  And believe me folks,  saved animals do know that you saved them.....  

Mariah is Available for Adoption Now!

You may know that the Renegades themselves are donating 10% of our annual profits to this wonderful group of humanitarians, but you may NOT know that we have been able to gather some fine artists to lend their hands to making our fundraising both fun and effective.  Thanks also to Mr. Jeff Brown of Boulder Brewing allowing the Renegades to use the Boulder logos and branding to add some spice to this custom artwork.  The collective willingness of all of these people to give has given a new life and meaning to what I do, and I continually find myself feeling an overwhelming joy that I have not professionally felt before.

Let's face it, beer lovers are animal lovers.  What better thing than to take beer and animals and put them together to create an opportunity to enjoy one while saving the other? If you see ARK at one of our events, please be kind and donate to the cause.  You are sure to get some beer-related stuff as a "thank you."  In fact, we'd like to change culture into thinking of SWAG (Stuff We All Get) into a new term, SALG (Stuff Animal Lovers Get)!!

The dogs pictured here are available now.  For the month of February, if you adopt a pet at ARK the Renegades will reward you with a 6 pack of craft beer to enjoy while learning your new family member.  

3rd Annual DeLand Craft Beer Festival - Part 3 (the Crowd)

We have been very lucky to have attracted the crowd that we have for this event over the years.  Seeing the growth of our crowd is one thing.  Seeing the growth in our crowd's Beer Intelligence is another.  It wasn't many years ago (December 23, 2006) that I was getting hit over the head with a Bud Lite bottle by a pair of douche bags who were apparently pissed off that we didn't carry the world's best selling beer and wanted to  be demonstrative about their preferences. Soooooo - fast forward to today and we are a burgeoning beer culture well on our way to meet Athens, Savannah, and Asheville (although it could take a few years).

So, no lie, we have a great beer culture here and I am more and more appreciating how wonderful our crowd is.  I often say that I know how good a beer festival is by how few people say "what is the lightest thing you have?"  I hold to that today and I think that is probably going to be a steadfast theory.

As I posted before, the breakout sessions are a great sign that our public wants to know more.  Additionally, we have not had an incident of violence in 3 years :-) AND we have the chief of police and the mayor attend our event.  Keeping in mind that our festival does not carry anything to the availability of Blue Moon, it is impressive in a small southern town to have your local power want to see what you have going on.

The other amazing sign that our festival is moving in the best of directions is that we have folks from literally all over the WORLD come to our event.  We did a "where are you from" poll and had an attendee from Australia here!!  This is not an anomaly.  Of course we're not that international, but we do have attendees from all over the state and actually do have quite a few from the southeast United States.

It does appear that we are on the up, and are going to have a great core clientele that will follow us from year to year.  Given that we have the dedication of everyone in town, this is the perfect recipe for getting better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and...........................................

3rd Annual DeLand Craft Beer Festival - Part 2 (Breakout Sessions)

Ernest Shackleton said "I believe it is in man's nature to explore."  Being pre-disposed to wanting to visit Antarctica yes, it is easy for him to say that.  Of course, he is not just talking about the desire to move your body from one geographic region to another.  Exploration is about so much more than just geography, and the massive trends we have seen over the past many years support this.  We not only want to see more of the universe around us, we also want to explore knowledge, psychology, and emotions.  It stands to reason really, that craft beer would take off.  This is not a phenomena, it was an inevitability.

For many years, record companies decided what we would listen to.  While thousands of bands were doing club tours all over the world, we were handed a small ring of bands who were given record contracts as if drawn out of a hat and that was what we had to choose from.  Enter Napster and here we are.  For years we survived on the same meat and potatoes diet that were taught to us by our parents who were taught by their parents.  Enter World Wars, young men and women travelling abroad, television giving us cooking shows, and here we go trying all types of exotic foods we never would have tried.  For many years, the massive breweries used their lawyers and advertising dollars to convince us that beer was dull and had to be drank excessively cold.  Enter easier travel, the internet, and here we are with a craft beer revolution.  The fact is, we as humans want more than what we are given.  We have a natural inclination to desire information about what we are experiencing.  We are curious beasts.

It is that theory that caused us to make one of the most important decisions regarding this festival that I feel represents the next level in what we are trying to accomplish - the breakout session.  Simply put, we try to get people to leave a beer festival to walk into a room where they will attend a 30 minute class.  Why not?  Everyone wants to leave a beer festival to take a class, right?  The theory is that the people who attend our festival will because they are naturally curious beasts who want to know a little more about what they are consuming.  I'm not saying that we invented this idea.  In fact, it has been done at the Great American Beer Festival for years and I was able to attend some great sessions at the Savor festival in Washington D.C.  The fact is that these are two of the best festivals in the country and I want to be like them.  So, if you want to throw a fastball like Nolan Ryan - learn from Nolan Ryan.

We hold our breakout sessions across the street from the festival in a room that belongs to the legendary Cafe da Vinci.  Lucky we are that they allow us to use this room, it is the perfect setting for a class, equipped with stage and seating for a good 50 people.  Each session lasts about 30 minutes and each speaker is given a topic which he or she has personal expertise in.  This year we had some great speakers:

Me and Tom Moench

Tom Moench - Owner (Unique Beers / Orange Blossom Pilsner) - Tom spoke on the topic of Bottles versus Cans.  Tom's own brand is moving to cans and this being a hot and terribly misunderstood topic right now, we felt it would be a perfect fit.  We were able to do a blind tasting of three different beers that were available in both bottles and cans and had the crowd discuss which they thought were superior.  As could be expected, the overwhelming favor was given to the canned products.  Of course, the subtleties were all different across the brands, but when asked which they prefer, the majority of the crowd chose the canned product.

Brian Hansen - Sales (Craft Brewers Alliance) - Brian spoke about the benefits of ageing on certain types of beers.  We had a sampling of the 2011 Barrel Aged Brrrrbon from Widmer Brothers http://widmerbrothers.com/beer/#barrel-aged-brrrbon-11 and were lucky enough to have them donate a case of 4 year old RedHook Double Black Stout http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18134/55 .  Of course, we were fortunate to have both of these brews at the event, but the Double Black was a perfect example of the subtle changes that a beer that sits for a number of years can accomplish.

Jeff Brown from Boulder

Jeff Brown - Owner (Boulder Brewing) - One of the true gentlemen of the business, we were lucky enough to have Jeff attend our festival for the second year in a row.  Jeff's topic was facing the challenges of growing into new markets.  Being that Boulder is making a huge move into the east coast, it was a perfect time to attack this topic.  Additionally, we were lucky enough to have samples of the 2009 Killer Penguin Barleywine http://www.boulderbeer.com/ and the fresh Mojo Risin Double IPA that was recently released.

John Lasseter - Sales - (Rogue Brewing) - Another awesome and appropriate topic was this one.  John spoke about the use of home-harvested ingredients and the different brews that Rogue is making with their own proprietary blends.  In this session, we sampled out the Chatoe Rogue Good Chit Pilsner http://www.rogue.com/beers/chatoe-good-chit.php , which was only just available in our market, so it was a special treat to get to try it out.

John Lasseter of Rogue

As I stated before, the sessions are a chance for people to get to know what they are consuming a little more intimately, get to hear some great stories about the beers and the people who surround it, and to ask questions of the very people who make it happen.  For next year, I have dedicated myself to thinking of the breakouts as the reason for the festival and not as an addition to the festival.  I feel that everyone who attended (and they WERE full) left with a little better understanding of this wonderful business that we are in and I feel very fortunate that we have been able to make it happen.  Cheers!

3rd Annual DeLand Craft Beer Festival - Part 1 (The Idea)

Pretty much the greatest day of my year as a professional is the DeLand Craft Beer Festival.  Myself and Vinnie approached Jack Becker, Director of Mianstreet DeLand several years ago and asked if putting together a festival to benefit Mainstreet DeLand would be something he was interested in.  In all honesty, we went in with an argument, waiting for him to poo-poo the idea on the grounds that the city leaders would never allow it and it wouldn't be worth the risk.  Surprisingly, he was excited about it and said he wanted us to present it to the organization.  Once again, it was a fairly easy sell and the first festival went down in March 2010.  We have come a long way in three years and I have become extremely proud of this event.

Our first aim was to differentiate this event in a few major ways.  This festival was going to donate 100% of its profits to Mainstreet DeLand.  We felt this would enable us to keep a system of checks and balances in place.  As beer lovers, we could argue the point year after year that we wanted to simply keep making the festival better.  Taking money out of the hands of ourselves, the organizers, enables the festival to hang tight to the desire to keep it great at any cost.  The non-negotiable instrument in this case is that the Director of Mainstreet also could not get greedy for the revenue dollars generated by the festival because they would always have us tugging at their purse strings.  The relationship works and as along as Jack Becker stays with Mainstreet, this festival is guaranteed to get better and better.

The second way we were going to differentiate this event was who we are going to have pouring beers at our event.  At this event, we would not only have representatives of the breweries there, but the real spotlight was going to be on retailers, both on and off premise retailers, working the booths and pushing their business.  This carries with it two theories.  One is that when a brewery representative is usually asked by a festival goer "where they can get this delicious liquid," they are not quite certain given that they do not live in the area.  Now they can simply point to the retailer pouring side-by-side with them.  The second reason is that we always want to have people pouring beer who know the product, and who better that the retailers themselves to help out the brewery representatives?

Third, we will be different by never growing.  Get that - never growing!  As the years pass by, our intention is to keep getting better, NOT bigger.  By doing this, we will raise ticket prices every year, but never allow the crowd to grow beyond 700 people.  Quaint to be sure, but this allows us to keep a flow and a controllable crowd.  This also allows us to continually grow more adept at creating a great experience by keeping this number as a constant and not a variable.  

With DeLand, Florida growing as a beer town and more and more people wanting to see rare and creating offerings from breweries, Jack has allowed us to do one more magical and very important thing.  He is allowing us to purchase some very expensive beers and save them for the festival.  By giving us a budget, we as festival organizer are able to get product that other festivals are not wiling to take the chance on because they figure "We'll pack the place anyway, why bother with spending extra money we don't have to?"  In our case we figure, as Jim Collins put it, "the enemy of great is good."

Naturally, the most important piece of putting together an event that strives to be great is to have good business partners.  We have been lucky enough overt the years to have great reps working Florida from great breweries such as Anchor, Brooklyn, Stone, Craft Brewers Alliance, Bell's, Harpoon, Dogfish Head, Highland, Sam Adams, Rogue, Terrapin, Sierra Nevada, Abita, Woodchuck, and many others.  We've been been so lucky as to have the support of brewery owners such as Mr. Jeff Brown of Boulder Brewing, Tom Moench of Orange Blossom, and Bob Gordash of Holy Mackerel fame.

Also, no festival goes down without great community members and volunteers who dedicate their time and skills to an event.  We have had such great luck to have volunteers over the years, I cannot even begin to name them all off.  Especially helpful these few years has been the increase in our presence of home brewers and a huge nod goes to the Volusia County Homebrewers Association and particularly Ann Marie, Blair, and Daneaux for making the homebrewers presence a massive one!!  More on the homebrewers later on.......

Thankfully we will never be good enough and we will continue to get better and better.  Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2 (The Organizing of This Festival).

The Beginning of DeLand Craft Beer Weekend

So here we are again.  This is the third year of the DeLand Craft Beer Festival http://www.facebook.com/DelandCraftBeerFestival and we have achieved thus far what we intended to do - make it better each year than the last.  This year represents a huge leap forward as we have added a rare and vintage booth to the already impressive list of beers being poured.

Added last year were our breakout sessions, which are essentially half hour classes on various topics in the beer industry that are held by respected professionals in the field.  We have four classes this year including Jeff Brown of Boulder Brewing discussing the ins and outs of moving into new markets, John Lasseter from Rogue discussing the use of locally grown ingredients, Tom Meonch of Unique Beers on the topic of bottles versus cans, and Bryan Hansen of Craft Brewers Alliance on barrel ageing beers.

But more on the actual festival later.  This weekend begins on Thursday, where the local bars are beginning their kickoffs of this weekend with some great promotions.  Before I headed out to an event in Orlando, I was able to stop into ABBEY delandabbey.com and get a first taste of some of their rare drafts they have pulled out for this event.  Of course, a beer that has been three years in the tasting, a 2009 World Wide Stout http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/occassional-rarities/world-wide-stout.htm on draft was my way to get motivated for a long trip.  Daneaux of Mermaid Juice Brewery was also kind enough to let me sample some of his brew before I left and they were great as always.

ABBEY also has on draft as we speak, Boulder Brewing Hazed and Infused, Mojo Risin Double IPA, and Killer Penguin Barleywine; DFH 120 and World Wide Stout; Holy Mackerel, Mack in Black, and Panic Attack; Lazy Magnolia's Southern Pecan and Jefferson Stout; and of course a list of great Belgians.  \

Tomorrow begins the massive set-up and the next few days are some of the happiest days of my year.  I'm very proud to be a part of this event and feel fortunate that Mainstreet DeLand went for this crazy idea three years ago when we pitched it to them.  Cheers!!

St. Bernardus Tripel

Bailey's pretty mug and a St. B

So I move to ABBEY (of course, the place that holds the largest piece of my heart) and they have St. Bernardus Tripel on draft...........

To say that I have an affinity for Belgian Beer is to say that I am mildly excited at watching Jack Lambert throw Cliff Harris to the ground. Yeah I like 'em.  So I initially ask for the Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye since I have had the St. B a hundred times and am appreciative of the short life-span of the Ruthless Rye.  To my misfortune the Ruthless Rye had just blown and I luckily got an LA FREEWAY (a blend of random stuff not supposed to be blended) of the Ruthless Rye and the Killer Penguin to begin my night here.  Once all was cleaned and settled, I looked at the choices and grabbed the St. B.  So glad i did.........

A Day Off

So we had most of the day off minus the final meeting for the 3rd Annual DeLand Craft Beer Festival and a run to Jacksonville to pick up our copies of the posters for the ARK (Animal Rescue Konsortium) events that we have coming up.  A big "THANK YOU" to Mr. Dave at Champion Brands for printing off some great posters of some amazing posters of Boulder Beer products.

In the end, we stopped in at McK's and got stuck on some great brews.  To be fair, the brews they had could NOT be passed up.  In order, I ended up having the Ommegang Adoration and the Lagunitas Sucks on draft.  Rip had the McSorley's and Liefman's Oud Bruin. Unfortunately we also had to pass up some amazing brews to have those two each, but whattya gonna do??

After taking January off from drinking, I was shocked and surprised to find someone who still had the Lagunitas Sucks available as it has been a cult favorite since it was released.  The commercial description (as stolen from ratebeer is):

"This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feared BrownShugga’ Ale. You see we had a couple of really good years (thank you very much) and so heading into this season while we are awaiting the January delivery of a new brewhouse we are jammin’ along brewing 80 barrels of IPA and PILS and such every 3 hours. A couple of months back we realized that since we can only brew a mere 60 barrels of Shugga’ every 5 hours, that we were seriously screwed. For every case of Shugga’ brewed, we’d short 3 cases of our favorite daily beers. It’s a drag. This year, we brewed something that we think is also cool and brews more like our daily brews. The new brewhouse will help insure this kind of failure never happens again. It’s a mess that we can not brew our BrownShugga’ this year and we suck for not doing it. There is nothing cool about screwing this up this badly and we know it. Maybe we can sue our own sorry selves. There is no joy in our hearts this holiday and the best we can hope for is a quick and merciful end. F*@& us. This totally blows. Whatever. We freaking munch moldy donkey butt and we just want it to be all over... 
So this substitute beer is a ‘Cereal Medley’ of Barley, Rye, Wheat, and Oats…. Full of complexishness from the 4 grains, and weighing in at 7.85% abv, Then joyously dry-hopped for that big aroma and resinous hop flavor."


Delicious as expected.  Somehow reminded me of sitting in the Lagunitas brewery and having some of their delicious brew as fresh as could be.  Something about a west coast beer every now and then strikes me in the heart as a reminder of the difference between the wonderful experience of comparing west coast versus east coast hoppy beers.   


After drinking, we left and I got a ticket for running a red light by a fucking CAMERA!!!  More later.


So I dropped Rip off and hit DaVinci for a brew.  They had the Boulder Killer Penguin on draft and i had to have one.  I sat with Dan and planned out a fundraiser for the Animal Rescue Konsortium that involves auctioning off shots of the 1917 Old Baker Bourbon that NO LONGER EXISTS!!!  More to come on that, too!!  


Although I probably should go home at this point, I think I'll take my chances and hit some more bars.  Wish me luck.....




    

Beer Tasting - Vintage and Seasonal Stuff

Was able to taste out some beer on Thursday that I had been sitting on for a while.  Had some of my favorite beer drinking buddies with me at my old stomping ground, ABBEY so I also pulled out a brew I had never had before.  

First was the third batch of Cigar City 110 K+ IPA.  As tasty as I remember it and certainly as malty.  I dig this one a lot, but my preferences tend toward the more malty IPAs anyway.  Steve Evans, the new owner of ABBEY, has a pant-busting crush on this beer, so it was the perfect time to try it out after a year or two of ageing.  Something tells me it has another millenia or so until it goes the way of the dodo.

Second we had the Great Lakes Christmas seasonal from 2011.  Always a treat, and anyone from Ohio will tell you it's a brew that they all wait all year for.  This is one of Rosie's favorite beers and I'm always joyed to have some of it.  

Third was the Flying Mouflan from Troeg's.  The commercial description as listed on ratebeer reads:

"The Flying Mouflan was #4 in the "Scratch Beer Series" begun by John and Chris Trogner and their brewing staff in 2007, producing one-offs based on recipes the brothers developed in the mid-’90s when they were considering opening a brewpub rather than a production brewery. The medal-win in Denver last October convinced the brothers to make the barleywine-style ale the first beer to come out of the Scratch program and be added to the production roster."

This was a kick in the teeth - in a good way.  My only regret is that I didn't buy more.  Would love to find a few more bottles sitting around (message to my middle America friends).

Lastly we had the Weyerbacher Fifteen, as smoked Imperial Stout.  Once again, a brew that still has many years on its tires.  The smoke had subsided with a few years ageing, but not to any level whatsoever that you missed it.  Good stuff, as can always be expected from Weyerbacher.

Not one miss in this bunch!!

Total Wine Tastings - Tampa Area

Rip waitin to get moving

So we did some tastings for Boulder Brewing, Lazy Magnolia, Chimay, and Abita Brewing in the Tampa area on Saturday.  One two-hour stint was at the St. Petersburgh location and the second was in Clearwater.  I'm digging Total Wine.  Their staff is very well-trained and their beer selection is constantly growing.  With the Renegades being able to hit the Total Wine's with good frequency, we should be able to get some more SKUs in-house which would rock.  For the most part, they are carrying Hazed, Mojo, and Singletrack from Boulder and the classic Southern Recan from Lazy Magnolia.  My hope is to get some Sweaty Betty in with greater frequency and the new Kinda Blue from Boulder.  The big Kahuna is going to be getting Lazy Magnolia Jefferson Stout kegs in house so that we can get some rarer draft gettin' going there.  Will keep ya posted.  Cheers!

Rosie helping out with some tasting.

ABC Tastings

Preparing for our trip

The ongoing tastings we have been able to do at ABC is certainly having an effect.  The Renegades have made some massive headway in getting the word of our brands out there and have additionally been asked to help out with some other work.  I'm loving this life and I'm loving the results we have achieved!!  For those of you who don't know, ABC does beer tastings at given locations and for $10 you get to sample all kinds of amazing beers brought to you by some amazing breweries.  Knowledgeable people serving as well.  Upcoming Tastings are at the following locations and are from 6pm-8pm:

Thursday, February 9 - Store #4 - Apopka Vineland Road
Thursday, February 23 - Store # 126 - 3433 SW Archer Road, Gainseville

Rip hanging out before we take off

Get on down and grab some beer.  Cheers!!

She Loved the Sweaty Betty

Believe it or not, this guy liked us

ABC Stores

Looks like we're getting some massive Boulder Brewing and Lazy Magnolia support in our local ABC Stores and I'm LOVING it.  Lucky enough to have Hazed and Infused in house, we reached out to some store managers and asked if we could do a training session with them to introduce them to the rest of our portfolio.  They were nice enough to give us some time and the Renegades got some beers in their hands that they loved.  Additionally, we got some massive support from SR Perrott, who distributes Boulder Beer and Lazy Magnolia in the Volusia market including major help from MR. Jeffrey, who helped us out huge!!    In addition to what we currently have, they are going to add Kinda Blue and Sweaty Betty.  Big Thanks to ABC!!