I guess I'll start with Sacramento's first Beer Week. I am happy that this town is starting to realize its' potential with what can happen when we put our minds to it, now if we can get some smaller version of Austin's South by Southwest and let taco truck run rampant, we'd be just fine.
http://sacramentobeerweek.com
I was fortunate enough to start off with the Mulvaney's Beer Paired dinner on the Tuesday. I won't go too far into it but rather link this one to my significant others' page but I will say there can't be much wrong with paying $50 for all you can eat and drink with such great food and beer.
http://www.undercovercaterer.com/2010/02/sac-beer-week-at-mulvaneys
The next night I was happy to see that my neighborhood cider maker extraordinaire, Two Rivers Cider hosted an open house! How could I pass up on free cider? Well I ended up drinking too much cider, but was still make it work the next morning and function somehow. There were at least eight ciders on tap and couple of other special bottles that were available all for free and I tried most of them. Two River makes great products and you should check them out if you have not had a chance to do so yet, thanks for the open house TRC!
http://cider.iamjp.com
The third and last event for Beer Week was a cask conditioned ale event at Rubicon Brewery in which they supplied along with several other norcal breweries a chance for us to try beer without any added bubbles. The beer is only naturally carbonated and pours via gravity, which for me makes it easier to drink. I hate over carbonated beers(Budweiser)yuck!
http://www.rubiconbrewing.com
My next adventure was the annual pig roast at Mulvaney's. They were gracious enough to invite us over for roasted pig, lamb, sides, cheese and copious amounts of Guinness! I love this place and want say thanks for the hospitality, you guys are truly the best!
http://www.mulvaneysbl.com
I stayed in for St. Patrick's Day or as I call it, Amateur Night! I did have a few pints of Murphy's Irish Stout before I had to head to the airport for my red eye flight to Austin, Texas!
I arrived at my friends house in Austin around 9:45am, just in time for a few beers and some tacos to start that day! I went there to attend the aforementioned SXSW for four days of pure music, beer and taco bliss with some of my best in life and a few new ones as well! In those days i drank plenty of Lone Star which is a great session beer (see my previous post), Shiner Bock (yum) and for the first time Pearl beer! All of these beers went down nicely with tacos and music and treated me just fine. Of course there were other beers consumed on this trip, but you guys know about all of them and this is an homage to some Texas brews. I saw soo many great shows, got a pick from Rick Neisen, a photo with Ian McLagen(see below) and even got my first chance to play at gig there! I love Austin and will be back may more times!
http://www.lonestarbeer.com/Default.aspx
http://www.pearlbeer.com/Home.aspx
http://www.shiner.com/
Finally this last weekend I went with seven other friends up to Reno for Clay's bachelor party. Now I don't really gamble too much, but if I do I usually play the cheaper games to get free booze which I consider a win! This time though I was lucky enough to get nine ears of corn on the Hee Haw penny slot machine and walk away with a cool $130 bucks! As for what I had to drink, there were Coronas, Greyhounds, Bourbon.....you get the picture. There were a few cool new places I went to in Reno though and the links will follow this for your own exploration.
http://www.olebridgepub.com
http://www.imperialbarandlounge.com
http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-nugget-reno (Go to Awful Awful's)
Once again thanks for bugging me to write more and I'll try and be more active.
Cheers,
G.
