Brooklyn Beerfest 1999

"The drunker I get, the more attractive the chicks get." -- Joćo

To sum up the Brooklyn BeerFest in a sentence: It started out wonderful, with a couple hundred people sampling beers, talking with the purveyors about the brands, and generally ambling from station to station enjoying the beautiful day. Cliff and I smartly ducked into a deli and purchased a bottle of water to keep hydrated during the sunny outdoor event, before meeting up with Joćo shortly after 2:00.

Sometime before 5:00 that evening, the half-block was overrun with, by my estimate, 1500 people, and instead of subtlety, the event devolved into just simply pouring beer into beer glasses shoved in front of their faces, leading to a sad state where the taste of the beer became less important than grabbing what you could before they ran out -- which many vendors did, before we left shortly after 6:00.

This is a list of the beers I remember tasting, in roughly the order to which I sampled them. The way the place was set up, if you wished to try all of a vendor's samples, it was usually best to plant yourself in front and finish each one in turn, rather than trying one and wnadering off somewhere else before trying again. That wound up costing great big gobs of time.

While the list is probably not exactly comprehensive, it's pretty close. When I had anything particularly interesting to say about a beer, I noted it duly for your pleasure in my notebook, and I've transcribed it here.

1. Aventinus Wheat -- Very wheaty, fruity beer, low acidity.
2. Westmalle Dubbel -- Chewy, malty brew, nice deep brown color, bit of an alcohol bite.
3. Westmalle Tripel -- Light Belgian ale, at least in color and aroma. Heavy alcohol, sour even.
4. Grosse Vapeur Cochonne Ale -- at 9% abv, an interesting Belgian ale. And there's a pig on the label.
5. Magic Hat -- Bob's First Ale. Not memorable to me, though a second tasting is in order.
6. Unibroue Blanche de Chambly -- Lovely Belgian-style white, quite crisp.
7. Unibroue Maudite -- strong ale, powerful flavors in the malt, but ultimately not memorable.
8. New England Oatmeal Stout -- Probably the most obvious vanilla aroma and flavor I've ever tasted in any stout. Almost disconcerting, distracting from the roasty flavors.
9. La Chouffe Bok -- Standard bock, somewhat malty, light and cloudy. Interesting.
10. Ayinger Oktoberfest -- toasty malt flavors, excellent brew.
11. Ayinger Celebrator -- One of my favorite doppelbocks. Smooth, alcoholic, very low hop presence (if it was even there).
12. Lindemann's Framboise -- Can't pass this up, especially when you've already paid for it.
13. Full Sail Imperial Porter -- Dry, alcoholic, toasty, chocolate, EXCELLENT beer. Did I mention the complex palate?
14. Magic Hat Fat Angel -- Interesting Pale Ale, haven't seen it in the bars but I hope to, to give it a fairer shake. Hard to pin down -- somewhat malty, not really very hoppy -- somewhat sweet, even.
15. Unibroue Tres Pistoles -- Sweet malty doppel(?); chewy, almost caramel texture.
16. Geary's Porter -- Very dark beer, burnt malt flavor heavy in this one. Full and rich, not remotely watered-down.
17. Spanish Peaks Nut Brown Ale -- Back in normal naming conventions, this beer was appropriately nutty, but otherwise not very exciting.
18. Pyramid Draught Pale Ale (DPA) -- Very malty and sweet for a pale ale (this seemed to be a recurrent theme at the BeerFest for pale ales). Almost bocklike, though that would require a fermenting switch, now wouldn't it.
19. He'Brew -- "The Chosen Beer." Aside from the name it wasn't all that spectacular; kind of your average amber ale. But I'd buy it for the label.
20. Unibroue La Fin du Monde -- Yes, the whole Unibroue stable was out for the day. I didn't complain, though they were swamped the entire day.
21. Sierra Nevada Porter -- What can I say? They make a fine suite of beers.
22. Stoudt's Fest -- good Oktoberfest beer, healthy amber color, sweetly malty, dry finish. Good beer for drinking many of over the course of a banquet.

I didn't get a chance to sample any of the Paulaner/Hacker-Pschorr beers, nor did I go to the Brooklyn setup, since I drink those all the time anyway. I also failed to sample from Catamount, though judging from my trip to Vermont a month later, I didn't miss much.

At least, for the first time, I attended a Beer Festival and didn't feel really woozy or sick afterward. Tired, yes. But I was composed and that's all I could ask for. Plus, I had a ride home, which is always key. But I really, really didn't make use of the Port-O-Sans as often as I should have.

Not that you wanted to know that.