Rant

I love shitty, generic, cookie cutter beer festivals.

Especially when they have really shitty, generic, cookie cutter websites, too.

NOTE: Previous images removed at owner’s request. Current image may contain portions of copyrighted works that totally don’t belong to Thomas Tarry, Jr. nor The Results Group, in fair use as a parody. I’ve put about as much effort into this picture into as Tom does his websites and beer festivals.
Tom Tarry

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BA Bigfoot, meet Pig Destroyer Jon. Pig Destroyer Jon, meet BA Bigfoot.


Last Friday night was the Sierra Nevada event at The Ruck. Oddly, most of the beers they were offering had already been on draft earlier in the week, even the Porter on cask and the Brandy Barrel Ovila Quad. Given that we were there for wing night on Monday and had already had the majority of the event’s beers on tap, this definitely took away a lot of the luster of the event away for our whole group; I’m sure we weren’t the only ones to feel this way.
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Some Like It Hot

Pig Wings.*

The sauce wasn’t terribly hot, which was also a disappointment because I ordered it hot on their “mild-medium-or-hot” scale – DerryX on his visit to The Flying Chicken in Troy, NY.

This bugs the shit out of me. Why is it that in the Capital District the hot sauce scale is so effing skewed? I had a nice long discussion with the George of the Bier Abbey the other day about this (after telling him his wing sauces needed to be kicked up).

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Thoughts On the @IthacaBeer LeBleu Release [#CraftBeer]

Did Ithaca respond at all about how much of a mess the release was? I’ve seen nothing but negative PR on just about every website regarding it. Probably a little late to clean up their mess at this point, but I see absolutely nothing on their website, Facebook, or Twitter since the release. They haven’t even responded to the to the long thread of negative complaints beyond “Hey, we have other beers here, too. And cheese pairings.”

I love the way Cigar City did the release for Hunahpu, and wish other breweries would adopt a similar method.

  1. Determine exactly the number of beers you’re selling and have a corresponding limited number of wristbands to give to people waiting in line. If you don’t get a wristband, you won’t wait for three hours in line with the expectation that they’re going to get any and then walk away empty handed when they sell out.
  2. Have a beer fest with food trucks, beer trucks, and live music the entire day celebrating the release of the beer. Yes, this should be a celebration. Not two weeks of people bitching about how much your release was a clusterfuck.
  3. Have said beer on draft at each one of the beer trucks so that the people who aren’t going to be able to take a bottle home at least get to drink as much of it as they can handle at the fest itself.
  4. Have a reasonable bottle limit. Two is plenty for someone looking to drink one and cellar another. Or cellar both since you’re able to drink it at the fest anyway. If you want more than that, bring friends. Anything beyond two and people are buying it for trades and/or eBay. I’m sorry but a brewery really shouldn’t be catering to these type of people. Not that I’m knocking beer traders, since I’ve done some in the past, but selling a case plus extras to someone when you’re turning away a hundred something other customers is just bad business.
  5. Have a second release at the end of the day with whatever’s left and up the bottle limit to a case. This caters to the traders/ebay sellers while also not completely pissing off the people who waited in line for three hours during the two bottle limit trade. The second release should hold NO GUARANTEES that you’re going to get any extras at all and it just sells out when it sells out first come first serve.

My brother and I walked away with two bottles of Hunahpu each and we drank plenty throughout the day to satisfy even the biggest Hunahpu fanatic. Anything beyond that is for retail, ebay, and beer trades, none of which benefit Ithaca nor their direct customers/fans. Get your shit together, people.

I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to 2005…

…and punch the guy in the dick who came up with buffalo chicken dip.

I fucking hate this white trash shit. No, not because it doesn’t taste good, and not because I don’t love the ingredients individually, but because it’s this decade’s lazy, no effort, brain dead appetizer that your friends who don’t know how to cook bring to potlucks. Every.Single.Time. Sometimes they even fight over who’s going to make it. Think of something else, people! There’s a really good recipe app out there called the internet. Use it.

So what if it tastes good? There’s plenty of other awful food out there that I love to eat that isn’t nearly as bad, and anyways who doesn’t love wing sauce, cheese, and bleu cheese dressing? (If you answered yes to any of those, you’re dead to me. Or if you use ranch. In anything.) 

Even worse is the fact that the people who are bringing it to your potluck are people who have just “graduated” from bringing plain ol’ chips and dip. Now they’re bringing this crap instead, and they show up with a grocery bag and smile while saying “I just need a dish and to use your oven!” Oh great, I get to clean up your dishes, too! Thanks a lot, jerk.

Sadly, the epidemic is getting even worse:

As you can see, it’s gradually gathering more and more steam, peaking each holiday season as more and more people go to party after party with no cooking skills and have no idea what to bring. “I know, buffalo chicken dip!” Puke.

We’ve seen this in the past. A few years ago it was grape jelly meatballs. Before that, it was spinach artichoke dip (man I’m sure we’ve all had more than a few bad experiences with that). But lately BCD has reigned supreme: 

And there seems to be no end in sight. Different techniques, different variations. “I layer mine!” “I mix mine!” “I add this cheese!” or whatever the hell other “secret ingredient” is the flavor of the day. Then there’s the person who makes BCD their own specialty, as if no one’s ever had BCD before and we’re somehow going to have some eye-opening revelation by trying their version. Yeah. Right. (Ooohhhh man the Frank’s Red Hot in this one is soooo good!)

So, the next time you have no idea what you’re going to bring to a potluck, use your head. Put in some effort. Look literally ANYWHERE on the internet; there are millions of recipes out there. Or open up that cookbook that’s collecting dust on your bookshelf. Pick any recipe that requires more than dumping a few bags of shit and a bottle into a dish and you’ll be in a thousand times better shape than bringing god damn buffalo chicken dip!