Day 83 – Week 12 Nearly Down For The Count

Twelve weeks - 84 days - is nearly in the books. It is one week shy of a fourth of the way home. The good news is that I'm 30% of the way through the beers. That is 159 beers tasted. That's forty beers (more or less) ahead of schedule or four weeks. I'm on cruise control right now and breezing along.

I am still finding some stinkers, of course, but I've also found some real gems. I'll skip the stinkers, but here are some of the real gems. The first is called Moose Drool Brown Ale (you gotta love the name!) from Big Sky Brewing Company out of Montana. This is every bit as good as the best brown ales I've ever had. It is so smooth and well balanced that you'll wonder if your taste buds are deceiving you. I am definitely buying more Moose Drool! Another one is Buster Nut Brown Ale from SKA Brewing. Not as good as Moose Drool, but Buster Nut is close. A third brown ale that is right up there with Moose Drool, however, is a local fave called Nimbus Brown Ale from Nimbus Brewery (those marketing guys are pretty clever, huh?). Very good brown ale.

Some other good ones include a Scottish Ale from Odell Brewing called 90 Shilling and a Heller Bock from Rogue Ales called Dead Guy Ale (those marketing guys are pretty clever, huh?). The best of the bunch, however, is an imported German Hefeweizen (from Germany, of course) called Erdinger Weissbier. That was expensive, but well worth the money. Man, was it good!

Of course, I did hit the imports the last week or so. I've just about exhausted the 12 oz American Microbrews. The good news is that there are plenty of good ones left in the larger sizes. The bad news is that I'm going to be paying twice as much for them, so my plan is to buy a few of the larger American brews and the rest imports, which aren't cheap, but aren't bad compared to the larger sizes. That will soften the financial impact of my strategy.

I'm still not 100% confident I'll hit the 524 mark, but I look at it this way. I'm having fun, I'll come close, and I'll have a large list of beers from which to purchase in quantity down the road. To date I have 90 that are above average, two thirds of which I would buy on a regular basis. I have expanded my horizons beer-wise beyond which I would have otherwise and had a great time doing it. Nothing about this is a failure or disappointment, regardless of whether I achieve the end goal or not.

Life is good and so is beer!

Bunden i vejret eller resten i håret! That's Danish for " Bottoms up or the rest in your hair." I'm not sure I want to know what that means exactly.

Goal...............524.....365
Progress.........159.......83
Remaining.....365.....282