How bad work became a good day!

As you can see below, I was bored enough at work today to make a post (Coworkers: but Adam, all you do every day is play with tools, what made today more boring than the rest?) Shaddap guys, don't you have some powdered sugar to be smearing around?

Anyways, on my way home, (after remembering that the house was dry... I.E. no BEER) I stopped at Vintage Estate (Formerly Felix wines) and picked up an assorted 6 pack from their MASSIVE selection of specialty brews. As I drink them, I'll relay my thoughts. I'm doing this for 2 reasons.

1) I like beer, and I've drank alot of it. I can tell you a good be from a bad beer, and I have nothing better to talk about

2) we got our results back from the Ohio State Fair beer judging, and I can honestly say we got shafted. Our beer was entered as an American Amber Ale (I.E. Mild IPA/APA). Our judges were NOT Certified Beer Judges (yes, there is a rigorous certification program, and OSF does have them on hand for this tasting)....Instead, our judges checked the "Amature/Experience" box. Hell, I'm an experienced beer drinker, but I KNOW I'm not capable of judging a show as big as OSF. So anyways, our "Judges" for the most part had no idea what the hell they were drinking, most of them got a bit confused when it came to the style guidelines for APA/AAA beers, and only one out of the 5 understood that we bottle aged the beer (which creates individualized carbonation and increases the alcohol content slightly, but creates small bits of particulate at the bottom, and I mean small bits). I honestly feel, if we had judges that were properly trained, we would have fared significantly better than the middle of the road "Good" rating we got. So basicly, if those rejects can be tasters, I can be better.

Anyways, the beer list. On the taste list are the followings:

Straub Organic (Greenie) - http://straubbeer.com - Greenies is the nickname for the beer that straub only distributes locally, or to very special vendors. It's rare to see these green bottles outside of the general area of the brewery these days.

Orkney Skull Splitter - http://www.orkneybrewery.co.uk

Arcadia Whitsun - http://www.arcadiabrewingcompany.com

Victory Prima Pils - http://www.victorybeer.com

Victory Hop Devil - http://www.victorybeer.com - As a side note, we just made a decent sized batch of this, but while that's fermenting, I wanted to cheat a bit and sneak a taste of the official brew, for comparison

Harpoon Munich Dark - http://www.harpoonbrewery.com

Stay tuned!