My Christmas Present, Part 1

Sorry for the late post, it’s been a hectic couple of weeks. But I promise you I’ll be posting at least once a week for now on. If I don’t, you can find my at World of Beer, and force me to drink Miller Lite, and only Miller Lite for the whole night. So let’s get down to business, beer business.

For Christmas this year (well last year) I bought The Girlfriend a beautiful Finnish watch. She, being the loving amazing girlfriend got me nothing for Christmas. Rather she got me the best thing to date, a brewery tour of the Eastern Shore. So for a good two months, I had to wait for my present, and needless to say, it was worth it.

The Girlfriend planned everything, as I literally only hadto sit in the car, walk into bars, breweries, and distilleries, and drink. She picked me up from work and we drove from Annapolis, to the St. Michael’s Md. Here, we dropped off the puppies to our mutual friend and went to a local brewery, ReAle Revival.  Here, I sampled the first beer of the weekend. Here I struck up a conversation with the bartender and started talking beer and home brewing. Little did I know, it was the Brew Master, and he invited me to check out his brewery. Needless to say, I was giddy. As I got a private tour, I was given sample of sample of  beers, mostly taste batches, but each pretty good. As it ended, he asked why I was here, and told him it was my Christmas present from The Girlfriend. He told me to wait a minute and he came back with a pleasant surprise. Stone Vertical Epic 10.10.10 Aged in Oak Barrels. If you don’t know about Epic you are missing out. Either way, the Epic Series was amazing.

Next, we hit Evolution in Salisbury (uneventful) before heading to Bethany Beach. Waking up, The Girlfriend takes me to Starboards. There I am required to drink an Orange Crush. Let’s just say, my liver hasn’t done much morning drinking since college. And let’s just say, 8 a.m. was the last time I was sober for the rest of the day. After breakfast, we went to Berlin Maryland, to hit our favorite Maryland Brewery, Burley Oak. Now Burley Oak is a small brewery, but it makes perhaps the best Saison ever. Period, end of statement, the best. SummaRye, is a Rye Saison, that happens to be panned as absolutely amazing by everyone I’ve known who has drank it. I was psyched to go, but oh so sad when we got there and saw a closed sign. I moppely walked up only to find it was a beer release party and they were glad to have anyone come in. We walked out with a slightly used liver, and a bottle of beer, 1 or 440.

That’s it for now, I’ll finish the rest of our trip later. But I’ll be adding one of the Great Trio’s blogs tomorrow.

Till next time,

Slainte!