Registration

I told the story behind Registration Ale a few weeks back on DrinkPhilly.com. This weekend, I benefitted from the prudent patience of Jeff from TJ's Restaurant and Drinkery in Paoli, who had the foresight to save his keg of Registration for an event a week after Philly Beer Week. Not only did I get to have this lovely hop bomb of an IPA again, I actually ended up with a growler to take home (as did most of the other Beer Advocate types who showed up for the event.)
Here's why this matters: The geekiest of us beer folk are always on the look out for those special one-off beers that I referred to in my last post. In fact, Russian River's Pliny the Younger is almost synonymous for "I ain't gettin' any younger while I'm waiting in this line outside the bar for the Pliny event." By the time you get through all of the barriers to entry to getting PtY, it psychologically results in you thinking it was the best beer you ever had, even if they served you a Bud Light Lime. I should know, I waited an hour outside Tria on a very nasty day  for it.
But with the confluence of events that led up to the TJ's event, the lines just didn't show up for Registration the way they do for PtY, even though Registration is rarer and possibly just as vaunted. Maybe its name isn't as big, maybe the Philly area beer geeks were tapped out from Beer Week, maybe all of the Main Line snobs were on vacation. Whatever it was, I genuinely lost sleep when I heard through Twitter that the Registration got tapped a night early, thinking that I would lose my chance to have it one more time, only to find the keg still running strong the next morning (hey, it was 5 o'clock somewhere).
Incidentally, this one was made specifically for Philly, so even the beer folk who live right next to the Russian River brewery in Santa Clara, California, were out of luck for this one. That's a limited release, my friends.
The point is that the score was so profound that some of my lucky fellow beer geeks are now using their Registration growlers as barter for some serious whales from around the world.
Personally, I don't like the hassle, so I'm just going to enjoy Registration for the next week, a little at a time.

Beer and Hype

There are some beers out there that have such a following that it's almost unfair to judge the beer itself against the hype it generates. These are usually rarities of one stripe or another: brewery only releases, limited or single batches, local distribution only, or at the very least, the seasonal. Seasonal favorites generate some serious anticipation. Midwinter brings such celebrated ales as Troegs Nugget Nectar and Bell's HopSlam, but these are generally not hard to find as long as you're looking at the right time. On the other hand, Russian River's Pliny the Younger (available only in kegs on a very limited basis in the Philly area) creates such a mad rush that taverns build events around its tapping, resulting in lines at the door and one-per-customer limits. Beer fans drive or fly from all over the country to Three Floyds Brewery in Indiana to pick up the wax covered bottles of their one-day release, Dark Lord.
While a bit more ubiquitous than PtY or Dark Lord, perhaps no beer's seasonal release is as anticipated as Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS as it reads on the bottle). This bourbon barrel aged Imperial stout is one of the most coveted and praised beer in the craft community, and when a tweet or a Facebook post goes up informing the masses of a new batch hitting shelves in one bottle shop or another, it's often gone in a matter of hours.
I finally got my hands on a few bottles the other night at Capone's in East Norriton at $9 a pop for a 12 oz, and I was pretty excited about the score, to say the least. I still restrained or a couple evenings before cracking the first bottle with a few friends. This was a seriously complex elixir, with notes of smoke, bourbon, oak, licorice, coffee, chocolate, cream, and anise, a damn good stout. By the intimidating measuring stick created by all of the hype (and price point) for this beer, it fared rather well. This was something of a pleasant surprise to me, after being a bit disappointed by the coffee overkill of Founder's Breakfast Stout (not the Kentucky variety).
So while this kind of hype is easy to criticize as an overblown emotional reaction to viral and word-of-mouth marketing, I think it can add an element of fun to craft beer conoiseurship. There's something satisfying about hunting and killing the white whales of the craft beer ocean...even if the meat isn't always as tasty as one hoped. Dark Lord, Canadian Breakfast Stout, and Midnight Sun TREAT, I'm coming for you.

International Great Beer Expo

I crashed the International Great Beer Expo with DrinkPhilly.com







Check out :56 for an appearance by my lovely wife, Desiree.

See the full article here.