We missed Happy Hour
No $3.50 pints after 6pm, so Hubby is finally trying one of the half yard glasses of Stone IPA at the Yard House.
Beer
June 24, 2008
June 21, 2008
Pipeline Porter
It's from Kona Brewing in Hawaii. Pretty decent, fairly smooth, medium richness of flavor.
June 02, 2008
The most important part of the grill
Once I saw the built-in bottle opener I was sold.
May 29, 2008
There's pink in my beer!
The Yard House also serves various beer blends, and yes, they are also $3.50/pint during happy hour.
This is a "Youngberry Chocolate" -- a blend of Lindeman's Framboise and Young's Chocolate Stout. It's pretty sweet. I like it, but it tastes more like a berry-flavored wine cooler than it does beer.
May 27, 2008
We need to go grocery shopping
At the Yard House late happy hour (Sun - Wed 11pm - 2am). Young's Chocolate Stout, Stone IPA, Spicy Tuna Roll (not actually a roll, it's a 4 or 5 inch diameter mass of edamame, tuna, cucumber, and avocado), and Grilled Jamaican Wings.
Young's here during happy hour is only about a dollar more than at Lee's (which is already cheap).
Beer in a boot!
We are in the Irish bar in the Orleans killing time with beer and bad video poker while we wait for the buffet to open.
May 23, 2008
Triple 7 Brewery Happy Hour
They have really good Happy Hour deals here. $2 draft beer, $1 house wine, and $1.50 well drinks plus appetizers for $4.50 including peel and eat shrimp.
Too bad their beer is weak and mediocre.
Triple 7 Brewery inside Main Street Station
We're trying their 5 beer sampler for $5.50.
Blackchip Porter is very smooth but weak and tasteless.
High Roller Gold is a wheat beer and is vile. It smells bad and tastes like piss. Hubby says it's possibly the worst beer he's ever tasted -- down there with a malt liquor -- and the aftertaste makes him want to vomit. What's really sad is this is their "flagship" beer.
Hubby likes the Marker Pale Ale. He says it's pretty hoppy but the aftertaste isn't that great. It's not worth making a special trip here for but it's drinkable. It's the strongest of the lot.
The "special" beer is a Hefeweizen and is oddly sweet.
My favorite is the Royal Red Lager, which is odd because I don't normally like reds.
All the beers are pretty weak and watery, though.
May 21, 2008
Pre-movie beers
We were going to go to the Yard House but they were INSANELY packed so we're at the mellower Louis's Fish Camp (on the other side of the movie theater) instead.
The bartender is pretty cool here -- I didn't like the first beer I tried (Turbodog Porter, which he claimed was supposed to be a smooth chocolatey molasses flavor but I found to be really harsh) so he replaced it with a Breckenridge Vanilla Porter, which is AWESOME. It really does taste like vanilla.
Hubby is enjoying a Rogue Dead Guy Ale and arguing with the bartender over the virtues of hoppiness in beers.
Somehow we always end up here
We had to stop by Town Square anyway to pick up tickets for the midnight Indiana Jones... and it was happy hour... and we were hungry...
Classic Sliders, Onion Ring Tower (Susan is right -- they are awesome), North Coast Old Rasputin Stout (also excellent, and STRONG!), and Uintas Angler's Pale Ale for Hubby.
The table next to us ordered Coors Light. Who the hell orders COORS LIGHT at the YARD HOUSE?!
Hubby used to drink Coors Light. His life was so empty and meaningless before he met me and I introduced him to beer snobbery.
May 20, 2008
Happy hour at the Yard House again
Grilled Jamaican Wings, Hawaiian Poke Stack, Lost Coast Eight Ball Stout, and Stone IPA (not pictured). Bliss! for $19.
May 18, 2008
Lee's Beer Experience was awesome!
300+ beers from 50+ breweries. I made it my mission to sample all the porters and stouts and three hours later it was MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Our best finds were Lost Coast Brewery's Eight Ball Stout (very smooth and rich) and the SNAFU Home Brewing Club (the home brews, especially the Smoked Porter and Strine Stout, were better than 95% of the commercial beers at the event).
Other good beers:
- Stone Brewing Co.'s Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale. I've had the regular Arrogant Bastard and it's not that great, but the "Oaked" version is much better.
- Deschutes Brewing Co.'s Obsidian Stout. Very smooth and not bitey. Their Black Butte Porter is also quite good. Hubby really liked their Hop Hence IPA as well.
- Moylan Brewery's Ryan Sullivan Imperial Stout was quite good.
- Utah Brewers Cooperative's Polygamy Porter ("why have just one?") was very good and smooth.
- Green Mountain Brewing Co.'s ciders were good. I liked the Pear Cider best, but the Granny Smith Apple cider was also pretty good (although less sweet).
- Johnson Brothers of Nevada's Weihenstephaner Korbinian was sweet and honey-flavored, like mead. It was the least beer-tasting beer at the event but if you like mead you might like it.
- Euro Brew Inc.'s Monty Python Holy Grail was an English bitter. I don't normally like non-porters/stouts, but this one was actually quite good.
- Euro Brew Inc.'s St. Peter's Cream Stout was pretty good.
- Unibroue USA Inc.'s Quelque Chose was served mulled (spiced and heated). It tasted like cinnamon and apple cider.
- Merchant Du Vin's Samual Smith Nut Brown Ale was VERY good, which surprised me because I don't normally like brown ales that much.
- Hubby really liked Merchant Du Vin's Samual Smith Imperial Stout, but I thought it was a bit too bitey. He also liked the Samual Smith Organic Cider but I thought it was a bit too sweet.
- I don't know the brewery (they weren't in the tasting book) but someone was serving a Bison Chocolate Stout that was very good, almost as good as Young's Chocolate Stou.
OK but not great beers:
- Jacob Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat beer. It was light, tangy, sweet, and a little fruity.
- Big Sky Brewing Co.'s Moose Drool. I've had this before, and it's a decent beer.
- Rogue Brewing Co.'s Chocolate Stout. It's not as good as Young's. Amusingly, while we were there a guy walked up to the booth and declared, "I like light beer." The boothling told him, "Then you're at the WRONG booth!"
- Lost Coast Brewery's Downtown Brown. Well... it's a brown. I'm not a big fan of brown ales.
- Johnson Brothers of Nevada's Hefeweizen Dark was smooth and sweet like an apple, but a bit too sweet.
- Johnson Brothers of Nevada's Mendocino Black Hawk was sweet and weak-tasting but drinkable.
- Euro Brew Inc.'s St. Peter's Porter was just OK, there are many better porters.
- Hubby thought that Full Sail Brewery's IPA was OK. I didn't try it because I don't like IPAs.
- Crown Imports' St. Pauli Girl Dark was sweet but a little bitey and carbonated-tasting.
Beers we did not like:
- Moylans Brewery's Irish Stout.
- Anderson Valley Brewery's Oatmeal Stout was way too bitey, and almost seemed carbonated.
- Sierra Nevada's Porter and Stout were both too bitey for me.
Hubby tried a bunch more but didn't take tasting notes, so hopefully he remembers what he liked.
It was a really fun event. The crowd was very different than the crowd at Lee's Wine Experience (which we attended last year). The Beer Experience crowd was perhaps 90% male, so if I were a single woman I would add "beer festivals" to my list of places to meet men. (You won't get the hard-core alcoholics there because for the $40-$50 ticket price they could buy a lot more alcohol at the store.) Many were also wearing various beer- or drinking-themed shirts, and I saw one Ron Paul t-shirt. I'm pretty sure that there were a disproportionate number of Pacific Northwesterners in the crowd relative to their representation in the Las Vegas population as a whole -- in addition to the two Utilikilts I saw many other people sporting Seattle-area style in clothes (socks and sandals) and facial hair (that style of scruffy beard that's so popular in the Northwest), plus they just all sort of looked kinda familiar even though I'd never met any of them before.
Hubby and I are excited about the home brewing club. Brewing our own beer is something that we've wanted to try for a while. Hubby has read a book (How to Brew
HOORAY BEER! Beer is proof yeast loves us and wants us to be happy.
May 17, 2008
Mr. Lee
I met The Man himself! I told him how much we love his stores and the events he sponsors.
You don't buy beer
You rent it.
Monty Python beer
It turned me into a newt!
St. Pauli Girl also brought a Beer Wench
And she told us where to buy a similar outfit -- "Leg Avenue'
Johnson Brothers of Nevada brought their own Beer Wench!
Hubby says I need an outfit like this.
Second Utilikilt spotted
LOL beer people.
