Well, we’re back from the Northeast and beer-wise, Brooklyn Brewery was the trip highlight hands-down. We got a private tour with Garrett Oliver (Brewmaster/VP), hung out with Mike Vitale (VP Sales), met the resident cat, enjoyed Brooklyn-Schneider Hopfen Weiss at will with Karl Knoop (Operations Mgr), and watched the truly surreal scene as a TV crew appeared and transformed the brewery into “Spoor Brewery” for an upcoming show on FOX. (Don’t ask me what it’s called, I don’t know. It will be a mid-season replacement.) The clincher was that it was a funeral scene, so the whole visual of a casket being set-up next to the tasting bar was really hilarious (in a dark sort-of way).

Especially exciting was the brief time with Garrett, and admittedly, all the questions we had were thrown out the window when we met. He’s quite friendly but it’s humbling to be in the presence of someone of his stature in the beer world. He had just gotten back the night before from Michael Jackson’s funeral and was leaving in a few hours for Sweden’s Scotch & Bourbon Festival. Truly! So, we fumbled a bit, but the chat over beer was fun. We did a side-by-side tasting of Chocolate Stout—last year’s and this year’s—plus a 1993 bottle of Thomas Hardy’s from his personal stash. We saved the bottle. There is proof.

To honor our local beer scene, we hand-delivered two bottles of the new Highland Imperial Kashmir as a gift and in return got two vintages of Chocolate Stout as well as an unlabled bottle of Brooklyn Local 1 from the very first batch.

Here are some pictures: