The Things One Keeps in Empty Bottles of Rare Beer
(© Anneliese Schmidt, composition courtesy of mj.)
My wife and I recently moved to Sebastopol, California, a city we’d decided upon as an ideal spot for ourselves during our three-month road trip a year previous: crunchy, quiet, heavily walkable, good beer. All of the places we’d lived before had been determined by school, from sunless Pittsburgh to lake-effect snowfall in upstate New York, to DC. We’d then spent nine months abroad, volunteering and traveling, living out of suitcases. We didn’t know anyone in Sebastopol, and even our cat (who doesn’t move well) had been left behind back in Nevada.
This past weekend, the first things I’d unpacked were the few empties we’d had room for. None of us really understood why I would unpack these first.
Alesmith Barrel Aged Decadence 2005 (#98/124) (© Anneliese Schmidt)
In 2007, I somehow convinced Ali that we should fly out to San Diego for an upcoming Alesmith Barrel Aged release and spend the entire weekend drinking beer. This would have been an early warning sign for most people.
We were the second people in line that morning, behind a couple of San Diego Ratebeerians (this was our first time meeting any of the San Diego crew), each of us picking up two bottles of BA Old Numbskull, two bottles of BA Wee Heavy, and one bottle of the new BA Decadence 2005. A cask of Decadence 2006 was followed by first visits to The Linkery, O’Brien’s, Hamilton’s, the Pizza Ports…
De Dolle Stille Nacht Reserva 2000 (© Anneliese Schmidt)
In two years of trading beer, this was the one least likely to happen. I couldn’t remember anyone publicly trading for this beer in over a year, I’d exhausted any potential leads, and we’d been drinking down my cellar and were leaving DC in September. Mike and Ryan were instrumental in making this trade work.
In total, we shipped out approximately $125+ in rare beer, including two of the aforementioned BA Alesmiths, Fish Tale’s Barrel Aged Poseidon, 3 Fonteinen J & J Blauw, 1.5 liters of 2001 HOTD Doggie Claws, and some Michigan rarities that have since been lost to the annals of time. I almost spelled that “anals.”
Brian Strumke's La Passion de la Saison (© Anneliese Schmidt)
In addition to traveling stupid distances for beer (I just realized this article won’t otherwise mention our jaunt up to Connecticut to try Hair of the Dog Dave), we were also perfectly happy to just sit at home and let beer come to us.
Infrequent tastings turned into occasional ones, which turned into semi-regular ones, which turned into seeing some of the Ratebeer DC crew 2-3 times a week. Our final DC tasting included a full vertical of Dark Lord, Pizza Port’s Mo Betta Bretta, and so forth, but this is the only bottle from that event I have left. It was one of Brian’s last bottles, given as a going-away gift. A beautiful, unique saison.
Kuhnhenn Bourbon Barrel Barley Wine (© Anneliese Schmidt)
Our road trip began in September, centered upon visiting family and friends, touring national parks, and stopping at breweries and pubs along the way, eventually reaching the West Coast. One of the only focal events was Dieu du Ciel’s 10th Anniversary Party in Montreal (for which a certain local Ratebeerian whom we barely knew gave us the keys to his apartment for the weekend), and was followed shortly afterwards by visits to the numerous world-class breweries of Michigan: Bells, Kuhnhenn, The Livery, Shorts, etc.
At Kuhnhenn, we ended up talking with a number of folks from the local homebrewing club (including a local couple, Don and Marie, who invited us to stay in their guest room that night instead of camping), and I had mentioned in passing that Kuhnhenn actually made the tastiest beer I’d ever had, a certain Bourbon Barrel Barley Wine that they hadn’t made in a long time. We were given a tour of the brewing assembly and the bottling line, where some of these same homebrewers were working. We tasted an excellent sour concoction. And at the end of the night someone gave Ali this bottle (seen above), which I didn’t learn about it until the next day. We opened it with Eben in St. Paul.
Squatters Fifth Element (© Anneliese Schmidt)
After seeing the dismal beer landscapes of Wyoming and North Dakota, we would have driven straight through Salt Lake City had I not heard that Squatters had brewed a sour ale. Utah law required that the bottles (982 released that year) be consumed in-house, and that you also had to order food with them.
During the two (slightly scared) hours spent in Salt Lake City, we got to immerse ourselves in one of the finest beers of the trip. Fifth Element took home a bronze medal in the American Style Sour Ale category at GABF that year.
Lost Abbey Cable Car (© Anneliese Schmidt)
A great philosopher once asked, What could possibly be better than Toronado? The answer: a second Toronado, with bottles of Cable Car.
We visited Toronado San Diego on the last leg of our road trip, having started up in Seattle, following Highway 1 down much of the coast, with our tickets already booked to leave for Nicaragua (a land of awful light lagers) less than two weeks later. All that remained was returning to visit family in Nevada, and packing.
In Toronado SD, we stumbled upon one of the only places in the world to ever sell bottles of this Lost Abbey creation, which had been one of the best beers I’d ever tried (once, thanks to a friend back in DC). At $50 for 750mL, I figured this would have been a tougher sell for Ali. But this was also our last beer of the trip.
4 Comments to “The Things One Keeps in Empty Bottles of Rare Beer”
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brian’s bottle = sick
Sounds like you’ve been keeping memories in those bottles. Glad to hear has a sympathetic companion for your beer lust. My bottles of memories have been detoured to sad little boxes in the basement, waiting for their grand return when the ’sewing room’ meets it demise and the ‘Man-cave’ triumphs to its rightful throne. Cheers!
[...] someone with a mild fixation on rare beers (see here and here for examples) that even eight months in Nicaragua couldn’t properly efface, [...]
[...] in terms of rarity and critical regard is De Dolle Stille Nacht Reserva 2000. I’ve mentioned elsewhere the difficulty of acquiring remaining bottles of this beer, which saw limited U.S. distribution [...]