Past, Present & Future! (A small update)

It’s Sunday night, and another great weekend is over. Yes, we lived by the beer and we died by the beer. The beer geek week started with some beers at the beer club at Cardinal’s Onsdag². The night was kicked off with a wheat beer home brew and finished with the no holds barred stout Tokyo* from Brewdog. Met a bunch of cool people I’ve never spoken to before, drank good beer, had a good time.

Tim Burton Beer?

Saturday last week Bongo and me took two good friends out for beer tasting at Cardinal and we went through a well-prepared list of 12 tasty brews. The highlight being the “Ægir Lynchburg Natt Barrel Aged Imperial Porter”, a great tasting beer stored on barrels used to age a rather famous brand of sour mash Tennessee whiskey.

Friday Bongo and I hooked up to go see two of our best friends play a gig at a local bar. Both x-members of our own rabble rousing band Upskirts. Then we went to Cardinal for a brew and found some new beers to tick, haha! No we’re not beer tickers! Thanks for the DVD Tom Young alias Kjempetorsken. Before the gig we watched the DVD “Beertickers” that I won in the International beer day photo competition.

Saturday I had no plans to go out, but I wanted another go at the “Lervig Lucky Jack Unfiltered” and the “Nøgne Ø Aku Aku” I tried the day before. It ended up as a whole day and the whole of the night drinking session. Educating total strangers in the joys of beer and getting new friends. Cardinal is so much more that just a place for good beers! Most people who go there act completely different that how people act in the other pubs in town. It’s civilized and friendly! If you don’t fit that description, just stay away!

This beer was brewed in 1981.

So what’s happening in the near future Haffy? Hmmm lets see:

•        Going to New York visiting Brooklyn Brewery & Southern Tier in September.
•         Ølfestivalen 2011 at Nærbø October 22^nd.
•         Nøgne Ø Juleølsmaking in Grimstad October 29^th.
•         Starting homebrewing September/October

So there will be enough of stories to be told in the future. There will be beer-blogging!

I was recently in Orlando and since I got you all here I want to tell you about a bar called “Redlight Redlight”. My team at work won a sales competition, so we won a holiday in Orlando. Since the airline lost our luggage we went to “Target” to get some new clothes the first morning. No I’m not gonna go into details on this airline story. But at Target I found “Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA” & “Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA”. I bought the Dogfish since I hadn’t tried it before, and what a delicious beer. Continually hopped and heavily dry hopped this were a tasty treat no less. At the next liquor store near the hotel I found “Sierra Nevada Glissade Golden Bock” and their “Pale Ale”. The Glissade didn’t rock my world like the “60 minute IPA”, but the “Pale Ale” fresh was a world of difference compared to what I’m used to at home. Man the hop character was so up front and tasty that if you gave me this one fresh in a blind test I would call it an IPA.

Inside Redlight Redlight!

But I was supposed to tell a story about “Redlight Redlight”! So lets get back on track. Before leaving for America I had been checking out Google Earth and Ratebeer for tips where to go drinking. And all the way at up at number three at the list for best beer bars in the world I found “Redlight Redlight”. It was a bit far away from my hotel and the parks, but I just knew I had to go there. So I dragged along my friends from work to a place I’ve never been. Risky business! And after walking around in the plastic fantastic Disney/Amusement Park world it was incredibly refreshing to see normal people drinking tasty beer, to see local people that didn’t work in the parks, the hotels or in the tourist business. But compared to every other place we’d been to it looked pretty trashy so I was nervous my friends wouldn’t like it. I took it upon myself to try to make sure they got a tasty experience, while I myself tried the really tasty stuff, he he.

At the door it’s stated, “We specialize in Craft Beer, NO WE DO NOT HAVE BUD LIGHT!” The inside of the pub is cold and dark, and doesn’t look like it does on their web page at all. So we sat down at the benches outside. My first beer was a “Cigar City Jai Alai India Pale Ale”, it was an awesome IPA! 7,5% ABV and it smelled like Mary Jane. Some would also claim that it tasted a bit like Mary also. Next up was the “Old Rasputin” from “North Coast”, one of my all time favorites, but this time from tap. Pitch black, low carbonated and an intense coffee flavor, totally different from the bottled version I’m used to. “Lagunitas Luck #13” was my next and my last tap beer of the night, a dry hopped heavenly double IPA at 8,56%, I would never have guessed it to be so strong. But another great beer indeed, really fresh hop taste, just awesome! “Sierra Nevada’s Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale” was the next one up! With fresh hops flown all the way from New Zealand and a 6,7% ABV this is one sexy beer! At this point my friends wanted to go for a strip club, and the nice female bartender recommend a place nearby she liked. While waiting for the cab I tried another beer. The bartender (Male) said this is his favorite IPA. “Bells Two Hearted Ale” is one of the few beers at ratebeer with a 100/100 score. What can I say? A very tasty and extremely refreshing beer with a lot of hops in it!

Haffy @ Redlight Redlight

I’m a hophead and I love IPA’s as you’ve probably understood by now, so one I was disappointed that Redlight had so few IPA’s to choose from. I think I tried them all, at least all that were in the beer menu. Redlight specialize in Sour and Belgian Ales and also had a good selection of vintage ales. When I asked the bartender about Southern Tier he said they don’t have ‘em because of Southern Tier is in the InBev distribution, and they don’t touch anything touched by InBev. I love Southern Tier, but I guess I gotta respect them for that, stick it to the man! Stay free – Be independent!

So that’s all I had on my mind today, subscribe, recommend to your friends and share on facebook, twitter or whatever! More stories coming soon!

Cheers and remember: LIFE IS TO SHORT TO DRINK CHEAP BEER!

-Haffy