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as sam was kind enough to remind me, it’s been almost a month since the last update. guess i’ve been getting a bit lazy but there hasn’t been a whole lot going on, save one pretty awesome weekend when steve graced mpls with his presence. sadly the weather was not too cooperative (we had snow… in october) but we managed to hit most of the usual highlights: post-band beers at town hall (thanks steve for being a good sport), one last trip to the uptown bar (r.i.p.), muffuletta with brian and sara (aka dinner club with steve instead of sam — a good upgrade in my opinion), birchwood cafe for a tasty pre-ride breakfast on saturday, a bikeride around the best third of the grand rounds, and even a stop at kopplins before steve had to catch a plane. we spent saturday evening in rochester where steve got to partake in the time-honored tradition of crashing samm’s place, drinking lots of tasty beer, eating too much food, watching football, and playing rock band until the wee hours of the morning. was a good time and i’m glad b+v allowed steve enough time to come out and visit!
as for the beer, they were all pretty excellent; i think we decided the barleywine was probably the best, although the j.w. lee’s was pretty interesting, even if hardly beer-like. i’m definitely liking the trend of aging beers in bourbon casks — it’s a magical combination of two of my favorite forms of booze. also the maximus is a good subsitute for those of us who crave a well-balanced dogfish ipa but have no access to it here in the midwest, and the breakfast stout was definitely worth waiting for. on a related note, brian and i enjoyed a growler of th’s pumpkin ale on halloween, which was surprisingly tasty; easily superior to last year’s offering in my opinion. wish i’d bought another to save for thanksgiving.
