Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Looking Back At WYES - Saturday International Beer Tasting

Man, what a weekend!  The Friday night Private Beer Sampling was phenomenal, but Saturday brought the extravaganza that was the WYES International Beer Tasting.  Just like Friday, the Saturday night event was moved in 2013 to Mardi Gras World along the river right after the convention center.  The location is awesome, Mandi and I were able to walk back to our hotel after the Friday night fun, sleep in, and then walk to lunch and a few beers at Barcadia before heading to Mardi Gras World early to help set up for the Brasseurs A La Maison homebrew club.  


Unlike Friday night, we had one of our beers on tap, so we were there as more than just beer drinkers.  Before too long we had the Tap-A-Canoe ready to go, but it was already past 4, so rather than head somewhere to drink we decided to start trying all of our club brews!  Usually at festivals like Zapp's or WYES I only get to try a small sample of our club's offerings.  This time I was determined to try them all, and it was a paltry 26 taps compared to the 40 we had at Zapp's.  



Of course beer tastings meant restroom breaks, and unfortunately the only set of restrooms was located at the entire opposite end from us... so that of course meant it was easy to grab a commercial beer on the way back.  Before I was even halfway through the canoe 6:00 had rolled around and the crowds started pouring in. 


Yeah, that's a lot of people!  And that was at the very beginning before the crowd got even bigger.  We were in the far corner above the HOMEBREWS sign, but I had to take the time to get this angle.  Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to do much tasting of other homebrew clubs, or commercial beers.  It's just too big of a festival and by the end of the night I had barely made it through our club's tap list.  

All in all though, a great time.  I don't regret missing out on the commercial brews but I do regret not trying more from the other homebrew clubs.  I guess there's always next year!  If I could make one recommendation, it's to be sure to go on Friday night for the commercial special releases and then on Saturday night for the homebrew selection. 

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