Normally, you don’t see much of me in the beer section; but after this weekend, I had to ask Robert to let me step in. Friday night, Buffalo Bayou Brewing was visited by SCN and TheBeerandWineGuy to share a few bottles with friends. The cost of admission was a toy to donate to Texas Children’s Hospital. Robert organized everything, and thanks to him and the team at Buffalo Bayou, we had an awesome evening.
Buffalo’s tap wall was open to us (the Cranberry Whit is awesome!), and an estimated 50 bottles of delicious godly nectar was poured that night, including a 3 quart bottle of Stone’s Double Bastard, 2008 and 2010 Sisyphus from Real Ale, and the much sought after bottle of Vanilla Rye Bourbon County. Adelbert’s brought us a Barrel of Love bottle and Brooklyn killed it with 2012 and 2013 Black Ops, Hand and Seal, Cuvee Noire, and Wild Streak.
Of course, with bottle shares come exposure to beers that you’ve never heard of because someone’s friend’s cousin’s roomate’s uncle brought it for them from some place up north. Alright, I exaggerate, even going to Austin changes the distribution landscape. This bottle share included many of these beers that I had never tasted, the highlight was a tie between a white chocolate ale and a sour made with mushrooms and sea salt. I wouldn’t include them as highlights if I didn’t think they were amazing. And of course, this gives home brewers the opportunity to show off what they spend weeks cooking up. I was blown away by Apogee Brewing’s Hatch Chile Douple IPA, I’m a huge hophead and this had a great balance of spice and bitterness.
The event ended up collecting a great amount of toys for TCH and the camaraderie felt between beer drinkers voluntarily sharing things that are treasures to them made the night feel incredibly warm and inviting…apart from the beer that was in our bellies. I bring up the sharing part because of Robert’s last write-up about “shelfies and whales”, and also because as a nerd community we’re used to hoarding all the collectable/variant/exclusive/etc. pop culture merchandise. End Tangent.
Buffalo Bayou forced Robert’s hand by proclaiming it was the first annual toy drive, and I’m already ready for next year’s! Thanks again to Robert, if you need beer in a classy manner…this dude is where to go. Thanks to Rassul, Bosley, Scott and the rest of the BuffBayou team for hosting the event. Now all I have to do is figure out when I’ll open the 3 quart beer I won in the raffle.
