Met up with the Japanese beer blog fashionista for several pints down the original baird taproom in Numazu. Chuwy, Capa, Nate and DH and of course TimE downed a few as well as made quite a mess shelling peanuts. Bloggers, Ratebeerians and Tweeters alike drank their ambrosia and immersed themselves in increasing hazy and innuendo centered conversation. Head brewer Chris came down later and joined us for a few too. Top guy. Things started to get a bit hazy, but not before Nate poped out some of his IPA and Imperial Stout homebrew (great job on both!) and Tim pulled out a bottle of Barrel aged Imperial Porter from Full Sail. Like Wow! Cheers gents.
More drinking and fun and games in to the night, last trains home and through a series of fortunate events caught the last train on my local line (don't ask me how - I couldn't tell you). Special thanks to Chuwy for making sure I got the right train!
Now Numazu wouldn't be my first choice for a trip again (Much more commercial than I expected) but it was good to get all these beer heads together at a decent brewery. I'm not going to lie and say Baird is my favourite brewer, but they make some decent beer. Now if only they turned decent into great. Maybe Chris is the guy to do it...A good weekend trip, even if it taxed the old wallet a bit!
From memory I had the Numazu Lager, Shimuguni Stout (surprise of the day!), Rainy Season black ale (disappointment of the day), Red Rose Amber, DIPA, Morning Coffee Stout (Fantastic - highly recommended) and Tekioku(?) IPA. Not too bad....
Are you coming out to play in Yokohama on Sat?
ReplyDeleteJonno..it was a great time and I hope we can hang out again soon! Wish we were closer! What can I bring back from the states for you??? If you told me before, i probably forgot!!!
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