I'm really not supposed to drink beer, at least not often or a lot. I have a gluten allergy, which can act up at times. The hops, malt, barley and sometimes wheat used in the production of beer can play havoc with my system. Still I've always been a beer lover and have found that if I'm really careful keeping other glutenous articles out of my daily diet I can cheat every so often.

Anyway, there was a regional beer festival this past weekend, so me and long-time buddy Gerry decided that we'd be 'real men' and check it out. :-)

What a great time Gerry and I had on Saturday night! We actually found the place where the event was being held with little problem, but almost got wiped out by bicycles on the way there!

We were on a main highway, before turning off to the local roads, when a car started to pass me on the left. I saw the car coming up and suddenly heard this crashing sound. Looking behind Gerry and I saw two of the four bikes the guy had strapped to his roof go flying off and hit the car behind him. The car behind that one swerved over to the right
sideswiping the car immediately behind me! You can imagine the chaos in the rearview mirror. :-(

To say we were lucky is an understatement.

The festival itself was a lot of fun, with over thirty brewers & brewpubs taking part. There were about 100 different beers on tap (or from bottles) from all over New England and the Eastern Seaboard. The only 'mass produced' beer was Saranac, a small but old brewery from New York. It seemed like I tried at least half of what was available, but probably not since both Gerry and I were still standing after three hours. :-)

Among the brewers and brewpubs taking part were Buzzard's Bay, Dogfish Head, Sea Dog, Red Hook, Smuttynose, Flying Dog, Allagash, Brooklyn Brewery, Magic Hat, Otter Creek and Bru Rm (a nice brew pub in nearby New Haven). Even if some of the beers weren't all that great, you have to give the folks points for some of the names and labels. :-)

Even though the even is over you might want to check out Mountview Plaza site to get links to some of the brewers and see where else they might be showing up. Mountview has beer events coming up in September and November, so if you are in the New England area you might want to swing by.

Later, we wisely decided to grab some food at the restaurant (the event was held behind the country club in Naugatuck, CT at a public golf course) before leaving so we (actually me, since I was driving) was sober enough to get on the road safely. Since we had to head back on back roads (it was shorter than backtracking to the highways) I wanted to be in fairly decent shape, as it was around 10:00pm.

Still I almost did get us killed, because I had hit the heat since the temp had gone done. The inner windows immediately fogged up and I was crouched down trying to look through an unfogged two inch gap at the bottom of the windshield. Fortunately, I was able to get over on the shoulder without incident. *sigh*