BC4M Va Beer Festival T-Shirt Design Symposium

With the Virginia Beer Festival fast approaching, the creative genius of the group, Johnny Wilder (or J Wild to the crew) decided to have a collaboration of ideas with the Founding Fathers on designing a T-shirt to wear to the festival. What better way to stoke the flames of imagination than to crack open a few new beers and see what sort of new virtuosity develops. First up was RedHook Rope Swing Summer Pilsner (5.3%). Seemingly brewed with rope salvaged from Davey Jones' locker, this beer didn't knock any ones socks off and was a typical ho-hum run of the mill summer style beer and got a so-so. If the choices in the local store were down to Keystone Light and this, then choose this. Otherwise, leave this mediocre swill on the shelf. Next was Flying Dog's Woody Creek White (4.8%), a Belgian Wit style beer, which poured just like every other mass marketed white beer available. From the first taste you know your drinking a wheat beer, that clovey, spicy note in every sip. Another so-so beer. The night was definitely starting off very weak. If Van Gogh was forced to drink this beer, he might not have had the balls to cut his ear off and instead would have severed his tongue. We then opened a new seasonal from New Belgium Brewing, Skinny Dip (4.2%). Self described as a summer style beer brewed with kaffir limes (limes evidently grown in diesel fuel), this had to be one of the worst beers ever. Fred said, "I would rather drink the runoff from the sprinkler system than have to taste one more sip of this shitty mess". Most of the assembled just poured theirs out rather than subject their taste buds to anymore abuse. We decided to go back to Flying Dog's Snake Dog IPA (7.1%). These guys have some interesting bottle labels, and usually have a decent beer. This one was very hoppy (in a good way) but some members asked where the malt was. J Wilder exclaimed, "I love this feisty bitch". This one rated a definite good. Trying to keep the good times rolling, we opened a Flying Dog Double Dog Double IPA (11.5%). Now this is the type of beer that generally gets us excited. Big hop aromas followed by the big alcohol bite, this one was like chewing on a pine cone ( a big ass pine cone). A split vote was given, half for so-so, half for good. Designs for the t-shirt were slow to materialize (Bim drew a picture that only a 4 yr old would be proud of that sorta looked like a mosquito riding a shot glass, design DENIED). We decided the answer to our lack of productivity was another cold beer. Sam Adams Imperial White (10.3%) was our next choice. A big, bold, strong beer, Fred said it was as smooth as "a freshly Pledged coffee table", while J. Wilder said "I feel a bit short-shafted, its an RF without hitting the G-spot, but its damn good". This one is a great beer and in fact all the Imperial Series from Sammy A are either RFG or very good. We then tried another new seasonal, Troeg's Flying Mouflan (9.3%). The bottle looked like a cover from an Aerosmith album, and it was described as Nugget Nectar pushed off the side of a cliff. No one seemed to know what a mouflan was so Fred suggested it was the tasty dessert served at most roadside Mexican joints. Snake brought up the fact that as a young lad growing up in the wilds of Turkmenistan he and his brothers would hunt wild mouflans for dinner. "Tastes like porcupine, Dee-licious" exclaimed Snake. A quick search on the encyclopedia for dummies (i.e. Wikipedia) showed that the mouflan is actually a type of sheep. Known to be very cunning and agile, Snake said he gained his all-neighborhood track speed from running down these rams over the Caucasus Mountains. This barley wine style beer was a solid good. Since we seemed to be on a roll with some good beers, we decided to keep the party going and pulled out a Coastal Brewing Pamlico Amber (4.7%). Wow, this shit SUCKS. One member said, "take a glass of unsweet tea and remove all taste, then piss in it and it would still taste better than this awful crap" This stuff was simply horrible. To cleanse our palates, we opened the last beer of the night, Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat (4.9%). As you know, wheat beers generally don't rate high on our list, but this 12 oz bottle of "fruity pebbles" was a sheer delight. This was pretty damn good, but like a bowl of sugary cereal, you cant take on a lot of this stuff. This would be an ideal beer (light as a feather and just sweet enough) to get your new girlfriend to try when you take her out for the 6.99 soup and salad special at Olive Garden (you cheap bastard). The evening had come to a close, and a design still hadn't been agreed upon. Even though the canvas was still blank, in our minds we say "a great beer will always beat shitty art".