Road Trip to Foothills, Part II

What would you do for a Klondike Bar?? Probably not a fucking thing unless you are a self-loathing chunky monkey with an addiction to sweets. But for a Foothills Brewing Barrel Aged Sexual Chocolate, I’d have a three-way with your grandma and her 90 year old friend Mildred. Or, in this case, leave the comfort of our homes after midnight and drive to Winston-Salem North Carolina packed in the BC4M beer wagon like a can of mustard drenched sardines.

Driving under the brilliance of a full moon sky, our group arrived at 4:30 AM, tired, hungry, and soon to be wet, as the rain began to fall immediately upon arrival at the Winston-Salem city limits. The line for the beer stretched almost 2 blocks by then and it looked as if it had been raining hippies, with their smelly, unkempt carcasses littering the sidewalk in various stages of either inebriation, slumber, or both. Bim, the resident hippiologist, pointed out how unique an opportunity it was for us to observe hippies in the wild, in their natural habitat. He warned us not to feed them, make direct eye contact, or give them change, but we could offer them beer, as long as we did not share cups. Hippies are known to carry a variety of diseases, both known and unknown to modern medicine.  As we sat in the rain, happy to finally be at the brewery, we watched the methadone clinic across the street beginning to open for the day. Starting at 5 am, the drug addicts began showing up in their beater cars. Not sure why, but there seems to be a direct correlation between narcotics addiction and lack of mufflers. These people hate mufflers! We were amused by these folks, watching as they lined up in the rain to get their methadone. Some of them undoubtedly traveling long distances for their fix, only to have to line up like sheep in the pouring rain. That’s when the irony hit us… we’re a lot alike. Except that we have better cars, bigger houses, better healthcare, all our teeth, no drug addictions, steady employment, still on speaking terms with our families, no arrest record, have never sold our ass for drugs (yet), we like mufflers, and we generally have better personal hygiene. If you take all those things out of the equation, we’re alike. Oh, and we love great beer and they don’t, which may be of some significance. But really, that’s all that separates us from them.

We had a good time sitting in line huddled around the portable grill while Nestle Goodbody cooked us up some delicious steak and egg burritos as we chatted and drank with our new pals like Pike and his buddies who were happy to share beers with us. We even had the pleasure of sampling some of Pike's homebrewed stout, aptly named Charlie Murphy, The Darkness (11.0%). It was better than a lot of commercial stouts we’ve had but it lacked the barrel aging taste as we later learned his home brewing secret was to just "add a few shots o'whiskey in the batch". We also would like to give thanks to our new Twitter buddy from South Carolina, Chris (@scbeerguy) who traded us some KBS and the drunken young Ernest Hemingway wannabe from FermentedArtistry.com who got wet in the jammies while flirting with Nestle and Cricket and then happily traded us a Lost Abbey Red Poppy for a chance to get an up close and personal inspection of Bim's zebra striped man hammock. And lastly, we’d also like to thank the two anonymous guys who traded us a Dogfish Head / 3 Floyd's Poppa Skull and a Coast Brewing Boy King DIPA, two amazing surprises While we were there we got to try a few beers on draft. Foothills Coffee and Vanilla Bean Randalled People's Porter (7.0%) was decent but tasted a little like the 3 day old remains of a carafe of coffee left on the burner too long so it got a so/so. The Foothills Bourbon Barrel People's Porter (7.0%) was fantastic, with a super rich chocolate taste that had just the slightest hint of bourbon taste although it smelled like a freshly opened flask of Fightin Cock. We also made our now traditional run to City Beverage to stock up on some more goodies. While we were there, we tried a Great Lakes Brewing Lake Erie Monster (9.0%), an Imperial IPA that was fruity and full of fresh hop flavor. Not quite Pliny the Elder, it was phenomenal nonetheless and rated a really good. After we picked up our 20 bottles of BA Sexy Cocoa, we began the seemingly endless journey home. Even after downing a case of 5 hour energies, Fred was too exhausted to continue to pilot us home, so Bim took over behind the wheel. Evidently, when you get close to 50 years old, your prostate swells up to the size of a musk melon, cause like a 6 year old girl, he had to stop and pee every 2 fucking miles. Thankfully, we made it home before sundown and we each passed out from exhaustion. Another successful mission, we look forward to invading downtown Winston Salem in August for the release of Olde Rabbits Foot, the three way collaboration barrel aged stout from Foothills, Duck Rabbit and Olde Hickory.