GABF.
Sooooo…
There are some things that you just simply have to experience. Like a comic book convention, with its saber wars and vampires and Klingons; a speedway race, with its mullets and daisy dukes and too-close-talkers; a web slinger convention, with its nerdspeak and guffaws about the rest of us who’ll never speak binary; and most definitely this: the Great American Beer Festival.
From pretty much start to finish, here’s our evening.
The check in.
Hank was evidently in a no-papparazzi kind of mood. Turdbucket.
Yeah. You kind of have to walk around in awe for a few minutes.
The arrival of Angry Jay.
And the arrival of the Hopheads.
Actual hops, at the Homebrewers’ Booth.
And if you happen to have forgotten to make your own pretzel necklace for sustenance during the tastings,
The pretzel booth will throw packets at you until you catch them.
Then there are the “costumes”. The beer pjs, erm, doing the booty pose for random people…
I actually don’t know what this one is…
Kilts and such…
And Jason sends a big “cheers” to the lone ranger.
My all-time favorite brewery, New Glarus, had a brew team who proudly served up my all-time favorite beer-that-doesn’t-taste-like-beer: Raspberry Tart.
Raspberry Tart makes everyone happy.
Hmmm. Suicide bangs make me look like I don’t have eyebrows in pictures… Interesting.
And then Hank found this shirt.
He says he’s just gonna go put it on every time he gets mad at me and just walk around showing me the back of it.
He’ll probably wear the thing out in about two weeks… Ha.
More dress-up time with grapevines maybe? Hops leaves? Not sure, but they’re owning it, which I love.
And more Angry Jay…
Along with his fancy belt buckle, the Angry Bovine.
Not sure what SammyTheGuy thinks about that…
We found one of the coolest booths there via Anchor Brewing. And the brewmeister stopped us cold, grabbed his heart, and freaked us out for a minute because we thought he was having a heart attack.
But he just needed a drink of his own.
Whew.
Dude full on freaked us out. Oh I already said that.
But then something was super funny. Nerd humor, I think.
I think these are my favorite pictures of our people.
Ooooh. And then we found my second favorite brewery, Dogfish Head. I had a very yogic beer: Namaste.
Well, hello Namaste and friends.
A couple of years ago, Dogfish had an ancient beer tour which was my favorite thing that they’ve ever done. This year, my favorite DF beer was Red & White, a white ale fermented with pinot noir. So delish.
Oh, btw, this is guybling, the only way guys accessorize sans pretzel necklaces, I suppose. The pic on the right? Who knew that there was a whole movement entitled, “Women Enjoying Beer”? Huh.
A bunch of Waldos.
Omaword.
Next installment? The silent disco. I could only whittle down funny pictures to a number around 85 – much too long for one post.
And seriously? You do NOT want to miss that post. It’s pee-your-pants funny.
