Gaming the System

Oooooh boy.  Saturday Saturday I had 11 beers and got super wasted!  PSYCHE!  I only had two beers.  DOUBLE PSYCHE!  I actually had no beers.  TRIPLE PSYCHE!  Ok, now that you've take a ride on the tri-psyche-le, I will say I had 11 beers on Saturday.  That is no lie.  The lie (and subsequent psyche) is that I did not get super wasted.  The truth is...I gamed the system.  Saturday consisted of two breweries and 11 flight-sized samples.  As per the rules, which you all agreed upon when we started this thing (check your contract), those get to count as a beer a piece.  I didn't start the day out intending to game the system, but then I did.  So let's discuss!

Saturday, in a shameful (but appreciated) attempt to get more than a passing "I drank a beer on the in-laws couch," the in-laws decided to up the ante and take me and, for some reason, my wife (their daughter) to the Lancaster Brewing Company in, of all places, Lancaster, PA.

Lancaster Brewing is most well-known for its Milk Stout.  Well, it's not known at all if you live outside of PA/NJ/DE/DC.  They don't even have distribution up in NY.  Anyway, I've had a rocky history with their Milk Stout.  I first had it prior to my becoming a beer snob and I did not care for it all, but that's to be expected.  After my Enlightenment, I tried it again expecting to be pleasantly surprised.  I was surprised, but not pleasantly.  Still didn't like it!  I set the Milk Stout aside, expecting to never cross its path again.  But lo and behold, I found myself at the Lancaster Brewery.  I was pretty excited to have their Strawberry Wheat (a pretty solid strawberry wheat beer, in case you couldn't deduce that from its name) and their Hop Hop, an IPA, which oddly enough, only registers a 55 on the IBU scale and is the highest IBU beer they have.  I didn't know what else they had, but I was about to find out.  Liz and I split a sampler of the 11 beers they had on tap (her parents and her brother split a sampler as well).  I picked six and she picked five, draft style.  It was a draft draft!  I am amazing at wordplay.  Here's the aftermath:

Here's the thing.  While I'm a-samplin', I didn't write down the names of all the beers thinking that Lancaster would put all their beers up on their website.  Well, I suppose in a tribute to the Amish that inhabit the surrounding glen in their igloos, Lancaster only used the old fashion "chalk on blackboard" to give the names of some of the beers and didn't post them on the interwebs.  So here are the names I definitely remember:  Lightning Lager (a really light, drinkable lager, not flavorless, but not flavor-ful per se), HopHop (mentioned that earlier), Celtic Rose (an Irish lager, don't remember too much about it but it was good!), the Milk Stout (which I actually liked!  Crazy!), and another honey ale called Rumspringa or something like that that was super awesome, I almost liked it better than the Brooklyn one, and a Hefeweizen.  Well look at that.  I honestly didn't think I would remember them all when I began typing but whatdayaknow?  All in all, Lancaster was pretty dope.  The guy who gave us the tour seemed super nervous for some reason.  Probably because he could tell he was in the presence of greatness.

Later that night we all went out to Bethlehem Brew Works, which I believe I have mentioned a million times.  Here's a picture of it:

If they put in strip club, it would be hedonism central.  Their veggie burgers are super awesome.  I don't generally get pysched over veggie burgers, but these I do.  Additionally, they have some beer.  Some super awesome beer.  I figured I wanted to take it kind of easy in the upcoming week, so I figured since I already started gaming the system, well, game on!  That was awful.  I am sorry.  Truly sorry.  Anyway, instead of getting a beer, I got another sampler.  It was a sampler of six but I decided to pass on the raspberry beer to the ol' father-in-law on account of me being a really nice guy (and he paid for it and I didn't like it and he did, but mainly because I'm a nice guy).  In this sampler was the aforementioned Machine sHop (which was really sweet, sweeter than the last time I had it), the aforementioned Stumbling Monk (ok, the name was aforementioned, but it's the belgian ale I had last time whose name eluded me, and also it tasted way spicier this time, which I really appreciated), their Steelgaarden Wit, Hefeweizen, and their Double Brown Ale (which was surprisingly watery).  So that's the story of me drinking 11 beers in one day.  The next day (Sunday) I had a total of one Sam Adams Coastal Wheat back at my apartment.

This week I plan on drinking no more than one beer a day.  That's the plan.  But I think I'm approaching 500 beers, which is a pretty momentous occasion.  I want to do something for 500, and I've got a couple plans in the works, so I may have to drink a few more this week to meet deadlines and all.  I know that was super vague, but this blog is nothing if not convoluted.  Now, time for some astronomical numbers.

Total Beers: 451
Where I Should Be: 430.136