Feb 19, 2012

Kate's surprise for my birthday came around today as we headed to Lancaster and it was soon revealed that we were going to the Winterfest Craft Beer Festival at Club Chameleon. I was pretty excited at the news. We got there early so we wandered around the city a little bit. There are a lot of art galleries downtown. None of them were open, unfortunately.

When we were allowed inside it was a crowded and small basement level room with a few vendors. It seemed like that was all there was, but we realized that it was a multi-level event. The sampling began, and the rule is: if you want to sample craft beer, a craft beer festival is the worst place to do that. Once you have a few your palate is not what it should be. There was a table of home brewers who brought their trashcan keg system to give samples.

I was happy that this sandwich was included in the admission price. Part of it anyway. It was a delicious respite from the beer drinking. Don't worry, we didn't lag for too long.

We went up and down the many levels on our sampling spree. I tried some things that I've had before and some that I had never heard of. Lancaster Brewing had their Double Chocolate Milk Stout, which is amazing. Erie Brewing had some great stuff as well.

The upstairs area had a DJ playing on stage. The room feels much different when there are bands playing and the whole room is packed. St. Boniface's Libation Double IPA was one of my favorites of the day. It's always hard to pick any. Some of the bigger names were represented upstairs, where I tried a dark Yuengling and a Guinness beer I'd never had.

The day took time, but it also flew by. We had sampled pretty much everything (or at least I had) and I was feeling it. There is some desire in me to make sure I check off every beer and make sure I've had a sip of them all for some reason. It ends with me being drunk and wanting to go to sleep.

So we came out to Kate's car and took a nap in the back for a short time. We considered getting a hotel just so we could sleep, but we ended up getting food at Wawa and making the drive home. Lancaster is too far. Next time we definitely need lodging. Either way it was a great day and a great gift.