I’m just back from a successful, if not wet and chilly, Kate The Great Day at the Portsmouth Brewery in beautiful Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And what a wild & crazy morning it was. Josh Christie (of BrewsAndBooks.com fame), a few mutual cohorts and I piled into the car this morning around 3:50am and departed from Portland en route to Portsmouth for The Portsmouth Brewery’s Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout – the beer which is considered by many to be the best beer in America (and is towards the top of just about every list for sure).

The bottle "lines" at about 8:40am

If you’re unfamiliar with the way “Kate Day” (as it’s called) works, there are a total of 900 bottles of the infamous Russian Imperial Stout for sale one morning each year. The first 450 people in line get a single page from a page-a-day calendar (well, calendar and a half). When the pages are all handed out, the beer is essentially gone. Folks then mill around downtown Portsmouth in search of warmth and breakfast until they start letting people in to pick up their bottles (limit 2 per person; $10 a bottle) in order of month beginning at 9:00am.

Our carload arrived right around 4:45am and got December 28-30 of the first year. By 5:25 all of the 450 pages were gone. Reports said that folks began lining up at 1:00am last night when the bar closed and stood in line overnight until they began handing out pages at 4:30 this morning (so all the bottles were spoken for in less than an hour).

If you miss out on a calendar page and aren’t able to pick up a bottle, not all hope is lost. The Portsmouth Brewery opened for lunch at 11:30am and promised to have a couple of kegs of Kate on tap. However, when we left with our bottles at 9:30, the lunch line was already down the street and around the corner, two hours before they opened. Our rough estimate was that if we had gotten in line at that exact moment, we might have been eating by 3 o’clock. And the brewery was sure to kick all of their Kate kegs before the day is out. Pure insanity.

Look at all those bags of Kate The Great!

However, if you’re within striking distance of Portsmouth, Kate Day is a definite don’t-miss, at least once in your drinking career. I do wish they would host the event on a slightly warmer day than March 1st, but I guess standing outside in the cold and the rain adds a bit to the mystique.

Did you make it down this morning? What’d you think? And if not, I’ll see you there next year (BlogAboutBeer.com Kate Day Party Bus anyone?). Oh, and I won’t be trading either bottle so don’t waste your time. Sorry!

Last weekend marked the fourth annual Beer & Cheese party at Vignola restaurant here in Portland’s Old Port. As I mentioned before, this has quickly become one of my favorite annual Maine beer events. You can literally pig out on some of the best cheeses and beers in the world until you feel like you’re going to burst — in the best possible way — for a mere $25.

It’s great, too, because there are two very different sessions to this event. The first, which runs from 12 noon to 2:00pm is very relaxed. This is the session we always choose to attend and this year my party of four made up quite literally about 1/3 of the entire crowd (you do the math). It’s a great intimate setting where you can really take your time with each beer and each cheese, have good conversations with the distributors and chefs and generally just feel relaxed and not rushed or pressured. However, the evening session (which runs from 3-5pm) had nearly 70 reservations before the session started and I’m sure there were plenty of walk-ins. So I’m guessing that session is much more of a party atmosphere (if any readers out there can attest to this, that’d be appreciated, since I’ve never been to the later session). Point being, whichever style of “festival” you like better, you’re sure to find it at the Vignola event.

The setup of this year’s festival differed slightly from the last three years, and definitely for the better. Last year each distributor had their own table with their own beers (so no table had any rhyme or reason as far as beer style was concerned) and all 25+ cheeses where just laid out on the bar. Granted they were in order from lightest/creamiest to darkest/bluest/funkiest, but that was about it. It was very much a “here, drink some beers. okay, now eat some cheeses” sort of setup.

This year, much more effort was made toward actual “pairing” of the two. There were 4 tables set up throughout the restaurant (which had been cleared of most chairs to provide enough room for everyone to move about); the first featured a handful of IPAs and Pales to match with 4 or 5 different cheddars. Next you moved to a table of soft, creamy cheeses and meads (another new and welcome addition), which is pictured above. From there, to belgians and hard, aged cheeses and lastly to porters & stouts and the blues and really funky cheeses (my personal favorite of the stations). I definitely preferred this set up to the way the event was run in previous years and from the few other attendees (and employees) who had been to previous years, I think that sentament was universal.

The only downside, I felt, to this year’s event was that the selection of both beers and cheeses, although better arranged, paled in comparison to last year’s. The cheeses certainly never fail to impress — although I’d say at least 10 or 12 of them this year came from the same farm in Vermont; not bad, just not much variety –  and, as I mentioned, the meads were a nice touch, but other than that, the beer selection was pretty unimpressive.

I will absolutely attend the event again next year (and every year Vignola continues to put it on), and I appreciate the improvement in set up. I just hope next year they can find the right balance between improved presentation and the better selection of years past. See you next year!

The winners in the 2010 Mother of All Beer Blogging contest have been drawn. They are as follows:

Will Wohler – (1) A $50 gift certificate to the Cataqua Pub at Redhook Ale Brewery in Portsmouth, NH, two tickets for a Redhook Brewery tour & tasting and a Redhook skateboard (please don’t drink and skate!).

Jason Jewett – (2) A Jubelale gift pack from Deschutes Brewery in Bend, OR. The gift pack includes Jubelale ornament, Jubelale long-sleeve T-shirt, Jubelale pint glass and a Jubelale poster signed by the artist.

Finks - (3) A Magic Hat gift pack from Magic Hat Brewing Co. in Burlington, VT. This pack includes a mini tin-tacker sign that reads “Drink Me”, a Magic Hat t-shirt, a bottle opener and a key chain.

Lucas - (4) A Growler Kit from Kegworks.com, which includes glass growler, an insulator jacket and growler filler (a $44 value).

Dave - (5) An Allagash Brewing Co. t-shirt (Portland, ME) and a pint glass and poster from NorthernBrewer.com.

Scott - (6) A Shipyard Brewing Co. t-shirt (Portland, ME) and a pint glass and poster from NorthernBrewer.com.

Ryann E – (7) A Seadog Brewing Co. t-shirt (South Portland, Topsham & Bangor, ME) a pint glass and poster from NorthernBrewer.com.

Hokie - (8) A t-shirt of your choice from beer clothing headquarters craftbeerclothing.com.

All winning names were determined based on random integers assigned via random.org. e-mails to all the winners are being sent out now. Thanks so much to all who entered; please keep reading BlogAboutBeer.com for more great contests and giveaways in the future. Cheers!

I’m not talking about a raging kegger, I’m talking about a clever, themed “Better Beer Party”. There are plenty of options for themes: beer and cheese pairings, beer and chocolate pairings, traditional beer tastings (especially fun if you have friends who aren’t yet converts, so you can really teach them about beer) or you can get extra creative like Josh from BrewsAndBooks.com, a mutual blog-less, Twitter-less friend and I did this most recent Saturday night. We threw ourselves a “beers you can’t otherwise get here” party (for lack of a more creative name).

This kind of party of course requires some pre-planning — I had been saving some beers I got during my trip to Washington D.C. in November and Josh traded for some of his beers from away — since securing brews for this type of event takes a little more effort than running down to the local Packie. But, if done correctly, it’s a great way to try some new beers everyone involved might not otherwise get to try and it makes plowing through some 22 ounce “bombers” much more manageable than if they were a one-man job.

Here’s a picture of the haul we slowly worked our way through, throughout the evening. A Lagunitas 2009 Correction Ale, a 2009 Three Floyds Dark Lord (!!), a Pretty Things Baby Tree quad, Otter Creek Imperial Stout, Troegs Java Head, Deschutes Red Chair NWPA (Northwest Pale Ale), Deschutes Cinder Cone Red, Bashah (the Stone/BrewDog collaboration), and the Brew Free or Die IPA and Watermellon Wheat ales from 21st Amendment Brewing. Needless to say, not an easy task (but a damn enjoyable one).

Especially ’round these parts where the winter doldrums are extra long and sticky — although these days, the whole country is gripped by cold, so you know what I’m talking about regardless of where you’re reading this from — throwing special themed small beery get-togethers like this one are a great way to beat cabin fever and a great alternative to another night at your local watering hole (even the best beer bars in the country need some at-home alternatives from time-to-time). What themed beer parties can you think of?

Happy New Year one and all. With each new year, comes January. And with each January comes what has, in recent years, become one of my single most-favorite, most-undiscovered Better Beer events in the state of Maine. I am referring, of course, to The Belgian Beer & Cheese festival at Vignola restaurant in downtown Portland.

The 4th annual Vignola Beer & Cheese Dinner (they call it a dinner, I call it a festival because it starts at Noon), which is an opportunity to sample a “wide array of American, Belgian and German beers and artisinal cheeses”, will take place on Saturday January 23rd at the restaurant on the corner of Dana and Wharf streets in Portland’s Old Port. Tickets are $25 a piece (non-inclusive of tax or gratuity) but that’s truly a steal for the absolutely glutenous amount of beer and cheese you consume at this event, after even just one pass through the line! Reservations are required and are available for either session (12pm-2pm and 3pm-5pm) by calling 207.772.1330 or visiting the restaurant (although last year, we bought tickets at the door without a problem but do so at your own risk).

If you’re still on the fence about whether or not to shell out, check out my full recap of 2008′s event (and last year’s was even better, I just forgot my camera). Seriously, can you think of a better way to shake some mid-winter cabin fever than artisan cheese & beer on a Saturday afternoon in January? I thought so.

I will absolutely be in attendance, so be sure and say hi if you see me.