A Shout to Stout!

I must've been in heaven, man. Yesterday, I was in a room, and every where I looked there was a tapped keg of stout. There was imperial stout. There was bourbon imperial stout. There was oatmeal stout. There was milk stout. There was Irish stout. There was dry stout. There was really thick stout. There was watery stout. There was raspberry stout. There was coffee stout. AND, I had them all!!!! Yup, I was at Goose Island Brewery's annual Stout Fest! AND, it was the best! I even have a tasting glass to show for my efforts in drinking 22 different kinds of stout. I love those fest things, especially those focusing on my favorite style of beer. I had some nice drunken conversations with the actual brewers. I had drunken conversations with other drunks. I even met somebody from Texas who said that she thought the people around were friendlier then she had heard. "What?" I asked. "You can't be serious!" ... Evidently the people of Texas are nicer as long as you don't mess with them. I don’t know if I agree. Then again, that was really my first real conversation with a Texan. My last foray into the Texan world was at a Waffle House in Amarillo. Think of the worst dive you’ve been too. Multiply that by 10. Add ants and a waitress spraying them with poison five feet from the breakfast counter while chanting, “Oh, don’t sit here, honey! It’s infested with ants.” Add a 5000 pound short order cook complete with exposed belly and tattoos all over the arm and one saying “MOM.” …. I was in heaven then too…. I had come searching for America, and there it was in a waffle house in Amarillo, Texas with nice Texans as long as I didn’t mess with them. Now, if only there was stout… I guess you can’t have them all.

So, yesterday I was stout fest. I, in true Joe fashion, did not do the damn thing properly. I was drunk after the fourth sample and I couldn’t taste anything my friend was tasting. “This tastes like coffee,” he said concerning one sample. “What? It does?” I asked. “I don’t remember coffee tasting?” So, at that point I stopped tasting and drunk critiqued using a one-point judging scale… Did I like it? … That worked well. My scorecard clearly shows this thinking. Regarding Dry Stout from Mikey Finn’s… “No!” … I guess that says it all. I figure, if I’m drunk and I don’t like it, it sucks. Lite starts getting drinkable the drunker I get. I hate Lite. I loathe Budweiser. I LOVE STOUT! And I had tons, at least according to my head and stomach and the several visits to the bathroom…… Beer, it does me good!