Happy National Beer Day

Last night my wife and I celebrated the release of Stone Brewing's Beer into Illinois, a wonderful pre-event to National Beer Day.  We went first to Bent River Brewing, because we saw on facebook that they had both Arrogant Bastard and Stone Pale Ale on tap.  It was their special guest taps for the night.  Your choice was a pint of either one for $3 or you could have a pint of either beer and keep the commemorative pint for $6.50.  My first beer was of course Arrogant Bastard, I know some may say that is fitting, and my wife surprised me by ordering the Pale Ale, she hates hoppy beers.  As we were enjoying our beers we eventually were waited on to order some food.  That is one definite thing that Bent needs to work on is the table service, plan to have more people on staff for special nights like last night.

I was very pleased that my wife drank her whole pint of Pale Ale and enjoyed the beer.  Once our food arrived I order the Pale Ale.  The food and beer we both quite enjoyable.  So when we finished our food and beers we paid and headed for stop #2, onto RIBCO for their Stone Release Party.

We arrived just a few minutes before 8pm when the Stone draft beer was scheduled to go on sale.  We made our way into the bar and saw some friendly faces that we spent the rest of our time talking with.  They had 3 Stone Brewing beers on tap: Cali- Belgique, Arrogant Bastard and Smoked Porter with vanilla beans.  First up for me was the Porter, the vanilla came through but no real noticeable smoke.  I greatly enjoyed the beer though!

My wife went with a bottle of Levitation Ale, this one she said was way to hoppy, hoppier than the Pale Ale, but she did manage to drink it.  Way to go Sweetie!  Beside Levitation Ale in bottles they had Pale Ale, IPA, Ruination, Sublimely Self Righteous (in 22 oz. bottles) and Oaked Arrogant Bastard.  All the bottles were available for purchase before 8PM.

We both decide to have a second beer and I ordered, anybody? anybody? Yes!  Arrogant Bastard! and my sweetie order the Vanilla Porter.  Again a bit of a surprise since she does not like very many dark beers as well.  All in all we had an enjoyable evening on our adventure of welcoming Stone Brewing's Beer to Illinois.  It is so awesome that we can now have Stone Beer just by driving a few miles across the Mississippi River to a bar in Illinois and more importantly purchase for home use at liquor stores. 

Now onto today's event National Beer Day.  First of all we need to work on the name and make it more exciting.  Any suggestions?  The main point to today is it is the anniversary of the repeal of the scourge of mankind know as Prohibition.  It was on April 7, 1933 that the Cullen- Harrison Act went into effect, which was signed by FDR in March of the same year.  So go out and have a beer to celebrate this great anniversary.

QC Beerguy