Wow....I suck at blogging regularly, right? Yep. I do. Oh well, worse things have happened in the world.
First off, happy Memorial Day. But more importantly, thank you to the members of the armed services and those who serve our country. Never take those who serve our country for granted. Today is not Veterans Day though, and I think we all need to remember to thank the families of fallen soldiers. Thousands of men and women have given everything to protect our nation, and today is their day to be remembered and memorialized.
Now, on to the less important part of this blog, beer....and a catch up on my weekend. As many of you know, I graduated college a couple of weeks ago, and for graduation, my girlfriend decided to plan a weekend mini-vacation to Louisville, Kentucky.
Now, if you want a quick but complete overview of the whole trip, check our my girlfriend's blog here (complete with way better pictures). I'll stick to beer and bourbon on this one.
First off, Friday night we wandered down to Fourth Street, which turns out to be the night life area for Louisville, and found a little place called Maker's Mark Bourbon House and Lounge. Great bourbon, good specials for happy hour, and a whiskey drink that the lady likes; win, win, win. Later that night, we had a pretty awesome dinner in a revolving restaurant downtown....pretty swanky and lots of great views.
Saturday we headed for a walk downtown after breakfast at the hotel, and went to a little place called Gordon Biersch for lunch. This place is a brewpub, albeit one that is mass-produced (turns out they just merged with Rock Bottom), that specializes in carrying traditional German styles. I had the Marzen, which was solid, and the lady had the Hefe, which was good, but too spiced for me. She liked it. After lunch, we took a little trip down the road to Churchill Downs to see some horse racing. They were running races, and Race 10 was a $100,000 purse. We watched probably 5 races, and it was pretty fun. I hadn't been to horse races in years, and Mindy really liked watching them run. We even found her a great Derby hat in the gift shop, too bad it was $65.
Sunday was the day I got to plan, and of course I made it baseball and beer related. We started with church, but then walked to the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum. I had been there before, but it's always fun to go back, and I got another mini-bat. On the walk there, we noticed that the streets of Louisville had home plates and bats in honor of some of the great baseball players of all time, and of course I had to stop and take a picture of the Hit King's.
The plan for the rest of the day was to get dinner at Against the Grain Brewery and Smokehouse before catching a Louisville Bat's game, and conveniently, the brewery was inside the stadium. Got to try a full flight of their 6 beers on tap and their 4 house-made barbecue sauces. The lighter beers, a German pils, a gose, and a double wheat IPA were pretty good. The darker beers weren't that great, just average, with a brown ale and an oatmeal stout. The barbecue sauces ranged from weird to pretty good, with my favorites being the sweet honey barbecue and "The Thunda Package" hot barbecue, although I think they oversold the level of heat. After the brewery and dinner, we got into the stadium. I love Minor League games because of how affordable they are. Two seats in the first row on the right field line were under $25 total, and in the end, led to me not catching a foul ball and Mindy getting hit by it. Good job me.
All in all, it was a pretty awesome weekend. Lots of good beer, including some that I didn't mention here, a foul ball, good food, and some horse racing. Now it's back to my lull between school and work, which means lots of golf and umpiring.
As for the next blog post, I'm trying to get one written in the near future about some Great Lakes Brewing Company beers that I picked up across the border in Ohio a couple weeks ago. Hopefully I'll get that done this week. Until next time, cheers!
-Chris
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