I am a lucky dog. Seriously.
A couple weeks ago, I managed to snag a ticket to an event that one of the local Chicago beer distributors puts on every year.
The format is essentially this: They get most of the breweries whom they distribute for to send a few reps and many many cases of beer to a convention center Chicago and pour beer after beer after beer for the folks who come. (Mostly buyers and a few friends.)
I'm not exactly sure, but there were somewhere on the order of 5o breweries pouring multiple beers each. They ranged from macro american fare (Pabst / Schlitz / LaBatts) to Belgians to some of my favorite American craft makers (Dogfish, Breckenridge, and Great Lakes.)
Being the beer geek that I clearly am, walking around a convention center and just being able to try new beer after new beer was unreal. My biggest (and only) complaint was the fact that I had to drive myself home afterwards, so I had to start spitting after the first hour or so...
In any case, I got to try a few special reserve type beers which blew my mind. Particularly the dogfish stuff. They have a crazy raspberry strong ale called Fort that's somewhere around 19-20% by volume, and still manages to be very drinkable.
I also got to continue my search for the perfect IPA, which went mostly unfulfilled. (Rather surprisingly.) Most of the IPAs I tried weren't quite balanced enough to be great. The only new one I tried which actually made me happy was Arcadia's HopMouth double IPA. Their head brewer was actually the one pouring, which made for some solid conversation over the beer.
All in all - awesome experience.
