Sensei’s Poker Dojo

Howdy folks, in an effort to consolidate things a bit and take advantage of the sweet new blog system that we’ve built at DeucesCracked, I’ll be moving most of my blogging over to this new address. I’ll keep SenseiPoker up and possibly post some things here and there, but they’ll most likely be nonsense or otherwise not at all related to poker. So if you’re into that sort of thing, feel free to keep checking in, but for the most part you can expect way more posts over there.

Last week I took my semi-customary fall trip to the east coast to visit friends in DC and Durham. It was an excellent trip as usual, revolving primarily around the Durham beer festival. My college friends and I have been to several of these festivals in the past; what better way to spend time with old friends than a sunny afternoon sampling dozens of delicious craft-brewed beers from around the country?

Saturday morning I armed myself with my new moleskine notebook¹ and my new camera, intending to chronicle the event as well as possible before the charge of the afternoon naturally lead to memory loss. Unfortunately I still haven’t figured out how to shrink and upload my pictures, so I can’t share them. The primary contents of the album are faces and shirts greased with barbeque sauce from turkey legs, boisterous group photos, and some shots of us scheming to hop a barrier and run the bases before we were stared down by the young volunteer security guard who was clearly on to our plan. (Fun fact: the event was held on the outfield of the old Durham ballpark where Bull Durham was filmed.)

The notebook, on the other hand, was used to its fullest potential. I used it to chronicle a list of all of the beers I sampled, also rating them between one and five stars. I have listed those ratings below, accompanied by what more specific memories I have of a beer when relevant. I used a half-star interval, which I came to regret halfway through but which may have been a good decision up until that point. The names of Breweries or beers may not be entirely accurate due to haste. Samples were intended to be 2 oz, but most brewers poured more than that.

1 star – Undrinkable (ex: Bud Ice, Schlitz)
1.5 stars – Only if there are no better options (Budweiser, Bud Light)
2 stars – Average (Stella Artois, Pabst Blue Ribbon)
2.5 stars – Slightly interesting (Blue Moon, Dos Equis)
3 stars – Good beer, would drink again
3.5 stars – Quite good (The best beers of many microbreweries will fall in this category and the next)
4 stars – Very good beer, excited to see it
4.5 stars – Memorably delicious
5 stars – Transcendent

Brewery Beer, Rating

• Ska Blonde, 2.5
• Holy Mackerel Golden, 3
• Fort Collins Chocolate Stout, 4 – My bias towards stouts, porters, and IPAs may become apparent as you read on
• Dale’s Gordon Red, 3.5 – Dale’s (more accurately, Oskar Blues) makes some of the best canned beer in the country.
• Widmer Drifter, 3.5
• Sweetwater IPA, 3
• Breckenridge Oatmeal Stout, 3.5
• Tibet Lhasa Lhasa Lager, 2 – I was compelled to try this beer because it was of Tibetan origin, but, as expected, it tasted like most light American lagers.
• Saranac Pumpkin, 3.5
• Peak Organic Nut  Brown Ale, 3
• Blue Point IPA, 4.5
• Blue Point Oatmeal Stout (cask), 5 – An amazing beer, they had just opened the cask before we sampled it. Perfectly balanced, smooth, and delicious, even at lukewarm temperature
• Duck Rabbit Marzen, 4
• Duck Rabbit Baltic Porter, 3.5
• Foothills Double IPA, 4.5 – Maybe the most well-balanced double IPA I’ve ever had (watch out Dogfish Head 90 minute!)
• Foothills Porter, 3.5
• Highland Kashmir IPA, 3.5
• Highland Gaelic Ale, 3.5 – Perhaps my most nostalgic sampling of the day. This beer and I spent a lot of time together on Thursday nights my senior year at Duke.
• Asheville Amber, 3
• French Broad Wee Heavy, 3
• Kind Beer Belgian Red, 3.5
• Kind Beer Pale Ale, 3
• RJ Rockers Bald Eagle Brown, 3
• Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye, 3.5
• Bosteels Tripel, 4
• Great Divide Yeti, 4
• North Coast Brother Thelonius, unrated (previous referenced in this post)
• Left Hand Smokejumper, 4
• Malheur 12, 4
• Dogfish Head Punkin, 3 – I was disappointed both by the Dogfish Head offerings (only two modest beers) and the flavor of the Punkin. It was certainly good, but not as good as other pumpkin beers I had tasted earlier.
• Blowing Rock Winter Ale, 3.5
• Victory Baltic Thunder, 3.5
• Mother Earth Wit, 3.5
• Mother Earth IPA, 4
• Blueprint Rastafarye, unrated – My handwriting at this point is clearly deteriorating, and I have given up on rating beers, opting instead to try as many as I can before we have to leave at 4.
• Fort Collins IPA, unrated
• Holy Mackerel Mack and Black, unrated

Upon reviewing my ratings I noticed a greater amount of variance early in the session, when my taste buds are fresher. In the middle segment the ratings cluster around 3.5, both because my palate was overwhelmed by delicious beer and because my selections tended more towards beers I expected to be very good than beers located the closest to my glass²

The standouts of the session were clearly Blue Point and Foothills. I had not heard of Blue Point before the festival, but their beers were astoundingly good. The brewery is located on Long Island, surprisingly, but their website was too poor for me to obtain useful info from so I gave up. If you see some beers of theirs somewhere, you should try them! Foothills was also new to me, though it had been hyped up by my friend Sam. Apparently located nearby in Winston-Salem, they had a wide array of top-notch offerings.

On the whole, it was an excellent afternoon. I got to see many old friends, enjoy some excellent southeastern fall weather, and sample all of those beers. The only downside was that the hangover kicked in around 9 PM (but I was back at full strength for Sunday brunch!)

1. Apparently moleskine notebooks are associated with hipsters? I had no idea, otherwise I might have avoided it. It is a pretty fantastic notebook. [↩]
2. Actually a plastic cup. They used to give out a glass. Lame. [↩]