"Saturday In the Park"

Perfunctorily, I had my last run tonight before Sunday's half-Marathon. I ran 9 miles in 88 minutes. I'm expecting to have my slowest time yet. This is disappointing to me because I've always finished under two hours and probably won't this year.

Saturday I went to Parkville, MO, right next to Kansas City, for their Parkville Microbrew Festival. They had 24 different microbreweries from Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska sampling their wares.

My day started, however, with breakfast with Brett Toay at Dixie Quick's Magnolia Room in Omaha. My apple and brie omelet with grits and English muffin was very tasty.

From 1 PM to 5 PM I sampled 31 different beers. All the attendees were given a souvenir tasting glass (I'm guessing it was 4 oz.). A quick tip if you're going to a similar event: Start asking for a half glass from the beginning. Two ounces is plenty to taste everything you need to, plus you can always get another sample if you find something you like. I started getting my half glass samples about halfway through the event so I would venture that I consumed around 90 ounces of beer in the four hours. This works out to 7.5 beers. This was a lot, but don't worry; I waited three hours including supper and dessert before I took to the road.

I won't bore you in this space with each beer that I tasted, but I'll mention a few that stood out to me. There were a lot of IPAs (India Pale Ales) and other Pale Ales, a few fruit accented wheats, a smattering of maibocks, with the rest being filled in with stouts, porters, and ales.

Coming in at 60 IBU [International Bittering Units (Budweiser is less than 10)], my favorite IPA was from 23rd Street Brewery in Lawrence. I tasted something in Blind Tiger's IPA that I couldn't pinpoint, but still enjoyed. 75th Street Brewery from KC, MO had a Double IPA with 103 IBUs, which is crazy--crazy good.

Free State Brewing Company [which created maybe my favorite beer: their Blackjack Porter (Baltic)] came through again with a Blue Sky Rye ale.

Of the four maibocks at the event, I enjoyed Boulevard's the most with its strong banana accents; Blind Tiger came in second, but surprised me. They were very consistent with the Java Porter and its tremendous nose very deserving of a Gold (2004) and a Silver (2007) at the Great American Beer Fest.

There were enough fruity beers with two peach, a raspberry, and a blackberry offering. O'Fallon's Wheach was the winner for a great peachy nose and taste. McCoy's had a Ginger Shandy that was also very tasty.

At the Microbrew Festival, I also met a lot of dogs:

Wylie, German Shepherd Husky mix (first dog I met, friendly owner's name was Dale)
Chinook, Siberian [all white and undersized for the breed standard (41 lbs. instead of a minimum 45)
Bam Bam, Pug (his owner created the website for the event)
Cessna, Black Lab ("father" is a pilot)
Duke, Viszla & Georgia, Yellow Lab (belong to the same couple)
Gertie, Bassett
Cappuccino and McLovin, Daschunds (not siblings just acquired near in time to each other)
Mini Cooper [full name (not certain of nickname), Yorkshire Terrier
Remington, Puggle
Mango, Black Mutt
Kaya, Chow Australian Shepherd mix (really neat coloring with a Chow-like pumpkin base with black tigery markings)