DerekRx

Although it's now officially autumn, I refuse to believe it just yet. Feeling in the mood for something IPA tonight, I'm glad I've got friends in California to come thru and deliver. thanks for the beer, Bubba! This face is for you! boy do I love bombers when it comes to good beers I enjoy drinking lots of! Wonderful West Coast hop flavor, very comparible to Pizza Port's Wipeout On tonight's agenda, a bottle of Hop Stoopid from Lagunitas

Magnum XL-200 about 9 hours ago. Still as coat hangery as ever! The Mistake on the Lake, as seen from our hotel room window.

Been busy driving and riding coasters for the last few days, but managed to stop off for a beer along with dinner on the drive home tonight. and after a visit to the Rogue Dead Guy in the bathroom, it was back on the road to finish the drive home, otherwise I would have had another Accompanied my chicken enchilada nicely I decided to try the Great Lakes Oktoberfest, great marzen style A nice draft list as always Back to the Monroeville Mad Mex, a nice way to break up the drive home from Ohio

Tonight I decided to stick with the canned theme from yesterday, trying out a new to me brew from a brewery I hadn't had anything from yet, but thanks to Capones managed to grab a can. Coming in at #90 on Beer Advocate's Best American Brews is Bender, a brown ale from Surly Brewing out of Minnesota. Would it live up to the rating? Wow, really good. More like a porter than a brown ale; good chocolate, coffee, caramel, and some vanilla tastes with a good hoppy finish. Smooth too with great lasting head and not too much carbonation. Looking forward to getting more Surly stuff but even the can says "beer for a glass, from a can" so we better put it in a pint glass Pretty good stuff out of the can, one fine oatmeal brown ale loaded with flavor right off the bat Another canned brew, this time from Surly Brewing, Bender brown ale ranking at #90 on BA's list.

Woohoo! More reasons to visit Fresno (other than to see Bob and the Hoffman Girl, of course). Hope the whole thing works out. I find it funny that Bob wears his TPR shirt to Gold's Gym. Sometimes it pays off to wear the shirt to more than just a park.

Going after something from New York but hopefully good (unlike Southern Tier's general stuff). I've had this before, but it was bottled. Let's see if it's as good if not better out of a can. Turns out it's actually pretty tasty for a canned lager! Thanks for the brew, Heath This one we'll keep in the can Brooklyn Lager, it's in the can!

With the changing of the weather once again, that means fall is upon us...meaning it's time for the Hop Harvest! With the harvest comes lots of wet hopped brews, where instead of throwing in dry hops for flavor, they do it with a nice helping of fresh wet hops, making for a different kind of taste. I didn't get to have too many last year, as it isn't something many breweries do, and even fewer bottle them, but one of my favorite beers was last year's Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale. Checking out Beer Advocate's list of fall seasonals, a few more made the list, and after finding one of them at Capone's on Saturday, I decided to grab it, even though it's from one of the breweries I don't really care for. How and what was it?.... Yup, typical Southern Tier stuff, not a lot of hop flavors, more focused on malt and bready flavors, with some alcohol tastes. Turns out they used British hops in this, which is why it had very little hop presence. Glad I only picked up one bottle! None other than Southern Tier's Harvest Ale, which is a wet hopped ESB, instead of a Pale Ale or IPA

Maybe Intamin and B&M are working together to create the world's first floorless 4 across launched wooden aquatrax with a vertical drop! I'm just shooting out anything right now, this waiting another 8.66 days for the announcemnt is torture!

After Heath told me he managed to pick us up a case of the newest brew, Stone's 11th Anniversary Ale, I knew what I'd be drinking on Monday night. Looks like he had the same idea. it was pretty much like drinking a chocolate milk IPA. Definitely one of the best beers of the year, and one I could live with drinking every day for the rest of my life As the beer warmed up, more porter-like qualities came out, more caramel, coffee, and chocolate Almost a combination of a West Coast IPA and a porter, this beast was crazy good. Smells of citrus and pine, a starting taste of the citrus, then strong notes of roasted malts and caramelized grapefruits before a final assault of pine goodness Pitch black and ready to burst out of it's glass bottled prison comes Stone's latest creation, a beer only classified as an American Strong Ale

I will say this is a very fun way for those anxious enough to be able to get some sort of information about the ride, without actually hacking into anything they're not supposed to be seeing. Great job, Hershey! Of course, I figured the coaster was going in that area probably even before Hershey knew it. I think they may have even taken my suggestion to heart! Sure, you may all think it's a steel coaster like Maverick, Colossus, Wicked; or a floorless dive machine Eurofighter aquatrax (EuroMaverossus Monstertrax?), but they're just throwing you all off, it's really a woodie!www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35314 You can all thank me later after you ride this without having to go to Europe

Woohoo! Matt finally makes it somewhere and his camera doesn't die right away! (Though apparently the photographer got a little tipsy too soon ) Was this your first beer festival? Unless you're going to the Extreme Beer Fest in Boston, don't expect to get the best brews a place produces, as they are usually higher in ABV and people get drunker and dumber faster because of that. It's normal for breweries to bring their most popular/mass produced stuff, as it's cheaper for them to donate a small keg of something they always have lying around and it generally helps them bring notice to their brewery, as a good portion of beerfest goers don't know the difference between a stout and a lager. Most places that do bring a special brew normally don't put it on until the last hour of the festival. By then most of the drunkards have already passed out or just don't know enough about the beer and the concept of time to know when "last call" is. Did you guys get anything special from the VIP ticket other than an hour without idiots and the stein, like some special brews? Soon it shall be time for me to enjoy some new awesomeness. But for now, I gotta go eat some Japanese food!

Today we did our last visit to Great Adventure for the year, and then on the way home got thirsty again any of their pint glasses were available to me. I chose the Prussia's Pride IPA, as it's both local and tasty Woohoo! It's visit #5 for me as a Mug Club member, that means free stuff! Better enjoy the Argyle Scottish Ale now while it's still on tap, Rocktoberfest goes on come Wednesday evening. The beer was odd, classified as a Brown Ale, not very Scottish, but still pretty good. And yes, I did wear the El Toro Brewing shirt to Six Flags, and yes it really confused the staff and then it was BACK to Rock Bottom for lunch, since we still didn't want to give Six Flags our money for food, as nice as the park is becoming. started out with some El Toro goodness, though it had a line thanks to Kinda Klosed being down at the start of the day to suck lots of the line away from El Toro

Backrow of Nitro this afternoon. Probably my last time on that coaster this year. The rust is part of the theming

Yesterday we continued Nicole's birthday celebration by stopping off at the King of Prussia Mall so she could spend her gift cards on some tax-free clothes and such before heading to Jersey. But before we got there, we was hungry! and Bret finally opened up the bottle of Troegs Nugget Nectar I gave him after assuring him it was hoppy and not honey flavored then Nicole would enjoy some Black Cherry Fizz, which kinda tasted like cough syrup and I'd go all redneck with a can of Dale's Pale Ale where Nicole would have more blue colada stuff then it was time to head outside and enjoy the nice brisk air with a fire and nothing says fun like Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA and some Wii Then it was off to Jersey, where I'd enjoy some Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest compliments of Bret and Rylee While Nicole did some shopping with crazy long lines, I sat down to enjoy the UF football game and drink a Catcher in the Rye, Rock Bottom's seasonal rye beer Then it was off to the mall, home of Rock Bottom But I still represented while drinking their Autumn Ale, a different kind of fall beer. Not an Oktoberfest, and not a harvest ale, very malty though with some nice bitter notes Saturday was another special day at Capones, as the brewer from Breckenridge was gonna be visiting. Lots of stuff from them on tap, as well as some leftover Bell's stuff. Sadly the brewer didn't arrive until after 6pm so I didn't get to meet him I've got lots of cash and a hunger for a burger, time to hit up Capones. And let's pick up some pumpkin beers and whatnot for future continuing of this thread

My final selection on the intensity scale leaves with very little in terms of options. I have a few cards left up my sleeve, but since this one has been chilling in the fridge, it's gonna be the brew of choice, a Triple IPA from Grand Rapids, Michigan. And this is fantastic. Sweet, piney, spicy, citrusy, and alcohol packed Founders Devil Dancer, not an IPA or a Double IPA, but a TRIPLE IPA, and rocking a whopping 13%abv

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but to me someone who isn't a local, posts some good/some bad things, or hasn't been posting about how excited he is to ride it before he gets there has a more "honest" opinion to me than a local who has been enthrawled by this ride since it was just in blueprint form. Some people it seems put blinders on when it comes to their homeparks or something that they may want to make the world aware that "they rode first". They want to like something so badly that they ignore anything that may be wrong with the ride, and you can tell they'll like it before they go ride it and come back with a review. I get that feeling anytime I see someone with a "countdown: 97 days until I go to Knoebels for the first time!". Sure, Knoebels may be a great park, but if you're hyping it up THAT early, we already know you're most likely going to love it, even if you only do 3 rides there and eat 1 funky food item. It's not that your review may not be honest, it just may come off that you're homepark biased. And even if you're not, it's still taken with a grain of salt, just because that's the way it is in this world. It happens with every ride. Same way I ignore everything ACE says in their magazines, because they praise everything, even if it's terrible. And then when the ride is removed, they'll let out "yeah, that ride really was terrible, most people aren't sad to see it go". I know it's all PR and PC, but to me it holds no weight at all in my decision to want to go somewhere to ride something. It's like asking what movie Steven Spielberg thinks people should go see and he picks the movie that he directed.

Finally this thread has become entertaining! Thank you, guys!

Tonight's increase in style was to a Double IPA. A really nice pine smell and great sweetness to accompany the foresty flavors. What could tomorrow bring beerwise? Dogfish Head's 90 Minute IPA, 9% abv

^Why don't you just call Zamperla and have them build you a fresh brand new Wave Swinger? Then you get both Borg and Swings, and poor Bubba is left spending his money on beer instead of a Great America season pass

I've seen similar things at Great Adventure, when you walk thru the turnstyle you're given a card with the park rules and policies. If you don't read it and do something against the park's rules and regulations and get escorted out, it's your own fault. However, neither SFNE nor SFDK were doing that this year, so it may not be a universal Six Flags thing.

^Last I heard, Zonga got sold, but no one at Six Flags knew where it went.

^Joe, that may be the one thing the Holy Land needs to gain not only a Golden Ticket, but also huge droves of tourists, shemale videos!

Tonight's intensity upgrade will have me going from a regular IPA to an Imperial IPA. Some sweet characteristics, some piney notes, and a little warmth of alcohol. One of my favorite things from Saranac Saranac Imperial IPA, weighing in at 8.5%

Gee, if that is the layout, that really doesn't give much room for a launch to get over the "tophat". How cool would it be if Intamin was working on their own vertical lift into a Maverickesque drop!

OSHA itself is a giant waste of space. I've seen more problems caused by OSHA's regulations that if we would do things the way we actually wanted. OSHA's recommendations are to protect everyone, but in reality it just makes Darwinism work harder. "Durrrrr, I didn't know that fence meant I was supposed to keep out!" and thus the place was fined $134,500 and a "Danger: Keep Out" sign was recommended