DerekRx

^Awesome, dude! Yeah, that honey raspberry needs a much better name! Tonight I tried my first of the Joegia additions obtained from this past weekend, the Sweetwater IPA, one I was really looking forward to. Let's see if it was worth the wait. For a cheap beer this is pretty good stuff, nice honey and lemon flavors with white grapes too. Very sessionable! I think I'll enjoy a Reading Premium too while I'm at it No hopface from Nicole tonight Nice sweet start with good grapefruit flavors up front, then some caramel malts and a great pine finish. Awesome stuff, thanks Joe! Now, time for me to enjoy some Sweetwater IPA Nan also reappears in the beer thread to enjoy something that she used to drink back in the day First up, some Reading Premium, but it's not for me

Today I happened to pull my Weiss Ass Brewing shirt out to wear. So, may as well make tonight's beers something Wally would appreciate! This sad face is because I can't taste all the goodness as much as I'd like to. Darn you cold! Not sure if Wally ever had this, but I've got like 10 left, so I'm drinking it, the Shelter Pale Ale from Dogfish Head even with a cold, I can still taste this greatness Thats right, Wally's favorite to start, the Dortmunder Gold from Great Lakes

Sunday we hit up Lakemont and Del Grosso's in Altoona on the way home. Nicole managed to break 200 with her ride on Leap the Dips, and I managed to rack up a few more beer credits at the nearby Marzoni's Brick Oven Pizza and Brewery about 10 minutes south of Lakemont in Duncansville. The beers were fairly decent, nothing outstanding, but nothing bad either. And the food was great. and to accompany my beers, some awesome Hawaiian pizza, loaded with bacon, ham, pineapple, and a nice sweet chili sauce. and the Stone Mason Stout was pretty good with some nice chocolate and coffee notes. Not lite and watery like some stouts. Even though I had it before, the Avalanche IPA was probably my favorite. The Patchway Pale Ale was pretty hoppy too, but not as severe as the Avalanche (which made Nicole cough upon sampling) Again, I couldn't taste much from the Highway "22" Wheat, but Nicole enjoyed it Joe would have been impressed with the Saison The Czech Pilsner was pretty crisp with a light hop bitterness Lucky me, they had a sampler, good price too. Best of all, $1 more will get you the two newest ones to boot, those being the Czech Pilsner and a Saison A little description of their beers Nice big bar area with plenty of seating. Behind the bar is the tanks and brewing process area 8 different beers on the board, only 1 of which I've had in the past at a brewfest Cool old style delivery truck at the entrance Marzoni's, just starting out in the business about 4 years ago, but they've now got 3 restaurants in central PA

Saturday we hit Kennywood with the TPR Midwest trip participants. Afterwards Nicole and I hit up a fairly new spot in nearby Monroeville. Rivertowne has a few restaurants in the Pittsburgh area, but at the Pour House they brew plenty of supposedly awesome beers. Cameron was intrigued, so he'd join us, and our waitress looked like Lucy Liu I'll definitely be going back to the Pour House on my next visit to the 'burgh, as they had excellent brews. Do you think they do growlers? and to end my night, I got a pint of the Perked Up Pale Ale. An excellent pale with great citrus flavor and the Shady Lady Maple Brown was excellent. Even I could pick up the maple finish Cameron gave the Almost Irish Dry Stout a thumbs up approval The Upper Cut Porter was one of the best brews there Unfortunately my cold is getting the best of my tastebuds, so I couldn't really pick up much apricot in the Apricot Tree. Nicole assured me it was there Beer #1100 for me was the Old Wylie's IPA, and it was darn good stuff The Shephard's Crook Scottish Ale was pretty tasty I went with the Brew Master's Sampler, consisting of 7 of their brews (the Assistant Brewer's Sampler contains another 7) Having quite a few fruit beers, Nicole was sold on going. Up for her was the Cranberry Catch, very lite and crantastic, almost like a Canada Dry Cranberry Ginger Ale 18 beers on tap, 17 of which they brew themselves Tucked away off in Monroeville is the Rivertowne Pour House, just opened in June

Another weekend spent BACT style, hitting up coasters and beer each step of the way. Friday we were off to Geauga Lake to score Nicole some credits before they take anymore away. Completing the park in like an hour, we could have gone to Great Lakes Brewing afterwards, but instead decided to just head back to Pittsburgh a little earlier for dinner at one of the best bars in town with some friends. and to end this, some hot lesbo action! Plenty of purchases made. Thanks for hanging out guys! After dinner, Joe seems pretty happy up in the bottle shop, getting some stuff not sold in Georgia I was going to order the Rogue Brewer's Ale, but they were out, as were they with the Southern Tier Uber Sun. So I went with Rogue's Brutal Bitter on cask For dinner, mostly everyone got wings, but Nicole had to order the Nicole Burger and Ted and Catrina showed up too, also drinking the Sierra Nevada Anniversary Joe went with the Victory Brewing St. Victorious To follow up, I went with Fathead's special ale made by Rogue Why is Joe pointing and laughing at Matt? Why, it's because he's drinking a Bell's Oberon! Even Glutenfree Greg came out to see us, drinking Woodchuck Cider Nicole took her love of coffee to heart and ordered the Atwater Vanilla Java Porter To start off, I went with the Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale, an IPA Plenty of awesome stuff on tap, as usual Dinner time, off to Fat Heads on the South Shore of Pittsburgh

Skyliner at Lakemont Park today.

Tonight we went out for sushi, Nicole's first experience with this awesome cuisine. Lucky me, they had good beer worth drinking! Good stuff for sure. One fine pale ale back home, gimme Shelter Hungry for more, I went with more salmon as well as sea urchin. The urchin tasted like Band-Aids and what beer goes great with this? Sapporo? Kirin? No, the answer is HopDevil! Awesome!!! For me, a spicy salmon roll and eel and spicy tuna called a Jazz roll Nicole and her roll, a Volcano roll, loaded with spicy tuna, crab, roe, all on top of a California roll

I wonder if they changed the name so as not to confuse people with the one that had the accident at Expoland earlier this year. Seems like a really odd name though for a standup coaster. I'd more expect it from an indoor coaster themed to space travel.

Seeing how pretty much EVERY trip I've taken to Cedar Point with Robb and Elissa in the past has resulted in at least one day of total washout due to storms, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they had 2 days at this park was predominantly because of situations like this. Tomorrow's weather looks much better for riding stuff, and while I'm sure everyone is anxious to ride everything there, maybe some R&R is more than welcomed by a few participants. It looks like the storms may be ending soon though, which could mean some nice lighter crowds for the Midwest trippers to enjoy the park more.

Today was another brutal day with a heat index well over 100. Gotta stay lite tonight, so no stouts, barleywines, or porters for me. Fortunately, one of the girls at work gave me 2 six packs of Dogfish Head's Shelter Pale Ale that she had left over from her July 4th party, seeing how she probably wouldn't drink it while it was still fresh. As it was already cooled and chilling in the fridge at work, I knew exactly what to start with when I got home. And so, another Dogfish night at the Ruth household. A little too sour for Nicole, and she couldn't really pick up the peaches. Oh well, we'll just have to get her some Lindemans or WLD. Very refreshing and tart, nice peach hints and a great lemon taste, perfect for summer Next up, my last bottle of Festina Peche Nicole wasn't so thrilled with this one, not enough coffee flavor for her Nice citrus hop flavor makes this cold one easy to down quickly on a hot summers day Shelter Pale Ale, one of the lighter Dogfish beers, but still 5% abv

Does anyone remember when people would go away on trips and you wouldn't hear or see anything until they got back or a postcard arrived?? If you want to specifically see your significant other/child/parent/neighbor on their trip, there are 2 very easy options: 1. Buy them a laptop, wifi card, digital camera, etc and tell them that instead of having fun, they need to post on the internet every night. 2. I will be starting a service where for the cost of the trip, I will follow your particular person around the park constantly and take photos and videos of them. And for an extra $2500, I will have it all uploaded on the internet in Real Time format, so you can see everything the moment it happens. If you don't like either of those options, then just calm down and wait patiently for them to get home and share everything with you, and keep checking ThemeParkReview when Robb graciously spends HIS free time uploading a brief amount of pictures of the day as a whole generalizing what everyone did that day. Who knows, maybe your precious will have a starring role in at least one picture that day!

It may be the East Coast version of Disneylands, but I'm all for it. It's about time the ride got renovated, and I'm looking forward to the new attic scene. Open up already!

Great report, Jimmy. Lagoon is one of those places I keep meaning to go to finally, but it always seems to get bumped for one reason or another. After your report, it looks like it'd be easy for me to conquer this place fairly quickly, so if there is ever a conference I can attend out in Salt Lake City, I may just have to go and hit the park afterwards. At least the park gets stuff other parks in the US don't, makes it more unique.

I decided to make tonight a Troegs night. More specifically, I decided to make it a Troegs Porter night, as a rare occurrence has happened; for the first time there are 2 different Troegs porters out at the same time, the Scratch Series #2 and the newly unretired Dead Reckoning Porter, so new it just came out this past weekend. Let's try em, shall we? Nicole was a bit confused by this one at first, but like mostly every Troegs beer, she found it pretty drinkable after she got used to the taste. A very hopped up porter, taking away from the malt and chocolate tones a little, but leaving with a hoppier flavor. Up next, the Scratch #2 porter, this one being filtered Even Nicole enjoyed it, though she said it kind of smelled like soy sauce Nice roasted malt flavors with chocolate notes and a nice hoppy kick First, the Dead Reckoning, an unfiltered porter

^Welcome to the party! Last night I headed down to Baltimore with Nicole and we had dinner with Dave and Mary at Outback. Then tonight I just had what was left in the house, as my beerventory was getting very low. And then I ran out and bought some more goodies! Definitely a lager, and a lighter beer, not too hoppy, but nice and crisp and great for summer sessions with some lemon hints. And less than $1 a bottle for craft beer! Bravo Reading!! Well with my supply running low, I ran to the beer distributor to see what I could pick up. Reading Premium is back, as Legacy bought the recipe. This stuff used to be around way back in the day, and at $17.99 for a case of 24, I figured I'd give it a try After sampling this, Nicole said "I'd rather have HopDevil" Pretty good (great for Saranac!), but doesn't mask the alcohol that well compared to other imperial IPAs Though I wasn't really in the mood for it tonight, I went with the Saranac Imperial IPA Dave and Nicole had nothing alcoholic, but Mary enjoyed a Stella Surprisingly, it was pretty good for a lager, nicely hoppy with some good lemon hints. Yay Cameron, your country does have good stuff! Since we were at Outback, I decided to get something Australian. James Boag's Premium Lager looked to be the most promising

^Yup, backrow, the best place for Skull Mountain rides. Of course, that was after 4 waitless rides on El Toro and a ride on Batman and Nitro, in addition to Rolling Thunder and the other kiddie coasters; all in less than 2 hours, on a Saturday in the Summer!!!

Saturday would see us going to SFGAd to help Nicole rack up a few more credits, and we followed that up with some good R and R chilling out at Bret's, who doesn't live too far from SF. and to end the night, more Dogfish for us, though I'm confused why Bret is wearing gloves Marshmellows and beer go ok, but the Coconut Colada and marshmellow go much better Which also meant marshmellows for us Of course Bret would be grillin, ROCK! and Nicole went back to the Seagrams Bret tried the Troegs Scratch #1 and liked it Next up, some Brooklyn East India Pale Ale, not too shabby Bret looks to be in heaven with the Dogfish Head 60 Nicole was quite happy that Bret still had a bottle of Leine's Sunset Wheat left. mmmm blueberry fantastic with some oranges too Fun to drink and fun to destroy I mixed it up with the canned Sly Fox Royal Weisse Bret also is venturing into the world of IPAs, and he was impressed with the Long Hammer Nicole loved drinking the Seagrams Coconut Colada. While it's not beer, who here is really gonna complain about seeing a chick in a bikini with an alcoholic beverage? Yeah, that's what I thought Then we moved on outside to enjoy some brews while lounging in the pool. Red Hook's Long Hammer IPA for me, a new credit. Dying of thirst from a hot morning at SF, I started off quick with the always great 60 Minute IPA Sorry Conner, no beer for you yet. 18 years to go! and we'll definitely be back plenty of times before then. Thanks for the always excellent hospitality, Bret!

Another fun-filled weekend, as Nicole has finally moved down to PA and in with me for the time. Upon her arrival, she was welcomed with a weekend in Jersey, to make her feel better about living in Pennsylvania. But first, we needed dinner, and I had a new IPA to try out at Rock Bottom. Watch out, Jahan! No beer for Nicole, but the french onion soup did have bourbon stout in with it and a shout out to Lou, my Salmon fish n chips My mug of American Dream IPA, a really nice and citrusy, loaded with grapefruit flavors A late dinner at Rock Bottom at the King of Prussia Mall

Just sitting here waiting for Nicole to arrive so we can start our weekend outing, but since she's stuck in traffic several hours away, I have nothing better to do than put one back. Very crisp and refreshing with some nice hoppiness and some lemon hints. I sure wish this would become a regular seasonal for Troegs May as well make it something enjoyable for this time of year, like Troeg's Scratch #1, a California Common/Steam style

Great Adventure tomorrow, yeah, we're dumb going on a Saturday.

^Nice choices, welcome to the thread. Today was another scorcher of a day, so I started off with something nice and refreshing before trying something I'm pretty certain I had before, way back when I first started going to brewpubs but never documented it at the time. Pretty average oatmeal stout. Good flavors of roasted malts and coffee, but the taste died pretty quickly and the beer was fairly thin. Worth a try though Next up, the Breckenridge Oatmeal Stout, something I'm pretty sure I tried out at Breckenridge's Denver brewpub in 2003 Ahhhh! That really hits the spot, an excellent mixture of citrus and pine hops and quite easy to drink, although it is 6%abv Starting off on this hot summer day with some 60 Minute IPA from good old Dogfish Head

Wow, that looks like one nicely themed coaster! Not that Star World wasn't, and the effects were really awesome, but Star World's theme was so 1980s. Must...get...back....to....Oktoberfest

Just drinking some old favorites tonight. Definitely my favorite of the Dortmunders out there The very tastey and drinkable Dortmunder Gold Yeah, definitely still a favorite, tried and true Starting out with the HopDevil

I can vouch for captain and the coasterfriends, they really know how to have a good time (at least what I can remember of it). Even with it being cold and rainy out at the fairgrounds, the tents were beyond amazing and made my short trip well worth it. It's something I definitely want to go back and do again. Now what's this about you coming stateside? Where was I during all this planning?!

Another something new tonight that I picked up at Capone's (nope, not one of the reasons why I went there, those are saved for the next episode of "Drinking With Heath and Derek"). I know the other brewery in the town brews some pretty good stuff, hopefully the other one does as well. That said, let's try something from Fort Collins Brewing all the way from Colorado. And let's also hope that by this stuff showing up here, New Belgium's goods won't be too far behind in distributing to me; then Matt will have NOTHING on me! another excellent beer from Troegs. Looking forward to their next in the Scratch series, available soon hopefully! Time to follow it up with some Troeg's Scratch #2, a hoppy porter Not as hoppy as I was expecting, but still pretty good. Lots of burnt toffee, caramel, and earthy flavors with some pine Retro Red, a red ale from Fort Collins. What's up with the town of Fort Collins and using old child transportation on their beer labels?