Showdown - Great Divide v. Schlafly

Our Setup at McCoy's

After a record 94 emails, frantic searches across town for beers and last minute cancellations, the Gents of KC got back together again for another showdown. We had 3 newcomers this time, OzBrau, McCoy and the Twitter famous Rod_Leviathan (nearly all of his body parts and one of his diseases, herpes, have their own Twitter accounts). The rest of the crew was JJSKCK, Yeti, Chimpotle, Paul A. Ner, Nate, Duff and myself. Our count this time was 10. Our venue changed this time as we went a little classier and McCoy was able to secure the old cigar room in between The Foundry and McCoy's.

Yeti and I walked into the room first and we had 5 tables, 12 glasses of ice water, a pitcher of water and an empty pitcher on each table and 2 boxes of tasting glasses. Yet we somehow needed more so we needled our waitress, the Mayor of McCoy's, Amelia, for a bucket filled with ice, some extra beers including the Schlafly India Brown on cask over at The Foundry. She was so compliant we wanted to see how far she would go before she'd say no, but we decided to be nice and not ask for a trough so we could relieve ourselves in the room and not have to trek through McCoys.

We filled up one of the tables with all of the beer that was brought, approximately 10 6 packs and 8 bombers and pushed 3 of the other tables together. At one point while we were sitting waiting for our food a preppy, corporate-y type guy walked through the room to get to The Foundry, he turned his head, looked at all the beer, looked at all of us sitting there and gave us the most delicious, hilarious, priceless, wtf scowl. A scowl that would be appropriate if Chimpotle had just asked him if he would like a Hot Carl. It was like he was actually angry with us and I guarantee that if he wasn't already angry with us he was after we started laughing uproariously before he made it into The Foundry. Anyway, with The Scowl out of the way and dinners consumed (Paul A. Ner got chicken fingers for dinner, I wanted him to eat them in a high chair) we got the showdown underway.

The Scores
Schlafly Kolsch 5 - Great Divide Samurai 5
Schlafly No. 15 6 - Great Divide Dunkelweiss 4
Schlafly Scotch Ale 7 - Great Divide Claymore Scotch Ale 3
Schlafly American Pale Ale 8 - Great Divide Denver Pale Ale 2

Down goes Great Divide, down goes Great Divide. The upset was secured, Schlafly won. Great Divide didn't pull out one win. There were no losers here though as it was quite difficult to pick a winner on nearly every matchup. This tasting was different than all the others we've done because we didn't know which beer was which in each matchup. With the exception of No. 15, I don't drink any of these on a regular basis. And I couldn't pick No. 15 out, Dunkelweiss was very similar to No. 15 and might serve as a good replacement when No. 15 leaves this earth in a couple of months. The only time I knew what something was was in the Scotch Ale matchup and the Claymore doesn't taste much like a Scotch Ale but it does taste like a Great Divide beer. I don't know how to describe that flavor but it was obvious to me I was drinking something from Great Divide when I was drinking Claymore.

Great Divide Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti 8 v. Schlafly Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout 2

This one was quite close too. I think each of us deliberated quite a bit on this one, but Yeti won pretty big in the end. It was the chocolate. If the Schlafly had chocolate it probably would have been closer. This win gives Great Divide of whiff of respectability in the final tally 3-2-1. This was an upset on the level of Royals over Cardinals in 85 or Dodgers over A's in 89. None of us saw this coming and we were quite shocked.

I drank this dump pitcher

The shock made the post game festivities much more raucous. We bothered Amelia for another round of food mostly snacks and desserts. JJSKCK tried to anger Tony Muser by ordering cookies and milk, if he wasn't 7 feet tall I would have made the high chair joke with him too. I got some pretzels and I'm pretty sure Duff got some chicken fingers but he said it softly and hid his food from me when it got there. I had quite a challenge in front of me, 2 piping hot pretzels, a full bladder, fisting Martina Navratilova jokes and tales of the dirty plunger in the McCoys bathroom. The challenge was to eat the 2 pretzels while they were still hot which meant I couldn't go to the bathroom, but the laughter made me really have to go. I somehow got the pretzels eaten without going to the bathroom.

Gents Collaboration #1

We then cracked open the special beers, or the part of the evening I prefer to call "the haze". My first special beer was rod_leviathan, Paul A. Ner and my dump pitcher (we washed out our glasses after each round and dumped them in the dump pitcher). I think you could bottle it and call it Keystone Light Dunkel and sell it by the truckload. Next up was the Surly Bitter Brewer which was not good at all. Finally something from Surly that I hated. Then we tried some of Nate's homebrew barleywine one with port and one without. Both were astoundingly wonderful. I liked the port one a little better but the regular one is the best barleywine I've ever had (I don't like barleywines so I haven't had a bunch of them) and the port one is better than that. Nate's little home operation might be my favorite brewery in town. Rod_leviathan brought along some AleSmith Speedway Stout but I don't remember anything about it.

Collaboration #2

Then we were out of special beers, something that hasn't happened before. But we weren't ready to stop drinking and we still had a table full of our matchup beers. So we did what any group of 7 drunk idiots would do (JJSKCK, Nate and OzBrau were gone by then) we poured them into an empty pitcher and drank it. The first Gents collaboration was a bit overstirred and was pretty flat. But, it didn't taste bad at all.  Gents Collaboration #1 was a resounding success and called for a sequel that wasn't stirred quite as much. Gents Collaboration #2 was born. It had the extra ingredient of a full 1/4 cup of Speedway Stout to bring it over the top. Again Collab. 2 was a bit flat but was better than our first collaboration.

After that we split up the remaining beers to take home, paid our tabs and deserted the room we had reserved til 9 at about 11. McCoy's really made us feel like kings even though our agreed upon tagline is "obesity and sorrow". Thanks to McCoy's and Amelia for putting up with all of our odd requests and for giving us great service and a great room.

Obesity and Sorrow