Two weeks ago I announced that we’d soon be featured on tap at Consumer’s Beverages for growler fills of Frank and The Whale. At the time my best guess for the timing was “sometime next month,” but we’ve collapsed that waveform and have an exact date:

Saturday, March 16 from 1-4 at the Orchard Park location! Come down, try some Frank and The Whale, hang out with the CBW crew. Well, not me: I’ll be working retail at CBW HQ 11-7. But that shouldn’t stop you!

Playing with the big boys

Last Saturday was round 2 of the National IPA Championship. I won’t lie: they say results will be posted on the NIPAC website within 24 hours, and I was refreshing the page like a madman until Sunday evening.

Round One, The IPA defeated Knee Deep Brewing’s (Lincoln, CA) Knee Deep IPA.

Round Two, we were up against Fordham Brewing Company’s (Dover, DE) Ram’s Head IPA. The results are in, and…

Image placed for dramatic effect

We’re moving on!

Yes, we’re on to round three, along with 31 other beers (cheers to Flying Bison’s Buffalo IPA for joining us!). The competition is most definitely heating up, as this round we’re matched against… Founder’s Centennial IPA.

I’m not going to lie: this one will be tough. We might not make it. But no matter what, I’m happy:

• If we lose, we’ve lost to Founders. Yeah. I get it. I feel no shame.
• If we win, holy crap we beat Founders!

We’ll let you know how we fared, well, within 24 hours of the judging!

More tooting of our own horn

Perhaps you noticed a handsome devil smiling in front of some brewing kettles in last Saturday’s Buffalo News. No, I don’t mean myself for once: Ethan was interviewed about CBW,  Buffalo’s beer culture and what it means to live in a world with the big breweries in it.

I’m not even going to bother making a bad pun

I am very, very excited to play this

The My Embeered Life series has been going well, I think, in that I’m at least having fun writing it! Next week I’m upping the ante a bit, and will host the first of eight gatherings to play the 15 game Risk Legacy campaign with beer lovers from around Buffalo.

What’s Risk Legacy? Everyone’s played Risk, and you all have memories of games lasting four hours and being, well, boring. Legacy not only streamlines the game but allows it to change: during the course of playing the board changes, permanently. Win a game? Name a founding city that only you can start in from now on. Build bunkers for extra defense, launch missiles to hurt other players, have entire rules change as you go.

I don’t know much more than that, because I’ve tried to keep myself as unspoiled as possible. Starting on 3/12 you’ll meet the players and learn how our first day went. Until then, you can check out the extremely silly and poorly filmed Vines I shot of unboxing the game: one, two and three.