The rest of the 20th in Riga I have down so far as places go, in order from first to last this time (after hotel room pre-gathering tasting, up until my last stop before heading back to hotel):
Easy Beer
Bierhaus
Alus Darbnīca Labietis
Valmiermuiža Alus Tirgotava
Walters & Grapa
TAKA bar
Alus Celle
Beerfox/Callous Alus |
Hi everybody!
Thank you also from my side to all participants. When I decided to put a proposal together for this gathering, I had not attended any gatherings by myself previously, so this one offered me plenty of opportunities to learn. We had some unexpected backlashes (broken bus being the most nerve-cracking for me), some things could have used a bit more thinking through and at times we were not able to follow the plan 100% - but overall I feel we were able to do what we set out to do. I was lucky to have only great people attending the gathering, many of you much more experienced tickers than me. I had always wondered how it is possible for some raters to tick through 50-70 beers a day while not at beer festivals - but now I have seen and experienced how this is done. If I manage to upload everything in my backlog I have collected this month, I will have done my best ticking month by far.
Finally some personal shout-outs. FatPhil was the first to help with ideas for the proposal, also he lead the pub crawls together with Anna, Travlr shared his advice on many occasions (for example next time I know that RateBeer Gathering’s hotel should be visible from the last bar - as it was in Helsinki - and I will also be able to think of the best way how to circulate bottles on the table), nate2g orchestrated the Grand Tasting with a firm and extremely speedy hand, kermis offered some useful hints how to increase ticking efficiency during pub-crawls (I think we were not always able to follow that advice but we got through many ticks still), Marduk represented the group when adding some hops to RBESG 2017’s special brew, Borresteijn helped to drag people out of the Sori tasting room just before Grand Tasting to do the brewery tour (and delay the start of ticking session a bit, not a small feat!), gnoff kept up good spirits till the end and shared many brewing-related insights during brewery visits, AndySnow and Sunitha joined the gathering and finished 100% and some more of the program, everything during very important time in their family, VamboladeTolly cracked many jokes and hosted us at his bar in Tartu, Juks took a lot of pictures (I wonder if we can share them with everybody later?). martjoobolut pointed out some things that might have caused confusion during the tasting - and also was akin host for gnoff, Rubin77 and vision thing joined everybody else during Grand Tasting, it was great seeing you! VastActiv and mjs came down to Tallinn for Grand Tasting and some Tallinn bar hopping, also joined the group for the pub-crawl next day in Helsinki and also Hermod brought some freshness into our last official day of ticking. last but not the least, Leighton organised the proposal submission stage and voting for the ERBSG 2017, without that we would not have been able to do anything! Outside of RateBeer, we also got support from many bar-owners and breweries in Riga/Tartu/Tallinn/Helsinki, big thumbs up for Sori Brewing guys who helped me to get the proposal together in the beginning, hosted Grand Tasting for all of us and our special beer for the gathering is now fermenting in their tanks.
I guess we still have some work to be done with the special beer (name and label needs to be decided), so I will still bombard you with some messages before its all done. See you soon at some (beer) events!
Posting this already from Berlin, came here for a few days to attend Berlin Beer Week :P
Cheers, terviseks and kampai!
jinroh
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Originally posted by gnoff
The rest of the 20th in Riga I have down so far as places go, in order from first to last this time (after hotel room pre-gathering tasting, up until my last stop before heading back to hotel):
Easy Beer
Bierhaus
Alus Darbnīca Labietis
Valmiermuiža Alus Tirgotava
Walters & Grapa
TAKA bar
Alus Celle
Beerfox/Callous Alus
Beerfox/Callous Alus is the bottle-shop, we also went to Beerfox Artisan Beer Bar, connected but separate entity next door with 10 taps.
Tartu locations we managed to visit after a long bus ride and many tics on a bus would be these:
de Tolly õllebaar
Õllepood Nr.1 Gambrinus / Beershop No.1 Gambrinus
J. R. Schramm’i Keller
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Tallinn locations that I went, this might have been different for some others:
Põrgu Õllelokaal
Koht
Speakeasy
Kochi Aidad
In a hindsight, we could definitely have used one more extra day in Estonia to be able to visit more places. |
Originally posted by jinroh
Originally posted by gnoff
Beerfox/Callous Alus
Beerfox/Callous Alus is the bottle-shop, we also went to Beerfox Artisan Beer Bar, connected but separate entity next door with 10 taps.
Ah, thanks!
Haven’t gotten to that place rating yet, you saved me the problem of putting it in the wrong place, since I never made it to the bottle shop, staying behind to finish mead and Boris at the previous place :) |
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So finished by backlog from the trip.
Did get two new countries and my "last US state" during the grand tasting.
Upped 284 ratings, also typed in some 33 rerates.
28 new place ratings and one rerate.
Latvian beers went from 11 to 106, got me from way out of the top raters in the country to currently 11th spot.
All in all very good show, lots of fun, plenty of beers, and finally can relax that my beer book is almost empty until my trip to Czech starts in a few days.
Cheers! |
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Name and label? I’d suggest that "Piston Broke" is a fitting name!
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Whew, backlog in. About 600 beer ratings and 90 place ratings. Took a quick trip to Asheville the day after I got back.
Taking a break for a while |
