What’s more American than getting plastered?

After having thoroughly enjoyed the Phoenix Invitational Brewers Festival in December and muddling through the Spring Swing Beer Bash in Mesa this March, we can’t say enough about how excited we are that the Ameri-CAN Canned Craft Beer Festival is only 2 days away.

At noon on Saturday, May 18th, the gates will open at the Scottsdale Civic Center and the droves of craft beer fanatics drooling at the thought of getting their hands on over TWO HUNDRED different craft beers will pour in (see what I did there?  POUR in?  Oh man…) and the festivities will commence.

Click here for the list of Breweries.  Seriously, click it, because holy shit that’s a lot of breweries.

Tickets are $25 presale, $35 at the gates, and they do expect it to sell out.  There’s also a $100 VIP option that includes entrance to theVIP area with catered food, private restrooms and a meet-and-greet with brewers.  If anyone wants to gift us VIP tickets, we’ll gladly take you up on it.  Please gift them to us now.

Yeah, that’s…I mean…is she your DD?
(Photo stolen again from TheBrewBros.com …I swear that was a coincidence)

Games, Food Truck Food Court, live bands…BEER.  How can you NOT want to go to this event?  The only question is going to be how blurry your pictures will be at the end of the event, which ends at 6pm. The party will continue in the cab on the way back to my house, and then in the bathroom of a random Carl’s Jr. because someone will inevitably not be able to make it the whole way home without peeing their pants, and then eventually make it to my house where we will act like we’re going to party all night long and then fall asleep at 9 with a beer in hand after making a bunch of Totino’s Pizza Rolls.

We’ll see you there!

The post AmeriCAN Canned Craft Beer Festival 2013 appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

He kind of looks like a creepy, rapist Friar Tuck

I recently read a review from some seemingly nice fellows about The Hungry Monk in Chandler.  They extolled the virtues of its beer list, the convenience of its location with regard to proximity of other craft beer hotspots (specifically San Tan Brewery and Whole Foods) and mentioned they loved the wings…

Pause.

…the boneless wings.

I have to give credit to these guys though, The Brew Bros [Editor's Note: Why can't we have a catchy name like that?  The Wing Warriors?  The Imbibing Idiots?  The Drink....Drinkers?], they seem pretty legit in their knowledge of craft beer.  They’ve got interviews with San Tan Brewery and reviews of out-of-state breweries, whereas all we have to show for our dedication to the craft is getting drunk at a beer fest and getting drunker at a different beer fest.  Then again, we also spent a lot of our time narrowing down the exact science that is the art form of the buffalo wing, so we’re not completely useless.  And since The Hungry Monk has developed a reputation for both their craft beer list and their wings, what better place to expand our beer repertoire (read:  drink more beer and act like we’re doing it for science)?

The Hungry Monk started off as a franchised location for Buffalo Wings & Rings, a restaurant you’ve almost certainly never heard of unless you’re from the Midwest, Florida or Texas, and probably don’t care about anyway if you’re reading this site because franchised wings are akin to heresy and I’ll ban your IP if I find out otherwise.  I actually ate there when it was still Buffalo Wings & Rings, though I didn’t eat the wings.  I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me back then, I went to a place with the words “buffalo wings” in the name and ended up eating a gyro quesadilla.  I was a real stupid bastard at the time.

It’s a match made in hairy-arm heaven

The owner apparently broke ties with the franchise and decided to go it alone, a decision that seems to have paid off.  There are still a few holdovers from the Buffalo Wings & Rings days though.  The decor hasn’t changed too much, and their menu is still pretty similar.  I actually wonder if the menu is the exact same, because that gyro quesadilla is still there and that’s a really random thing to just happen to still be serving.

At any rate, the way they want you to order wings also sticks out as a reminder of the Buffalo Wings & Rings days:  you order the amount of wings you want, then the type of sauce, and then you choose a heat level.  This says two things to me immediately.

1) That this offers a huge level of customization for everyone who always loved the flavor of buffalo sauce but couldn’t handle the heat or any variation of flavor and heat thereof.

2) That this also means the sauces aren’t created with a heat built into them, it’s added into it at some point later in the process.  This means that while the options are certainly wide open, the sauces also tend to be a bit more homogenized by whatever heat ingredient they’re adding.  More on that later.

While awaiting our little cholesterol-boosters we got a chance to look at the beer menu.  Hungry Monk doesn’t have the massive tap selection of, say, Copper Blues (or, if you’re Aimee, “Copper Blue” because apparently that big giant S on the end doesn’t apply to her) or Yard House, but is close to even par with Angels Trumpet Ale House for number of taps.  Besides the hard numbers, what they do have is a beer list that was obviously crafted with care by people who both love and love serving beer.  The list shows the name of the beer, the brewery, the location of the brewery, the alcohol percentage, a description of the beer and then a beer rating based on Beeradvocate.com’s ratings usually.  And considering that this list rotates constantly, that’s a lot of work for someone to go through to put their beer list together.  Pretty awesome.

Know what would be more awesome? If we learned how to take a picture.

Camera faux pas aside (does ANYONE want to come photograph for us?  We’ll pay you with our company and my sincere promise to not take pictures of you when you’re drunk and passed out and put the pics on the site), we were rather impressed with the beer list.  Hungry Monk isn’t the biggest place in the world, and while it’s decorated and well-lived in, it still shows the roots of a strip-mall restaurant, but the effort they put into their beer is to be applauded both because of how unexpected it is and because it’s just a damn fine list of beer.

I guess the layout is a gripe about the place, if you can say that.  They’re doing the best with the space they have, but I almost wish the entire place was just one big bar.  As is, they have the small restaurant divvied up, half for the “bar area” and half for the “restaurant side”  Really, there’s a row of 3 booths, a walkway, 3 more tables, then a pony wall and the bar and bar tables area on the other side.  Just make the whole restaurant into the bar area and quit acting like you’re directing us to different wings of the manor when we walk in, sheesh.  That shit isn’t very feng shui.

[UPDATE:  We were schooled by someone much smarter than us about the subject.  In their own words:  "The Hungry Monk is a restaurant and not a bar by license. As such they have to have a split layout by law so as to keep minor children from kicking your barstool while you drink. It's (the license) also why they can't fill growlers."   Minor gripe explained!]

Image graciously borrowed from TheBrewBros.com , who (unlike us) were smart enough to take pictures of the actual place. We just took shitty pictures of the menus and wings.

Besides the layout-bitching, I didn’t find much to complain about in Hungry Monk to this point.  I did wonder if the wings would be a letdown, and if so how I was going to reconcile the idea of loving a place for its beer but loathing it for its wings.  Tyler was too enraptured in the beer to really even formulate a thought about that scenario.  I remember him being a bit miffed at the fact that they ran out of one of the Lost Abbey beers they were serving, but I can’t really blame them.  A keg of that would run out pretty fast at my house too.  Also, if anyone wants to buy me a keg of that, I promise to load it in my kegerator and drink it every day while thinking of you.

I really need a sugar-mama for all my beer-related arousals.  Maybe she can even pay a photographer for us…

OH LOOK ANOTHER WHYDIDIEATTHIS.COM EXCLUSIVE NEWSBREAK, THIS TIME IT’S OF THE TIME-SPACE TEMPORAL DISTURBANCE AROUND THAT GOBLET OF BEE- oh…what’s that? It’s just another awful picture because we suck at taking them? Nevermind, back to you Bill.

Sooo…I was getting hungry.  Much like love-making, drinking copious amounts of good beer really makes me ravenous and so when the wings came out it wasn’t a moment too soon.  Are you picturing me nude in bed drinking ale out of a golden goblet and gnawing on a whole turkey leg yet?  Go ahead, I can wait….. ok, so we got 5 buffalo hot, 5 buffalo whatever their hottest option was, 5 Thai Chili, and 5 of these “crazy” wings that were like half bbq, half garlic.  Note that these names might not actually be the names of the sauces, but don’t blame me.  Whoever the dingbat is that runs their website decided it’d be a good idea to leave the wings COMPLETELY OFF THE FUCKING WEBSITE.

“Oh hi, I’m The Hungry Monk!  People know me for beer and wings.  I’ll now proceed to leave WINGS off the fucking website, because that makes the most sense of anything ever.  That makes as much sense as that album where Paul Anka reinterpreted pop songs as big band songs, only that was awesome and this is completely stupid.  I won’t put wings on my website but I’ll put up a god damn event calendar but not wings.”

Seriously though…Paul Anka.   All that being said, we got the wings, we ate the wings, we really liked the wings (to varying degrees).  I’ll break down the sauces first, here:

Buffalo Hot:  Good, not great.  The sauce was standard buffalo, not terribly hot, not overly tangy, nothing unique, but they didn’t completely wuss out on the heat.  It was like taking that really average looking blonde girl to prom – no one made fun of you for it but your friends weren’t exactly excited to ask you if you were going to bang her in the backseat of your cousin’s Honda CRX afterwards.

Shout out to any place that uses really good quality blue cheese. That shit can make or break you.

Buffalo Nuclear/Suicide/Whatever:  Again, the flavor of the sauce was kind of mediocre, but we were impressed that they tried to bring it on the spice.  It didn’t kick us in the junk like The Reef’s Donkey Sauce did, but it certainly caught me off guard after tasting the regular Hot.  Best flavor of the night because they managed to maintain a standard buffalo flavor while upping the heat.  Most places just screw up the flavor and barely add anything to it.

Photo Credit: Ansel Adams

Thai Peanut(?):  It tasted like a Thai peanut sauce.  I don’t say that to be a smart-ass, I say it because, frankly, it tasted exactly how you’d imagine it tasting.  Ok, pretend I tell you to imagine a Thai peanut wing sauce.  Ok, got it?  Yeah, you just tasted these.  They weren’t bad by any means, but there was no depth, no layers of flavor.  Four Peak’s Thai wings?  Those had inventiveness, those had effort in the sauce.  Those had gusto.  These had both Thai and peanut.  Ok.

“Crazy” (Barbecue/Garlic):  …I didn’t hate them, and I can see how someone would like them.  Their bbq tastes like it came out of a big tub, and their garlic sauce tastes like it came out of a salad dressing bottle, but even so the combination works on a flavor-profile level.  Sweet BBQ meets tangy-as-hell but creamy garlic sauce, creates garlicky barbecue children that take over the condiment-hybrid market in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, live to be 87.

These were the homicide/patricide/matricide/pesticide wings.  (Photo Credit: Annie Liebovitz)

All the wings were cooked pretty well.  They certainly weren’t undercooked, which is usually the problem when you get an above-average wing size like Hungry Monk offered.  Their wings weren’t upper-echelon massive but they certainly were big enough to dwarf Native New Yorker’s wings (not that that’s very tough but still).  The wing itself really was the star of the show though.  Well-cooked, good-sized, they really became just a beautiful palate upon which to lay the sauce of your choosing as an accoutrement and not a main ingredient.  Sort of like how cologne should be used, though Mexicans apparently never got that memo because they stay keeping Cool Water in business.

As good as the wings were though, they were still no match for the beer list.  I suppose I hope that there’s a little more style-diversity in the list next time, when we were in there the list seemed a little heavy on stouts and IPAs.  There’s nothing wrong with that, and I love both, but it’s the sheer variety of style AND brewery at a place like Angels Trumpet that sets it apart from Hungry Monk, and I think that part of it is something that’s easily rectified, or maybe we just happened to be there on a weird week.  Who knows.

And maybe try giving us a full six beers if you’re going to serve us on a muffin tin for 6.

We’re certainly no Brew Bros, and I can’t even begin to act like I have any manner of expertise on beer, but I can tell you this much:  those guys completely missed out by eating the boneless wings.  It’s kind of an affront to humanity, really…here are these beautiful natural wings and there you go eating compressed chicken toes and shit.   Maybe next time give us a call when you’re doing wings, we’ll be glad to join.  We’re still learning in regards to beer but we wrote the fucking book (almost literally!) on wings.

As for the Hungry Monk, I enjoyed myself.  The place was packed, the wings were good, the beer list substantial, and I can’t even remember the prices because I was so enamored with the beer and wings and the inebriation that was taking over.  I can remember that after we left, we got even more beer and went back to Tyler’s house where we waxed philosophical about Robert Sarver’s failure as an owner and why people that eat boneless wings can go step on a fucking Lego.  And then this happened:

Remember that promise I made about not taking pics of you passed out and posting them to the site? I LIED.

The post The Hungry Monk appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

The folks that run Wingstock recently referred to us as the Phoenix wing experts. Pretty quick after that someone let us know they did not feel the same. Their reason being that we think Native New Yorker is one of the worst wing places (we don’t actually, we consider them pretty average) and we should have them ranked number one because they are the most popular and therefore they are the best.

While their appeal to popularity argument may be a fallacy it does bring up an interesting question: Are we out of touch with the average Phoenix wing eater?

To be fair, our own views on the best wings have changed a lot as we toured the Valley going to every dive bar, pizza joint, and wing spot we could find. Native New Yorker was actually my regular go-to place before we began all of this.

I have to believe, though, that most people would have a similar experience as I did and they are picking Native New Yorker as their favorite because they haven’t been exposed to better wings rather than because they have tried them all and they hold Native up as truly the best. Native New Yorker wings are not terrible, and if you are comparing them to Buffalo Wild Wings or a similar chain they are going to look pretty damn good. They just can’t hold their own with the best of local hot wings. You know, like how Pizza Hut would look pretty damn good when compared with a Totino’s frozen pizza but it isn’t going to fare very well if you compare it with Pizzeria Bianco.

Wingstock 2013 was our chance to find out if we were just elitist assholes or actually picking out some kick ass wing places (and still probably being assholes). At Wingstock 2012 we were not shy about our feelings that NY Boyz got cheated out of the King of Wings title.In our opinions, they were clear choice. We went against the majority who voted for Native New Yorker. Our favorite, NY Boyz, did win King of Wings in 2011 so that can’t count against us too much. The real test would have been Wingstock 2013. If the majority went in a totally different direction than us again then maybe we were full of shit. If they agreed with our assessment of the best wings than maybe we do know what the fuck we are talking about.

Unfortunately, Xavvi and his wife Sarah had something come up at the last minute and they weren’t able to attend this year’s event. My wife was with me again this year (probably to make sure I didn’t get wasted and try to sing a duet with Johnny Anonymous) and we ran into some friends and family.

Our quest to be reunited with NY Boys ends in failure again.

The first thing we noticed when we got through the gates was that NY Boyz was suspiciously absent from our King of Wings ballot. A quick look around confirmed that they were not set up. This was a huge bummer because Omar, the owner of NY Boys, had told us he would be there again this year and I was eager to dig into some NY Boys wings again. Since NY Boyz has been closed a while (oh God, please make it temporary) we have been dying to get their wings again.

Also surprisingly missing was Teakwoods, last years winner for Hottest Wing. That made two of our favorites from last year that didn’t make it back this year. Luckily, there were some newcomers we were excited to see to partially make up for it.

Two of our all-time favorite wing joints were added to the list this year: ATL Wings and The Reef (formerly Draft House on the Reef). Add to that Cogburn’s Big Wings, a place we enjoyed last year and later when we went to review them, and The Hungry Monk, who we haven’t had the chance to visit but had heard lots of good things. To fill out the list Diamonds Sports Grille was back again, Native New Yorker was there defending their King of Wings title, and, finally, the chain Buffalo Wild Wings made an unfortunate appearance.

I was disappointed that Buffalo Wild Wings was invited to Wingstock this year because I always thought of this as an event to showcase local hot wing places and adding a chain kind of undermined that. Still, it would give me the opportunity to finally put BWW to the test. We have talked a lot of shit about them in the past so it was only fair we gave them an objective look to see if they can actually stack up.

Mesa has a brewery?

The event was set up the same. They had all the wing places lined up facing the stage and you get beer and drinks on either side of the venue. They included a local Mesa brewery this time around, called Desert Eagle Brewing. I felt better paying the insane prices for beer knowing that a local brewery was getting something out of it. The prices were still crazy steep though. It didn’t help that I knocked my first cup over and dumped about $8 worth of beer in the grass.

This is what somewhere around $34 worth of beer looks like.

After grabbing a beer we made our way to the far side of the amphitheatre to start our day of gluttonous wing eating at Diamonds Sports Grille. I was surprised to discover they were taking a page from Antar’s playbook from last year’s event by not even cooking wings at the Wingstock. The wings were pre-cooked and put into little warmers before being served up. As you can imagine this doesn’t do great things for the quality. They didn’t give you the satisfaction you get from a freshly fried wing.

You know what would improve these wings? Having a fryer at Wingstock, probably.

I won’t say Diamonds Sports Grille wings were terrible but there definitely wasn’t anything especially good about them. Maybe they were relying on the sauce to save the wings but the sauce was a pretty average sauce. The one thing I can say for these wings is that it wet my appetite for some better wings to come.

Cogburn’s Big Wings was next in line. They delivered on their usual blend of huge hot wings and lots of cleavage (like Hooters if Hooters wings didn’t suck). They gave us exactly what we wanted from a place called Cogburn’s Big Wings: BIG ASS WINGS. They were cooked very well, with the tried and trusted fry ‘em, then grill ‘em cooking method that we were first introduced to at JT’s, and covered in delicious wing sauce, including an interesting Dr. Pepper BBQ in addition to their regular flavors.

These wings were almost as big as my… fist.

My wife got the Dr. Pepper BBQ and really liked it a lot. It seemed to be a popular flavor for them. I really enjoyed their Hot and Garlic Parmesan. The Suicide wings that I loved when we visited Cogburn’s in Gilbert wasn’t on the menu at Wingstock. Maybe it was available only by request but I didn’t think to ask until we were enjoying our other flavors and moving on to the next place. They also were giving out sunscreen again this year which is a nice touch.

We made our way to ATL Wings next. This was the first time we had to wait in much of a line. The line wasn’t too long but it was noticeable. Somehow people had turned the line into a L shape that screwed up other lines and made them do the same thing. That turned into a bigger problem later when the lines got longer until some Wingstock volunteers finally got the lines straightened out much later in the day.

ATL Wings is probably my new go-to wing spot because they aren’t far from my house or work and they never disappoint when I visit. Everything I have had there is exceptional, from the Kool Aid, to the mozzarella sticks, and, most importantly, the superb wings. So, our expectations were high for ATL Wings.

While we were looking over flavor options I was excited to see a Toxic flavor that hadn’t been on the menu the last time I visited ATL Wings. I ordered up one of those and a standard Hot.

Spoiler Alert: 2013 King of Wings right fucking here.

The quality was totally lived up to expectations. These wings were excellent. I think it is fair to say they were comparable to NY Boys from last year.

The Toxic wing was pretty damn hot. Definitely the hottest wing I had at this year’s Wingstock. I think it was probably about as hot as Teakwood’s Suicide wing last year. Considering that those won for the hottest wing last year that is nothing to take lightly.

Don’t be fooled by my naturally cool, collected demeanor, these wings were HOT.

After we finished up at ATL Wings we were on our way to defending King of Wings title holder, Native New Yorker. As usual the people running the booth were very nice. We ordered up some wings and just like last time they were pretty right on for the most part. The wing was a decent size (although not huge or anything), they were cooked well enough, the sauce was good but it all comes back to the one issue we just can’t get over: they bread their wings.

I wonder how this would taste if it wasn’t fucking breaded.

I can’t get past that. It just kind of ruins it for me. You DO NOT BREAD HOT WINGS. If you get wings at Anchor Bar or Duff’s in Buffalo you aren’t going to get breaded wings and for good reason. It doesn’t make them better. It takes away from a good wing. It doesn’t make it crispier (ATL Wings and Cogburn’s both had them beat on that) and it makes it taste worse so I don’t understand it at all.

If there was going to be a place that could make me wish I was back at Native having some fucking breaded wings it was potentially Buffalo Wild Wings. The moment had finally come and I was not ready for it. Walking up to Buffalo Wild Wings was like the moment before getting an IV when they are wiping down your arm with alcohol. You know the anxiousness you feel leading up to that moment is probably going to be the worst part. Except it wasn’t. Not this time.

Turns out we haven’t been judging B-Dubs harshly enough.

The wings at Buffalo Wild Wings were actually somehow, inexplicably WORSE than I expected. I don’t know how it was possible. I felt like shit giving up my wing tickets for it but wanted to be thorough. I swear that the sauce on these wings looked exactly like the cat-food flavored Campbell’s wing soup we have reviewed, which is to say it looked like someone had thrown up all over my wing. And it tasted worse than it looked.

Did someone’s cat throw up on my wing?

It was like biting into concentrated garbage soaked in urine. That is only a slight exaggeration. These were the only wings my wife and I couldn’t finish. We ended up throwing them away after struggling through half a goddamn wing.

I do want to be fair and give Buffalo Wild Wings credit on what they did well so here it goes: The staff running the booth were very nice. Oh, and their branding is alright, I guess.

Anyway, on to other things because I don’t want to recall the memory of those wings any longer.

Next in line was The Hungry Monk who we had heard lots of good things about before but we haven’t been out to review it yet (soon we swear!).

The Hungry Monk has a decent reputation for their wings and a pretty solid reputation as a place to get some craft beers. Sounds like our kind of place. This was probably the only place at Wingstock that I had no idea what to expect from. Turns out that I really dug their wings. My wife enjoyed them quite a bit as well.

People loved them or hated them. We loved them.

There were some mixed feelings about this place though. As much as we liked them a lot of our friends and family actually totally hated their wings. I don’t know how to explain the wildly differing opinions when we basically agreed about every other place.

We will have to go for a real visit to see what it is like for the final verdict.

Some sociopath attacked the Wingstock chicken dude while we were eating our Hungry Monk wings.

Our last wing spot to visit was The Reef. The Reef’s actual location is almost directly across the street from ATL Wings in what must somehow be becoming Arizona’s hot wing holy land because their wings kick ass too. We waited in line for these wings for a long time as they were having some issues with their fryer.

When we finally got to the front we were happy to get some solid wings to round out our list of places. I didn’t think they were quite as good as they are at the bar (nobody’s really is but this was a larger than normal gap) but they are good enough at the bar that they were still good here.

Pile of wings from The Reef.

By the time we got through all of the different places there were a LOT more people at the event. The lines were getting long. ATL Wings line was hitting the stage while Johnny Anonymous was playing. Don’t be fooled though. As any Facebook hot wings expert can tell you, you have to go by the votes each place gets to see who is really popular and therefore the best.

People were pushing Johnny Anonymous out of the way to get in line at this point.

We actually heard a few days after the event that apparently ATL Wings wasn’t prepared for how crazy their line would get. One of the other places nearby that didn’t have quite as long of a line sent over one of their cooks to help them out and when they actually started to run out of wings Native New Yorker stepped up and let them have some extra wings. By all accounts the people running the Native New Yorker at Wingstock are really stand up people and deserve to be commended for that.

ATL Wings and The Reef, two of our favorites, looking good in the voting here.

ATL Wings got my vote for best wings. My wife was conflicted on whether to vote for Cogburn’s or ATL Wings but in the end ATL Wings got her vote too. It was actually hard to get our votes in there because ATL Wings votes were overflowing. Cogburn’s looked like a decent second from what we could see and Native didn’t disappoint with a decent showing for votes themselves.

Overall, the event seemed a little better than last year. There were fewer wing places but the quality of wings places seemed to have gone up. If NY Boys and Teakwoods would have been there it would have been a really impressive showing. The band’s even seemed a little better this year. Johnny Anonymous was back and the other acts were passable. No bands that you were just praying would quit playing this time around which was nice. The addition of a local brewery was great. Something I really appreciated seeing.

Wing casualty!

In all, it was a very cool event. Better than last year. Still room for improvement but I was happy to see they are getting a little better each year.

The moment of truth though was the announcement of the King of Wings. Would we be revealed as disconnected from the people or would the popular vote back us up and vouch for the places we knew were great?

First came the Hottest Wing crown which went to Cogburn’s. As I said, I didn’t see anything hotter than their Hot flavor but they must have been serving up the Suicide after all. I have been had that Suicide at Cogburn’s before and it has a hell of a burn (although the heat can be inconsistent on multiple visits) so I could totally buy them winning for hottest wing.

The King of Wings title for Wingstock 2013 went to… ATL WINGS! Definitely a deserving winner. We loved them, you guys loved them. I am glad to see them get the recognition they deserved.

Wingstock 2013 King of Wings: ATL Wings!

As for the guy who called us out before Wingstock, he actually said after the event that he thought ATL Wings had some of the worst wings at the event. But he certainly can’t be an expert since they won the popular vote, right?

All hail the King.

The post Wingstock 2013 appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

This is from the event’s Facebook page. It about says it all.

Better late than never, right?  With all the changes happening both to the site (redesign might be coming soon!) and to our lives (apparently you need money to do this stuff on a consistent basis without sponsors), things have been rather chaotic in the last few months.  Our posts have become more sparse and so when we ARE able to attend an event like this beer fest, we have to be choosy because money doesn’t grow in my backyard after trying to plant cut-up dollar bills into a Topsy-Turvy I got from the Dollar Store for literally a dollar, which may or may not have happened (it did happen).

That being said, we did make it out to an event about a month ago that I’m just now writing the article for.  A combination of waiting for the pics, not having internet for a while, and then switching jobs has wreaked havoc on my ability to write an article, but it’s not like I would have remembered the details if I had written it the next day anyway.  This beer fest did a number on us, to say the least.

This particular craft beer fest took place on a cold and blustery March day.  It was March 9th, and I’m fairly certain that I waxed poetic about the aptness of it being a rainy day on the anniversary of the death of Notorious B.I.G. drunkenly to many a folk that day.  If I didn’t, you’re welcome…that could have gotten bad.  Flanigan Entertainment was putting on this particular event, and are apparently also responsible for a “Beat The Heat Winter Fest” that I had no idea existed.

This is the most clear picture I took all day.

Here’s my first gripe with you, Flanigan:  You held this thing in the Arizona Event Center.  Don’t know what the Arizona Event Center is?  That’s ok, because it didn’t even exist until like January.  Sure, the building existed, but the venue wasn’t actually the venue before that.  No, before that it was a defunct country bar and before that I’m pretty sure it was a place that sold boots to Mexicans or something.  The shopping center it’s located in is a good place to sign up for an online university or grab some late night Taco Bell before getting shot, and I say this as someone that literally lived a mile away from there until just recently.

I literally had a white guy come into my front yard, ask me for a ride up to Stapley and Broadway to save his life from some Tongan Crips, and then when I declined the guy tells me “Just remember this face because you’re gonna see it on the news.  They’re gonna murder me so I just want you to remember this face” before sauntering off drunkenly into the night when I lived in that area.  So it’s not like I’m some prissy bitch who can’t handle a little bit of ghetto, but this place is just a decrepit dive of a shopping center.  It’s not a welcoming place to go to drink craft beer, and frankly I’m surprised that as many people showed up as did.

Oddly enough, it’s not too bad once you get inside.  Nice and clean, spacious but fragmented.  Not the ideal place for a beer fest (see:  Brewers Invitational for how to do it right) but it at least worked…for a while.  Still, the way the place was laid out made for a weird flow.  When you walk in, there’s one big room, then there’s a large hallway that leads towards the back, where there’s a stage and more bathrooms.  This meant that half the brewers were up front where everyone could find them, and the other half were in the back on the Island of Misfit Toys or whatever.

This was in the back room too, just saying. Also, why the fuck were they there?

The price to enter depended on whether or not you got a Groupon/CouponWallabee deal or not.  If memory served me right, $20 got you entrance for 2 that included 20 pours, so it was a good deal to be sure.  But there’s always a catch.  See, at the Brewers Invitational, they gave you a little plastic mug.  It wasn’t as big as a normal mug, but it wasn’t tiny either.  Just a little smaller than normal.

Here they gave you a plastic cup no bigger than a Dixie cup or Chad Kroger’s diaphragm.  BUT…you could pay an additional $5 and get a slightly bigger, but totally cool glass cup…errrr…mug….errr..it didn’t have a handle so it was a glass…but it was small…I have no idea what to call it.  A cup?  Whatever.  It was $5.

The little plastic cup, with our cards showing how many beers we had left. Note that this must have been maybe 3 seconds after walking in, because no beers had been consumed yet.

This is what $5 bought you. Note that this must have been maybe 3 seconds after purchasing it, because no beer had been consumed in it yet.

The small free one inside of the larger paid one. There’s a joke to be made here somewhere…

The $5 cup-glass-thing definitely made this experience a better one.  It’s just nature, really.  When you hand a small cup to a volunteer beer-pourer, they’re going to give you less.  When you give them a bigger cup to work with, they’re going to give you more because they don’t want to seem like they hardly gave you any and then have you glare at them like they’re cheap.  Worth the $5.  I should also add that those $5 were not mine, as I was (and still am) as broke as an NFL player 3 years after they’ve retired.  It was only due to the kindness and generosity of very good and wonderful people that I was able to attend, and they shall be paid back in kind when I give them…WHYDIDIEATTHIS.COM Stock!  INVEST NOW!  Just kidding.  But seriously, thanks to Braimee.  Or Aimrad.  Whatever sounds cooler.

WDIET FANS 4 LIFE

There was a tequila company giving out ice luge shots of its product, and plenty of folks got tossed up rather handily on that.  I may have had a couple.  I may have also had my wife go get a couple and then give me hers.  I may have also gone back and gotten more.  I may have a drinking problem.  But everyone was having fun!

It looked too cool to say “No, please, my liver.”

Shortly thereafter, one of them rode the mechanical bull while the other one said “I’ll hold your hat”

The list of breweries was more than adequate.  In fact I’d say it was quite impressive.  Phoenix Ale Brewery, Sonoran Brewing, San Tan, Old World Brewery, College Street, Grand Canyon Brewing and Prescott Brewing all represented locally, while Leffe, Odell, Mission, Sierra Nevada, Maui, Firestone Walker, Dogfish Head, Goose Island, Uinta, Stella, Red Hook, Hoegaarden, Widmer and…Budweiser….all rounded out the rest.

Budweiser, you were obviously drunk and in the absolute wrong place.  We tried to call you a cab but you just kept screaming out “NO I’M OK LEMME Sshhh….LEMME SHTAY.  LEMME STAY AND IT’SH OK.”  You should try to hang out with the right crowd next time man.  You weren’t wanted there and you kinda looked like a leper in that crowd.

Speaking of the crowd, it was interesting.  Whereas at the Brewers Invitational we had a lot of slightly more well-to-do folk mingling with hipsters and a lot of beer enthusiasts, at this one we had a slightly less rich crowd, less hipsters (though they were definitely there) and a lot more casual beer drinkers that probably saw a coupon for cheap beer near their house and said “Fuck it, let’s get our Saturday on!”

“Fuck it, let’s get our Saturday on!” – Captain Coors Light, aka The Human Colon Cleanse

I’m very glad I accidentally got way too drunk way too fast.  This beer fest was supposed to last 5 hours but most of the breweries started running out of beer at about the 2 1/2 hour mark.  I mean, like…they were done.  Finito.  Shut down.  This, coupled with the massive hoards that just kept piling in, made it a sweaty pit-stained debacle after about 3 hours.  A lot of the good breweries ran out so whoever still had beer ended up with a line the length of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and you couldn’t really move anywhere without squeezing by people.  It got to be very shitty and we didn’t even stay till the end.

The card they were supposed to be marking off when you got beers only got marked off sometimes, and so what was supposed to be 20 beers for me ended up being like 40 beers with still 10 left to go on my ticket and 6 shots of tequila.  This was the case for pretty much everyone in our group, but what else can you expect when the event planners found their volunteers on Craigslist literally hours before the event started?

Yep, talking to the volunteers we found out that a lot of them got offered free beer on CL earlier that day because they realized they were severely understaffed.  That it ended up being an overcrowded, under-served mess in the middle of a dank shopping center further solidifies the idea in my head that this Flanigan Entertainment is really just two dudes with no idea how to run a proper beer-fest and in fact may be responsible for writing the scripts to Date Movie and Leprechaun In The Hood 2.

I was so drunk I was trying to take the beer signs and my wife was trying to divorce me in the damn event center for being a “thieving drunk asshole”…and we STILL had more beers left.

Look, I love craft beer.  I love local craft beer, and I love being able to dive into some really well-respected craft brews from around the country, so on paper this event sounded awesome.  But I’ve seen better execution in Texas electric chairs and this event just reeked of promoters that either cut corners to save money or were too inexperienced to throw a proper fest and got overwhelmed.

It’s tough to complain when I got that much good beer in me and had such a drunken good time, but I was one of the first people in the door.  For anyone showing up more than an hour after start time, you might as well have turned around and gone home.  So did we have a good time?  Yeah, I think so, from what I remember.  Would you have?  Depends on when you showed up.

Maybe next year will be better.  Maybe next year they’ll pick a spot not rife for a knifing.  Maybe there won’t be one next year.  All I know is, if they do have one they need to consult someone that’s done it successfully before because this clusterfuck needs a clean-up.  There was live music and food, but it was tough to give an opinion about it because all I could see was the sea of humanity and the lack of beer after a while.

Anyway…Enjoy some pictures of drunk people!

DOUBLE FISTING SADNESS

I only took this picture because this dude’s daughter was hot but he refused to move.

Red Hook serves pinky out.

They had hemp beer and they were from Salt Lake City. I feel like Joseph Smith was off somewhere smiting them.

Old World was holding it down! Long line, well deserved.

One of my personal favorite local breweries.

I have no idea who this was. Tyler, was this a friend of yours or did we get drunk and meet strangers?

…I’m guessing we got drunk and met strangers.

And then I took pictures of everyone’s crotch. Mine looks regal.

There’s like 15 pics in a row of Tyler trying to lick his wife’s face, 7 in a row of me taking pics of everyone’s crotch on purpose, and then at the end I just took pictures of me screaming for like 5 minutes straight.

It seems like a fitting description of this event, really.

The post Spring Swing Beer Bash – 2013, Mesa AZ appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

Giant Chicken Man preps for his new movie deal with Marvel

On March 30th, restaurants from all around the valley will gather to compete in this year’s annual Wingstock Festival.  We wrote all about last year’s event, and how much fun we had there.

Games and attractions for the kids will be present (I think there’s a jumping castle.  I also think you might find one of us sleeping in there, drunkenly).  Live music will be played all day, and Mesa’s own Desert Eagle Brewing will be serving beer at the event.  Gates open at 11am and it runs until 5pm.  Admission is $5 in advance, $7 at the gate, and you can buy wing tickets inside.  1 ticket = 1 wing, so we recommend you buy…ohhhh, I don’t know…50 tickets a person.

You will also be able to vote for your favorite wing of the day, so please help correct the awful mistake from last year and don’t let Native New Yorker win again.  That was a travesty and it insulted our wing-loving hearts.  The Reef (formerly Draft House on the Reef) will be there, and they’re awesome, so check that out.

An ATL Wings restaurant will be there, but there’s some controversy over just which one it is.  There’s ATL Wings (on Warner Rd) that we reviewed and LOVED.  But there’s also an ATL Wings Your Way, and there’s apparently some bad blood between the two.  Just which one will show up?

Get your asses over there and eat some wings and support this festival.  It’s like our Christmas.  AND VOTE FOR THE RIGHT WINGS.

The post Wingstock 2013: Will The True King of Wings Please Stand Up? appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

Pictured: Me, just after leaving Flancer’s.

I have a confession to make.  It’s not an easy one and I’ve wrestled with it for the entirety of this website’s existence, but I feel like if I’m ever going to be able to move on with my life I just have to face it head-on.  Here goes:

I can only eat the super-hot wings if I douse them in enough ranch to fill up a kiddie-sized (or Danny DeVito-sized) swimming pool.

It’s an earth-shattering revelation for someone as revered in the hot wing community as myself [Editor's Note:  There isn't a hot wing community.  He's a dick.].  Reviewing hot wings means you have to be able to handle something beyond mild, and that’s not a problem for me.  I know a lot of people out there give us crap for always wanting to push the heat limit because they don’t quite have the same tolerance we do, and I totally get it; not everyone is a heat-freak.  It’s fine and I’ve said so before, but now that you know I can only ever reach the upper-echelon heat with assistance from Mister Buttermilk and the Dairy-Doos (it’s a real band, look them up) [Editor's Note:  It's not a real band, don't waste your time.  He's a dick.] how can you ever take me seriously?

Tyler can handle heat.  I’m actually 100% certain that Tyler was born without the part of your tongue that recognizes spiciness, and he’s probably doing damage to the linings of both his esophagus and intestine.  Isn’t that a real disease, by the way?  Where someone is born unable to feel pain, and you think, “Oh man, that would be awesome to not feel pain, like a superhero or how Kristen Stewart probably feels after one of her heroin benders!” but you don’t realize that it makes their life a living hell because they never know if they accidentally bit their tongue off or got stabbed in the back with a rusty stop sign?  I swear that’s a real thing.

“…and here we have Kristen Stewart displaying her emotional range. All of it.”
Photo Credit: screencrave.com

At any rate, the point is that Tyler can handle everything humanly possible.  Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats the Merciless Peppers of Quetzlzacatenango and goes temporarily insane?  Tyler probably would have just farted and moved on.  And that’s truly awesome for him and anyone who can eat the actual surface of the sun, but I’ve had to admit to myself that I just am not in the same league with him on that.

It makes me feel better that I’m actually a lot more like most of you reading this, because it seems like everywhere we go the cooks and servers call us nuts for ordering their hottest wings.  They tell us “Oh, I won’t even touch the HOT, much less the Super/Nuclear/Insane/Megafire/Three Thousand Alarm/Atomic/Subterranean/Suicidal/Homicidal/Patricidal/Matricidal/Pesticidal wings!”   And when they do, I’m left wondering…if you’re not even ordering the hot, what are you ordering?

I hope it’s not the mild.  Just for the sake of you eating wings and having a penis, I pray it’s not mild.  Not even for the fact that mild has no heat, like, I’m not trying to puss you out and get your puss-puss all puss-ed out for everyone.  Not calling you a pussy if you eat mild.  Just saying…that’s basically butter with red food coloring.  Mild is what you spread on your toast, essentially.  Step up to the medium, please, your tastebuds will thank me later.  Most mediums have the spice of Taco Bell’s mild sauce (so, basically, ketchup) anyway.

I was going to say “O-Town Albums” but I didn’t think anyone would remember

That tangent out of the way, what I realized is that we’d order the hottest they have, and Tyler would gleefully chomp his half down no problems.  I’d do it too, and we’d compare the heat and whatnot but whereas he’s sitting there with only some wing sauce on his fingers, I’m basically globbed in white stuff on my hands and mouth, it looks like I gave a kangaroo a handjob or something.  I’ve tried to cut back, tried using less and less, but I love the creaminess of ranch on my wings.  The flavor of ranch and hot sauce works better than any combination I can think of.  Still…it is a crutch for calming the heat.  Why now?  Why the revelation of my lack of heat-handling now?   Because we are on the precipice of a new chapter in hot wing mastery.

Yes, we are finally going to do a hot wing challenge.

Very soon we will be revealing the (rather unexpected) location for this challenge on our Twitter and Facebook pages and you’re welcome to join us, cheer us on, help us not look so bad by doing even worse than us, or just buying us beer after beer for being so awesome at writing about hot wings [Editor's Note:  You don't have to buy him beer.  He's a dick.]

This challenge does not allow ranch.  It does not allow drinks of any kind.  It allows your fingers, a dozen wings, and a 15 minute wait time before we can run off crying like little girls.  And if we win?  Well, if we win, we become the first to ever beat this challenge, because so far all other comers have failed miserably.  Am I scared?  Nah.  I don’t get scared.  I get fidgety in the bowels because I’m afraid I’ll shit myself or puke everywhere or have uncontrollable hiccups that can’t be cured and I’ll end up in a hospital, but I don’t get scared!  Haha…ha……….  ha.    Oh god.

Time to start training, and there’s only one training montage manly enough to handle this challenge.  We hope to see you there.

The post The Burn Unit, or “Can’t Stand The Heat?/!” appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

Photo Credit: Flickr

We recently got an email from the folks that make Frank’s RedHot (or at least the people they hired to contact obviously important writers such as ourselves) about an Frank’s RedHot event, The Frank’s RedHot “Get Franked” Bus Tour.

Now, if you have been reading this site for any amount of time, or if you just realized it is a hot wing site and came to the common sense conclusion, you would realize we are pretty huge fans of Frank’s. After all, Frank’s RedHot is the THE definitive hot wing sauce. We’ve enjoyed lots of other good sauces over time but Frank’s is the original and has been around literally since the beginning of wings.

So, when they approached us to help promote their upcoming event we were happy to oblige. Thanks for the sauce, Frank’s!

Here are the details:

WHAT:

The Frank’s RedHot “Get #Franked” Bus Tour—check out this full-fledged interactive venue jam-packed with exciting things to do:

• Participate in interactive games
• Win awesome Frank’s RedHot prizes
• Taste delicious “RedHot” food and game day snacks
• Sample Frank’s RedHot’s great flavors—Original, Sweet Chili, Buffalo & Xtra Hot

WHO:

Meet our Frank’s RedHot ambassadors who will keep the party hopping with games, contests and RedHot giveaways!

WHEN & WHERE:

Tuesday, March 5th at 1:05 PM
Oakland A’s vs. World Baseball Classic
Phoenix Municipal Stadium
5999 East Van Buren St.
Phoenix, AZ 85008

Wednesday, March 6th at 1:00 PM
LA Dodger’s vs. Mexico
Camelback Ranch
5999 East Van Buren St.
Phoenix, AZ 85008

Hope to see you all there!

The post The Frank’s RedHot “Get Franked” Bus Tour appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

Anyway, I want to leave you with this image that Barros shared on Twitter:

Super Bowl Feast – gluttony at its best

The post Super Bowl XLVII appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

Keegan’s Grill in Chandler (Photo credit: Google +)

You don’t always get what you expect. For example, I didn’t expect to be sick for 3 weeks. I didn’t expect to miss the Phoenix Invitational Brewers Festival because I was sick. And I certainly didn’t expect it to be two and a half months since our last review that was focused mostly on wings.

These types of things tend to happen when you least expect them and sometimes there is not much you can really do about it. In this case, I had been wingless for weeks. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the doctor had told me I wasn’t sick I was just suffering with wing withdrawal. That would be if I had gone to a doctor, like a wimp. (Fine I went to the stupid doctor, shut up.)

As soon as we got a chance we picked a night we could go out and we picked a place that had a good reputation for wings. We picked another place randomly at first but the place didn’t have enough reviews saying the wings were good for us to visit it this time. We wanted something that sounded very reliable to deliver the wings we were craving. It had been long enough that we were not screwing around. So, based on some personal recommendations, and several good online reviews, we picked Keegans Grill & Taproom.

Keegan’s was known for having really good grilled wings. We were fine with moving away from the traditional fried-only wings because we had the memory of JT’s telling us it would be okay. All we really wanted was a pile of wings slathered in Buffalo sauce.

We brought along my cousin James again. When he asked what type of place this was I wasn’t actually sure but I had the impression it was a sports bar. That was incorrect. When we arrived we saw that they did have a few TVs around the bar area but the rest of it was far from a sports bar. No TVs in the rest of the place was a pretty dead giveaway. It was more of a traditional restaurant and they were pretty nice digs too.

Not a sports bar. (Photo credit: Google +)

They seated us at a table towards the back. We ordered some beers to get us started. Their draft beer list was mostly craft and local breweries which was pretty cool even if several of the craft breweries were some of the most obvious choices. It would have been nice to see them get a little more adventurous and pick out a few more of the lesser-known craft breweries.

Still, there were plenty of options and we didn’t have any trouble finding something we liked. I did notice they were out of the several of the beers but it was clearly marked in the menu which they had and which they did not.

There was no variety as far as wing orders go. The only option on the menu was the Spicy Grilled Wings. Xavvi and I each ordered a plate of those. James wasn’t feeling the wings that evening so he went with a steak sandwich at the recommendation of the server.

We drank our beers and ordered a few more while we were waiting. It wasn’t too much of a wait for the food to come out.

This was the moment of truth. The wings that would break the drought had arrived. I would finally get to dig my teeth into some juicy wings and savor the subtle heat of the Buffalo sauce. Or so I thought. The wings were not what we expected.

The wings are on the left. (Photo credit: Yelp)

The wings were grilled as advertised although without being fried first, like JT’s does it. Fair enough though, not everyone needs to do it the same way. I prefer having them fried first but they were still cooked well. Some of the wings were a little more well done than others but none of them tasted burnt and none of them suffered from the worse crime of being undercooked.

How they were cooked was not the problem, however. The real problem was there was no Buffalo sauce. What we got instead was wings that were covered in a dry rub of various spices. This was definitely not what I was looking for. That isn’t to say that it was bad. There wasn’t much to the “Spicy” claim in the title but it still tasted pretty good. If I had just ordered some type of chicken entree and it tasted like that I would have been happy enough with it. But that is just not what you think of when you get an order of chicken wings.

This is grilled chicken.

THESE are hot wings.

Chicken wings carry with them certain expectations: chicken wing drums and flats fried until they are crispy and covered in a mixture of cayenne pepper sauce and butter. It is certainly fine to experiment with those expectations. JT’s has done it with their grilled wings and quite a few places have done with all kinds of variations on the traditional sauce. This just felt like they abandoned the idea of what makes wings wings. They had lost all the attributes that really make hot wings a unique experience from another chicken dish (deliberately ignoring boneless wings here).

I won’t lie and say they weren’t good because I did enjoy them. It is just hard to separate my disappointment from the overall quality of the meal to form an objective opinion. James’ steak sandwich, however, looked very good and he confirmed that it was. The food overall does seem to be made with high quality ingredients.

Also worth noting is that the server was very good and went out of her way to help accommodate James, who is blind. James seemed surprised and impressed by this. It seems most servers either ignore the fact that he is blind or just flat-out don’t notice. So, kudos to our server for the evening on doing an excellent job.

I left Keegan’s with my craving for wings unsated but I was still left with a positive feeling about the place. They must be doing something right.

Lake Superior State University’s 2013 List of Banished Words

In other news, Lake Superior State University came out with their annual list of banished words, which I was unaware of until this year. Basically, they take suggestions and compile a list of the most annoying, overused, and incorrectly used words and phrases from the past year and publish it.

This year was special because of the second-to-last entry: Boneless Wings. As John McNamara of Lansing, Michigan put it, “Can we just call them chicken (pieces)?” I agree, sir. May the wing-gods smile on you for suggesting this awful term be banished.

The post Keegan’s Grill & Taproom appeared first on Why Did I Eat This.

You poor baby, you’re bone dry. Let’s get some life-liquid in you.

We’re beer snobs…err…reviewers now, right?  And as beer house reviewers, if there’s a festival that has 61 breweries participating in an outdoor event on a warm and sunny December day in downtown Phoenix, well I suppose it’s just our awful and terrible duty to find a way to cover it, right?  Right.  Right as shit.

The Phoenix Invitational Brewers Festival (PHX BrewFest) took place on December 7th and 8th in Heritage Square in Phoenix.  Organized by Greg Fretz of the Phoenix Ale Brewery (and namesake of Fretzy’s Unfiltered Ale), it was a weekend scheduled specifically for craft brew enthusiasts. We wanted to check out both Friday and Saturday but we had a rather large prior engagement to attend to on Friday.  As well, Tyler was extremely under the weather basically since the last time the Cardinals won a game so it was up to me to suffer through this terrible task of drinking delicious beer on a gorgeous day.

Being relatively unprepared for this event (we honestly didn’t even plan to cover it until the very last minute), the pictures and notes I have are mostly scattered and as you can imagine would be the case with a beer festival, the later the day got, the more scattered my thoughts got.

What I’m saying is that I got very very drunk, if you’re not good at catching hints.

Oak Creek Brewing.  Sorry to the dude whose crotch I included.  Or, you’re welcome, I guess?

The selection of brewers was absolutely fantastic.  The entire state of Arizona was represented well and it made my heart soar with pride and glee.  Not that really shitty, lame Glee show that sucks or anything, either.  I mean like legit, actual glee, like you get from Christmas songs.  Here’s a list of the local breweries represented (Linked for convenience, check them out):

• Four Peaks (duh)
• San Tan Brewing
• Phoenix Ale Brewery
• Lumberyard Brewing
• Oak Creek Brewery
• Prescott Brewing
• Sonoran Brewing
• Grand Canyon Brewery
• Papago Brewery  (PS: Update your site, dear lord.  I’ll do it for you if I need to)
• College Street Brewhouse (PS: Get a shorter URL, dear lord.  I’ll buy it for you if I need to)
• Nimbus Brewing
• Old World Brewery
• Mudshark Brewery
• Sleepy Dog Brewing
• Fate Brewing
• THAT Brewery
• Thunder Canyon Brewery

(You can find the full list of participants including non-locals by clicking HERE)

Ask yourself an honest question here.  Did you even know Arizona had that many brewers?  Have your tried their beers?  Do you have any favorites?  My friends, Arizona is undergoing a beer renaissance.  Actually, scratch that.  The entire country is undergoing a beer renaissance.  The sales of Bud Light and their ilk, the standard bro-beer lager fests, they’re stagnant.  They’ve lost a lot of their market share.  Who have they lost it to?  Why, craft brewers!  Craft brewers like the ones listed above that are helping to forge the beer revolution and bring America up to speed with those uppity fucking European trouts so we can challenge them for beer supremacy and let them know that we brew better beer because FREEDOM.

And damnit, we’ll win the beer war.

“Today, we celebrate…our beer dependence day!”

Now, I got a deal for the PHX BrewFest on Groupon or DealChicken or CouponWolf or SavingsPlatypus or SlightlyDiscountedHybridCatMan or whatever stupid random sites give discounts and have animals in their name.  The festival is free to enter, but to get a mug and start tasting it cost $10.  You could buy tokens for $1 each, and each token was supposed to be good for 3 oz of beer, or you could pay 4 tokens for a full mug.  The deal we got gave us the mug and 25 tokens for $20.  You do the math (or, if you went to public school, just know that we basically got $15 worth of tokens for free).

Here’s the rub:  there’s no way these very kind and nice volunteers pouring the beer are going to know exactly what 3 oz is.  Some of them are going to under-pour.  Most are going to over-pour.  It’s fine, really it is.  But the 4 tokens for a full mug deal?  It’s completely worthless.  They’re pouring basically a half a beer for each token, why would I give you 4 for twice as much?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about getting lots of beer, I’m just saying, either make it 3 tokens and make the stupid people think they’re getting a deal, or just ditch it altogether.

It’s not a teepee and cacti, so you’ll be forgiven for not realizing it’s in Phoenix

So they almost kicked us out of here. I’ve been kicked out of better pizza plac…nope. I’ll stop right there, because that’s a fucking lie.

Sir, even your jeans are ironic.

Heritage Square is really the perfect place for this event.  It’s not too big to make it feel empty and unsuccessful, but it’s not so small that it’s cramped.  It’s a classy little reprieve in the middle of gleaming glass skyscrapers and homeless people that make up downtown.  There were people with their dogs there, including a great dane that looked like it would force Marmaduke and Scooby Doo to 69 for the opportunity to eat its shit, it was so huge.

There were couples, there were single people, there were groups of bros, there were groups of hipsters.  There were also more hipsters.  There were slightly more hipsters after that.  There were then mo- you know what?  The place was primarily filled with hipsters.  The amount of scarves and ironic hats and plastic glasses and plaid was unreal, it felt like I was on the set of Portlandia, or on the patio at Casey Moores.

Then I realized that I wear plastic rimmed glasses.  I have my own website.  I’m at this beer festival extolling the virtues of local beer and craft brew and artisan cheeses.  And fuck my life, I was wearing a Porkchop Express shirt.  Yup.  These were my people, and I was theirs.

Fuck you, there’s no irony.  That shirt is amazing.

There was a BBQ truck and a wood-fired pizza vendor, there was a place giving away Al Capone Cigarillos that I got drunk enough to smoke, there were people walking around with free energy bars of some sort, and a place giving away Larry The Cable Guy-brand chips.  Dead serious.  Fried Pickle flavor, and they were good too.  I remember feeling really guilty for eating them until I remembered I didn’t pay for them and so fuck him and that’s all I have to say about Larry.  But they were good.  I am trying REALLY hard right now to resist a git-r-dun joke.

Moving on.

There were some very nice folks from CraftBrewedClothing.com that really exemplified the entire festival’s approach.  They had a great attitude, super knowledgeable about beer, and their entire business was based on sending you t-shirts and info from brewers from around the country, one every month throughout the year.  It’s like when Clark Griswold got the 1-year membership to the Jelly of the Month club, except this doesn’t suck.  I promised I mention that I’d mention their promo code, so I’ll just git-r-dun now (kill me, please):

Use Promo Code CRFTBRW when ordering your 12-month membership and receive your first Craft Brewery T-Shirt for FREE!

CraftBrewedClothing.com folks. Good people, go give them money now.

That’s my version of “SWAG”. Only what I could carry in my pockets, because my hands were full of drinking.

CraftBrewedClothing.com also told us that Fate Brewing had just tapped a special keg, which I promptly ran over and guzzled from.  Sweet nectar of life, I besmirch you with my paltry existence but I thank you for the fruit of the Gods you bestow upon me.  Getting rare beers is such a fun thing.

So hoppy it made my eyes water. In a good way.

Mr. Fate. Just kidding, I dont know his name, I just drank his beer and loved it.

Chalkboards: Professional Sidewalks.

This kind of stuff is what really makes the festival.  These guys have reserved kegs that they’ve aged or held out or brought from a private stash.  Rare beer, things that you can’t just buy.  Mudshark had a mint chocolate porter.  Per Ron Kloth, president of Papago Brewery via Facebook: “Friday 6:00 PM- Awesome beer being tapped-Wild Raven-double black IPA aged in used Odell sour deconstruction barrels with brett added. Total beer geek beer. If this beer were bottled it would easily be $25+ a bottle.”  You just can’t find this kind of enthusiasm for beer anywhere else.  It’s truly staggering to see this many brewers having this much fun.

My wife and I had a blast at this event.  It didn’t hurt that we ran into a couple of pals there, one of whom is the only person I could actually consider an actual WhyDidIEatThis.com fan and enthusiast.  Aimee, when you read this, you’re totally famous now. Also, this makes you our site-groupie.  Seal with it.

I desperately wanted to add some sunglasses coming down and then caption it “DEAL WITH IT.”

The food options were existent but somewhat lacking, I would have liked to see at least a couple more places to eat.  The bathroom situation seemed dire at first too, with only 3 port-a-potties, until we realized that the Heritage Square public bathrooms were open (as were the bathrooms in the Science Center, though they were none too happy that we were going in there to relieve our strained bladders).  It would have been nice to have some sort of little water fountain thing to wash out your mug after each beer, though I gave less and less of a shit about cross-mixing as time went on and I realized I could only barely stand anyway.

The bands were fine I guess, I didn’t pay too much attention as I was busy DRINKING.

You get it, band dude. Rock the shit out of that Red Hot Chili Peppers cover!

Beyond the locals, the list of other brewers that showed up is really encouraging for the future of this festival, and my respect and my best wishes go out to the organizer, Mr.  Greg Fretzy who we’ve learned is now battling throat cancer.  Anyone who wishes to donate to help him out with medical bills can do so by clicking HERE.  I’m pretty poor but I’ll gladly give a few bucks to a guy that has my favorite city’s name on his brewery, makes a damn fine brew, and worked so hard to organize such a great event for beer lovers.  Good luck, Fretzy.  I look forward to meeting you and having a beer with you and then having you go, “Wait, who are you again?  From WHAT site?  ….what the hell is that?”

On a lighter note…some more pictures!

One of the most popular beers at the event.

Rogue Double Chocolate Stout, if you have trouble reading off pictures

Boom, Mudshark. My wife is from Havasu so we’re reppin’ hard for her city

Phoenix Ale Brewery! Now we’re reppin’ MY city.

And now I’m starting to get too drunk to take good pictures.

I DONT EVEN WHAT THE FUCK OK BEER SLOW DOWN

And the last picture I took of the night ended up being this one:

Pizzeria Bianco…microscope-level-zoom

Yeah, the beerfest did a number on us.  25 tokens was just so many that by the time we got towards the end we were just giving the vendors 4 tokens anyway, even though we only got 1/2 mugs.  Trust me, 25 goes a long way.  And then we got our name called to get into Pizzeria Bianco, the womenfolk got really loud and shrill in there, some bitchy hostess decided to come up and be a jerk about it, and then we shut up, ate our pizza and drank our wine and beer and left while grumbling profanities towards her person.  Were we in the wrong?  Was she?  I don’t care (read:  probably us.  Sorry Bianco).  All I know is that by the time I was done with such a lush selection of beer and good breweries, the only thing that was going to satisfy my stomach was the best pizza in America.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t remember how it tastes.  What matters is that I knew, even in my inebriated state, that the only thing that could top a day as good as this one was to finish it with perfection.

Thanks again to Fretzy, and all the brewers that put an effort into this PHX Brew Fest to make it the event it was.  We’ll see you next year!

Ok, so this is the REAL last picture I too, but that’s not nearly as funny. More delicious though.

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