A Few Days in Los Anchorage

Well, the Big Chill has finally moved out of South-Central Alaska, giving us temperatures in the 20's (above zero rather than below) and snow. I'm hoping the snow wraps up today or tomorrow, as on Thursday the missus and I are on the road, heading up to the big town of Los Anchorage.

It's our annual pilgrimage to the Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival and the Great Northern Homebrewers meeting that precedes the fest each year. My lovely wife Elaine is looking forward to some shopping and I'm looking forward to hitting some of my favorite watering holes, like Humpy's and Cafe Amsterdam. We're going to try to pack a lot of action into about two days of time; then we have to head home to feed the cats...

One thing I didn't have to wait for this trip to do was to try Midnight Sun's Uranus, from their Planets series, as I was lucky enough to find it for sale at County Liquors in Kenai. for those of you who haven't been keeping track at home, Uranus is a Belgian-style (what else?) Golden Ale with 100% Brettanomyces fermentation and conditioning, weighing in at 7.2% ABV. The taste was laced with the classic brett funkiness and with just enough sourness to be refreshing. The carbonation was excellent and the overall impression of the beer was wonderfully quenching. A little reminiscent of Pluto, but even better, in my opinion. Uranus is just the sort of style-melding beer that Midnight Sun has become justly famous for.

In my next post, I'll try to make a complete report on all my beery adventures in Anchorage.

Until then, Cheers!