Northern Virginia Craft Beer News

Posted on by chappyshi

I am pleased to note that we have two new eating/drinking establishments in my area:  Vintage 51 South Riding and Dogfish Head Ale House.

Vintage 51, hereafter known as V51SR, is an extension of Vintage 50, hereafter known as V50, in Leesburg.  V51SR’s website is supposed to be www.vintage51sr.com but is still not up and running, which is stupid in my estimation.  The restaurant  has been open for at least three weeks now but in truth it is still not up and running.  The menu is still not complete, prices are up in the air (a bit too high), but the beer selection is awesome.

V50 Leesburg brews some awesome beers in my estimation and I can get growlers there which is a major bonus.  However the drive to V50, 30 to 40 minutes, diminishes the value of the brew.   V51SR, less than 15 minutes away, has a nice selection of craft beers on tap from Ales, Pale Ales, IPA’s, Kolsches, Hefe-Weisens, Stouts, Lagers, etc, well as quite a selection of bottled beers.  Don’t expect to get a Coors, Bud, or Miller Lite there though.

They are supposed to be pouring growlers.  My initial impression is that they won’t be able to do so profitably, since they would be pouring growlers of beers purchased from distributors rather than those produced in house.  That impression has nearly been confirmed by at least one of their bartenders.  The initial pricing projections are way beyond what even the most devoted micro brew aficionado would spring for.

V51SR is in a weird spot.  First of all  let me say that the Virginia booze laws are wacked.  V50 in Leesburg brews their own beer on site.  They can’t sell their  own beer at another one of their own restaurants without selling it to a distributor and then buying their beer back from the distributor.  So V51SR would have to sell beer produced by the the same company that runs V50 and V51SR at a higher price than V50 sells it for.  WTF?

If you are half-way serious about craft beers, you will be familiar with Dogfish Head.  Their 60 Minute IPA is fairly widely distributed.  The 60 Minute IPA is a a great beer…it is the anchor of their product line for those of us who like ales.  Unfortunately, for one,  they don’t sell growlers.  I think if  they brewed the beer  on site they could sell growlers.  Secondly, the beer selection is good but also a bit exotic, particularly on the flavoring side.

Most people will like their Lawnmower Light and then have to do some tasting of the other beers to find what they might like.  The Aprihop is a good beer but I am not likely to have more than one at a time.  I recently had the “Festina Peche,” which I now remember, after finding reference to it on the web, was sour tasting, not as in bad but as in citrusy sour.  Like the Aprihop, I am not likely to have more than one at a time which could be a good thing.

Please don’t ask me about the food at either Dogfish Head or V51SR.  I eat at home.  I visit these places only to check out the beers and the talent.  I do know that both of the “Vintage” restaurants get many of their fresh ingredients from the Fields of Athenry Farm in Purcellville, VA, where, as I understand, everything is grown/raised, organically.  Fields of Athenry, is on Snickersville Pike, which is a great motorcycle ride from Rt. 50 west of Aldie to Bluemont on Rt. 7 west of Leesburg.

Enjoy your beers but not before you ride!

I Must Be a Loser

Posted on by chappyshi

I must be a real loser because I don’t have a a cell phone permanently attached to my ear nor do I use a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone.  I do have only a cell phone…no landline…so maybe I  not such a loser but…

I really don’t get it.  I am having a busy day if I talk on my personal phone once a day.  Yet all around me people are walking in and out of their houses talking on cell phones, they are getting in and out of their cars talking on cell phones, they are pulling into and out of parking spaces talking on cell phones, and they are walking and crossing streets…talking on their cell phones.

I watched a young girl walk across a major intersection today talking on her cell phone totally oblivious to her surroundings.  Yesterday, I saw a woman in her late fifties/early sixties run into a hip-high flower pot on a strip mall promenade while talking on the phone.  She thought no one saw her but I gave her a little nod to let her know that her mishap had not gone undetected.  Not too long ago when I was walking on a neighborhood trail, I frightened a young woman who was on her cell phone walking her dog.  I was not 10 feet from her before the dog called attention to me.  I am not sure that she would have ever seen me…

I don’t really understand why people  have to be so connected.  It is amazing that people even have time to take a crap without getting a call or a text message.   For all I know, they don’t!  I should create a web site called “Shitter,” based on Twitter, from which you can alert all your friends to the fact that you are on the crapper.

Life Is Tough

Posted on by chappyshi

What a rough day!  Beautiful weather.  Reading the Washington Post on the balcony loving life.  Headed off at about 3:30 PM for a friend’s house a few blocks over for a pool/birthday/football party.  Tons of food there all designed to set my cholesterol level even higher than it needs to be before I get blood work done tomorrow morning.  My back is bothering me from an incident 10 days ago so I couldn’t get involved in the Cornhole competition which was looking quite intense.

My intention was to cut out of there after two beers which I did…with some difficulty.  I went to the Giant to get some beers to have at the house should I desire them.  On the way home, I stopped by Julie and Ed’s to check the house and found a crab and clam feast going on at the neighbor’s house.  Chris and Courtney invited me over.  Kathy Slover, who I always enjoy seeing, was there.

Chris had three bushels of live female crabs and just keep cooking away.  I had to get home at about 7:30 PM but before I left three or four more people showed up and the feast just kept going on.  I really did not want to leave but my cat needed to be fed and I needed to find some sanity.

Trip to Vermont, Early August

Posted on by chappyshi

In early August I went up to Vermont to attend the Vergennes Union High School 30-year class reunion.  I actually left there after my 10th grade year but have had the privilege of attending the 20 and 30-year reunions as a guest.  Other than the reunion, the trip was for kayaking, birding, picture taking, hiking, camping and visiting with friends.  It was well worth it!

You can read more about the trip by clicking here or browsing under my “Currant News” section.  You can view photos by clicking here or following the “My Photo Album” link on my home page.

The links in the PDF format “trip read” don’t open in new windows as I had hoped they would.  If you follow a link in the PDF document, it will take you forever to reload the PDF file.  Ergo…

All the imbedded  links are replicated below.  Please use them rather than the links in the PDF document if you wish to find out more.  I will have to come up with another presentation format but bear with me in the meantime.

Kayaking on the Potomac River at River Bend Park, 20090823

Posted on by chappyshi

I met my friend Garrett “Buz” Shea at River Bend Park on the Potomac River in Great Falls, MD, to paddle  on Sunday.  I have been to the park a few times with my uncle to hike and bird watch but never to paddle and rarely in the summer.  The park seemed so totally foreign to me since I’d been there mostly in the winter time.

We had a great paddle.  The day was mostly clear and not too hot but fairly humid.  Buz likes paddling up through the rapids so he can float back down through them so that is what we did.  We paddled up the north side of the river and on the way back down tried to cut across to the south side at a cut through an island.

We almost made it but the current was such that after I watched Buz try to get up through this cut a couple of times, I found a way to get through that, albeit twisty and turny, was relatively calm.  Unfortunately, that left us down river from another set of rapids that Buz wanted to run.

We broke down, got out of our kayaks and toted them over a set of rocks so we could be upstream where we wanted to be.  Buz noted that that was the exact spot where he broke his toe on the rocks last year.  He now doesn’t wear an open toe shoe while paddling…

Once back on the water, we paddled further upstream to about the point where Seneca Creek comes into the Potomac from the north and there is a forbidding set of rapids that we would have had to portage to get past.  We decided to turn around and float back down river to our entry point.  That was perfect for me.  I wasn’t tired but I was ready to head back.

Buz said he got quite the good work out.  He hadn’t paddled since we shot down the Shenandoah near  Front Royal twice in two days over Memorial Day weekend while camping out at a friend’s place on the river.  I can’t believe that it is that time already but we’ll be up there next weekend for the Labor Day festivities.

Kayaking on the Potomac River, Brunswick, MD 20090816

Posted on by chappyshi

I drove up to Brunswick, MD, to paddle on 16 August.  It is about a 45 mile drive and longer than I would normally drive for an afternoon paddle but I hadn’t paddled up there so I figured WTF, eh?  The river, though low, seemed to be running fairly well by my estimation.  It took me a good hour plus to get upstream a couple of miles.

I got up to a point where I could see Weverton Cliffs which is a vantage point on the Appalachian trail that I have hiked to from both the north and south.  The view from there to Harper’s Ferry and the junction of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers is awesome!

I Watched “Dances with Wolves”

Posted on by chappyshi

I thought “Dances with Wolves” was an excellent movie.  Who can find fault in the scenery, the cultural assimilation, the poignant love story, and the painful killing fields?  I feel bad for the Indians and their homeland and lifestyle.  It is a travesty what the white man did.  Unfortunately we keep doing it, at least to the homeland…

Memories and Melancholy

Posted on by chappyshi

I got a bit melancholy the other day as I was reading the travel section in the Washington Post.  For some reason, the article I was reading made me think about Canada and places I had been to there repeatedly due to work.  One place is St. Georges de Beauce in Quebec, another is old Quebec City, and the other is Toronto in Ontario.  St. Georges and Quebec City were places I went to for business and pleasure when I worked for Canam Steel and Toronto I went to for business while I was working for DDi…that was a pleasure also.

St. Georges is a fairly small town where Canam’s IT department was headquartered.  I remember fondly (not fondling) being entertained on the town by my Canadian coworkers.  At the end of  trip up there I would usually take a couple of personal days at my expense in old Quebec City.  It is probably not much harder to find an old world, read “European,” environment than Quebec City in North America expect perhaps for Montreal.

My favorite place to stay in old Quebec City is the Hotel Le Clos Saint Louis which is comprised of two old merged townhouses with a variety of accommodations that were always reasonably priced, especially, considering the location and included a free breakfast in the basement of the place, which kind of put me on edge, being in the basement that is.

I have a vague recollection of departing the place very early in the morning one time, waiting for my cab to the airport, and realizing I had left one of my bags in the foyer and already dropped off my key.  There was no one on the front desk that early and repeated attempts to roust someone via the door buzzer were futile.  I had no cell phone at the time but when the cabbie showed up we used his phone to call the hotel to no avail.  Meanwhile, I needed to get to the airport!  Finally, as desperation was peaking, some folks came walking out the door, I ran in, grabbed my bag, jumped in the cab, and made it to the airport on time.

Toronto has supposedly the largest immigrant population of any city in the world…over 50%.  That in and of itself meant good things to me.  I met people from all over the world and ate their food.  The remarkable friendliness and kindness of the immigrants made me question why there was so much strife and hatred in our world.  Toronto’s location on Lake Ontario, thankfully, makes up for it’s unbelievable flatness.  Best of all though were the friends I made at DDi Toronto.  We worked hard together, we had some good times, they had a birthday cake for me in the office one day, and I went out with a few folks who treated me to dinner that night.

So I am a bit sad thinking back.  I have been out of work for so long that I reflect back on the work relationships that so define our day to day existence.  They really did and continue to mean a lot to me.

Weather News…Is It Only for the Future…or Not?

Posted on by chappyshi

One thing I really hate about weather reports and websites is that I can’t find any meaningful information about what happened weather-wise yesterday.  Case in point, we have been hurting for rain in Centreville, VA, for months after a very wet spring.  Yesterday we finally had some significant rain but from one person I heard we got a record 2.71 inches at Dulles Airport and from “The Weather Channel” website I saw that we got 1.5 inches.   That is a fairly large discrepancy.

I certainly am not complaining about the rain.  It is just a shame that it is so hard to find “historical” weather information from even the previous day.  Whatever the weather gurus say, I know we got a lot of water last night because my kayak, which was sitting on top of my car, was the only thing visible this morning.  But I jest.  Actually, it had about about three inches of water in it.

I had to have Ed help me take  the kayak off my car this afternoon.  I don’t advise driving around with a kayak full of water on the top of your car.  Which is not to say I was driving around on the top of my car.  Sentencing can be so convoluted.

Bottom line, how much freaking rain have we been getting and is it soaking in or just washing fertilizer, animal shit, and road dirt into the waterways?

Blair Witch Project? Not a Horror Movie by Any Stretch of the Imagination.

Posted on by chappyshi

I just watched The Blair Witch Project which, according to Wikipedia, is based on the story of “three young student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams) who hike into the Black Hills of Burkittsville, Maryland to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch, and subsequently go missing.”

The cinematography was interesting/good.  The story, including the filmed interviews with locals was terribly weak.  The plot line about being lost was totally unrealistic.  The “Black Hills” referenced in the Wikipedia article do not even exist in the area.

I used to live about 20 miles  from Burkittsville and now live about 50 miles away.  I have driven,  ridden my motorcycle, and hiked in the area for years.  The Appalachian trail runs north/south not two miles west of Burkittsville.  There are major roads two or three miles east and west of and running parallel to the Appalachian Trail.  Six miles south of Burkittsville is the town of Weverton and the Potomac River.  Nine miles north is Route 40.

Unless you are totally bewitched, it is nearly impossible to get lost in that area for more than a day!