Benching and Beer

The official first post for “Great Divide Brewing Co. Month” will start with your regularly scheduled beer review tomorrow.  Discussing some of the product seems to be an appropriate way to start such an event.  So for today, I have for you another entry for “Food And Travel Monday,” which in the past has been respectfully referred to as “FAT Monday.”

As a first for The Wife and me, we awoke quite early on Saturday morning to head down to Tampa for a weightlifting competition.  We had a very good reason, as Cousin Adam was to compete in the bench press at the Raw Unity Powerlifting Championships that morning.  Certainly check out the site (and results) to satisfy your curiosity, but this is an occasion where I can let some pictures tell most of the story for me.

Waiting on deck.

You could sit one of me on either side of the bar.

The important part (as I am concerned) is that Cousin Adam set a meet record and won the lightweight division by lifting 363 pounds while weighing in at the 132-pound weight class.  Try to wrap your head around that for a moment.  Obviously a big congrats goes out to him and I know all of the family and friends there supporting him were more than proud.  By the smile on his face after, I would say he was pretty pleased as well!

Collecting some hardware.

Lightweight and Heavyweight champs

After leaving there late Saturday morning, our day continued to be excellent as I was able to visit Cigar City Brewing on our way back to Orlando.

The welcome sign.

Fortunately, since we were there at about 11:01, they open their tasting room at 11 on Saturdays and since they had to unlock the door for us, maybe we arrived 59 seconds earlier than I thought.  One of the good things about being the first and only people there initially was that, as The Wife later put it, I could get “my beer geek on.”  For what turned out to be 90 minutes or so, we were able to talk all things beer with Mike Melton, about Cigar City and beyond.

A brewery is a happy place for me.

As we worked our way through sampler paddles including Jai Alai IPA, Maduro Oatmeal Brown Ale, Blueberry Maduro, Winter Warmer, Oatmeal Raisin Cookie, and Berliner Weiss (guest tap) I was able to gain a lot of good information.  Visiting a brewery, hearing more of the back-story, and getting to meet some of the people almost always makes me appreciate the product even more and this was no exception.

A few of the participants.

It is certainly tough chose favorites among a lineup of beers where none of them are bad, but I will say that if I had to choose only two to have again they would be the Jai Alai IPA and the Winter Warmer.  The Wife also really enjoyed the Winter Warmer (I believe referring to it as a “glass of awesome”), but her surprise co-winner was the Berliner Weiss.  Even though the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie really grew on me, I went with a growler of the Jai Alai to take home for future enjoyment.

Some of the where the magic happens.

Maybe there is a prize for drinking the contents of this bottle?

You can always take some home with you.

I have gone on a bit longer than usual, but that should be evidence enough of how much I really enjoyed the entire day (also check out the recap from The Wife).  A big thank you to Mike for allowing me to bombard you with questions for a while and for giving me some excellent tips to help me with my home brewing experiments as well as providing additional inspiration to keep chasing my beer dreams.

Say hello to Mike when you stop by on Saturdays

The things happening at Cigar City Brewing in the near future (and beyond) are very exciting, especially for me in Central Florida where we may soon see bottles on the shelves.  I would expect to see more awards and medals on their wall as the months and years pass.  The visit this weekend will not be my only one and if any of you have the opportunity, do yourself a favor and stop by to drink some good beer with some good beer people.