Craft Beer and College Football - End of Regular Season Ends With A Bang

This last weekend was a big one in terms of college football. Who cares about Florida vs. Alabama or Jokelahoma vs. Mizzouri when there is a USC vs. (F)ucla game in town. Friday night the Baltimore Beer Guy Brian headed back up to my house as he did a week before from where he was staying in San Diego and we got a little beer action going. Because he had never really experienced the beer culture of the Orange or LA County areas we hit a couple spots that Friday. First we went to Hollingshead's Deli. We both started off with a half liter of Blind Pig, and he followed with another half liter of Gouden Carolus Noel. Since I was driving I limited myself to only the Blind Pig. After that we grabbed some dogs, sausages, chili and fries at Portillo's, one of his old stomping grounds in Illinois as a kid. When we got back home we headed down to a local Belgian beer bar called The Back Abbey. I went with an Ayinger Celebrator Dopplebock and then a La Chouffe IPA. I think he had a couple saisons, one of them I think was a Glazen Toren Saison.

We called it a night because we had a long day ahead. On Saturday morning we got up headed out. As we were leaving my house my VERY IMPORTANT bottle of Ruination (more on that later) dropped out of the cooler and was damaged. We NEEDED a bottle of Ruination for this game so we were going to stop at a BevMo later in the morning when they opened, but thankfully the famous Lone Hill Liquors (maybe the highest rated beer store on BeerAdvocate) right along our way was open and had a stock (albeit pretty out of date) of Ruination. After that we continued down the road and stopped at Lucky Baldwin's Delirium Cafe for an English breakfast which is right along the way of our half-hour drive over to the Rose Bowl- USC's home away from home. I passed on any food for breakfast and instead had a Stone Smoked Porter and a 7oz taster glass of Dupont Avec Les Bon Voeux. Brian had a Craftsman IPA and a taster glass of Lost Abbey Gift of the Magi. That Avec Les Bon Voeux was damn good by the way!! As we were finishing up around 9am, my sister met us at Lucky Baldwin's and we departed to the Rose Bowl.

Kickoff was slated for 1:30, and we didn't get down to the golf course where our friend Kevin was tailgating until around 10, so there wasn't a whole lot of time for tailgating. I had brought a 6-pack of Dale's Pale Ale and a Stone Ruination for toasting purposes. It is now a tradition for us to toast to a victory over ucla with Ruination... because we like to RUIN the bRUINs. Amazingly, even though the bottle I bought was already 3 months past the expiration date stamped towards the bottom of the bottle it was still damn good! That's what refrigeration does for you folks. Thank you to Lone Hill for keeping all their bottles refrigerated!

USC won the game, 28-7, making it 9 wins in the last 10 years against the Ruins, and that pretty much concluded my beer weekend.