The State of Things

The local weekly paper has their annual craft beer roundup to go along with the Oregon Beer Awards, which they sponsor. And which I help out on!

Here is a picture of almost all of the glasses that were prepped and used for just the first weekend (there were two) of judging for the awards. There were over 1000 beers that were judged over two weekends and let me tell you, that is A LOT of beer.

I bring this up in part because hey, I think I participated in a cool thing. But also because while I was doing it, multiple judges thanked me for my work. It struck me, again, that none of this is possible without the efforts of a great many people and in this instance I am just one helper in a crowd of many.

One of the organizers thanked me for my work and I told her it wasn’t work. “This is me helping my friends.”

Which is a nice way to think about it, because standing on concrete for 8 hours a day for two weekends makes me sore.

But also, it makes me wish I could think about, or have the same help, when it comes to, say, any form of house maintenance that I do not understand. Which is most of it.

The OBAs

I was a steward for the judging portion of the Oregon Beer Awards last weekend, which was a great time and a very well run event. I can’t post many pictures because we were asked to keep any identifying information off social media until after the awards are given at the end of February.

Still, as part of a team that helped serve 1,029 different beers over 36 hours, I can tell you that we went through a lot of beer. Those empty boxes? Not even an eighth of what we dealt with.

Still, I got to see a lot of bottles, not just a few cans and more crowlers than I think we’d really like.

(From a pouring vantage, crowlers cause the most spillage, and wax topped bottles are the biggest pain in the butt to open, especially when you’re under a deadline.)

I also got to try some delicious beer and some questionable ones, though most relevantly, I got to meet some cool people. That’s really what it’s all about.

Well. That and the spoils.

Twelve cases of beer isn’t a bad haul!