Saturday, May 9th, was Port Brewing and Lost Abbey’s 3rd Anniversary party. In the gallery below are some pictures of the event. Cover charge was $15, that got you in the door with a wrist band [that you can take home] and 8 drink tickets. Additional drink tickets were available upon purchase.Pizza Port was making fresh, gourmet pizzas right on the premises.

As you can see from the pictures, there is an enormous amount of people here. It was packed like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I’d suggest for future events, move it to a 3rd party location or pre-sell the tickets and have 2 sessions. Yes, it is cool to be able to host this type of an event at the brewery but in my opinion, Port Brewing and Lost Abbey have too big of a following to do this. I guess that happens when you make good brews.

I did get a chance to taste a couple of beers and eat some pizza. For the 3rd Anniversary, Port Brewing produced a 3rd Anniversary IPA. Here are my tasting notes:

Cost: 3 tickets [taster]

Aroma: Esters with slight hops

Appearance: Cloudy orange with a small white head

Taste: Residual sweetness. Mild hops

Mouthfeel: Smooth slight graininess

Overall: Good but little sweet for an IPA. I guess for an Anniversary IPA I was expecting something a little more bold and big. Port Brewing creates a ton of IPAs and I was hoping this one would stand out a little more.

I also saw Gift of the Magi on the board, I was curious. I had heard of it, but never had the chance to indulge in it. Here are my tasting notes:

Cost: 1 ticket [taster]

Aroma: Esters, slightly sour

Appearance: Amber with a small white head

Taste: Grains with slight ester and sour notes

Mouthfeel: Grainy and chewy

Overall: Like a Belgian Style Barleywine. Very good.

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Tags: 3rd Anniversary, Gift of the Magi, IPA, lost abbey, Port Brewing

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Beer Reviews, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.