The Brookston Family Blog
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Today I judged a beer festival in San Leandro at Drakes Brewing’s 1st annual Beer Festival & Washoes Tournament. It was an unusual festival because all nineteen beers were made with the same hop — Summit — but each brewery was free to use whatever malt, yeast and water they wanted. Essentially, these were all single hop beers. It was great fun to see what different brewers did with the same recipe and the same hop.

Rodger Davis, head brewer at Drake’s enjoys a pint of his own.

The judges. Clockwise from bottom left: Judy Ashworth, Bill Tarchala, me, Craig Cauwels of Schooner’s, David Hopgood of Stone, [I never did catch his name] and Paul Marshall, who ran the competition.

Rodger Davis again, Dave Keene from the Toronado, Melissa Myers (also from Drake’s), James Costa from Moylan’s and Melissa’s friend Motor.

Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River and Rich Norgrove from Bear Republic.

Dave Keene and me.

Another vehicle ride the boys went on was the SUV ride.

T.J. and Porter in the front seat waiting to go cruising for chicks.

Where they had no trouble picking up a bevy of beauties, though Porter seemed less than enthused.

But they both put on a brave face.

And began to enjoy themselves.

As they cruised up and down the boulevard.

Just happy to be out with the wind in their hair.

Today at 1:05 p.m. PDT, I’m going to be interviewed for eighteen minutes on Beer Radio, which is Channel 147 on the Sirius Satellite Network. It will also be available a week later for podcasting.